Blogging Thoughts & Bloglines

I stumbled upon Bestiaria Latina Blog the other day as I was thinking about ways teachers are using blogs in their classes and across their curriculum. They have some good ideas of using blogs with your students.

As a classroom teacher I used to have students create web pages or websites for project assignments in Social Studies, Art and Technology, but now as faculty support for technology integration I have redesigned my thinking about the web and the use of websites vs. blogs.

Today blogs can be used in place of a website for any project-based learning activity allowing interaction between users and their audience. It's not just about creating a website for an audience anymore, but about creating space on the Internet for your audience to communicate and interact with the site creators. It's now become dynamic !

Many schools, I noticed a few years ago, were moving from School Web sites to School Weblogs to allow parents, students, and the community to add content and interact with faculty, staff and the site. Merriwether Lewis Elementary in Portland, Oregon was among the first to use a blog format as their school website. Very Dynamic !

Many teachers have set up blog sites for classes and their students; posting the latest class news, assignments and links to interesting subject area sites for student to research and post comments to the instructor.

A transition has occcured from putting up information for others to view to utilizing blogsites great potential as a communication tool between teachers, students and the world. A shfting of thought..its not about blogs as being the technology that's important; its about the dynamic presence on the Internet that is created by using this tool.


Web Resources:

• Bloglines
• WordPress
• Movable Type
• Blogger
• Yahoo! 360
• Buck Institute
  

FUSE, Open Source Education & Connexions

video via TED: "Richard Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system.

In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that's changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:18)"

Web Resources

• Open Source Education
• The Center for Open Sustainable Learning (COSL)
• Y! Search Blog > FUSE in Education
• BlendedEdu+Connexions
• BlendedEdu+FUSE

SnipShot- Image Editing Tool

Edit pictures online with SnipShot, a free web-based tool.

Don't have an image-editing software program ? Try this tool to crop, rotate, scale, and make image adjustments to your photos right from the web and your computer.

SnipShot lets you upload your photos from flickr or from any website and make changes.

Now your students can use this tool to edit images if they dont have an expensive photo-editing tool and they can share their edited photo-albums with classmates through flickr groups.

Pics4Learning, Copyright, and Community

Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The library consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.

Unlike other sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.

Need a photo for that lesson on California Mission, sloth, or dinosaur fossils? Then Pics4Learning is the place for you! Members of the education community can upload and share their photos in the Pics4Learning photo archive for other educators to use. In addition to photographs, Pics4Learning has lesson plans created by and for the community.

Pics4Learning is a partnership between Orange County Public Schools Technology Development Unit of Orlando, Florida, and Tech4Learning, Inc.

Web Resources

• BlendedEdu + Images
• Flickr + Education
• CyberBee: What is Copyright?

Flickr + Yahoo! Maps= Flickr GeoTags

Check out this new Flickr feature: How to geotag your photos & Exploring the Flickr GeoTag Map.

These new Flickr GeoTags can provide you with a fast and easy way to find (or share) photos you can use in your geography curriculum. So take a peek at this new Flickr Hack---it's pretty darn cool!

Any thoughts on how you might use Flickr GeoTags or Yahoo! Maps in your classroom? Share 'em here with the rest o' the BlendedEdu community.

Web Resources

• Flickr GeoTags + Flickr Blog
• Digital Geography
• Wikipedia > GeoTagging
• Yahoo! Maps Gallery
• Flickr + BlendedEdu

Audiobooks & The Millennials

Audio on the Internet is reshaping the way English teachers think about their curriculum and the resources they use. Back in the pre-digital kid days English teachers bought sets of books, including sets of novels they would read in class for the year. Today’s English teachers have a whole new set of tools to use on the Internet.

Audiobooks are a great resource for English and ESL teachers. Students now can listen to literary works in English, not only read them in print. This is great resource especially for learners of English as a Second Language.

LibriVox provides audiobooks from the public domain for students to listen to that are read in English; students can listen to the literature or poetry while also hearing the correct pronunciation.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod, “LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net (via podcast and catalog). Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.”

Today LibraVox has over 200 recordings of books, poetry and speeches with another 100 in development. Think of the uses of these audio recordings in your English, Literature, ESL or Social Study classes for students in all grades. Now think of the quiet in your classes as your students listen to this new medium – a medium of their generation.

Web Resources

• LibriVox
• Project Gutenberg
• Spoken Alexandria Project
• Telltale Weekly
• BlendedEdu + Gen Y
• BlendedEdu + Library 2.0

Pokemon, Video Games, & Learning

via eSchool News: "The new Pokemon web-based game uses interactive lessons to focus on Science, Math and Language Arts in grades 3-6 and is another method to integrate technology into your classroom curriculum that will engage students in their learning.

The highly interactive, standards driven game is designed not to replace the textbook but to supplement it and reinforce lessons learned through video role playing. Along the way students also learn valuable social behaviors such as, teamwork, friendship, and helping others.

The game is "scaffolded" so that learners progress through levels by first being introduced the Pokemom characters, then they are presented with a problem that they must solve through collaboration in order for the Pokeman creature to survive.

“Pokemon USA is making the site available to educators free of charge through Jan. 1, 2007. At that point, the company will offer schools a per-building subscription structure, with a per-household subscription structure for consumers.”

This game presents a perfect opportunity for teachers who have “1 computer classrooms” to enrich their science and math curriculum to extend students learning."

Web Resources:

• Pokemon
• Pokemon Learning League
• BlendedEdu + Game Based Learning
  
  *eSchool News (requires registration)

Teachers Domain & Gen Y Learning

In an effort to help teachers support the digital learning styles of today's kids, WGBH Boston has put together a phenomenal collection of multimedia resources (video and audio clips, podcast, interactive media, images, and documents) in a new service called Teachers Domain.

"Teachers Domain is an online educational service with two related components — collections and courses — that help teachers enhance their students' learning experiences and advance their own teaching skills. The Teachers' Domain collections include classroom-ready multimedia resources for use in lessons or independent study."

Web Resources

• Learning Styles 2.o: Digital and Always-On
• Technology Encourages Active Learning
• Social Media and Digital Learning Styles
  

Open Source Toolbox: FireFox Scholar

The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University is developing an open-source package of tools under the name Project SmartFox.

"Due for beta release in Summer 2006, Firefox Scholar will help teachers, students, and scholars organize and cite materials they have found online.

Comprised of a set of browser extensions, Firefox Scholar will allow researchers...collect documents, images, and citations from the web; and allow those materials to be sorted, annotated, and searched--all directly within their web browser window.

Like the Firefox browser itself, Firefox Scholar will be open and extensible, allowing others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand on the platform."

Web Resources

• CHNM + FireFox Scholar
• FireFox Scholar: The Educated Browser
• BlendedEdu + Open Source Education

Get Organized with iProcrastinate

iProcrastinate is a nifty calendaring app designed to help "lazy students keep track of their homework, big projects, etc." Right now iProcrastinate is only available to Mac users and requires Mac OS 10.4 or greater.

The first day of school is just around the corner, so this might be the perfect time to start using iProcrastinate--you know--while you're still ahead of the assignment curve!

Oh yeah....it's free!

Online Exhibit: Slave Narratives

Museum of the African Diaspora: "Slave Narratives contains dramatic and powerful first-person stories from those who have suffered under slavery.

Narrated by Maya Angelou and other acclaimed actors, the narratives originated from people across the globe, from the 1700s to the modern day.

Slave Narratives will be live on the MoAD website at www.moadsf.org on August 23."

Web Resources

• MoAD School Programs
• BlendedEdu+Africa
• Maya Angelou

BookMooch

BookMooch is a social network community developed to share used books with others.

Think of all the books you have in your book case, waiting for someone else to read them. Dust them off and get them ready to send.

It's really rather simple. Just post books to BookMooch you would like to give away and when you have 15 books listed you can begin sending your books to those who request your books. It all works on a point system.

You can even develop a wish list of books you would like to read.

BookMooch for students? This would be the perfect place for students to develop a 'zip code' or college social circle to pass around the old textbbooks they have accumulated in order to free up space for new ones.

The best part is that it's free. You only pay for shipping your books to others and you receive your books free!

mLearning Toolbox: Leonard Low + Mobile Learning

Mobile Learning is a fantastic new blog focused on mobile learning strategies authored by Leonard Low, Online Campus Manager and Educational Technology Strategist at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT).

In addition to an impressive corpus of resources, Leonard offers his keen insight on the design, development, delivery, and management of flexible, interactive learning, mobile, and Web 2.0 learning applications.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the burgeoning wave of mobile media and technologies being introduced to the education ecosystem. Brilliant work Leonard!

Web Resources

• FlickrEdu + moblog
• BlendedEdu + mLearning
• BuddyBuzz
• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning and Mobile Technologies

Gliffy- for "mapping" ideas on the web

Gliffy, is a nifty little web-based, collaborative tool that allows you or your students to create diagrams, flow charts, or 'webbing' without buying software.

First of all, its web- based, which means you or our students can use it from any computer in the computer lab at school or from home.

Secondly, it's collaborative, which allows you or students to work on projects together on the web without transferring files in hopes that the others have the same software program and version.

And most of all, its FREE to use.

FlickrEdu: Flickr Hacks for the Classroom

Here are some of the latest and greatest Flickr hacks created by members of the Flickr community for you to try in your classroom!

If you find one that's not on the list.....share it with the rest of us!

Enjoy!

*******

Delivr: "Digital postcards for the people by the people...just select an image from the most recent displayed on the home page, search all 600,000+ images, or lookup your own pix to create a unique custom postcard."

Slide+Flickr: Create a slideshow for your classroom, website or desktop using your Flickr tags and Slide.

FD's Toys Slideshow: "Create a slideshow from images anywhere on the internet. Then share it with your friends. Works with your photos hosted on Flickr or anywhere else."

Tag Man: "TagMan is a game that combines the classic hangman game with tags."

Flickr Firefox Search: " This is a simple search plugin for your Firefox browser, that allows you to quickly search the public available Flickr tags."

Bubblr: "Add comic strip bubbles to Flickr photos of your choice."

Findr: "Find photos on flickr by browsing and refining related tags."

Flickr Kaleidoscope: "A Flash-based Kaleidoscope using recent thumbnails from the Squared Circle group."

and another kaleidoscope hack:

Flickr Wildflower Guide: "Wildflower Field Guide, North America. Use it to identify a flower by searching the group pool for other flowers of the same color and shape."

And just for fun...

Tag Fight

WordPress: The Art of Educational Weblogging

The 06-07 school year is upon us. Instructors are back in class developing curriculum ideas to engage their 'Generation Y' students in their learning activities. One tool both faculty and students can use for their course projects are weblogs.

Weblogs are not new, blendededu.com has been blogging since 2002. However, many teachers are just discovering their use in their curriculum such as English, Languages, Art, & Sciences.

If you're ready to try out blogging with your students try WordPress. WordPress.org is an easy way for Instructors to start blogging and let your students try WordPress.com, its FREE.

Weblogging Curriculum Ideas:

• ESL / English: Have students create a blog their writing assignments to document their progress learning English.

• Science: Have students create blogs to document field studies with a blog using flickr for digital images of specimens.

• Art: Have students blog about their studio work, documenting a project's progress and reflecting on their thoughts from conception of the idea through project completion along with digital imagery.

• Spanish: Have students blog about Spanish speaking countries they would like to visit, blogging about the similarities and differences of the people, dialect, and cultural aspects.

Hopefully, these ideas 'spark' blogging ideas you can use in your classroom this year!

Web Resources

• BlendedEdu+EduBlogging
• WordPress
• Blog Safety: Are You Web Aware?

Hack the Education System: Yahoo! Teachers of Merit 2006

During this era of high stakes testing, can teachers discover how to use, apply, and integrate social media into their classroom? Can 7 days make a difference?

For seven days in July 2006, sixty San Francisco Bay Area teachers were selected by Yahoo! to work side-by-side with a team of educational experts, engineers, technologists, and top Yahoo executives as part of the Yahoo! Teachers of Merit Program.

During the course of this innovative program, teachers explored, used, and learned how to use Yahoo! Community Tools in educational instruction: like image sharing, effective and credible web searching, and making the most of Yahoo! online community tools.

But more importantly, Yahoo! and the Teachers of Merit spent time in active dialogue, working together to chart a course that will lay the foundation for a new way of teaching and learning in the 21st Century classroom.

The message from Yahoo! was clear: it's about using technology to support instruction and student learning, not using instruction to support technology.

The Yahoo! Teachers of Merit Program is a unique learning environment where teachers can benefit from the collective genius of the collective Yahoo! Teacher community—and share their own knowledge along the way.

Note: Slideshow created using Slide and Flickr tags.

Creative Commons: Legal Guide for Podcasters

Creative Commons has put together a Podcasting Legal Guide (PLG) that outlines the "legal and practical issues" of using music and video in your podcasts.

The Podcasting Legal Guide is available in either pdf or html format.

YackPack: Let's Discuss the Blackboard Patent

In case you missed it, last week the U.S. Patent office granted BlackBoard a patent for many of the key elements used in many, if not all, of the Learning Management System (LMS). Shortly after the patent was issued, Blackboard filed a lawsuit against the online education company Desire2Learn.

This move is being viewed by many in the education ecosystem as a power grab by Blackboard and a way for them to fight against Open Source education platforms like Moodle, Docebo, and OpenCourseWare.

So what do you think?

Our friends over at YackPack have started a new public YackCast for members of the education community to discuss the BlackBoard Patent issue. Join the YackCast and add your voice to the conversation.

Web Resources

• YackPack > YackCast on the Blackboard Patent Issue
• Desire2Learn Patent Page
• Blackboard > Patent FAQ
• Desire2Learn > Blogs and Sites Discussing the Patent Issue
• Stephen's Web > Blackboard Patent Discussion
• BlendedEdu + YackPack

Musipedia: The Open Music Encyclopedia

Here is an interactive site to check out with your students: Musipedia: The Open Music Encyclopedia.

Sing or whistle a tune, play the notes on a keyboard and use Musipedia's search engine to find and identify the melody.

Musipedia (not related to Wikipedia) is building a searchable, editable music collection by members who share the same passion for music. Anyone can register to add midi files or edit the collection.

Curriculum Ideas:

• Use in World History when studying world regions or time periods.
• Use with your Geography Classes for music of different cultures
• Use with your English Classes for writing assignments
• Use in Math Class for measurements and beats
• Just listen to everyone sing in class!

Free ESL- Languages Resources

Getting your ESL or Foreign Languages Classes ready for Fall?

Check out out these resources:
Free English teaching materials for ESL
Learn Spanish - a free online tutorial

Curriculum Idea:
Let your students talk to someone in English or hear a native Spanish speaker pronunciate correctly.

Just have 1 computer in your class? Easy- hook up your computer/laptop to a projector in your classroom for a "whole class" activity or assign lessons for homework.

Futurelab - Project Showcase

Spend some time perusing Futurelab projects, the latest innovations being developed to transform the learning experience using Educational Information- Communication Technologies.

Check out Snapshot, an interactive game that immerses users in a virtual, social and cultural role playing environment, where the users get to investigate and then report on what they observe.

Then check out Moovia- its "etch a sketch"- like interactive screen lets users draw on a tablet pc according to the rules of science and is actually for sale as a commercial product.

Another favorite is "Create- A- Creature" that allows users to create their own artificial lifeforms and release them into the world, then observe their behaviors.

Great ideas to enhance-extend classroom learning.

Wikimania '06: $100 Laptop, Wikiversity, Wikiwyg

via Andy Carvin: "A few minutes ago here at the Wikimania conference, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is including Wikipedia as one of the first elements in their content repository. (ac: though they've been talking about this for at least a year.)

He also announced a new project called Wikiversity. It will serve as an online center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. It will create and host a range of free content materials, multilingual learning materials, for all ages in all languages.

It'll host scholarly projects and communities to support these materials, and foster research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other wikimedia projects. Launching in three languages, in a six-month beta, within a month.

Wikimedia Foundation will also now have an advisory board to help improve partnerships, public relations, financing, etc. Additionally, Wikia and SocialText is launching Wikiwyg. It will make it easier for more people to get involved in wiki editing.

The technological barrier to entry keeps out really smart people who are uncomfortable with the Wikipedia interface. "Wikiwyg, in some shape or form, will be the future of the Internet," because it will allow non-techies to become Wikipedians easily.

Web Resources

• WikiMedia Foundation
• Wikipedia+BlendedEdu
• Wikipedia Credibility
• $100 Laptop Project (OLPC)
• Flickr > $100 Laptop Prototype