I have to admit that recently I have not been ‘playing’ with as many new tools as I have done previously. I think that this is partially because the tools I do use on a regular basis meet most of my online needs. I don’t often see things that either surpass what I am using already or excite me from an eduational standpoint. There is also the fact that I have been having a bit of a break from my online life of late. Still, every now and then, I have a spate of looking around to see what I’ve been missing and today has been one of those days. Here are some of the things I’ve been trying out.
This is a service where you can enter the URL addresses of a number of websites and it will turn them into a set of tabs (these will apear as sub-tabs within one of your tabs/windows) which can be accessed from a single hyperlink. There is a visual preview of these sites on the landing page when people follow the link. I tried it out by making all of my website links into a single ShareTab link. I think this will certainly reduce the cluster in my email signatures!!
This is an RSS tool that prioritises the top posts in any feed based on the number of comments, saves to Delicious and links to the post among other measures. This means that you can identify the most popular posts on the site very quickly and can get a widget that shows this. When I put in my blog feed, this is what it came up with:
I’m not sure if I would have called these my favourite posts but I found this a very interesting exercise.
Thanks to the guys at the Tek blog for the following:
A simple application that will turn photos that you drag into the interface into a collage – you can choose from a variety of shapes. It is a simple programme that does exactly what it is supposed to. I did wonder if the excellent Google’s Picasa software (now available for Mac and PC) might be better to use to do this on many occassions as you can do things like reposition images within the collage and resize individual photos. Still, it won’t do some of the shapes easily that Shape Collage does so I guess it is just personal choice. Picasa also does a lot more than just collages and maybe it is useful to have a dedicated piece of software for this purpose. You let me know your thoughts.
Enough for this evening. I will keep playing and see if I can find anything else of interest!
One Monday morning, I went to run a workshop at Wellington College for a group of teachers on a range of web 2.0 tools. I opened up my http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com site and during the course of the morning went to go to where I have all my blog collections so that I could pull up secondary school examples. On my ‘Finding blogs’ page I was in for a nasty shock – all of the feeds that I had aggregated using a tool called RSS Mixer were no longer there. When I visited the site, there was a message that it had closed down 15 days earlier taking all my feed collections with it! I had spent quite a long time putting these together so this was obviously not the best news!! I have messaged them on Twitter but so far have heard nothing back.
One of the tools I talked about when at the workshop was a favourite I had picked up from Lenva called CircaVie from AOL. I received an email today from Mark Callagher who organised the workshop to say that there was a message on the site saying it is closing on the 15th January. I head there tonight and sure enough this is the case. There is a similar tool out there called ‘Our Story‘ which I hope I can use instead but I am starting to feel as if the ground is not that solid anymore beneath the web 2.0 movement.
Basically, a lot of these sites are starting to look rather less than stable – even with larger companies like AOL behind them. I wonder how many more will topple with the credit crisis in full swing. Or would these have pinged out of existence without the current financial climate. This is one of the definite drawbacks to using web 2.0 tools – you can’t be sure that they will still be running next month!
Just to top off all of this bad news, the announcement has been made that VoiceThread is no longer allowing multiple logins at the same time on the same account. Say goodbye to the ability to have kids logged into a single account using the sub identiies to switch to a different picture at the same time as other kids. Now you will need to have multiple accounts for them to log in with to have them working on a VoiceThread at the same time.
Hmmm….lucky that Christmas is coming up to cheer everyone up To make up for this bah humbug post I will do something extremely upbeat before Christmas (now I just have to figure out what!)
Do you know of any other online tools that are closing up shop? Do you think this is directly related to the financial crisis?
Here is the first in a series of posts about the tools I have included in my learning web 2.0 wiki.
I have mentioned Pixton a few times recently. Pixton is a tool for making 2D comics that is incredibly customisable. You can change almost every aspect of a character including clothing, colours, facial expressions and postures. You can even change the position and angle of each limb and appendage. You are also able to add a variety of objects and backgrounds to your comic and these are also customisable. You can sign up for a single account or there is an option for schools (but this is rather pricey). Be aware that you can not log into a single account from multiple computers – it does not like this at all (see reality check post for what happens if you try). Some of the characters in the normal account are also a little borderline – I forgot about the fact there was a cartoon Jesus complete with halo when working at a Catholic school but then this could also be a good thing for retelling bible stories!
This is an introductory video that shows you quickly what some of the key features are:
Here is a thumbnail of one comic strip I’ve made while trialing Pixton (clicking on it will take you into Pixton to see a full size version):
I have also written a lesson plan designed to work with Pixton as well as other technology tools you can use for making comics on my new ict lessons wiki. This lesson is based around the topic of conserving energy and includes website resources for this topic.
I think this is a great tool and I’d love to hear stories of how other people use it.
I have been putting together a wiki for my upcoming pre-conference workshop and have been revisiting some tools that I have played with in the past as well as brushing up on the tools that I use reguarly. What I am finding is that I have become a little confused at the amount of choice that has opened up. This is nothing new in the internet world of infowhelm but I am now beginning to question things I’ve always just taken for granted.
For instance, I am a big Flickr fan. I have been advocating the use of Flickr for a long time now. Flickr has its groups, map, add note feature and direct relationship with Picnik for editing. I am still a fan but its supremacy is being erroded by some of the other tools I have played with in the last couple of days. PhotoBucket, for instance, has really grown since I last checked it out. The interface is easier to get around and you can now upload videos and it has a direct link to Scrapblog meaning you can make these from within PhotoBucket itself. Then there is DotPhoto which I hadn’t heard of before but found on the Top 10 Reviews website where it had been given gold with specific mention of the great photoshows that you can make with it.
This is just one example of the kind of exploring that I have been doing recently. All of which means that I am now getting a little bamboozled. So many options and they all have features that set them apart from each other while still having the same key functions. I don’t want to be uploading images to multiple places on the web but I don’t want to miss out on great features either. How are the rest of you out there finding the range of web 2.0 tools on offer? Are you coping?
In the meantime, here are the tools that I have documented for the workshop so far. I plan to add an extra couple in the next week or so to the wiki page.
I would love any feedback or suggestions on where to source further examples of tools. Have I missed any that should definitely be there? I am planning to add Photobucket, Bubbleshare and Scrapblog.
I was asked to give feedback to one of my Green Party colleagues on their new wiki and I suggested they add a movie trailer from YouTube for a movie fundraiser that is happening in their electorate. This lead me to start putting together instructions on how to do this that then turned into a rather comprehensive guide to adding YouTube videos to a range of online spaces including Wikispaces, PBWiki, Blogger (in post), Blogger (in html gadget in sidebar), Blogger (in video bar gadget in the sidebar), Edublogs (in post), and Edublogs (in Text widget in the sidebar). Also included is how to play with the width and height settings when you embed it. I incorrectly said Blogspot instead of Blogger throughout and will fix this up at some point. In the meantime, enjoy!
I have come across two very interesting web 2.0 tools in the last couple of weeks that could make blogging more attractive to both teachers writing blogs and to the community who read blogs.
This is an extremely simple concept. Anyone can get a blog going by sending an email to post@posterous.com. This email is converted into a blog post on a site that is automatically setup for your email address. Every time you send another email from the same email address it will be converted and added to this website as the latest post. Even better is the fact that if you send photo, mp3 or file attachments, these will be automatically added in a very web-friendly format for people to view or listen to online. I tried it out and the results of this can be seen at http://suzie_ogyqs.posterous.com/ You will notice that the name of my site is not that userfriendly. If I had set up an account BEFORE sending in my first email, I could have chosen the part of the URL that goes before posterous.com. As it is, the first time I logged into Posterous after sending my first email, it gave me the chance to choose my own URL so you will see when you click on the link above, it redirects to suzievesper.posterous.com.
Many of the parent communities we work with are not all that familiar with technologies such as RSS. However, most people have email and will check this regularly. Nourish allows you to turn a feed (or a combination of feeds) into something that people can subscribe to by email. You can add a button to your website where people can click on and add their email addresses into to subscribe. You can also add addresses in yourself so that those people will get the email newsletter. People will be able to unsubscribe by clicking a link in their email if they don’t want to receive these emails. This would also be great for someone who wants to keep check on the activity happening in online spaces such as a school ICT lead teacher or a principal. They could combine all the feeds from the teacher blogs/ wikis and have these being sent as a digest to their email. I am going to add a button for people to subscribe to this blog very shortly!
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)
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.
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:
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
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.
One Monday morning, I went to run a workshop at Wellington College for a group of teachers on a range of web 2.0 tools. I opened up my 
To make up for this bah humbug post I will do something extremely upbeat before Christmas (now I just have to figure out what!)
Many of the parent communities we work with are not all that familiar with technologies such as RSS. However, most people have email and will check this regularly. Nourish allows you to turn a feed (or a combination of feeds) into something that people can subscribe to by email. You can add a button to your website where people can click on and add their email addresses into to subscribe. You can also add addresses in yourself so that those people will get the email newsletter. People will be able to unsubscribe by clicking a link in their email if they don’t want to receive these emails. This would also be great for someone who wants to keep check on the activity happening in online spaces such as a school ICT lead teacher or a principal. They could combine all the feeds from the teacher blogs/ wikis and have these being sent as a digest to their email. I am going to add a button for people to subscribe to this blog very shortly!
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:
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 
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