BP17_20091103_Reflective Media Asset

Jing!

BP16_20091103_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools Weekly Tool

Sometimes when you searching through this world of Web 2.0 tools you come across a tool while researching another tool. You just have to say peek-a-boo and when you open your eyes... surprise you have found an amazing tool that you didn't even know you were evalualting. I found this great little Web 2.0 tool called Jing, jingproject.com, while watching the how to video for another completely different tool. I was going to blog about that tool which will now remain nameless and forever hold it's peace. I saw the ad for Jing, an app similar to ScreenFlow, appear at the end of the how to video. I was curious about another app used for screen captures and videos and when I found out it was free I was thrilled. I could use this app with my students and teach them how to make tutorials. The students could use this as a way to demonstrate how to use a website or how they work through a math problem on an online program. I see the possibilities as endless. Students could create and share their screen capture videos and really start to get their feet wet in this wonderful Web 2.0 world.


An app like Jing is a great tool that due to it's free nature opens up a wide range of uses. The need to capture videos of your screen can arise at anytime and having a free tool that you can use is great. I really feel that this is the way Web 2.0 tools should be used; freely and openly for us all to benefit from. Jing is set up in a manner that allows for great opportunity for sharing.

BP15_20091103_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools comment 3

BP8_2009112_Web 2.0 #2

BusinessCard 2

When preparing students for life in the corporate world, there are so many small details that simply get overlooked. One of these details is the importance of networking and making strong and valid business connections. With only two years under my belt in the corporate world, I have learned that one of the greatest (and oldest) ways to make contacts is through the use of business cards.

It is always a good idea to keep a few tastefully designed business cards on you at all times. You never know who you maymeet, and how they may be beneficial to your professional life.

While having business cards readily available is the old fashioned way of networking, there is a new web 2.0 tool called BusinessCard 2 which allows you to create and share virtual business cards.

This tool would be great to utilize at the high school or undergraduate levels to teach students how to market themselves in the best way possible. Each student in the class would be responsible for creating a business card, and sharing it with the rest of their classmates. Once the virtual business cards had been shared, student would then critique one another on style, design, layout, etc.

This lesson provides the opportunity to teach students that in business, reputation is everything. You have to know how to market yourself, in order to become successful.

1 comments:

Mr. HD said...

I like this tool! A virtual business card could be very useful in this digital world. Everything these days seems to be online so why shouldn't your business card. I agree this tool would be great to teach a self marketing/networking lesson. I thing you could also use it on a small scale with elementary level students, they could create their business card of the future and list their dream career and share them with the class. I think this would be a great motivator if used that way.

November 13, 2009 10:54 PM

BP14_20091103_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools comment 2

Ututti-Web 2.0 Tool in the Classroom

Ututti

This tool is going to save my life! Although this tool is focused towards the instructor, it is fabulous way for the instructor to get organized.

Ututti is a Web 2.0 tool that allows music instructors to organize their school information. This tool has many great features. Ututti allows the teacher to gather student information and use it intelligent ways. It also has the capability of placing students in certain groups/sections. It also allows the teacher to contact students according to their specific ensemble. Which is great when having a sectional rehearsal and need to get the information out to that particular group.

Ututti also has great library tool. Ututti will also organize your entire music library! And for those music instructors that have a music library, you know what a nightmare this can be if your library system is disorganized. It allows the instructor to number and name the pieces of music. And it also makes music searches easier. Searching can also be narrowed down by parts and/or composer.

And for all those music instructors that have problems with finances. It also has the capability of helping you with the money side of things. From collecting uniform fees to trip payments, Ututti is great tool that can help you with collecting money. And not to mention the fundraisers!

Being apart of secondary teaching can get very time consuming. Ututti has calendar feature that can help organize all your performance dates. Especially for those directors with multiple ensembles! With Ututti, performances, concerts and gigs can become organized allowing the instructor to focus on the students!

Two thumbs up for Ututti!

BP13_20091103_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools comment 1

BP4_2009112_Researching and Blogging About Web 2.0 Tools

Figure 1. Image created by Aaron Berchild. Source: Storybird website (2009)

BP4_2009112_Researching and Blogging About Web 2.0 Tools

The Web 2.0 tool I used is called Storybird. (Storybird, 2009) I was attracted to the site because of the storytelling element, which tied into my technology curriculum. We complete different digital storytelling project throughout the year and Storybird (2009) offers a creation element that students can use. They are provided with a group of pictures and they create a story using the photos in a unique way. I saw the photo of the killer whale and immediately thought of a student in my class named Alex. His dream job is to work at Seaworld and train the killer whales. He is obsessed with them, and I wanted to write a story about his love of sea creatures. The pictures were limiting, and my creativity was eventually stifled. Basically, the pictures dictated my story, not me.

As far as the educational benefits the tool provides, it is a way for students to have varying exposure to writing using graphics as the generator of the story. We could not use the tool during class, but I could offer it as an at home opportunity. We do not have access to this tool, as I tried it already and the site is unfortunately blocked. The graphics were very artistic and expressive. My students would have enjoyed looking at the pictures and trying to figure out a theme. It would have been a great project to select the photos or graphics and then ask them to create a story to tie them all in, like a story thread. We could pass the slides around and they could add their own pages to create a whole. Again, the photos were limiting and if you had a special need, I did not see a way to upload your own images to complete your unique story. Also, manipulation of the graphics and text is cumbersome and controlling.

I did get an idea to use this basic tool to teach students how to write their own children?s book digitally, whereby they would create their own graphics. Students have become very creative with tools like Paint and using their Microsoft Office graphics.

Storybird-Alex the Boy Who Loved All the Creatures of the Sea. (2009). Storybird. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from http://storybird.com/books/alex-the-boy-who-loved-all-the-creatures-of-the-se/

BP12_20091102_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools Tool 3

Taking notes and keeping up with assignments is a daunting task even with the best organizational skills. Note taking is a very important part of any educational system from elementary education to graduate school. The ability to keep track of deadlines and keep yourself on track is very important very difficult when you have a lot of deadlines to manage. Note taking and calendar organization is all apart of getting the most out of your education. I find this to be an essential part of my educational life but a part that is not always easy to keep organized. Notes for this deadline end up here while notes for this deadline end up there.

How can I do all of this and keep my notes in order? It is so easy to take a great set of notes and then save them somewhere and forget where you placed them.


Enter Notely a great little web app that will save you from the hectic world of note taking and deadline meeting.

Notely has all of that good stuff built in and it will also join with your facebook account and post updates to your page. Notely is here to save you form forge ting where you put your notes because they are all with Notely.


This noteworthy little app is here to keep us all on track and ready to take note... Even on the go Notely is also mobile and can be accessed on your cell phone, smartphone or iphone.

You never know when inspiration will hit, well now you can be ready with Notely.

BP11_20091102_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools Tool 2

Footnote


So many footnotes in history how can I possibly find them all. Web 2.0 has given us a way to locate many of the great footnotes in history. One place where we can find original historical documents and photos and more.


Footnote offers it's members an interface where they can browse for historical events in various ways. This gives the member the opportunity to learn new information that they may not have read before. This web 2.0 tool is great for users who what to broaden their knowledge of history.


This web 2.0 tool could be used in a classroom as a new and fun way to browse through history. A wonderful assignment comes to mind. An historical scavenger hunt using Footnote. The students could be tasked to discover certain pictures, events and answers throughout history. The students engaged in this activity would in the process also find new things they did not know and may find their own point in history they want to study. This tools does history right.

The interface in easy to use and the amount of information that is accessible is simply wonderful.

BP10_20091102_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools Tool 1

Udutu


I neat little tool for the 2.0 web. I like this tool because it is free and well designed. The user has the ability use this tool, myudutu, to create an entire course. This LMS of Learning Managment System is full feature and non-proprietary. The user has the ability to export their finished work to their own computer and host it on their own server or Udutu will host it for a very reasonable fee. If you choose to host the course yourself then the cost for usinf Udutu is free!


What a great way to bring course creation to those who need it but may not have the programing skills or the funding to create a course themselves. I would like to point out some of the features of Udutu. Udutu allow the user, through it's myudutu interface, to create a cousre filled with questions, pictures and even flash animations (no programing skills needed). This program puts the power of cousre creation in the hands of educators.

Empowering the course instructors by allowing them to also become the course designers. Udutu!

BP9_20091102_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools my weekly comments

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Jam Legend-Web 2.0 Tool in the Classroom

Jam Legend

Watch out Rock Band, here comes Jam Legend!!! Jam Legend is great way to get the video games into the classroom. If you are like me, then you realize that gaming can be very educational. Not all school districts allow the use of video games, but now you can have the video game feel in your classroom. Jam Legend is very similar to Rock Band and can be very beneficial in learning music.

For those that have played Rock Band or Jam Legend, you know that it takes much rhythmical thinking in order to play. What a great way to teach down beats! The beginner levels of Jam Legend would be a wonderful way to teach students how to feel the downbeat in the songs. It would also be a great reinforcement tools when teaching rhythms to your students. As the levels continue, the teacher can begin to introduce upbeats and what that feels like for the students.

The great thing about Jam Legend is that it has multiple levels. Students are always in different spots, and these levels would be a great way for students to challenge themselves. As students begin to master the levels they can move to the more difficult levels, allowing them to slowly learn the new concept.

This would also make for good friendly competition in the classroom! If the instructor would break the class into groups, this could be a great way to build relationships as well as build self-confidence.

This is a great tool and will really challenge and capture the attention of the students! The more we incorporate games into our teaching the better the students will learn.

Rock on!

1 comments:

Mr. HD said...

I must agree that challenging our students with interesting games and activities is a great way to keep them engaged and exploring. I find teachers that use this type of teaching method reach their students on a deeper level. This is a great idea.

BP8_20091102_Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking- Lets get social about it with bookmarks. I have found that we are at a point in time where we have to be a lot more social. We are able to be more social now do to the web and especially web2.0. People who are not social in their offline lives find themselves interacting like they never thought they could. We are now at a place where we can be social in safety. We don't need to worry about how we look, unless we are webcamming. We don't have to worry about how we sound, unless we are on a mic, or how we smell, well not yet. It would be great to be able to smell all those wonderful pictures of food found across the net.

We are getting more and more social everyday. The more social we become the more information becomes available. I have found that we should be able to share any and all information we want or find notable with whom ever we wish. Social bookmarking is a great way to share information and interact with others. The idea of being able to check out a website of a friend or web acquaintance is cool. This will allow a person to be able to share part of themselves with the web. Our bookmarks tell a lot about us; our intests, our style and our philosophy. Social bookmarking can be as personal as you allow it to be. Browsing through a persons bookmarks is similar to looking through their trash a shrewd person could find out good amount of information about someone. This brings me to the point of this blog using social bookmarking in education. As I stated above looking at someone's bookmarks can tell you a lot about them, so if we apply this to education then you can find out a lot about a specific topic. Groups can use these services for collective projects. Either a group account can be established, with the password passed around to the group or, in what is probably a safer and more useful version, a group can establish a unique tag and tag all group-related links with it… This could get very interesting, since other people, outside of the class, could potentially add things as well just by using the tag. You could get people from all over the country contributing to your class reading list (Hedreen,2005)! Wow! This would be great if you needed more information for a paper or a project. I find this to be a very useful tool that could grow beyond the scope of the initial tagger. That's the "social" part of social bookmarking. Sure, you are likely to get some things that aren't useful or relevant for your purposes, but in return you get resources that you never would have found on your own (Hedreen,2005). This seems to be the point of web 2.0 itself, to bring people together and share more and more information.
The educational uses are easy to see. You can then bookmark the sites that interest you or you find useful for future reference. By doing this, you not only helping yourself not to lose track of these sites; you also help your fellow social bookmarkers by providing them with new interesting and useful sites (Squidoo.com, 2008). The more information we gather and share the closer we come to uncovering the secrets of this world. The nature of sharin seems to be at the core of web2.0. The idea behind social bookmarking - which is part of the so-called Web 2.0 movement towards a more interactive use of the web - is to provide a way of storing, organising and sharing web resources. Users assign categories, or "tags", to web material in a way that is meaningful to them, which can then be discovered by others (Corbyn, 2008). Finally, social bookmarking not only helps you keep track of your favorite sites, it also imparts knowlegde to others. The more social bookmarks that are set up, the closer we com to finding the best the web has to offer. Their are sites on the web you won't find through a search engine you must know the URL, however social bookmarknig can help tp give you access to places on the wenb you would never find on your own. Social bookmarking in education is a bright spot that we should continue to allow to shine.

Refereces

Corbyn, Z. (2008) Read it, like it, list it, share it. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=40
0931


Hedreen, R. (2005) Social bookmarking in education. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://frequanq.blogspot.com/2005/02/social-bookmarking-in-education.html


Squidoo.com. (2008) Social bookmarking educations - things you need to know. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.squidoo.com/social-bookmarking-education

BP7_20091102_Reflective Media Asset

Edmodo!

BP6_20091102_Flickr

Flickr - Lesson plans hmmmm


I searched through the Internets and managed to find a few interesting Flickr lesson plans but none that I truly wanted to do with my class. I happened to run across one about disabled students that gave me some inspiration check it out here. I wasn't particularly inspired by the content or the subject matter. My interest was peaked by the use of these seemingly abstract photos to teach a subject. I see how I you could use photos to reinforce a lesson.

My Lesson Plan...In Short form:


I plan on using Flickr in this manner I will create an account for the class and allow the children to upload images to the account and create photo sets. I will of course have to instruct them as to how this is to be accomplished.

The students will be charged with finding pictures on the Internet or taking some photos of their own that will capture and/or reinforce some mathematical quandary. An example of this would be a picture or photo of a ruler and the title could be 12 inches equals 1 foot.

This activity would be a group assignment and the children would be able to see each others work online and show it to their parents as well. I think this activity would be fun as well as educational.

The children would learn a new way to view mathematical problems and equations while finding new ways to learn about math.



Project H Design. (2008). Julie- math through art. Retrieved
November 8, 2009 from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/projecthdesign/sets/72157607641738699/

BP5_20091102_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools

I have researched this Web 2.0 tool for use with my third grade students. I feel it could be a great way to get them more involved in their own education. It is hard to get young children to really understand the importance of their grades. This applies to most of the students I teach even if their parents punish thm if they make bad grades, they still are not motivated to to do their best for themselves. If you work hard to avoid a punishment you will only work hard if you feel the punishment is waiting for you. I want my studnets to want to do well for their own benefit. I want them to treat this free education like one they are paying top dollar for. It is very true that most people don't value things that they don't earn. I see students everyday that view school as a place their parents make them go to and any day they don't have to come is a blessing.

I see Edmodo.com as a way to combat this feeling by creating a place on the web a little community like myspace or facebook just for us, my students and myself. We will be the only ones who can access the community which makes it safer to use than some other fully public online communities. I could post their homework and assignments here and they would have to log in the see them. I would allow them to log on at school. They could talk to their classmates just like on myspace and chat about class, homework or anything they like. I am hoping this social aspect would entice them to want to log on.

I could also use this tool to keep parents involved as they could see at a glance what is going on in class with their student. They could check to see if their child is completing their assignment or not and they could also read the messages I send to their child. I would send them messages that tell them how well they are doing; behaviorally, educationally and socially. I would base they social grade upon how much and who appropriately they interact with each other inside the community.


I feel this approach would be a lot of fun for my students. I believe I could create some real student interest.

Interest in their grades.

Interest in their school.

INTEREST IN THEIR SUCCESS!

BP4_20091101_iGoogle PLE

BP3_20091101_RSS Feeds

My RSS and Why...










Education Technology- I chose this feed because it simply talks about Technology and I love tech. I also love to read about new tech in education, so that I can stay on top of things.


Webblogg-ed- A new site for me but one that may come in handy durinf this course and beyond as it deals with blogging in education.


Web Apps on Go2Web20- I choose this feed for obvious reasons Go2Web2.0 is an amazing site and I feel in love with it the first time I saw it. This feed is important in order to keep myself in the know with the latest 2.0 apps.


Broward Education- This one is the simplest choice- I work in Broward County so many of the articles here really hit home with me anf provide me with a good picture of education in my town.


FeedMyApp- Another great tool that I can use to get my fill of web 2.0 apps and widgets.

BP2_20091101_Getting Started

I really don't have any clue were this day will go. I don't know how a blog can benefit me or my students educationally. I don't blog. I thought aboput starting one a while ago but I just have too much to do to sit down and blog something meaningful. I guess this will have to change. truly it has already changed. I have been posting about my AR project however I have been using iWeb and I enjoy iWeb so this is strange opportunity I will either find myself in a very strange pickle or having a lot of fun. I tend to view new things as wonderful. I love new experiences however I have to find a way to see how this will help me. I searched the internet for some information on educational blogs that would give me some insight on how blogging in education could be beneficial to me or my students. I found a good article on a web sight about blogs. The author wrote, "Keeping a classroom blog will also help parents to be informed of what’s going on in the classroom. This, in turn, will lead to more parents taking active roles in their children’s education"(Adultlearn.com, 2009). I never thought of trying this not in my wildest of dreams. The author continued, "Write up a synopsis of what the class has been studying each month, or at the end of each term. Be sure to get parental permission before posting photos of students on your site. Photographs of in-class projects, science experiments, and the students working in groups will help parents to feel as though they are well-informed of their child’s daily routine"(Adultlearn.com, 2009). I can't say I am going to start blogging with my students tomorrow but it is a great idea and I can truly see how it would and could help me in my class. I think this would be a great way to involve your studnets parents and keep them involved in the goings on in the classroom which is important. Keeping students' parents involved in the education of the students is paramount. I feel that I could use this approach as a wy to also get feedback from parents on a more regular basis. As I am writing this I am becoming more and more convinced that this is a good idea. I may become a blogger, yet.

Adultlearn.com.(2009). Blogs in education. Retrieved Nov 1, 2009, from
http://www.adultlearn.com/blogs-education.html

There was darkness...

I will start by saying, first I am here to comment on all I choose to and will be silenced by none. I do not claim to be an expert but I am an expert on my opinion.