Week 7 Reflections

Week 7 has been mainly spent working on my final project for the WebTools course and I have tapped into my PLN continuously to find resources for the project. Some of the new things I have come across:

Education Pocast Network (from @skipz)
Wikis for the Classroom Tips and Tricks (via @Teachakidd and @PaulaWhite twitter)

Voicethread 4 Education wiki- tips and ideas (from the wiki above) EXCELLENT resources and links. Includes Classroom partners- a bulletin board type page where you can ask and offer to collaborate with other teachers/ classrooms using voicethread and other webtools.

Grade 9-12 Examples of Voicethreads in the Classroom. Check out the Biology ones shared by Jeff Utrecht. Great examples of using voicethread for a group project to investigate a question and for the teacher to provide formative assessment directly on it. Here is one...


For the Chemists, here is a link to chem lab voicethreads made by students. Topics include: Displacement Rxns, Chromatography, Enthalpy, Phase changes.

Added Education Innovation blog. I liked the post called New classroom rules and also found a useful ppt in this blog called "25 Webtools for Learning Professionals 2009", here it is.

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

Most we've already seen, but there are some new ones like:
FREE MIND and BUBBL.US for mind mapping
DIM DIM- open source web conferencing tool
One tool mentioned in the slideshow which I might definitely try is EVERNOTE described as an "external brain" a productivity tool to "capture, clip and share notes on the web". Here is a video about it, check it out, it's pretty cool...





I used many of the links provided by my classmates for the site I'm creating and added to my PLN (from 25 Ed Tech leaders to follow slideshow posted in FreeTech4Teachers)
@chrislehmann
@mscofino
@larryferlazzo
@elearningnews
@elemenous
@mguhlin

I also found this neat little site for creating a widget to show all your "web identities" on your blog or site. It's called Show yourself Widget, check out mine on the side bar.

Embedding a Podcast Feed and Grazr

I just figured this out and I thought it was worth sharing...

Embedding a single podcast into a blog post or website is pretty easy, you just go to the service that hosts it and get the embed code for it (most will have it). Then you copy the code into the Edit Html window, just like you would to embed a video, or anything else.

What I was interested in, is how to embed a Podcast Feed into my blog. So, for example, how to get the newest 60-Second-Science podcast from Scientific American to automatically show up on my blog whenever it's up without me having to do anything.

One easy way to do it is to go to the 60-Second-Science page, click on RSS feed, and copy the URL at the top of the page. Then, for example, if you want it to show up on your blog sidebar, go to the Layout section of the Blog editor, click on add a Gadget. There is one for RSS feeds, just click on that and copy the URL for the podcast page. I did it this way for my blog, see the RED ARROW to the left to see how it would show up. (The screen capture was taken using Aviary)

A better way to display the feed, I think, is by creating a customized widget for it (see BLUE ARROW). Sounds intimidating, but its actually really simple, it took me about seven minutes to figure out how to do this. Once you copy the URL for the desired podcast page (in this case 60-Second-Science again), go to Grazr.com to create a free widget, just paste the URL code into the blue box, customize the widget- ie change the color and size if you want, and copy the embed code from the brown box (you'll have to go there to know what I mean, but it really IS simple). Then in your Blog Layout editor, add an HTML gadget and copy the code into it. And its done!

If you know of other easier/ better ways to do this, please comment below, thanks.

Delicious, Diigo, both or neither?

By now, with the size of the internet and the number of new and useful sites and tools that are popping up every minute, everyone can appreciate the value of social bookmarking tools to keep track of links. For teachers, there is great potential fir using these tools, eg. from sharing specific links with students that you want them to use for a project to collaborating with other teachers in your discipline around the country to create a rich hub for useful, subject specific, web resources. Here is a list of Top 10 Social Bookmarking Tools for Educators.

I use Delicious to quickly tag everything I come across of interest, but I at this point I need to spend some time organizing it and getting more out of it than a mere repository of links which follow little rhyme or reason at the moment.

I had heard great things about Diigo, so I signed up. The first time I tried to use it, I was so overwhelmed by the number of features it has and options in the toolbar that I haven't touched it since. Some people say there is a place for both Delicious and Diigo. And then there are also all the other tools that I haven't explored yet.

So, what bookmarking tool do you use? Please answer the poll question and comment below if you'd like. Any tips on using either tool or any others would be appreciated. (Eg. How do you categorize your tags? Is it better to have a lot of tags or a select few?) And if you'd like to build on your bookmarking network, include your username so that others participating in this discussion can add you.

Which social bookmarking tool do you use? » online polls
Tags : technology teaching bookmarking

Trying out Screencasting

Screencasting was a lot more frustrating than Voicethread, mainly because every time you mess up, you have to start the whole thing over from the beginning. I figured out after trying it a few times that you can export the screencast at the end and then edit it with Windows Movie Maker, so I could cut some "mess ups" or long silences out, but it was time consuming and though its easy to delete segments, it would be difficult to add things in. It was the first attempt though, and I have to say that the end result is pretty neat.

I can definitely see myself using it to show students how to use a technology feature before we use it in class or to show them something I want them to try for homework (eg. creating a blog, editing the class wiki, using Google Earth, giving them a virtual tour of all of the class' digital resources, etc.) I intend to practice a bit more with it, the Pause button is definitely a time saver, because I was spending too much time during the screencast waiting for different windows to open. Once I discovered the Pause button, I would pause the screencast, then wait for the desired window to open, and resume the screencast. It went much smoother like that!

My screencast was created using Screencast-o-Matic and uploaded to YouTube.

Trying out Voicethread

Had my first go at Voicethread today and I have to admit that, once you get past the initial stage of total awkwardness watching and listening to yourself, it's actually pretty fun! I had to record some of the sound clips so many times, because being foreign sometimes I get the pronunciations totally wrong and my accent comes out funny, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Anyway, great tool, would definitely use it in my class as a more interactive alternative to powerpoint or as a homework assignment to have students answer questions on a specific topic before we are about to start it in order to get feedback on the preconceptions they are coming in with. Any feedback/ comments welcome of course. I think I was looking at the wrong place the whole time I was filming, I guess I should have been looking at the camera instead of the screen, it's hard to do when you're so self-conscious about what you look like when you're speaking... haha. Well, here it is...



I am also posting this powerpoint of ways to use Voicethread in the classroom that I am pretty sure has been posted before, but just in case people missed it. It was created by Tom Barrett- ICT in My Classroom blog.



Browsing through the Science category voicethreads, I found this one on Newton's Third Law of Physics that I thought was well done.



I'm off to try Screencasting now...

Powerpoint Presentation Sharing

I created my powerpoint presentation for an Introductory Biology high school class learning about Cellular Respiration. It is a basic overview of the process and includes some brainstorming questions. The role play and lab mentioned will be explained further in the screencast I will create and share in the next few days.

When I uploaded my presentation to SlideShare, I realised it does not enable animation effects, animated gifs or video. That messed up a lot of my slides! I searched through all the other presentation sharing tools to come up with one that supported these extras. Slidesix did not show animations either, SlideServe did support slide effects but not video or animated gifs. I finally found SlideBoom, which allowed for everything I needed even with the free basic account. Here is the final product. If you know of other presentation hosts that allow for animations, etc. please comment below. I am very impressed with SlideBoom!