I’m really starting to feel like I am getting swept up in the digital revolution. With each new thing I learn, I realize how much more there IS to learn. As for video sharing sites, unless you have been living under a rock for the last three years, you have probably heard of, watched or uploaded to YouTube. I have found it entertaining (my husband is always sharing new and interesting videos from YouTube and other video sharing sites, such as Glumbert. As for me, I do enjoy the ease of use and the sheer number of videos available on YouTube. However, I was happy to come across the France-based video sharing site DailyMotion which was mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for YouTube (supplied by this week’s Trailfire). As a French immersion teacher, this has literally opened up a whole new world of French content for me. Not only are there videos in French and English, there are versions of this site in more than a dozen languages! I will definitely be passing this resource along to my Spanish-teaching colleagues. Perhaps what is the most useful for me at this moment in my profession are the current events and news clips as I will be starting my current events unit with my Français langue 9 students soon.
On-line tutorials – from this week’s trailfire, One Hundred Awesome YouTube Vids for Librarians is a fascinating and very useful resource. I wanted to watch them all! What really struck me is just how much we are going digital. A simple tutorial explaining plagiarism would have been a magazine article or an encyclopedia entry just a few years ago. A fun video to check out is What is Plagiarism. It’s hokey and funny in a nerdy way, but accessible to high school and undergraduate students. I have always taught specific lessons on how to avoid plagiarism, but often had difficulty showing students what it looked like. I believe that these tutorial videos clearly demonstrate to students how to write and report without plagiarizing. Another thought-provoking video is Web 2.0 saved us which tries to define who the Web 2.0 generation is and how it is changing their lives and ours.
I am impressed by the fact that Teacher tube encourages its users to flag inappropriate sites. I am starting to grasp the concept of community that is out there on the web. I used to think that it was just one big free for all. However, with so many users keeping an eye on things, it is almost like there are built-in social mechanisms to regulate behaviour. One great resource that I found on Teacher Tube earlier this year was a video to Billy Joel’s song, We didn’t Start the Fire It was an excellent resource to teach kids about the Cold War and the baby boomer generation. Since starting this course, I have also begun to up the technology ante in the classroom by offering students more options to present material for projects or oral presentations. My grade 11 Social Studies students are studying government and have just completed projects on major political parties. Check out my students’ video on the BC Liberals which they uploaded to YouTube.
Another amazing tool that my TL introduced to the staff last year is Voicethread which is an online tool that enables users to talk about and share images, documents and videos. One of my other student groups used it for their political party presentation.
Throughout my on-line searches this week, I kept coming back to the same question: “Is one video sharing site better than the others?” YouTube certainly has the best name recognition, but I was interested to learn that it is not in fact, the video-sharing site with the most traffic. According to the blog, Friday Traffic Report, YouTube ranks fourth behind Google Video, BrightCove and PhotoBucket as video sites with the most traffic. Then, I stumbled across a meta-search engine for videos. VDOOGLE is worth a look as it allows users to search for videos from multiple sites.
The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration , mentioned in the Hasselbach article, Take a field trip without leaving the classroom: Museums, zoos and interactive videoconferencing, offers videoconferencing resources for teachers and students. I also signed up for NoodleTrip , a virtual field-trip search engine, which I thought would have enormous possibilities for second-language and humanities teaching. However, most virtual field trips have to be purchased with prices ranging from $50 to $185! Caveat Emptor! Just another reminder that now, more than ever, we need to be critical consumers of what we view, download, upload and sign up for on the Web.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
If a picture is worth a thousand words...
Hi all,
Well, after having signed up for and played with Picasa and Flickr. I think I prefer Flickr, however. It is more user-friendly, easier to navigate and I already have some experience with it as friends use it. I checked out Webshots, which seems quite easy to navigate as well. However, I would not recommend photobucket as the layout is too text-heavy and not visual enough. This struck me as odd, since it is a photo sharing website and the home page had NO IMAGES! So, it's back to Flickr, for this photo sharing newbie! Plus, I am have been somewhat influenced by Will Richardson and his overwhelming support for Flickr. Check out my photos from our day camp here.
There are lots of good ideas from David Jake's blog: The Strength of Weak Ties. It is so informative, that I have signed up for it. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend it.So, how can sites like Flickr help me in my work? For starters, I can search images using tags - excellent for research projects and Power Point Presentations. I also thought that the suggestions for illustrating poetry were brilliant! Imagine the possibilities. As a social studies teacher, I definitely would be able to use the geo-tagging function in Flickr to teach geography. Wow, and I thought Google earth was out of this world for social studies. As a second language teacher, there are a tremendous number of possibilities in using photo prompts to generate discussion, debate and writing. No more searching through books, clip art, or Google images to find that perfect picture. Plus, the quality of photos on photo sharing sites is remarkably good and not what I expected.
As for student photos, I see potential with being able to share photos of field trips. We just took our grade nine French immersion students on a one day team building trip to a YMCA camp. We could have everyone that took photos to send them into Flickr and tag them in a similar way. Another great application would be to upload images of our France and Québec exchange students and their partners from our school. This would be a great promotional tool for encouraging future students to participate in the exchange. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words” Then, the link to the photo sharing site could then be included on our department web page on the school web site. Therefore, we could change the photos on Flickr while maintaining the link – therefore not requiring the webmaster to constantly be updating the photos. As well, putting up a link is so much easier than managing photos on a website.
Whew! I had some problems linking my Flickr photos to my blog, but I think I may have figured it out. I still can't seem to link the slideshow function from Flickr to my blog. I see though, that it can be done. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Over and out!
Well, after having signed up for and played with Picasa and Flickr. I think I prefer Flickr, however. It is more user-friendly, easier to navigate and I already have some experience with it as friends use it. I checked out Webshots, which seems quite easy to navigate as well. However, I would not recommend photobucket as the layout is too text-heavy and not visual enough. This struck me as odd, since it is a photo sharing website and the home page had NO IMAGES! So, it's back to Flickr, for this photo sharing newbie! Plus, I am have been somewhat influenced by Will Richardson and his overwhelming support for Flickr. Check out my photos from our day camp here.
There are lots of good ideas from David Jake's blog: The Strength of Weak Ties. It is so informative, that I have signed up for it. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend it.So, how can sites like Flickr help me in my work? For starters, I can search images using tags - excellent for research projects and Power Point Presentations. I also thought that the suggestions for illustrating poetry were brilliant! Imagine the possibilities. As a social studies teacher, I definitely would be able to use the geo-tagging function in Flickr to teach geography. Wow, and I thought Google earth was out of this world for social studies. As a second language teacher, there are a tremendous number of possibilities in using photo prompts to generate discussion, debate and writing. No more searching through books, clip art, or Google images to find that perfect picture. Plus, the quality of photos on photo sharing sites is remarkably good and not what I expected.
As for student photos, I see potential with being able to share photos of field trips. We just took our grade nine French immersion students on a one day team building trip to a YMCA camp. We could have everyone that took photos to send them into Flickr and tag them in a similar way. Another great application would be to upload images of our France and Québec exchange students and their partners from our school. This would be a great promotional tool for encouraging future students to participate in the exchange. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words” Then, the link to the photo sharing site could then be included on our department web page on the school web site. Therefore, we could change the photos on Flickr while maintaining the link – therefore not requiring the webmaster to constantly be updating the photos. As well, putting up a link is so much easier than managing photos on a website.
Whew! I had some problems linking my Flickr photos to my blog, but I think I may have figured it out. I still can't seem to link the slideshow function from Flickr to my blog. I see though, that it can be done. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Over and out!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Where are my hyper links?
Hmm...
Why aren't my websites hyper linked? They were in my first post. I even tried editing and using the help option which says: "The hyperlink button is only present in Internet Explorer 5.5/Windows and newer,as well as browsers based on Mozilla 1.3 or later(Camino/Firebird/etc.". I use Firefox as a browser. I will have to investigate this further tomorrow.
Why aren't my websites hyper linked? They were in my first post. I even tried editing and using the help option which says: "The hyperlink button is only present in Internet Explorer 5.5/Windows and newer,as well as browsers based on Mozilla 1.3 or later(Camino/Firebird/etc.". I use Firefox as a browser. I will have to investigate this further tomorrow.
Customizing!
Well,
Things are happening in the blog world for me! In fact, I can barely remember all the gadgets and applications I have explored and/or added! I actually had to write a list (on paper) of all the stuff I have been playing with. Since my last post, I have reactivated my Facebook account (Come and say 'Hi'!), I have added an RSS feed to my blog (the browser, Firefox has a great one), I have signed up for the social bookmarking site, delicious.com and am registered at www.suprglu.com.
I also have begun adding edublogs to my RSS feed, but I want to be a little picky when it comes to these. I am starting with Will Richardson's http://weblogg-ed.com which I hope will reinforce and expand on what is in his book.
I still want to redo my colour scheme and personalize my blog a bit more. I also want it to be more interactive, with more gadgets like Shelfari. OK, my head is spinning - I just spent the entire day in the sun at camp with 70 grade nine French immersion students. It's time for bed.
Things are happening in the blog world for me! In fact, I can barely remember all the gadgets and applications I have explored and/or added! I actually had to write a list (on paper) of all the stuff I have been playing with. Since my last post, I have reactivated my Facebook account (Come and say 'Hi'!), I have added an RSS feed to my blog (the browser, Firefox has a great one), I have signed up for the social bookmarking site, delicious.com and am registered at www.suprglu.com.
I also have begun adding edublogs to my RSS feed, but I want to be a little picky when it comes to these. I am starting with Will Richardson's http://weblogg-ed.com which I hope will reinforce and expand on what is in his book.
I still want to redo my colour scheme and personalize my blog a bit more. I also want it to be more interactive, with more gadgets like Shelfari. OK, my head is spinning - I just spent the entire day in the sun at camp with 70 grade nine French immersion students. It's time for bed.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Finally getting started!
Greetings,
I have been putting off doing my first post as I felt I actually needed to have something worthwhile to say that other people might actually want to read. I must admit, I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the tools and information that is out there. Most of it is not difficult to use, it just takes time to find it, learn how it works and see if I can incorporate it into my learning or teaching. However, after having done some of the readings and playing around with suggested tools and sites, I am starting to get a feel for the scope of 'what is out there'. Up until this point, I have dabbled in using technology in the classroom. Now, I am becoming aware of the tidal wave of possibilities that exist for learning and teaching with Web 2.0.
So far, I have enjoyed the big picture presented by Will Richardson in his book, 'Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom'. It was interesting to note that he differentiates between the levels of what he considers to be 'journaling' versus 'blogging'. I also found the article "Old school meet library 2.0" by Laura Brooks. From that one article, I was able to start experimenting with tools like www.suprglu.com. However, it looks like I will need to explore many more tools before I even need a site that gathers my "content from popular webservices and publishes them in one convenient place"! Brooks also talks about Web 2.0 as more of an attitude than a technology. This is very interesting I was stunned to learn that personal websites are already ‘old school’ and blogs are the new way to share information about yourself and your world! I am starting to wrap my head around the idea of ‘static web publishing’ and how it’s evolving into social participation. If Web 2.0 is really more about collaboration and sharing, then the possibilities for education are endless. The idea that education is becoming less 'top-down' and more democratic really hit home with me. Hey! I didn't know that 'wiki' meant 'quick' in Hawaiian and that it's an acronym for 'What I Know Is'!
As for new stuff I am adding to my blog, I see that some of us are using Shelfari, which is very cool for visual learners like me: www.shelfari.com. On a totally minor note, I like the template for my blog, but need to work on customizing the colours a bit. That will come in time. I feel the need to get back to searching and learning more!
I have been putting off doing my first post as I felt I actually needed to have something worthwhile to say that other people might actually want to read. I must admit, I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the tools and information that is out there. Most of it is not difficult to use, it just takes time to find it, learn how it works and see if I can incorporate it into my learning or teaching. However, after having done some of the readings and playing around with suggested tools and sites, I am starting to get a feel for the scope of 'what is out there'. Up until this point, I have dabbled in using technology in the classroom. Now, I am becoming aware of the tidal wave of possibilities that exist for learning and teaching with Web 2.0.
So far, I have enjoyed the big picture presented by Will Richardson in his book, 'Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom'. It was interesting to note that he differentiates between the levels of what he considers to be 'journaling' versus 'blogging'. I also found the article "Old school meet library 2.0" by Laura Brooks. From that one article, I was able to start experimenting with tools like www.suprglu.com. However, it looks like I will need to explore many more tools before I even need a site that gathers my "content from popular webservices and publishes them in one convenient place"! Brooks also talks about Web 2.0 as more of an attitude than a technology. This is very interesting I was stunned to learn that personal websites are already ‘old school’ and blogs are the new way to share information about yourself and your world! I am starting to wrap my head around the idea of ‘static web publishing’ and how it’s evolving into social participation. If Web 2.0 is really more about collaboration and sharing, then the possibilities for education are endless. The idea that education is becoming less 'top-down' and more democratic really hit home with me. Hey! I didn't know that 'wiki' meant 'quick' in Hawaiian and that it's an acronym for 'What I Know Is'!
As for new stuff I am adding to my blog, I see that some of us are using Shelfari, which is very cool for visual learners like me: www.shelfari.com. On a totally minor note, I like the template for my blog, but need to work on customizing the colours a bit. That will come in time. I feel the need to get back to searching and learning more!
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