Sharing the Addiction

OK - so I decided to take out a bit of time and play with Glogster right now :-)  I have made an online poster of sites that I have made over the last year or so. You can click on a site image to take you to that site. I had a lot of fun with this though the results are not that stunning and I learned a few lessons along the way.

1) The page is a set to A4 portrait size which would seem to make it impossible to play around with some layouts. However, if you embed the page into a wiki and play around with the width and height settings in the embed code, you can change the size of the area you are working on. Instead of shrinking the page while keeping the same dimensions, playing with the embed size settings will actually cut off areas of the page. This is how I got my page to look the way it does in the picture. I heard about this site when visiting Lenva at Bucklands Beach Intermediate School. The kids there use Glogster to make the front navigation page of their online portfolios. Some of the children have moved into using Wikispaces for their portfolios and you can see an example of a student called Jess by clicking here.

I have embedded my Glogster page into my educational software wiki and you can go and check it out by clicking here (the picture above is just a screenshot)

Tags: glogster, posters

In my last week in my job as ICT advisor, I had some time free and so offered to do anything in classes that teachers wanted. Stu put his hand up and asked if I could spend a session with his class while he worked with podcasters as part of his action research project. I was quite keen to get into a classroom again and, of course, I couldn’t help but try an ICT tool that I have been mucking around with for awhile - VoiceThread. It turned out that the session time was during maths and I could get the laptop pod so I decided to put together a problem solving VoiceThread and give it a go. Generally, it went really well but there were some issues as well so I would adjust the activity if doing it again. Here is a summary of my thinking after the session:

What went well

• The problems were aimed at the right level and I think it was definitely worth the effort of popping them into Comic Life to ‘jazz them up’ before exporting them as images and uploading to VoiceThread.
• I had previously set up 10 identities called ‘Group One’ etc on my account and this meant I could have the children working in groups of three using one of the identities.
• I was able to be logged on to 10 different laptops on my one account and we could even all add to the same VoiceThread slide at the same time using the different identities (I was trying to stretch VoiceThread to the max and it coped well).
• I had embedded the same VoiceThread on 10 different pages of a wiki so that everyone could work off their own copy in their groups. This worked extremely well.
• The children were extremely motivated to use VoiceThread and many even asked if they would be able to set up their own accounts at home.
• Some children persevered with working out problems for almost a full half hour and showed higher level thinking skills.

What could be improved

• The children were told they needed to work out the answers to problems before being able to record but many were so keen to get onto VoiceThread they rushed the problem solving just so they could record. This meant that many of the answers were not well thought out. Next time, I think I would have a paper version of the problems and the children would have to show me they had worked to figure out an answer before being able to get a laptop to record their strategies.
• Some children recorded silly comments just to listen to them back and have a laugh. Even though they deleted them, this wasted time. By having the paper version as I said above, I think this would go some way to resolving this issue. I would also lay down some ground rules at the start and point out that anyone not following these rules would be working all the problems out on paper and not using the laptops at all.
• There was too much background noise in the recordings. I might try to control the noise levels more or have the recording area somewhere a little quieter.
• I didn’t know how to make the doodle tool stay solid so it kept fading out making it hard for the kids to show all their working in time. I know now that you click on the big white circle in the middle of the Doodle tool circles so this would make things much easier next time!
• I couldn’t seem to upload any images for identities or otherwise when I was at the school. I think this is something to do with the school firewall so it is a good thing I got it all set up the night before. I did try bringing a picture across from my Flickr account and this worked fine so I would advise teachers to have all their images banked there for the kids to use as a workaround.

I did really enjoy working with the kids and still think it was a very worthwhile activity. Anyone can use this VoiceThread and add their own working out strategies so feel free to do so! Many of the problems still have not been solved correctly. Stu has also blogged about the session in his class blog which you can also go and read.

Tags: maths, VoiceThread

I just wanted to give a big ‘ups’ to the teachers that I have worked with over this year who have now started to do their own blogs. Today I worked with the staff of one school (in groups of three) to get new edublogs up and running for their classes. Everyone was so enthusiastic and really enjoyed the tools at their finger tips when making their blogs. I must say that I am getting more and more impressed with Edublogs - particularly the Pages function which basically means that you have the benefits of a wiki and blog combined. I do find a couple of things mildly frustrating such as that when I send an image up to the editor when posting and try to resize by dragging the corners, it does not stay resized when I publish. I know that I can go and change the dimensions in the insert/ edit image area but it would be handy to resize without using this. The other very small thing that I think could be improved is having a widget named Html rather than having to know that you use a Text widget. It might also be handy to have something written in the template thumbnails to let you know which you can customise the image of and which ones you can’t.

However, these are very minor things and they don’t interfere with me being able to use the blog. The page feature more than makes up for any small irritations and I plan to add some to this blog in the very near future.

It would be great if some of you out there could go and leave comments for my fledgling teacher bloggers. Nothing is more motivating than knowing that someone is out there and values what you do. Below is the link to a page in our cluster wiki with all the blogs linked to:

http://teacherportal.wikispaces.com/Blogs 

I have also spent time working on Teacher Portal to make it easier to navigate and to simplify the interface. I am quite happy with it now. While some of the content is specific to our cluster, I think this could be a useful resource for other people as well and it would be great if anyone wants to add some of their own content into it.

Let me know if you think it could be improved and what you’d like to see added

Tags: Blogs, teacher portal

OK - it is now 2:30am in the morning and I am still sitting here like an idiot (school holidays at least) and I have become quite excited about a tool that I have just been messing about with called Brickabox to the point that I feel I need to blog about it.

Basically, it allows you create your very own YouTube or other resource site by helping you to build a similar interface and then start populating it with content (there are six ready made templates such as video sites or map sites) or you can completely design your own using their building blocks. I thought it could be handy to have my very own collection of videos that I think are good for education. At the moment, I have been embedding these into a wiki page but I think the interface much better when I create a brickabox to store them in. I signed up for a Brickabox account and then selected the option to make a ‘Video Collection Site’ which I then called  http://edvid.bricabox.com

From there I just used the ‘Add Video’ button to start putting in the content. I simply needed to give the video a name and then use the embed code from the site it was stored in to add it to my own site. I have only put in two so far but can say that the process couldn’t be simpler. There is also an Admin area (like the back end of a blog) where you can change the theme of the template (I chose the blue colour) as well as other aspects of the site. I REALLY like this tool and think it would be great in a school where you could bank great resources without anyone having to go to the sites where they were originally hosted.

Tags: brickabox

Today I put the finishing touches on my resource page on Flickr for teachers on my wiki.  I have included a number of ways that you can use Flickr in an educational context as well as links to tutorials and other tools that can work with Flickr. I am going to put a very brief summary here of some of the types of examples so it would pay to check out the wiki page to see an in-depth coverage of this topic.

Flickr to Share what is happening in the classroom

This is the most basic use for Flickr. Upload pictures of activities, displays or examples of work for others to view and to share ideas.

Use the Note Feature in Flickr for Interactivity

Flickr has the ability to add notes to parts of your image that will open in a pop-up window when you mouse over the area where you have placed the note. This can be used to ‘embed’ writing and information into your images. The only disadvantage is that the pop-up note feature only functions within Flickr itself and you can’t embed the images into a wiki or blog and maintain the notes. It is easy enough to have a link to the Flickr page however. The example to the left shows using this to create an online and interactive mihi (information about your background and heritage for non-New Zealanders). It can also be used for labeling, instructional writing or having information about each child within a group picture. It would be great if you could leave a comment on this blog post with other ways you might use this.

Using Flickr for Digital Storytelling

There are groups on Flickr where people submit photos that tell stories in 5 photographic frames. A New Zealand teacher with the Flickr username Hey Milly has created a group specifically for children to post their photo stories to and the example below was on this Flickr group.

 Using Flickr to Learn About Other Places

There is a map tool on Flickr that allows you to save images from your Flickr photostream into locations on a world map. This is not only handy for when you travel but can be great if you want to find images from other parts of the world if you are learning about them in class. You can ask to see the results on the map from everyone’s images and can then use pictures from these places.

Using Flickr as a Storage Site that Works with Other Tools

Flickr released to the public what is called its API. Other online tool developers where then able to use this to allow you to build connections between your account with them and your Flickr account. This saves you uploading the same pictures into all the different tools. An example of this is Big Huge Labs where you can make your Flickr photos into all kinds of things such as the motivational poster on the right.

Searching Flickr

Many people who upload their photos to Flickr make them public and apply a Creative Commons license to them meaning that you are legally able to use them as long as you cite your source. There are tools to search for these type of pictures in Flickr with search engines such as CompFight, Flickr Storm and FlickRiver.  You can also use the advanced search options within Flickr to do a Creative Commons search. See the wiki page for more detailed information on Flickr searches.

There are tutorials and more examples within each category on the wiki page. Enjoy using Flickr!

Tags: flickr, photos

I am at last posting about this awesome little online application creator. You may have heard of Zoho as it has quite a well known set on online office applications which give Google a good run for its money. Well, I was trying to think how to set up electronic registrations for our 2008 cluster expo and I came across Zoho Creator. Basically, you can set up an embeddable form which takes the submitted information and puts it into a database that you can export to Excel at the end. The forms are a breeze to make and the program is completely free! All you really need to do is drag the type of form box (eg a single line box) from the left hand menu into the form you have created.

I wouldn’t have needed to understand anything about scripting except that I wanted the form to perform the slightly complicated task of letting a person know when the workshop option they have selected is oversubscribed so they have to choose again. Zoho Creator lets you do this but I have to admit that I couldn’t figure out how to write the scripts I needed. I put a message up on the Zoho forums and the support was absolutely amazing! Bascially, the lovely man at Zoho ended up writing all the script for me (with a few messages sent back and forwards). I just had to paste it into the right place in my application. I also made up another form that involved no scripting knowledge which allows presenters to submit their workshops.

If you want to see the finished forms, I have embedded them into the wiki I plan to use for the cluster Expo next year. Go check it out. This is a highly recommended tool and I can see myself using this over and over again.

I have just been listening to a very interesting talk about Connectivism and Web 2.0 in education by George Siemens. Here are some of my takeaway points:

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

What Can We Do With Flickr?, originally uploaded by cogdogblog.

Thanks to Ewan (involved in a full day workshop with him today) for showing this great resource. Click on the photo above to be taken to where it is on Flickr. The photo has a number of notes on the image that give you ideas on how to use Flickr and have a number of really useful links. This Flickr user has a number of great ideas in his photostream so have a play through some more of his photos. I have a lot more ideas on how I could use Flickr after today.

Yes - that is a bold statement but I am loving Vuvox!!

It is hard to believe that it is completely free! You can search your photos on Flickr, PhotoBucket or upload them from your computer. You can also do general web searches for images to use. You drag the photos you want to display into your storyboard area and then apply a style to use. Many aspects of each style can be customised to suit your purposes. You can save it to their server and then they give you the ability to embed the code on a wiki page. Way cool!! Click on each of the photos on my ‘emotion tree’ to get a close-up of them (I took these photos years ago - the quality of the photos isn’t all that great which is not Vuvox’s fault)