Fabulous Fotos on Flickr

Here's another FREE Web 2.0 tool for you to try. It's called Flickr. Use it to post photos online to share with just your friends (private) or the whole world (public)! You decide. Signing up is a simple process. Since I already had a Yahoo! Mail account, I was able to use the same username and password.

Once on Flickr, your pictures can posted directly to your blog. (I'm typing this in Flickr right now.) You can add comments and tags to your pictures to make them searchable. I've got numerous pics from my fishing trips in the Eastern Sierras. To find them, just search for all the pictures with the tag "Sierras". Want to see all my Flickr photos? Just click on photo on this blog. Once there, click on "dgrice's photostream" to see my other photos. If you want, feel free to add comments to the photos and even subscribe to my photostream (using RSS).

What can teachers do with this? If you have photos from your vacation that you want to share with your class you can post them on Flickr and give students a link to access them online. They can use your photos in their multimedia projects or use them as writing prompts.

You can also use your vacation photos as a geography lesson. The map feature in Flickr lets you plot your photo locations. To see where my picture was taken, click on it and look under "Additional Information" to see where it was taken. Click the (map) link. For fun, have your student try to guess where a picture was taken, or create a Flickr for your class and have them bring in their own vacation pictures, upload them (with parent permission, of course) and then plot on the map where their pictures were taken.

A word of warning: I suggest you give students a direct link to your photos rather then having them go to Flickr and search everything. Since anyone can post photos to Flickr, some of the images may not be appropriate for use in the classroom.

A New Way to Process Words

If you haven't figured it out by now, I love stuff that's FREE. Imagine my joy when I discovered Google Docs. It's a free basic word processor. There's no software to install - it runs right inside your web browser. You can import a variety of word processing documents from Word (.doc), Star Office, Open Office (.odt), and Rich Text files (.rtf). While you can't import pictures or add clip art, you do have the advantage of being able to access, edit, and print from any computer with Internet access. Just log in with your Google username and password. (I was able to use the same one I use for Blogger.)
But wait there's more!

What makes Google Docs so powerful is the fact that you can Add Collaborators to your documents. By "inviting" others to edit your documents, you can have several people working together on the same document at the same time. You see changes as they happen. What a powerful tool for learning! When a document is finished it can be posted directly from Google Docs to your blog. If you make a document "public" users can subscribe to an RSS feed so they can be updated when any changes are made.

While a great tool like this doesn't convince me to put good old Microsoft Word in mothballs just yet, it sure does make me look at word processing in a whole new way. Google Docs is a great Web 2.0 tool.

Oh, wait! Did I forget to mention you can also do spreadsheets too? It imports Excel (.xls), Open Office (.ods), and Comma Separated (.csv) files.


For more info about Google Docs, take the tour.

Even More Podcasts

At our district technology meeting today, Rene Drevlow from Zion Lutheran School in Anaheim shared these FREE video podcasts she discovered on iTunes. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, clicking on the link will open iTunes and take you directly to that podcast.

Titles for Primary Grades:
Nickjr: Blue's Clues - 3 minute segments from the Nick Jr. kids show.
DragonflyTV Podcast - Ordinary kids doing extraordinary science investigations. (from PBS Kids)
Share the Earth...This is Our Earth - Songs about the Earth (from PBS Kids)
Miss Lori and Hooper - Themed activities, music, and movement. (from PBS Kids)

Want to Learn about Mac OSX?
Mac OS X for Your Classroom - Created by a school district in DesPlains, Ill.
Learn Mac OS X Tiger - a 16-minute video explaining how to set your personal preferences.
Learn Mac OS X - An Apple a Day Keeps the Viruses Away - More system preferences, using AIM with iChat, and more OS X help

If you find any other great iTunes video podcasts for education, please comment and let me know.

Thanks for your contribution Rene.

For more info on how to use Video Podcasts and iTunes, see my previous post (Dec. 6, 2006)

Diigo & del.icio.us

If you’re like me, you’ve probably got tons of bookmarks saved in your browser. When I click to look at mine, the list just scrolls down the screen. I never bother to organize them or put them in folders – does anybody? Also, if you’re like me, when you look down the list at some of those pages you’ve bookmarked, you can’t remember why you even saved them in the first place. I have enough trouble remembering where I left my TV remote. Don’t ask me to remember what I was thinking 6 years ago when I bookmarked “The Happiest Potties on Earth”
Even when I can remember why I bookmarked a site, those sites are only available to me if I’m using my own computer. There are times when I’m working in a classroom with a student or teacher and have to spend time searching for a site that I could easily find if I had my bookmarks available to me. If only there was a way to put all my bookmarks online so I could access them from anywhere. Wouldn’t that be great? (Here comes the product plug…)

del.icio.us
You might as well call it “Bookmarks to go” (or “Favorites to go” if you’re still using Internet Explorer). The word is the web site. No www’s or .com’s. It’s just del.icio.us and it’s FREE! You just need to register and create a user name. Then you will have your own del.icio.us site where you can add your bookmarks. You can access them from any computer just by going to your site. To help you remember why you bookmarked a site, you can add your own comments (think: reminders) to each of your bookmarks.
In addition to your comments, when you add a bookmark to del.icio.us, you can see how many other people have also bookmarked that site along with the comments they wrote. If you click on another user’s name, you can see their bookmarks as well. This is called “social bookmarking”.
Imagine you’re interested in vintage Volkwagons. You find a great web page and add it to your del.icio.us site. Then you see that 20 other people have also bookmarked and commented on that same web page. If you click on the user name of one of those people you can check their bookmarks and possibly find other great vintage VW web pages - pages that they’ve found that might also match your own interests.
For a more detailed description of del.icio.us, visit Steve Dembo’s Digital Passports blog.

Diigo
Diigo does what del.icio.us does, but takes it one step further. In addition to online bookmarks and comments, you can also highlight sections of your favorite web site right in your browser. Later, when you visit sites that you’ve previously highlighted, those highlights are still there so you can quickly find the info that interested you – without having to re-read the whole page again.
When you highlight something on a web page, you can add a “sticky note” and comment on that specific section. If other people have highlighted and added sticky notes to a sections on that page you can see those too.
Note: When you add comments about a web page, or sticky notes to a section of highlighted text, you have the option to make those “public” or “private”. Private comments and notes can only be seen by you. Public ones can be viewed by the entire Diigo community.
How does all this work? (Here’s the catch.) To see the highlights and sticky notes you need to install a Diigo toolbar to your browser. Without the toolbar installed, you can still see the comments and highlighted text when you look at your bookmark page, but they will not be visible when you view the actual web page. I can still access my bookmarks from any computer, I just need to be using my own computer, or any computer with the Diigo toolbar installed, to see my highlights and sticky notes.
I know it sounds complicated, but Diigo has some great tutorials that demonstrate all these features (and a few more).
Click here to see my Diigo bookmarks.

Upgrade to "Web 2.0"

Have you heard people talking about "Web 2.0"? The term is getting tossed about quite a bit lately and specific definitions vary. Even Wikipedia is hard-pressed to nail down a single definitive answer as to what it actually means. While I'll leave it up to the experts like David Warlick and others to define it specifically, generally lets just think of Web 2.0 as a 'kicked-up" Internet with a new level of interactivity and collaboration.

In the past, there were two kinds of web users: those who published the information and those who read it. Pretty much anyone could search for and read information on Web pages, but it took a little extra technical skill and know-how to actually produce and post information yourself.

New tools like blogs and wikis have changed that. No longer is the average web user relegated to the role of spectator, but now he/she can also be a contributor. Thanks to these tools, anyone who knows how to browse the web also has the ability to interact with content publishers, add comments and generate their own content as well.

Even the process of searching for news and information has been transformed. Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) web users no longer have to search for news and information of interest to them. They can select certain news sources or web authors and receive new articles and updates as soon as they are posted simply by "subscribing" to it.

Web 2.0 has taken the Internet beyond e-mail and web pages. It uses the the Internet as a platform to run all sorts of interactive and dynamic applications. As a result we now have things like Google Earth, iTunes (podcasting), Flickr, del.icio.us and many others.

In the hands of a skilled teacher, these tools can become a powerful platform for learning. I hope to post info, lesson ideas, and help sheets (or videos) on some of these tools in future posts. Right now I'm exploring classroom applications for wikis using Wikispaces. More to come...

Video Podcast Update

Here's an update to my earlier list of video podcasts. Remember you don't need an iPod to view a podcast. All you need iTunes software (available FREE at www.apple.com/itunes/download). To find these podcasts go to the iTunes Store and search for the following...

(If you have iTunes already installed, clicking on the links below will start iTunes and take you directly to that podcast.)

NOVA Vodcast - Short video stories from the PBS series
Ask an Astronomer - Real NASA astronomers answer questions like: "Can you feel solar wind?", "What is redshift?", and "How can we see a black hole?"
NASAcast Video - an RSS newsfeed with the latest NASA videos
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Podcast - Contains both video and audio clips
Sun-Earth Education - NASA - the sun and its effect on the Earth
Nature PBS - collection of 2-5 minute clips from various episodes from the PBS series.
CNN Student News - The same program that's broadcast for teachers to record in the wee hours of the morning. Don't forget to go to www.cnn.com/EDUCATION to download the daily transcripts and news quiz.

To learn more about using iTunes and video podcasts click here to go to my earlier post: FREE Video Podcasts for Teachers

Don't Tell Me, Show Me

I am the king of help sheets. Here at my school I've created and distributed tech help sheets that explain everything from "How to check your school e-mail at home" to "How to link to UnitedStreaming video assignments from your Blackboard course".

Unfortunately, what takes 30 minutes to explain in writing, I can usually demonstrate in 30 seconds on my computer screen. Well now my days of help sheet writing may be over.

Windows Media Encoder is a free download from Microsoft. (Thanks Steve Dembo for mentioning it in your blog.) It has several capabilities, but the one that caught my attention is its ability to record your screen activity.

Now I can hook a microphone up to my computer and record myself demonstrating various computer tasks for our students or teachers. When I'm done I have a Windows Media file that can be posted or e-mailed to whoever needs help. When anyone watches the video, it will be just like they are watching my screen and listening to me explain what to do.

Using the medium quality setting, 90 seconds of video takes up about 512K (1/2 MB) of space. What I've found works best is to break a task into several short 1-2 minute clips rather than record one long 10 minute clip. The shorter clips let your viewers select the part of the demo they want to watch, plus the smaller file size means they'll download faster.

Since I was not able to use Windows Media Encoder to record itself, I've posted a help sheet that explains how to use it.

[Using Windows Media Encoder]

Okay, so my days of help sheet writing aren't completely over.

'Tis the Season...

TO: School Administrators

"A Christmas Wish from Your Teachers"

It came to pass in those days that there went out a decree that all schools should integrate technology into their curriculum. And everyone purchased Microsoft Office and went online to register. So our teachers also went up from their classrooms and attended technology training, because they had received a substitute teacher and paid in-service time from their administrator. They went to learn Power Point™ and how to make their own classroom blogs. They learned how to find all kinds of Unitedstreaming™ videos and they pledged to use all this knowledge in their teaching.

Several weeks later, the school’s administrator was in his office keeping watch over his fall enrollment lists by night. When lo, the parents of his students appeared before him, and he was terrified.

But the parents said unto him, “Fear not. For we bring you good news of our great joy which overflows because of the accomplishments of our children. And this will be a sign to you. You will go into their classrooms and you will find them learning with technology.”

Then suddenly there was for the administrator, a phone call from the chairman of the school board praising him and saying,

“Glorious things have been happening in our classrooms. Special thanks to you, administrator, on whom our favor rests.”

When the parents had left, the administrator said, “I shall go to these classrooms and see these things that have happened that the parents have told me about.”

So he hurried off and found it was just as the parents had said. Teachers were presenting lessons using these wonderful new technology tools. They were posting homework, class information, and helpful homework links on their own blogs. They also had created online assignments and quizzes.

Students were taught how check the validity of Internet information. They were encouraged to use wikis for writing and editing. Their multimedia reports were filled with colorful pictures, graphics, sounds, and animations. Some even created their own videos!

The administrator was both pleased and amazed by all he had seen, which was just as the parents had told him. He praised the teachers at the next staff meeting, thanking them for their efforts and vowing to give them more time --time to prepare lessons, time to evaluate new web sites and new technologies (like podcasting), and time to meet with other teachers and share ideas.

The teachers treasured up all these things and pondered them in their hearts.

********************

If I had to choose the biggest obstacle that is preventing our teachers from integrating technology, that obstacle would be time.

Teachers that are using technology regularly in their classrooms have paid the price in lost evenings and weekends. They have spent countless hours of their own personal time in front of the computer struggling to create presentations for their classes. They have dealt with the frustrations of trying to get their web pages and blogs to look the way they want them to and have pulled out their hair trying to upload those same pages to the Internet. Old lesson plans have been re-written to enable students to use various technology and multimedia tools in their assignments and projects.

Ask teachers if this was time well spent? The answer would be a resounding “Yes!” Ask them if they would like more time for training and planning, and they would probably look at you as if you had just asked them if they regularly breathe oxygen.

Why is this time so important? Many who are new to technology are afraid to touch it because they don’t want to mess it up or break it. That fear is multiplied if they are told they must use it with their class next week. No one wants to look stupid. It takes time to learn how to use these new technology tools. Teachers need time to explore and experiment. They need a non-threatening environment that allows them to make mistakes and provides time to learn from those mistakes. This environment helps them become comfortable with the technology and feel confident using it in their classroom. This confidence can be cultivated by giving teachers time off for technology training, allowing them to visit other schools where these tools are being used effectively, and providing teachers with additional time each week for planning lessons.

With the support and encouragement of school administration, technology integration can indeed become a reality in your school. Just give your teachers a little extra time and glorious things can happen.

Brochure Maker

I like things that are easy to use. It's even better when those things are also FREE. Our 8th grade teacher shared this site with me this morning (www.mybrochuremaker.com). Her students are using it for their writing class. They are designing brochures for the upcoming trip to Washington DC (May 2007).
To create a brochure using this online tool, you start by selecting a type and style from one of their templates. You can select pictures in their template and upload your own pictures to replace them. Then you just click in the text frames and type your own text. For our writing class, students first wrote and proofread their text using a word processor. Getting the text into the brochure was just a matter of copying and pasting.
Pictures upload quite easily and I was even able drag and center my pictures within their frames, similar to the way you can using Apple's Pages or iPhoto . When you finish, you just print it out or you can save it for later retrieval by giving them your e-mail address.
Quick, easy, and FREE. What could be better?

Would It Make A Sound?

This is a test to see if I can post pictures to my blog directly from Picasa. I'm already a fan of Picasa for quick and dirty photo editing. Many of our teachers use it for class pictures (parties, field trips, etc.) and to show slideshows to their class. This is just one more cool feature. (No Honda CR-V's were hurt in the making of this picture.)
Did I mention it's FREE? [picasa.google.com]

Here's a very basic help sheet for creating slide shows using Picasa.
[Make a Slide Show with Picasa]

The Power Point Diet

If you've ever used your own digital pictures in Power Point presentations, you may have noticed that your Power Point files tend to be quite large. If you've got a 6 or 8 megapixel camera, just a few photos can make your presentation eat up as much as 20 or 30 MB on your hard disk. (You don't want to e-mail that to any of your friends who still use dial-up.)

How would you like to trim that file by as much as 80 or 90%? You can! Here's how...

Open one of your "overweight" Power Point files.
Find a slide that has one of your pictures on it.
Double-click on the picture to bring up the "Format Picture" window.





For maximum file compression use the settings indicated in the figure above. You should not notice any significant loss of quality in your pictures, but when you save your presentation, you'll see that you've trimmed quite a bit off the file size.

FREE Video Podcasts for Classrooms

You know how much I love the word "FREE". Now you can get free videos to share with your students by subscribing to video podcasts on iTunes.

WHAT DO I NEED?

• a computer
• Internet access (cable, DSL or something fast is definately a plus!)
• iTunes Software (version 7 is available free at www.apple.com/itunes/download)

WHAT DON'T I NEED?
an iPod - Believe it or not, you don't need an iPod to watch a podcast. You can watch it on your computer. Or you can connect your computer to a data projector.

Okay, so what do I have to do?
Launch iTunes and go to the Music Store. I found some great video podcasts by searching for the following...

• "Ecogeeks" - Science video podcasts that explain science topics in a fun and exciting way. Hosts and filmmakers are trained biologists. For more info about the episodes visit their site: www.thewildclassroom.com/home/nav/podastingscience.html
• "Electronic Field Trips" - A series of 4 – 8 minute Webisodes from the Ball State University Electronic Field Trip Program. The current list includes videos from Field Trips to Hawaii (Volcanos, rainforests, etc.) and Historic Philadelphia (Independence Hall, Revolutionary War).
• "isallaboutmath" - (no spaces) Covers various topics in mathematics. Good for upper elementary & middle school. Topics include: triangular numbers, summations, mathematical induction.

Not all video podcasts are available in the podcast directory. NASA's Brain Bites are a collection of 30 second to 1 minute videos on various topics including "What happens if you drop an hammer and a feather on the moon?" and "What time is it in space?"
To subscribe to these podcasts you'll need to go the "Advanced" menu in iTunes. Select "Subscribe to Podcast". Type the following URL in the box and click "Add": http://feeds.feedburner.com/brainbites/nasa

These are just 4 video podcasts I was able to find last weekend. If you find any other good ones, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Click here to download this post in a printable handout.]

Welcome to Tech4Teachers

This is the initial post for my new blog. More exciting stuff to come...