Web Tools for Teaching

Open Content Licensing for Educators 2012

2012-01-27T11:48:00.001-05:00

Hand in Compost from The Greenest Dollar

I came a little late to a fantastic week-long online workshop on Open Content Licensing for Educators (OCL4ED) about Open Educational Resources (OER) and Creative Commons (CC) but found plenty of ideas to reflect on. In an introductory video called Learning4Content ,Wayne McIntosh, the founder of WikiEducator presents some of the key concepts of the course.

Although I have tried to "catch up" with some of the exceptionally well presented material in the course, I feel that I am unsure about two issues:
1.) The freedom I have as a university lecturer to share my materials.
2). How content creators can make a living.
Personally, I am unsure of the "ownership" of curricula that I create for my online courses taught through a university. Since what I create is the result of what I have learned from others through books such as Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms , A New Culture of Learning; dozens of free webinars; and free online courses such as those offered through the Electronic Village Online (EVO), I feel that I would like to freely share what I have learned. However, I'm not sure to what extent I can legally to do that. Although some institutions such as MIT have made certain courses freely available on the web, the impression I get is that universities and school districts are in a state of flux regarding these issues.

The second issue that does not seem to be dealt with directly in the course is how people who produce content can successfully earn a living if they share it all freely. In the case of teachers and professors, perhaps nothing would really change if they made their curricula or projects freely available on the web with CC licenses. However, in the case of musicians, photographers or videographers, for example, I'm not sure how they would be compensated for their creations. Their creations are their source of income. Even if they put an All Rights Reserved CC license on their creations, isn't it still quite easy to "pirate" their material?

Tools for Connecting Through Voice and Image

2012-01-17T14:06:00.002-05:00

As part of the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2012 session Becoming a Webhead, I am trying out various audio and video tools to evaluate their usefulness for teaching languages. As I progress I will be adding to a Googledoc called Communication Tools which I created. It is open to the public for additions or changes. Feel free to contribute.

Right now I am embedding a short message that I created using AudioPal. It was extremely easy to create, but what I want to figure out is whether it is possible to set it to mute. I don't think it's a good idea to have audio turn on as soon as people open a blog because sometimes they are in a public or group setting and it can be distracting to everyone else. So here goes the message I recorded using text-to-speech on AudioPal. (BTW I discovered that in text-to-speech it is better not to use abbreviations because the voice doesn't produce them clearly).

OK. I can see that you have control over the playing of the audio. Now I'm going to try Voki.
Here's a link to a character and recording I created. But I am also going to embed the same thing here to see what happens.

Ok. Now let's see what Audioboo looks like.

Test of Audioboo (mp3)

Connections

2012-01-12T14:20:00.003-05:00

In A New Culture of Learning Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). The New Culture of Learning, the authors extol the benefits rather than the difficulties of the relentless pace of change that we are all experiencing. In their eyes, A growing digital, networked infrastructure is amplifying our ability to access and use nearly unlimited resources and incredible instruments while connecting with one another at the same time (p. 17).

Two essential elements they focus on for purposes of learning are collectives and imagination. I'm going to comment a little on collectives and save imagination/play for another day.

In collectives constant interaction among group members, with their varying skills and talents, functions as a kind of peer amplifier, providing numerous outlets, resources, and aids to further an individual's learning (p. 51). ... But equally important is the ability to add one's own knowledge to the general mix. That contribution may be large, such as a new website, or it may be a series of smaller offerings, such as comments on a blog or a forum post. It may even be something as trivial as simply visiting a website. But in each case, the participation has an effect, both in terms of what the individual is able to draw from it and how it shapes and augments the stream of information (p. 52).

This concept of learning through a collective sounds similar to George Siemen's theory of Connectivism which he posits in A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. In this 2005 article Siemen's says, The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.

In rereading Siemen's article I discovered that Siemen's actually refers to John Seely Brown. He comments that John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. The central premise is that connections created with unusual nodes supports and intensifies existing large effort activities. And Siemens concludes, This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.

As I participate in several of the courses offered by Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2012, I find that I am learning through interacting with the participants in each course. I can see that the participants in each are eagerly forming collectives. As Thomas and Brown say, Unlike a classroom where a teacher controls the lecture, the organic communities that emerge through collectives produce meaningful learning because the inquiry that arises comes from the collective itself (p. 54).

MOOCs

2012-01-06T11:44:00.003-05:00

I am attempting to organize my links and get set up for the EVO (Electronic Village Online) courses that begins on January 9. In the syllabus for the first week of Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments, I found a link to the video above in which Howard Reingold interviews George Siemens.

In the video George Siemens gives a detailed explanation of a MOOC (massive open online course). I have tried to participate in some MOOCs in the past, but I think that I didn't understand the concept behind them well enough to get much benefit from them. I am now lurking in the 16th week of a MOOC called Change: Education, Learning and Technology and from here on I will have a better idea of how to navigate the chaos, expand my own learning and contribute to the conversation.

Transformational Tasks

2012-01-05T13:59:00.005-05:00

The focus of José Picardo's blog post, Teaching and Learning with Social Media: A Case Study, really struck a chord with me. Usually when discussing the use of technology in education, we talk about how tech tools can "enhance" teaching and learning. However, Picardo discusses the use of social media not only to enhance but to transform learning tasks.

He says, Most interesting to me was the transformative potential of blogs, Web 2.0 applications and social networks, not only to enhance existing practice, but also to create new technology-based tasks which would have been previously inconceivable ...

Picardo refers to Transformation, Technology, and Education a 2006 presentation by Ruben R. Puentedura who divides learning tasks into 4 types, two which enhance learning and two which transform it.

Image from Ruben R. Puentedura

Enhancement type tasks
Substitution - Tech acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change
Example: Word processor used as a typewriter

Augmentation- Tech acts as a direct tool substitute, with functional improvement
Examples: Use of word processor functions such as spellchecking and cut and paste

Transformation type tasks
Modification - Tech allows for significant task redesign
Example: Textual, visual, audio tools for construction of shared knowledge

Redefinition - Tech allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable
Example: Tools for visualization and simulation, social computing, digital storytelling, educational gaming

I decided to try to apply Puentedura's typology using the 2 broad categories of enhancement and transformation to the Activity Types posited in World Languages Activity Types which I found in Grounded Tech Integration: Languages an article in the ISTE Connections online magazine, Learning and Leading. My conclusion was that the transformational aspect of tasks lies in the ability of language learners to do one or both of these things:

Have more control over their own learning
Interact and receive feedback.

Here are some examples:

Instead of playing an audio recording in class, the teacher posts a link to the podcast on a class blog and asks the students to post their responses to the podcast on the blog. In this way, the students have control over the number of times they listen to the podcast and post a response which is available to a wide audience for further feedback.
Instead of asking students of deliver a presentation for the class, the teacher asks the students to create a video podcast which is then posted online for feedback. Since there are many devices now available for creating and editing videos, the students would be able to create a product they were satisfied with before posting it for feedback.
Instead of having students send letters to a pen pal, the teacher can set up exchange emails with a speaker of the target language. (Sites like Edmodo and ePals allow for teacher monitoring of exchanges). Or to provide language in context, the teacher could develop Skype exchanges with students in a target-language country through a site like ePals.
Instead of taking students on a school -sponsored field trip, teachers can provide links to sites where students can take virtual field trips to sites not otherwise available because of distance and expense.
Instead of giving students access to written material in the target language in the classroom or library, the teacher can ask the students to materials such as FL newspapers online and write comments directly on those sites.
Instead of asking students to write text-based stories in the classroom, the teacher can ask students to write digital-stories using photos from Flickr on sites like Bookr, Bubblr or Stupeflix.
Instead of having students fill in speech bubbles on teacher-supplied comics, teachers can ask students to create their own comics using sites like GoAnimate or Dvolver.

There is no doubt that Puentedura's conceptualization of how technology can not only enhance but transform teaching has helped me immensely. You can go to As We May Teach on iTunes to learn more about his ideas. #change11

Image Attribution

2011-11-03T10:27:00.002-04:00

Images add a lot to blog posts but people often don't give attribution to the authors of the images. Here is one way to give credit to the author of a photo from Flickr.
1. Go to Flickr.
2. Click Explore from the top of the page.
3. From the drop down menu click Creative Commons.
4. From one of the license groups, click on See More.
5. Use the Search box to find a photo.
6. Click Share.
7. From drop down menu be sure that HTML button is selected.
8. Copy the HTML code from box.
9. In your Blogger post click the Edit HTML tab at the top of your post window.
10. Paste your previously copied code at the very top of your post.
11. Click the Compose tab to write text in your post.
12. Now when you mouse over the image, you will see that the photographer's name appears and if you click on the photo, you will be taken to the Flickr page where the photo appears.

What is a Content Curator?

2011-10-29T13:07:00.005-04:00

One of the best definitions of a content curator that I have found is in Rohit Bahargava's Manifesto for the Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job of the Future. In his 2009 post Bahargava offered this description of content curators:

To satisfy the people's hunger for great content on any topic imaginable, there will need to be a new category of individual working online. Someone whose job it is not to create more content, but to make sense of all the content that others are creating. To find the best and most relevant content and bring it forward. The people who choose to take on this role will be known as Content Curators. The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others.

Anyone who works online has already felt the overload of the information explosion. Although we try to stay current through blogging, tweeting, and social bookmarking, the tsunami of information often overwhelms us. Hence, the birth of the concept of content curators, people who cast a wide net for information, filter it and offer their own perspectives on the gathered material.

In The 5 Models of Content Curation, Bhargava suggests 5 fundamental elements of content curation: aggregation, distillation, elevation, mashup and chronology. These elements sound like tasks already performed by many people in my own PLN (personal learning network).

However, it seems that the tools for accomplishing these tasks may have improved. Steve Rosenbaum suggests some in 4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web. Barbara Bray offers a good example of one of these tools on her Scoop.it page called Curate your Learning.

Although I appreciate the concept of content curator, I'm not sure that many edubloggers or gloggers don't already do the same job with existing tools. It will be interesting to see if the newer tools used by content curators really offer any advantages in managing information. Are we witnessing an evolution of an online "content manager" from blogger to tweeter to content curator or are we just renaming the job already being handled in other ways?

Critical Thinking

2011-08-30T16:15:00.000-04:00

I just read Michal Coughlan's piece, Thinking Deeply about the Shallows in which he discusses ideas from Nicolas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. For me the main issue he is raising is whether the young learners of today are losing the ability to do vertical learning ("singular, in-depth focus on one topic") because they are more immersed in horizontal thinking "(multitasking possibly in connection with networks of people").

Personally I find that I tend to read blog posts and tweets more often than I write blog posts myself. This is definitely because of the time and deeper thinking involved in producing a reflective piece as contrasted with finding intriguing snippets of information and retweeting them or putting interesting new websites in my Diigo account for further analysis. (Unfortunately that further, deeper consideration often never occurs).

I think as educators we need to ensure that learners practice both types of learning. Some learners need to learn to utilize social networking sites for educational purposes while others need to learn to do read, reflect, and write. Each type of learning serves a purpose.

The Shape of Knowledge

2011-06-16T11:24:00.003-04:00

In Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger tells us that knowledge doesn't have a shape. There are just too many useful, powerful and beautiful ways to make sense of our world (p.83) In a very entertaining way, Weinberger takes us on a historical journey through time to show how the basis for categorizing knowledge has shifted from "experts" to "us". For example, he compares the Dewey Decimal classification system which is limited by the physcs of paper to give each book a spot on the shelf (p. 62) to Amazon which likes a friendly disorder, stuffing its pages with alternative ways of browsing and offbeat offers peculiar to each person's behavior(p.6).

In chapter 7, Social Knowing, Weinberger contrasts the intransience of the entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica with those of Wikipedia which are in a constant state of beta. This chapter also gives insight into how the citizen journalists of Wikipedia work to achieve accuracy and neutality. His behind the scene peek at the workings of Wikipedia are well worth the read. In closing this chapter, he offers a view of knowledge quite similar to George Siemen's concept of connectivism when he comments that we can see for ourselves that knowledge isn't in our heads:It's between us. It emerges from public and social thought, and it stays there, because social knowing, like the global conversations that give rise to it, is never finished (p147).

Weinberger provides us with a conceptual framework to view how knowledge today is digitally organized on business sites like iTunes and social bookmarking sites such as Delicious. He explains how folksonomy gives people more control over knowledge by making it relevant to them as individuals. According to Weinberger, Reality is multifaceted. There are lots of ways to slice it up. How we choose to slice it up depends on why we're slicing it up (p.82).

Playing with Tools for Digital Storytelling

2011-04-13T16:42:00.021-04:00

I'm experimenting with different tools for digital storytelling.

Here's my practice clip from Animoto Claire and Gypsy
I like the fact that you can combine photos, text, and music.

Here's the same type of creation using Slideroll.

Create a Free Slideshow

I like that you can add text (although I didn't) and music. It has an embed code, but I don't know if it has a link.

Stupeflix also lets you create slideshows with music and text and these can be embedded as this one below.

Voki lets you create an speaking avatar. You can use your own voice or text to speech. Here's my example.

Here is a link to a comic that I created using StripGenerator. This tool allows emailing, comments and embedding. However, I am unable to figure out how to make the strip small enough to fit well into a blog post.

I created a comic scene I created with Lego City but when I saved it, it become a PDF file.

Myths and Legends seems like a great site with a storyboard and audio, but I don't know if you can link from it.

I tried Pikikids, but couldn't get the results to embed or link.

I had more luck with Dvolver which allows you to create scenes and write dialog. You can both embed your creation or send it by email. Here's a one scene example.

Here's a simple animation made with GoAnimate. I couldn't figure out how to have each figure in the strip say something, but I'm sure it's just a matter of playing around with it a little more. GoAnimate also has an education account. I applied for one but it takes a few days to get a responses.

GoAnimate.com: The Advantage of Being bBlingual by maryanneburgos

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

2011-04-06T17:00:00.000-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daryl_mitchell/3560636199/

I am currently reading Toys to Tools : Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education by Liz Kolb and am changing my opinion of using cells for mobile learning. I had previously dismissed the idea of cell phones for that purpose because of the small screens, but Kolb offers some innovative ideas that are making me rethink how to use these devices.

Cell Phone

2011-04-05T20:27:00.001-04:00

Cell Phone, a photo by daryl_mitchell on Flickr.

Thanks for the photo

2010-12-24T16:30:00.004-05:00

by fras1977

Because copying and pasting images is so easy now, we often neglect to give credit to the creators of the images we use. As teachers we need to be model good attribution behavior for out students.

Finding and attributing photos from Flickr is easy to do with a tool called Imagecodr. On the home page of this site, you can click the Search tab to find photos. To provide attribution in your blog or website, you click the Get Code! tab and enter the URL of the photo you wish to use. Use the code displayed to put the image and the complete attribution information on your blog.or website.

I was looking for an image of threads to use when discussing Voice Threads. The image above with the CC licsnse and link is the result using the code from Imagcodr.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

2010-10-31T16:31:00.005-04:00

I attended the rally Oct. 30 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The rally officially started at noon, but when a friend and I arrived at 9:00 in the morning to find a spot, the mall was already filling up. The rally was a great experience. It was a mixture of good music, good fun, good sane people and a serious message.

Jon Stewart ended the rally with the message that despite what we often hear on tv or in the news about how divided we are as a nation, as individuals we actually do all work together everyday to get things done . His complete closing remarks are in the video below.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Jon Stewart - Moment of Sincerity

www.comedycentral.com

Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear

The Daily Show

The Colbert Report

The signs people carried were creative and very humorous. Here are a few:

I'm as moderate as hell.
Politics has been too concerned with right or left instead or right or wrong.
Be quick to listen and slow to anger.
I'm using my inside voice.
My comedy channel Fox News. My news channel Comedy Central.
Somewhat irritated about extreme outrage.
Separation of corporation and state.
Civil is sexy.
U.S. Department of Peace
It's a sad day when our politicians are comical and I have to take our comedians seriously!

Below is a video about the rally that was posted on Al Jazeera.

Jumping into Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge 2010

2010-10-12T13:43:00.002-04:00

By tsakshaug

Although I had signed up for a free, online course called Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge 2010 (PLENK 2010) facilitated by George Siemens, Stephen Downes,  and Dave Cormier, I hadn't had a chance to jump in until today.
On reading about various features of a Personal Learning Environment  (PLE) in an EDUCAUSE brief, I found these two quotes particularly salient. A PLE ... puts students in charge of their own learning processes, challenging them to reflect on the tools and resources that help them learn best. This way of looking at learning changes the role of the teacher who then becomes a real facilitator instead of a provider of information to be learned. As expressed in the article, ... [T]eaching is less a matter of data transmission and more a collaborative exercise in collection, orchestration, remixing, and integration of data into knowledge building. I have seen in the university courses that I teach, that graduate students can take charge of their own learning when given the opportunity. I also assume (but haven't researched) that the idea of self-directed learning is the basis for Montessori schools. What I am wondering is if this same process works in middle and high school. Is it possible? Is it being done? Who's doing it?

In Learning networks in practice, Stephen Downes explains how the PLE allows the
learner not only to consume learning resources, but to produce them as well. Learning therefore evolves from being a transfer of content and knowledge to the production of content and knowledge. Now as far as producing is concerned, students have always produced things ranging from illustrating a story in elementary school to writing a thesis in high school. How does the use of a PLE change that? The answer is in the formation of learning networks which become the basis for continuing the learning after producing something. The feedback from others can lead to refinement of both products and ideas.

Learning, in other words, occurs in communities, where the practice of learning is the participation in
the community. A learning activity is, in essence, a conversation undertaken between the learner and other members of the community. This conversation, in the Web 2.0 era, consists not only of words but of images, video, multimedia and more.

According to Downes these communities should display four essential characteristics:
1. Diversity - This means being exposed to a wide spectrum of experiences. Diversity allows us to have multiple perspectives, to see things from a different point of view. These views moderate each other, and prevent us from jumping to a conclusion.
2. Autonomy - This means that each learner operates according to an individual and internal set of
principles and values.
3.  Connectedness -The knowledge produced by a network should be the product of an interaction between the members, not a mere aggregation of the members’ perspectives.
4. Openness - Each participant in a network must be able to contribute to the network, and each ...needs to be able to receive from the network.

Mark all as Read!

2010-10-10T19:48:00.003-04:00

By barockschloss

On her blog, Librarian by Day, Bobbi L. Newman gives some very practical advice regarding how to keep your Google Reader RSS feeds manageable. She gives some practical tips in her post Be the Master of Your Domain, How to Conquer Your Feed Reader .

One thing she suggests is exactly what I have been doing lately and that is - when my Google reader gets too full and I'm feeling guilty about not reading all the posts, I hit "Mark all as read." What feeling of relief!

But Bobbi also offers some tips on weeding your Google Reader. For example, she suggests:
1. Ask yourself if you are getting the information somewhere else, like Twitter or Facebook. Do you prefer that method? Unsubscribe.
2. Look at what you are reading. Under “All Stuff” is a “Trends” link. When you look at your own trends:

First weed anything under Inactive.

Then take a look at Frequently Updated. Maybe if it (the blog)updates too frequently you should consider unsubscribing.

Bobbi says she has unsubscribed from some really popular tech sites because the authors just post too much information. I've done the same, although it's always with a pang of remorse at losing a good connection.

Today I'm suffering from information overload again, so I'm going to follow Bobbi's advice. I "pruned" earlier this week, so I think it's time for "Mark all as read" until I can do some serious weeding!

Literacy in the 21st Century

2010-09-29T09:59:00.001-04:00

I recently read Is Google Making Us Stupid? an article that appeared in the Atlantic magazine. Despite the harsh-sounding title, it is a thought-provoking article touching on issues which have yet to be sufficiently researched. Soon after that I watched an IDEO video called The Future of the Book which shows the power of new tools that will change literacy as we now think of it.

Flickr photo by cindiann

For fun, be sure to watch the hilarious Youtube video clip Introducing the Book.

Networking and Composting

2010-08-17T18:03:00.003-04:00

From The Green Dollar

After spending a week with my sister who is actively engaged in composting, I started a compost pile of my own and started thinking about how a personal learning network and a compost pile had a lot in common.

Of course, the most obvious similarity is that they can both be messy and need to be turned over or revised from time to time. But, in addition, think about these attributes of a compost pile and see if you can find the similarities to a PLN.

Good material goes into the mix.
The right balance of ingredients is crucial for a good result.
The ingredients get mixed together and interact with each other.
The mixture produces a compound that will nurture new growth.

New to networking or creating a personal learning network(PLNs) for yourself or your students?
Here's what Will Richardson has to say about student PLNs.

You can find more information on PLNs in my Delicious account.

Online Language Learning Resources

2010-05-16T15:55:00.003-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barretthall/ / CC BY 2.0

I am just beginning to learn Mandarin Chinese, so I found chapter 11 of Curtis J. Bonk's book The World is Open, fascinating in that it referred to so many online sites for language learning. In addition, my backgroundis in teaching second languages, so I was particularly interested to see what some of these sites offered.

I checked out beginning Mandarin at Live Mocha and was quite pleased with the presentation of material and exercises which incorporate visuals as well as both oral and written language. I haven't tried the interaction with a native speaker yet, but hope to do so when I have more of basic vocabulary. The ability to converse with a native speaker is an ideal situation for language learners. However, the conversational exchanges that occur during these situations can vary tremendously. The key to success would be finding a partner that fit your needs in terms of language proficiency, choice of topics, and patience on both ends of the dialog!

The Mixxer Language Exchange which utilizes Skype also looked appealing especially since it offers teachers the ability to create groups and exchanges can be either in written form or through Skype.

Friends Abroad is now owned by Babbel and offers courses that can be purchased, but does not offer Chinese. About.com owned by the New York Times does offer free lessons in Mandarin Chinese.

Chinesepod is described quite well in chapter 11. I like the fact that it has a mobile app. but wish the transcripts were free.

As the summer progresses, I hope to check out each of these sites in more detail. In the meantime, I am also using these online resources in my study of Mandarin:

Mango (Online Chinese course from Montgomery Co. Public Library)

http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/libraries/index.asp

On home page click Language Learning Tools, then Mango languages

Pinyin Chart with audio pronunciations of initials and finals

http://www.sayjack.com/learn/chinese/pinyin/?pos=1&tone=1

Chinese/English dictionary

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

List of free Chinese classes on iTunes

http://www.openculture.com/free_mandarin_chinese_lessons

List of Chinese resources on the web

http://www.cortland.edu/flteach/flteach-res.html#chinese

BBC Chinese lessons with videos and transcripts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/

List of links to videos for learning Chinese including Benny's "I Like Chinese"

http://universed.co.uk/language/chinese

The Future Belongs to Those Who ...

2010-04-23T17:31:00.001-04:00

I just read The Future Belongs to Those Who...which has as its subtitle "a guide for thinking about the future." This is the first suggested reading for the Open Course in Education Futures run by George Siemens and Dave Cormier. Amazingly this course has over 500 participants who are all concerned about and involved in the future of education.

I found The Future Belongs to Those Who...quite enlightening. It clarified for me why forward-looking researchers call their endeavors "futures studies". The plural is used because "there is no one preordained future that is fated to occur. Rather there are many different possible alternative futures." In order to explore these various possibilities, futurists use various methods including trend monitoring and scenarios. One of the trend monitoring techniques, scanning, for example, involves "searching through a variety of information sources to identify trends and emerging developments." This reminds me of what many of us do through daily scanning of rss feeds from edubloggers and by checking tweets from other educators.

From the data that is gathered, futurists develop sets of various possible scenarios which could occur. The purpose of these scenarios is "to encourage people to think about how to navigate successfully across the different circumstances that might be encountered."

Having just read The World is Open by Curtis J. Bonk, which is about all the changes that are occurring right now in the field of education, I am eager to hear what scenarios the participants in this course come up with.

Disrupting the University

2010-04-17T14:20:00.003-04:00

Katie Hafner's recent NYTimes article An Open Mind, answered some concerns I had had about students learning through free, online courses such as those offered through the M.I.T. OpenCourseWare Initiative.

One of my concerns was that students accessing these courses as independent learners would have no one to answer their questions or reply to their reflections. One solution to this concern is answered at the Peer 2 Peer University. Peer 2 Peer University, which is a tuition-free nonprofit experiment financed with seed money from the Hewlett and Shuttleworth foundations. At P2PU a 'course organizer' leads the discussion but you are working with others so when you have a question you can ask any of your peers. Ability to network with others taking the same course could be extremely helpful. It sounds as if you could even create online study groups.

Another site which pulls together open courses from various universities and encourages students interaction is the University of the People. According to Kafner's article, students not only interact, but students even grade one another's papers! My reaction - Why not? In my own teaching experience I've found that given a good rubric to follow, students usually grade each other very effectively and sometimes even offer good, constructive feedback.

My other concern with open educational resources was accreditation. Students may accrue a great deal of knowledge, but if they don't receive any official certification of this knowledge would it ultimately be useful to them for job-seeking purposes? Both Peer 2 Peer University and the University of the People do not at the present time offer accreditation, but both seem to be in the process of seeking to offer it in the future. It's a wonderful world!

Disrupting Class and the Future of Education

2010-04-04T10:31:00.003-04:00

I am currently reading Disrupting Class by Clayton M. Christensen., Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson. You can get a quick synopsis of the book by listening to this interview with one of the authors. According to the authors, If we acknowledge that all children [and adults] learn differently, then the way schooling is currently arranged-in a monolithic batch mode system where all students are taught the same things on the same day in the same way-won't ever allow us to educate children in customized ways.

My interpretation of the view of education in the book is to have each student accrue knowledge through his/her best learning style for that subject matter. This means that teachers will piece together an array of modules containing different ways of learning the same material based on various learning styles. These modules will have been created over time through online networks with teacher and user input. When enough modules have been developed, then teachers can start piecing together enough ... modules to create entire course designed for each type of learner. In this view teachers will serve as content architects and learning coaches supporting students in their choice and interpretation of online modules.

As I see it, some of this is currently being done. For example, the number of online networks where teachers share their insights and expertise now exist and are growing exponentially. Here are some examples:

Open source courseware through Wikieducator,
Nings such as are Classroom 2.0, EdubloggerWorld, School 2.0, NextGen Teachers, Educational Technology, EFL Classroom 2.0 , Teachers 2.0, Computer Mediated Communication

And here is a snapshot of a present day classroom that may foreshadow classrooms of the future, This is Our Classroom . There are also currently projects such as NYCDOE One to One project http://vimeo.com/7416500 which incorporate some of ideas of teaching students through their best learning styles.

The future of education is the topic of an open course beginning on April 19, 2010 and being facilitated by George Siemens and Dave Cormier through the University of Manitoba. I'm sure many of the ideas presented in Disrupting Class will be discussed. I'm really looking forward to the course!

LAI 598 March 3

2010-03-03T12:20:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

Feedback and further instructions

I Love ISTE!

2010-02-19T10:52:00.000-05:00

I have found the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to be a fantastic organization for expanding my personal learning network (PLN)on a grand scale. I attended the annual conference which was held in Washington, D.C. in 2009 and came away very impressed and full of new ideas. The conference this year will be in Denver.

One of the most useful aspects of belonging to ISTE has been the Social Networking opportunities, particularly through the 20 special interest groups. The variety of the "buffet" of SIGS offers something to delight everyone!

Recently I have been participating in the book discussion from one of the SIGS on Christopher Bonk's book The World is Open. Knowing that I am going to share ideas with other professionals has motivated me to be more reflective in my reading. I not only highlight, I also reread and select the ideas that most impressed me. I hope that there will be more of this type of reading and reflecting in the future!

Read, Reflect, Share

2010-01-30T14:24:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gesteves/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Thanks to a Christmas gift card to Amazon.com from my family, I have been reading some exciting books lately about the changing world of education. Two of the books, The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education and Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education & Training are being discussed in ISTE Ning forums at The World is Open and SIGML Book Study 2010. I've found that discussion of books on line by people who are passionate about the subjects of these books is a very exhilarating experience.

In the mobile learning discussion I learned that efforts were being made to provide solar-powered mobile learning devices to people in rural Haiti and in Kenya. I'm sure that there are more such efforts going on worldwide and I hope to learn more about them.

In Curtis J. Bonk's The World is Open, I have only finished the intro and chapter 1. The phrase the jumped out at me was participatory learning culture Bonk deftly illustrates this with the metaphor of the Borg from Star Trek the Second Generation. He writes, Once you arrive [online], you will discover that you are not simply using the Web of Learning; instead, like the Borg in the television show 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', you are now a part of it. Your actions-contributions, reactions, comments, and designs-have been assimilated into the corpus or being of the Web of Learning.

I think this is a concept that bears reflection. Actually, it wasn't until I had significantly expanded my own personal learning network that I began to feel what he was describing. We definitely become a part of our networks by the contributions we make and the input we receive. Both change us in many ways and online book discussions can be part of the process.

Video Games in the Foreign Language Classroom

2010-01-22T15:07:00.003-05:00

As part of week 2 of the Electronic Village Online (EVO) session Online Games for EFL/ESL, I just finished reading 10 Key Principles for Designing Video Games for Foreign Language Learning by Ravi Purushotma, Steven L. Thorne, and Julian Wheatley

These are the ideas from the article that resonated most with me:

Principle #1- At least as much thought needs to go into the design of failure states as for success states.

The authors give two very good reasons for this. The first is that learner anxiety about making mistakes could impede successful language acquisition. The second is that L2 learners need to make mistakes as they develop their interlanguage and the feedback they receive can be very helpful.

Principle #4 - Metalinguistic descriptions and terminology should be presented through optional supporting material, not as part of the core gameplay.

This principle like principle #1 deals with feedback a player needs to complete the task at hand. The authors suggest using a three-tiered approach to presenting language concepts. The top (or first) type of interaction with the game would be meaning-based. If players are not successful after receiving that type of feedback, then the next level of feedback they receive would allow them to consider the language that they have been using in new ways (focus-on-form) but without complicated grammar explanations. The third tier of the game for players still having difficulty would include extensive explanations of grammar terms and language structure.

I've left for last, perhaps, the most important principle.
Principle #3 - All elements of the game, particularly communication and input mechanisms, should have a playful spirit to them.

The authors give examples of well-designed games in which players purposefully make mistakes because they find the humorous feedback fun. They also give examples of players who are motivated to learn new languages so that they can participate in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). Now that is motivation!!!

Video 2 LAI 598 Sp 2010

2010-01-15T21:33:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

Video for mod 2 of LAI 598 Sp 2010

George Siemens in Second Life

2010-01-14T11:27:00.001-05:00

I just finished a session in Second Life run by Universidad de San Marin de Porres of Lima, Peru. One of the ideas that George Siemens , the developer with Stephen Downes of the theory of connectivism, touched on that really hit a chord for me was that competency today implies the ability to create and support networks. One of the implications of this is that as teachers we need to give students the skills to do this and to let them immerse themselves in the networking process to get a feel for it.

We need to give students the ability to initiate conversations and become active participants in learning networks. As teachers we all know that each learner has both a different starting point and a unique perspective on content or concepts that we would like them to learn. Negotiating meaning with other networked learners can lead to both clarification and growth of ideas for all. Learners can actually create new knowledge through conversations with others in their networks.

What implications does new technology have on us as teachers? Siemens suggests that the ability of learners to network and create knowledge has created a power shift in teaching and learning. Learners don't need teachers in the same way as before. I view education today as going through a transition period as this power shift occurs. Teachers need to learn to be promoters of networking and guides in directing students to good modes within networks. Learners on the other hand have to realize that their learning will depend on their active participation in creating network and contributing to the conversations in those networks.

This is definitely an exciting time to be a teacher/learner!

Teaching in the 21st Century

2010-01-09T13:30:00.030-05:00

Image from Andrew Churches' blog Edorigami

Today when I decided to reread articles form my delicious account about web 2.0, I found Andrew Churches' excellent post 21st century Pedagogy which sums up what web 2.0 means for pedagogy in the 21st century.

How we teach must reflect how our students learn, it must also reflect the world they will emerge into. This is a world that is rapidly changing, connected, adapting and evolving.

Teachers of any and all subjects in today's classrooms need to take advantage of the many internet tools that allow for 21st century learning or social learning. Most teachers are familiar with cooperative learning and probably incorporate this type of activity into their lessons. However, new technology allows students to cooperate and collaborate with others beyond the classroom walls. Students can now participate in real world projects with global partners. Such projects take careful planning on the part of teachers, but like any good learning activities, the rewards for the learners can be great and there are many sites such as ePals ,to name just one, that can facilitate such activities.

In a similar vein among the emerging trends that have special significance for educators, Steve Hargadon in Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education includes the following trends:

The world gets flatter and faster
Social learning moves to center stage
The age of the collaborator

Some teachers are fearful of the new technologies because of unfamiliarity and because the tools themselves tend to mutate (usually for the better) so quickly. However, if teachers keep in mind the aspects of 21st century teaching outlined in Churches diagram, and choose just one collaborative tool to use to meet their teaching goals, they will have contributed a great deal to their students learning in this new era of teaching and learning.

If a tree falls in the forest...

2009-12-26T20:22:00.007-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinken/ / CC BY 2.0

I have been blogging sporadically for several years, but sometimes I feel that my posts just go into a black hole in cyberspace. So for2010 one of my goals is to build up a network of followers to share insights with. I strongly believe in the power of educational networking and learning through the exchange of ideas.

To meet that goal my first step was to examine the delicious bookmarks on blogging that I have collected over the last 3 years. After reviewing those dealing with becoming a better blogger, I found two that inspired me. The first was guidelines for writing good posts. These are just a few of the tips from Vicki Davis's Ten habits of bloggers that win! that I plan to try to follow:

1. Get a catchy title. (I always enjoyed writing titles for essays. This one should be fun!)

2. Be brief. (Not a problem. I like writing and rewriting to find the best and briefest way to get my message across.)

3. Add an appropriate graphic. (I plan to use Flickr photos with appropriate Creative Commons permissions or MS pictures).

4. Use multiple, relevant tags. (This is tricky. It's hard to narrow down to the gist of the topic sometimes.)

From Richard Byrne's My Seven Edublogging Secrets I chose these suggestions for finding followers:

5. Identify a niche audience. (This is also difficult. I teach a grad school course online for teachers who want to integrate technology into their k12 classrooms. I would love to connect with other professors who teach a similar course, but it's hard to do. The edubloggers I follow usually are k12 teachers or tech instructors in k12 settings. I learn a great deal from them, but I have no idea how to find others who do what I do.

6. Post consistently. (I read a lot of edublogs and "edutweeters" everyday. I just have to remember to both comment of their blogs and post about thoughts their entries spark in my mind.) I'll try for every Friday!

7. Contribute to Twitter. (I really must remember to tweet about some of the great blog posts I read so that more people can learn from them too.)

Whether or not these suggestions work for me to extend my "following", they are definitely good suggestions for any edublogger.

Networked Learning for Teachers

2009-12-21T18:38:00.000-05:00

Stay Connected

The recognition of the importance of computer technology for teachers has grown steadily in the last few years. The Technology standards for language teachers from TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second Language) are a prime example. Actually these goals and standards could easily apply to teacher in all fields See if you agree. The goals are to have teachers:

Acquire and maintain foundational knowledge and skills in technology for professional purposes.
Integrate pedagogical knowledge and skills with technology to enhance (language) teaching and learning.
Apply technology in record-keeping, feedback and assessment.
Use technology to improve communication, collaboration and efficiency.

How can teachers educate themselves to meet these goals? Social (educational) networking is one of the most convenient and up-to-date ways. I remember the days when acquiring new knowledge meant finding the right articles or books from which to glean information. This usually entailed a trip to the university library to checkout books or feed the copier all your quarters to copy article from journals.

Today learning can mean finding relevant information from reliable online sources, reflecting on it, sharing the new, personal insights gained, receiving feedback and comment from interested parties and then responding to this feedback with new insights. Steven Downes discusses the importance this type of self-directed learning in his video, Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development.

Finding reliable sources can be accomplished by starting and nurturing a good personal learning network (PLN). Personally I find that my own PLN is always in state of flux. I continually add and delete rss feeds to edublogs in my Google reader, follow and "unfollow" people on Twitter, and check my Yahoo and Ning groups. I don't stop following others because any of their ideas are irrelevant, but because there is no way to keep up with all the good learning and sharing opportunities today.

I am in the process of deciding which sources in my PLN I want to keep. It's really a tough decision, but if I want to reflect on what I read, I need to have a manageable set of items. I hope that this "weeding out" of my PLN will allow me more time to digest and comment on what others say and to share my own ideas with them.

So You Think You Can Teach with Tech Tools!

2009-12-13T17:05:00.001-05:00

Since 2004 I have been teaching a course through the State University of NY at Buffalo presently called Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts in L2. The purpose of the course is to familiarize pre-service and in-service teachers with various free, online tools that they can use to enhance the teaching/learning experience. I could feel the excitement of the students as they blogged about how they could use these tools in their own classrooms, but then I began to worry that in their enthusiasm they might lose sight of their instructional goals.

Judi Harris and Mark Hofer wrote in Grounded Tech Integration in the ISTE magazine Learning and Leading with Technology, "Most technology integration strategies begin with and focus on the technologies' affordances and constraints - what they can help us do and their limitations. Unfortunately, this approach does not ensure that educational technologies will be well integrated into instruction that is keyed to specific content-based learning goals".

However, I have decided that the tools I teach about and the teaching goals the students need to keep in mind are like the partners in a dance. The tools that we as educators have literally at our fingertips today are recent developments. Before we can decide how to use them to meet instructional goals, it is necessary to become familiar with what each tool can and cannot do. So I visualize teaching with tech tools as a continual, partnered dance between new tech tools and teaching goals. At some points in the dance one of the partners shines more brightly, but at other times the other takes center stage. However, both dancers are essential to creating a great performance!

Personal Knowledge Management

2009-11-22T10:11:00.001-05:00

By Harold Jarache

The videos for Learn Trends 2009: Convergence in the Workplace Learning (Nov. 17-19) provide an excellent source of information on social learning. Although this free, online conference focused on social learning in the corporate world, many insights apply equally to the university setting.

A recurring comment by presenters was how difficult it is today to stay up-to-date. George Siemens observed that today's abundance of information means we have to change how we operate. "Continual change requires rapid learning and innovations for individuals and organizations."

Harold Jarache shared the personal knowledge management (PKM) system he uses to handle today's overload of information. This 5-minute presentation gives a quick overview and links to posts on the topic. He showed the relationship between the recursive, internal elements of sorting (gathering information), categorizing (tagging and filing), making explicit ( writing) and retrieving (looking up info when needed) with the external elements of connecting, exchanging and contributing.

In addition to the process he outlined, several individual ideas he mentioned resonated with me. One was the importance of adding notes, tags and categories to your blog and Delicious account. Another was backing up your Delicious account. (I'll have to figure out how to do that one). Perhaps for me the most salient idea was hearing that he blogs every Friday. That's a practice worth emulating for those of us who need some structure in our lives. I often glean ideas from others' posts but don't take the time to pull together a week's worth of ideas. I think I've been missing the critical-thinking or explicit part of managing knowledge and I plan to correct that!

Upcoming Online Educational Technology Conferences

2009-11-06T14:11:00.002-05:00

Connectivism is alive and flourishing through many free, online conferences in November and December. The K12 Online Conference involves educators from around the world who are interested in innovative ways to incorporate web 2.0 tools into their teaching. It runs or two weeks (Dec. 7-11 and Dec. 14-17). Archived live events from 2008 let you a feel for topics addressed by participants.
On November 13 Educause, Vice President, Richard Katz will present a webinar entitled The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing.

Nov. 17-19 Learn Trends 2009: The Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations Conference takes place in cyberspace. The focus of this conference is learning in the workplace.

Two new online conferences are debuting this year. The Virtual Roundtable Conference on language learning with technology Nov. 12 and 13 and the Campus Technology Virtual Conference on December 3.

If you are thinking about attending some of these events, be sure to check out which specific topics are interested in and see the time that they are offered. You may have to use a World Clock Converter to be sure that you arrive in cyberspace on time for the event. Some of the conferences also require prior registration, so don't wait until the last minute!

Ideas for Using Photos

2009-11-03T21:07:00.005-05:00

This week the students in my online class at the State University of New York at Buffalo are working with photos and the multiple things you can do with them through Flickr applications. In Big Huge Labs you can use photos from Flickr or your hard drive to create mosaics like the one to your left. You can also create posters, name tags and many other objects.

In a previous mod some of the students explored Animoto, a site where you can create cool slide shows with music. Down below is one I just created of my son's early years in Mexico. Loved those pinatas!

Online Conference on Social Networking

2009-09-21T12:24:00.004-04:00

Recently Vicky Saumell tweeted about an upcoming online conference Nov. 5-8 on social networking organized by two South American affilliates of IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) which is, perhaps, the European conterpart of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). The organizing groups are AVEALMEC ( Asociación Venezolana para la Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de Lenguas Mediados por el Computador) and ARCALL a group of innovative language teaching professionals from Argentina.

The line up of guest speakers looks very impressive. Here are just a few:

George Siemens: Connectivism and Social Networking

Etienne Wenger: Communities of Practice: A Social Discipline of Learning

Vance Stevens: Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities and Networks

Nik Peachey: From Information to Knowledge: Creating Your Own Development Network

According to the website, you do not need to register for the conference but, you will need a WIZIQ account, the on-line platform that will be used for the video conference.

This promises to be a conference worth attending!

Video Tutorials for Using Blogger

2009-07-27T13:21:00.009-04:00

In planning for teaching the technology segment of a course on second language learning, I've chosen to focus on social bookmarking, blogging and global collaboration. So today as I was revisiting some of my bookmarks in Delicious, I found these fantastic video tutorials created in Camtasia by J. Black. It's evident that J. Black has extensive experience using Blogger with students since she emphasizes the issue of safety throughout.

Tutorials on internet tools tend to get outdated very quickly, but these tutorials from April, 2008, are still right on target! Thanks, J.Black!

National Educational Computing Conference

2009-07-06T06:36:00.008-04:00

So inspiring! The National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in D.C. put on by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was such a great learning experience. This was my first time at their conference and I was delighted with the presentations. Those that stood out for me were the ones by Vickie Davis on DIIGO, by Will Richardson on connective learning and Steve Hardagon on Ning and Learn Central.

In Steve's presentation he also elaborated on the new feature of Elluminate through with educators can have a free account which will allow them to have a virtual room for private sessions of up to 3 people and public sessions with a much larger number of people. I have attended many webinars in Elluminate and always wished I could make use of this tool. Elluminate also offers free training sessions. Definitely something to check out!

Review of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other ...

2009-06-30T05:51:00.009-04:00

The updates in Will Richardson's 2nd edition of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms provide a lot of new information. Simply comparing the table of contents of the 2nd edition with that of the first (as I did), one might not appreciate all the updates contained in the newer edition

Richardson has now explored and explained the intricacies of social bookmarking tools such as Delicious and Diigo as well as visualization tools such as Flickr. He has also updated the chapters on weblogs and podcasting to reflect recent developments.

His book continues to be a stellar choice for teachers who want to enhance their teaching by utilizing web 2.0 tools to create more interactive learning environments for their students and it is rumored that a 3rd edition will be due out soon. Can't wait!

Wordle

2009-02-21T11:30:00.006-05:00

This image was created with Wordle. I can see many classroom applications for creating word images. This program allows you to print out your designs, use them in a blog or save them in Wordle. The Wordle image on the left contains the names of teachers that I worked with recently and from whom i learned quite a bit particularly about literacy for very young learners.

Joe Dale has provided a quick Slide Share of directions for using Wordle. (This is best seen full screen by clicking the tiny screen at the bottom). Nik Peachey has also posted some intriguing ideas on how to use Wordle for English language learners. One tip that will help you use phrases is to join them with a tilde in between.

Another tip is that if you want the size wordle you see here you need to take a screen shot of your creation, turn it into a jpg. picture through a program like Paint and then use the jpg. to upload to your blog.

Literacy and Web 2.0

2009-02-21T09:08:00.009-05:00

www.wordle.net

I am just finishing teaching a course on writing in multicultural communities for teachers in Prince George's County, Maryland. I've posted most of the lesson plans for the course in the sidebar of this blog in the same spirit of sharing that I have experienced through online courses in the Electronic Village Online, through contacts with other webheads, and through edubloggers such as Larry Ferlazzo, Nik Peachey and Vicki Davis. I hope that some of the ideas in these plans will facilitate someone else's planning by serving as a jumping off point for their own creativity. We all benefit from George Siemen's concept of connectivism which defines learning as networking and I'm hoping that some of the links in these plans will contribute to others' developing and everchanging networks.

Magazine Cover with Flickr Photo

2009-02-08T11:31:00.004-05:00

My creation
Originally uploaded by Anciana

As part of the Images4Education course that I am taking through EVO2009, I am discovering more and more used for photos on Flickr. At the BigHugeLabs site you can create so many things with photos. I used one of my own photos to create the magazine cover on the right. You can also use photos to create maps, movie posters, puzzles, and many other items.
The creation of all of these items is free as long as you keep them in cyberspace but you can also pay to print them.
Flickr can have many pedagogical uses for language development. One suggestions that I learned in the Images4Education course are creating poems or paragraphs in the comment section of a photo. Some topics for thought are "where I'm from", "where I want to be"and "what my dinner table looks like".

Baby Joey(Sugar Glider)

2009-01-27T10:35:00.004-05:00

Baby Joey(Sugar Glider)
Originally uploaded by Viper76

I'm playing aroud with Flickr to see how it could be used for language teaching. I found this picture when I searched for baby animals. Above the picture it said Blog this. I like that the attribution shows up directly below the picture.

Cute, aren't they!

Uh oh. While the attribution shows up fine when I am writing the post, it seems to get too tiny to view when I publish the post. I'll have to see if there is some way to fix that.

Notes Feature of Flickr

2009-01-26T12:09:00.005-05:00

Jane Goodall's Camp
Originally uploaded by lewiselementary

I'm trying out a feature of Flickr that I just learned about in the Images4Education course of EVO. I had never noticed before that above many photos is a feature called Add Note. After you click on it, you can click on whatever item in the picture you want and add a note (a label, description, etc.).
This could be an excellent feature to use for second language teaching. I've posted an example here called Jane Goodall's Camp. The notes will not show up here in my blog, but if you click on the picture, you will see the photo with all its notes.
It seems to me that only the owner of the image can add notes, but I'm not sure about that.

Snowball Effect

2009-01-13T16:58:00.019-05:00

Anyone who has ever made a snowman knows that you start with a small snowball. As you keep rolling it in the snow, it gets bigger and bigger until you have a "snowball" big enough to use for one of the parts of your snowman. This gradual growth of the tiny snowball into a much grander one is the "snowball effect." That is what I am experiencing this semester with my students.

This semester I started teaching a face to face class through McDaniel College for teachers in Prince George's County, Maryland. This is a face-to face class. We meet at Green Belt Middle School. I had never taught a class before where everyone had their own laptop and we had quite a time getting everyone on the Internet, especially those with Apple computers. (It's so much easier to work in a computer lab!) However, with the help of the IT person, Ms. Mitchell; the library media specialist, Ms. Butler; and Ms. Hammond, the Social Studies teacher at the school, we are slowly but surely getting everyone online through their own laptop computers.

The teachers in the class have all started their own blogs and I can feel the snowball effect as more and more of them are beginning to see the possibilities for using web 2.0 tools in their own classroom.

In order to provide a permanent record of the Internet assignments that we are doing, I've decided to create Googledocs and link to them in the sidebar under lesson plans. That way the students can have an easy way to refer back to what we did in class and to continue learning on their own.

Twitter

2009-01-05T20:13:00.004-05:00

I'm working on modifying a mod on microblogging for a course I teach through U.B. Last semester was the first time I had included microblogging in the course. I found that the students used microblogging like a form of short emails. I hadn't shown them how Twitter can be used not only as a social networking site but also as an educational networking site. Part of the problem may have been that I had them watch Lee LeFever's video which explains microblogging in social terms.

So this semester I'm going to have them read articles on educational microblogging, search for an educational term such as connectivism, check out the sites of others who posted on that subject and follow some of these people for a week.

In planning this mod, I reread all the sites that I tagged as Twitter in my delicious account and retagged them as TwitterTutorials, TwitterTeachers and/or TwitterArticles. This sorting helped a lot.

I also listened again to this great viral video by UK musician, Ben Harper. Check it out! :-)

Microblogging

2009-01-02T18:08:00.004-05:00

In a comment on one of my previous posts, Carmen Holotescu provided a link to an article called Can We Use Twitter for Educational Activities? that she co-authored with Gabriela Grosseck. The article is a good overview of microblogging in education. It also details some of the features that are lacking in Twitter but which would make the site more user-friendly.

For example, it would be helpful to be able to use tags. As interesting as it might be to learn about daily activities of some Twitterers, I would prefer to only read their tweets on professional issues. I just don't have time for more than that.

Another feature missing on Twitter is the ability to create user groups with notes visible only for members. I believe that some of these features may be available in Edmodo, but I'll have to check. Carmen is advocating the use of a new Romanian microblogging site called cirip that incluldes some of these features along with some others.

I'm going to look more at Edmodo today, but it seems to be much more than just a microblogging site. So if schools don't block it , the site may have lots of potential for classroom use.

Updating my online course

2008-12-24T15:03:00.007-05:00

At the end of each semster I look at notes I've made to myself and the results of student feedback to update the syllabus for my University at Buffalo online course on using Internet tools in the classroom. Although I have less time this break because of babysitting my adorable twin grandchildren, I'm going to make some changes. I am also checking the detailed feedback that I received from Robert Squires through the Webheads Yahoo group.

There are two areas I'd love to explore but need more time to investigate. They are creating videos and utilizing gaming. However, I think that I will be able to include having the students search for good videos on YouTube or TeacherTube which they can link to from their blogs.

As per Robert's advice, I also plan to put in course objectives. Strange that I always make my students use objectives in their lesson plans, but I didn't do it myself! I plan to use the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) created standards National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers since I not only have second/foreign language teachers in my class, but others as well.

I hope to finish my update ASAP.

Comparing Microblogging Tools

2008-10-17T15:32:00.005-04:00

Recently students in my online class Using the Internet in L2 Classrooms at the State University of New York at Buffalo completed a mod comparing several microblogging sites. Each group of 3 students was assigned to compare Twitter, the best known site, with either Plurk, Pownce or Spoink.

Those who compared Twitter to Plurk, the two most similar sites, differed on their feel about each layout. Some thought Twitter was more appealing because of its simplicity, but others liked the timeline design of Plurk. Regarding other features students said:

§ Each allows 140 characters of text which you can post online or by cell phone.

On both you can post links, but Plurk also lets you share images and Youtube videos.

§ The act of replying on each site differs but you can send public or private messages on each site.

Although many of my students are second language teachers, I don't think that many of them noticed that you can "plurk" in other languages. That would make Plurk a useful useful teaching tool. I think the reason this feature wasn't noticed is that you have to scroll down to see that option.

Those who compared Twitter and Pownce usually preferred the many features of Pownce such as:

The ability to share videos, mp3 files and events. One student posted about an event she was going to attend and replies asked how it went. Another student posted this YouTube video which compares Twitter, Pownce and Jiku.

Those who used Spoink liked being able to:

Podcast from their phones
Type 500 characters
Post text, video or pictures.

This was the first time I had students explore microblogging. None of them had even heard of it before. We all learned a lot. However, I definitely will revise the mod to be sure that the students:

§ Try all the features of each site

§ Add the other members of their group and reply to each of their posts

§ Post on various days so that they don't just post 5 consecutive posts!

§ Check out Edmodo which many of them referred to when they searched for articles about microblogging.

2008-10-15T10:13:00.001-04:00

Check Joe Dale's PP tech links at http://ping.fm/1h6Ig

Toxic Chemicals Harm Children

2008-10-14T10:48:00.003-04:00

I recently read Poisoned Profits: the Toxic Assault on Our Children by the Shabecoffs to learn about the effects of toxic chemicals on all of us and especially the effects on our children. It's quite scary, but a must-read for all new parents.

2008-10-07T22:58:00.001-04:00

If concerned about personal care products that are endocrine disruptors check http://ping.fm/KcESg [www_cosmeticsdatabase_com]

2008-10-03T10:38:00.001-04:00

Just visited Ana Maria Cult's flowgram http://ping.fm/bXx42 of great web tools for teaching. Well worth viewing!

2008-10-02T06:46:00.001-04:00

Saw Menopause the Musical last night. Funny! Getting ready to watch the twins this morning and am looking forward to VP debate tonight.

2008-09-24T10:12:00.001-04:00

Trying to learn how to use Movie Maker. It resembles Audacity in many ways, but will take me many attempts to get an ok video clip.

2008-09-02T22:56:00.001-04:00

I'm thrilled with the variety of backgrounds of the students in my class this semester.
They have a lot to share with each other.

2008-08-30T14:43:00.001-04:00

Robin Good's 40 minute interview with George Siemens http://ping.fm/myUsx was well worth the time!

Kwout

2008-08-25T09:32:00.001-04:00

kwout A brilliant way to quote

"Kwout is a free, online tool that provides an easy way to grab, cut and post screenshots to websites. Thanks to Joe Dale for leading me to the site. Next time I'll choose a smaller size!

In2Books

2008-08-25T07:42:00.004-04:00

I recently rejoined a type of mentoring/pen pal program called In2Books. It connects elementary school children with adults through reading and commenting on the same books.

During the school year, students select 5 books from lists compiled by children's literature experts and exchange online letters about the important issues in the books.

I have participated in the program twice and the organizers continue to improve the quality of the software used for the exchange of letters. Initially the 5 books to be read were free and were sent to the adult's home. Now the adults must buy the books or get them from the library, but I consider this a worthwhile investment.

The program always looking to sign up for new members. I like several aspects of the program. One is that there is a background check on the adults who participate and another is that they provide a lot of guidance in the writing of the letters.

Time Management Tools

2008-08-22T08:16:00.002-04:00

Vicki Davis has posted a very useful list and description of what she calls "the fab five of time management." She explains how to make handy widgets such as Remember the Milk even more helpful by tweaking them. Her fab five free tools for time management include Remember the Milk, Jott (no longer free), Google Calendar, Timebridge, and iGoogle. Since I use iGoogle as my home page for getting organized, her suggestions will definitely help me with time management. At the moment I have the ToDo widget on my iGoogle page and I've signed up for Remember the Milk to see how it differs.

Twitter by Phone

2008-08-18T09:09:00.003-04:00

I had been frustrated at not finding instructions for using Twitter. Somhow today I looked in Help and discovered that's where all the information is.

So today I tried to add my phone number to see if I could text message a tweet and it worked fine after adding my phone number under Setting>Devices.

I must admit though that if my daughter hadn't helped, I would have still been frustrated because in trying to add my phone number I had to verify a letter code. I mistakenly thought that I had to verify by phoning 40404, but I actually had to send a text message to 40404. Aren't families great. :-)

Twitter by Phone

2008-08-18T08:55:00.003-04:00

Ping.fm

2008-08-14T10:13:00.002-04:00

Ping.fm has turned out to be a life saver b/c I can post once and it goes on Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Pownce and Blogger. Gotta love it!

2008-08-14T10:12:00.001-04:00

Loving my new Flip video camera. Best aspect is viewing videos frame by frame and saving best ones as photos. Cool!

Spoink

2008-08-09T15:32:00.002-04:00

Tried out recording a short podcast on Spoink from my cell phone. It was easy to do and worked well but the time limit of one minute may pose a problem.

2008-08-09T15:14:00.001-04:00

Ok. I now have ping.fm on my iGoogle page. Let's see if it posts to all my sites.

2008-08-09T14:59:00.001-04:00

I trying out ping.fm to see if it posts on my Twitter, Blogger, Plurk and Facebook accounts. If it works, it would save me time!

Plurk and Shelfari

2008-08-08T07:05:00.002-04:00

I have been trying out Plurk for a few weeks, but was having difficulty finding friends who were not already in my email or Twitter accounts. I've finally mastered the art of finding friends, but it only seems to work if they use their real names and not an ID. Here are the steps:

Click My friends.
At bottom of page click Find or invite some friends.
In the Search for other plurkers box, put the name (ID) of the person you are looking for.
Under their name to go to their plurk timeline.
Click on either Add ... as a friend or Follow ...as a fan. (I have to check out the difference).

On a different topic, I recently discovered that someone from the Yahoo group Learning with Computers has started a group on Shelfari. This may be a good site to talk about books for professional development.

Leaving Voice Message on a Blog

2008-08-06T07:42:00.005-04:00

I was looking for a widget to put on this blog that would allow visitors to leave an audio message. So I asked for input from the friendly members of Learning with Computers. From their speedy replies this is what I discovered about their suggestions:
· Evoca seemed to be the best option for what I was looking for. It is now installed on this blog. I'm interested to see how well it functions.
· Odeo seemed to be more for creating podcasts and I wanted viewers to record, not listen.
· Chinswing is a cool little tools but didn't seem to be made for putting on one's own site.
· MyChingo is no longer free.
· Qlipboard didn't seem to be for a blog viewer to record on, although it looked like an interesting tool to check out some time. While searching for Qlipboard, I did find a useful blog post by Ronaldo Lima, Jr. in which he compared Qlipboard, VoiceThread and Splashcast. I liked his site and have added it to my rss feeds.

Asynchronous Voice Tools

2008-08-03T12:16:00.003-04:00

In updating my syllabus I recently added the following free tools for my students to explore:
BigThink
www.bigthink.com
Big Think is a site where the discussion of myriad issues starts with interviews with today's leading thinks, movers and shakers. The interactive aspect is that you can continue the discussion by uploading your own views through the use of multimedia or simple text.
Chinswing
www.chinswing.com
Chinswing is a global message board where anyone can add voice messages to ongoing topical discussions. It combines features of podcasting, text forums and live voice chat to create a whole new way to talk.
Gabcast
http://gabcast.com/
Record messages using your own phone, create podcasts, post audio to your blog, host conference calls.
Mogopop
http://www.mogopop.com/
Create and share multimedia content for iPod.
Screencastomatic
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
Screencast-o-matic is a free online tool which lets you create recordings of your desktop with audio and then upload them to share or export them to Quicktime all from your browser for free.
Vaestro
www.vaestro.com
Vaestro is a free tool which allows you to create your own Vaestro Voice Channel. Each Voice channel is a self contained space where you can create topics for voice recordings.
Voicethread
http://voicethread.com
A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows asynchronous group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

Fantastic Links about Blogging

2008-07-31T11:46:00.002-04:00

In revising the syllabus for my Fall course on using the Internet in the classroom, I looked over my del.icio.us account and found a great post by JBlack on his blog called Transitioning to Web 2.0. His post contains the most comprehensive list of links about blogging that I have seen. Here are some of the topics he provides links to :

What is blogging?

Blog statistics and research

Educational Rationale for and Pedagogy of Blogging

Student safety and Responsible Blogging

Evaluating Blogs - rubrics

I was pleased to see that I recognize many of the authors and have them in my own blogroll, but this compilation and categorization of resources is really helpful.

Link to Technorati

2008-07-08T17:24:00.001-04:00

Technorati Profile

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

2008-06-29T08:18:00.006-04:00

Tangled Web by Gruno Girin

There will be an exciting experiment of an open online course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in Septmeber. The details of the course show that it covers the following topics through various techological means:
Week 1: What is Connectivism?
Week 2: Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge
Week 3: Properties of Networks
Week 4: History of networked learning
Week 5: Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and
groups
Week 6: Complexity, Chaos and Research
Week 7: Instructional design and connectivism
Week 8: Power, control, validity, and authority in distributed environments
Week 9: What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators
Week 10: Openness: social change and future directions
Week 11: Systemic change: How do institutions respond?
Week 12: The Future of Connectivism

I'm very much looking forward to the course which starts in September. However, since my own courses start at that time, I'm trying to do as much reading as possible beforehand.

Buenos días, Grandma

2008-06-22T08:17:00.006-04:00

I found a recent CALdiget article from the Center for Applied Linguistics on current research on raising bilingual children. Two points that refute assumptions that many parents and pediatricians hold are that

Although many parents believe that bilingualism results in
language delay, research suggests that monolingual and bilingual
children meet major language developmental milestones
at similar times.

Despite many parents’ fear that using two languages will result
in confusion for their children, there is no research evidence
to support this. On the contrary, use of two languages in the
same conversation has been found to be a sign of mastery of
both languages.

I found this recent research particularly interesting because I live in a household with newborn twins whose mother is a speech and language pathologist. Although everyone in the household had agreed that it would be beneficial that I speak Spanish to the infants, we did wonder about the "speech delay" issue. My own background is in linguistics and bilingual education, but I hadn't heard about the concept of speech delay until talking with my daughter-in-law. We had both unsuccessfully searched for relevant research previously, but now we have this excellent article with references.

Embedding Music in Your Bog

2008-06-07T08:00:00.004-04:00

Aaron Campbell recommended a site called Seeqpod which lets you search for your favorite mp3 files or music videos and put them on your blog. He tells how he used this in his own classroom.

Here are the instructions from the Seeqpod site for creating a playlist and adding it to your site. Here in blogspot you would use the resulting URL to "create a new element" under the Layout tab.

How do I make and save a playlist?
Quite easily. First, register (it's free and only requires an e-mail address and password), then search for some playable results. To make a playlist, simply press the green arrow that appears alongside a selected result, or drag a result to the player, then repeat. You can add as many results as you like. To save, simply click the Save button and title your playlist. At any time, using the nearby buttons, you can share and embed your playlists, as well as create new ones.
How do I edit a playlist?
To delete a result from an existing playlist, just press the red X that appears alongside it. If you'd like to change the order of results, simply click, and then drag, the result to your preferred placement.

Online EFL Teaching

2008-06-01T14:56:00.006-04:00

I have long wanted to do some online EFL teaching, and now there are many sites which facilitate that. Talkbean is one such site. The company posted a job description on the TESOL site. Personally, the time commitment of everyday discouraged me. I would like to do some tutoring but just 2-3 times a week. I'm going to investigate other sites from a list I received from Meri Aaron Walker's site called mawstoolbox as well as Myngle.

Each of these sites offers connections of teachers and students through the use of webcams, whiteboards and chat technologies. So not only conversational language skills can be developed, but reading and writing as well.

The whole concept of connecting language teachers with students who can benefit from intereaction with native speakers is a concept that holds a lot of promise.

Facebook

2008-05-11T13:46:00.003-04:00

Today I uploaded the final grades for the students in my University at Buffalo course, Using Internet Tools in the Second Language classroom. The feedback from the students was very positive and that is quite encouraging. However, I always feel a need to update the course each semester because online tools for teaching are proliferating exponentially and I want to give the students the best course possible.

This week I read a lot of Facebook for Dummies and tried to update my own account. However, I don't see that this networking site is a particularly useful one for teaching and learning. It is helpful for me to keep abreast of online events that I might be interested in, but there is just an overload of information in general on the wall. I have to see if I really want to keep this account open or if the Ning site Classroom 2.0 might not be a better one to keep tuned into.

Although I now have a little time to explore various new tools and modifications to older tools, I find that my biggest concern is cutting down the influx of information to a manageable size. That way, I can continue using only the most useful tools and continue checking them on a regular basis. As it is now, as soon as classes start, I get overwhelmed.

New Post

2008-02-22T10:26:00.002-05:00

Evoca for Recording Audio

2008-01-14T11:14:00.000-05:00

Last semester I had my students create podcasts. I suggested using Podomatic. Big mistake! So now I am searching for a more user-friendly and reliable tool. I'm going to play with Evoca and see if that's a good alternative.

While exploring Evoca, I discovered that it allows you to put a recording device on your blog so that readers can leave audio comments. I've inserted a recorder on this blog and will see how that works while I continue to explore Evoca for podcasting.

Yeah! I was able to record a comment easily. The only drawback I see is that the audio comments are not available for listening for everyone who visits the blog. It is useful to see others' text comments on blogs and it would also be useful to hear others' audio comments.

I'll keep exploring.

Downloading YouTube Videos

2007-09-11T08:58:00.001-04:00

In the Webheads chat a few Sundays ago at TappedIn, someone mentioned that it would be a good idea to download educational YouTube videos to your own hard drive. The reasoning was that the videos might disappear from YouTube at some point and would then be unavailable for teaching purposes.

Serendipitously, in checking the latest assignment for my grad students which was to start a del.icio.us account, I noticed a link to an article on downloading YouTube videos. What I like about this program called vconvert is that it doesn't require any downloading of software. The comments on the article were also worth reading.

I have downloaded some videos and put vconvert.net in my del.icio.us account for future reference. It seems like a good resource to have.

I've also discovered something that I need to learn how to do. I don't know how to include an image from a another site in my blog. For example, I wanted to put an image of the vconvert page as a thumbnail in this post, but don't know how. Maybe that will be my next learning project.

Twitter

2007-08-20T08:20:00.000-04:00

I've discovered that I like a tool called Twitter. When I first read about it a few months ago, it sounded like a really useless Internet tool, but, like many things, until you try it out, you don't know.

Twitter is a social networking tool that can be used many ways. I have only used it on my computer to keep in touch with a teacher friend to see what she's been up to. I'd really like to get some of my family members to participate. We all live spread out around the country and it's hard to really keep in touch. This tool lets you catch little snippets of friends' lives and makes you feel closer to them.

Personally I love asynchronous tools because they don't intrude on everyone's busy schedules. People just check in when it's convenient.

Networking

2007-08-05T08:50:00.001-04:00

The new semester is quickly approaching and I'm trying to finish revising the syllabi for my fall 07 courses. I do so much reading and experimenting with new tools that I learn about through online networking that it is hard to decide what to include and what to leave out.

I always assume that the students in my classes will learn about principles of teaching and learning in other courses. So what I try to do in my courses is offer them the opportunity to become familiar with free-online tools that they can utilize to apply these principles and to make their professional lives more fruitful.

I am always hopeful that the students will end up learning how useful it is in today's digital world to become part of a digital community of practice. Such a network can be a great source of inspiration and a good place to offer and receive feedback on ideas. My present network can be seen in this Gliffy visualization.

This summer has been soooo busy that I haven't had as much time as usual to work on revisions, but next week I plan to finish up. This summer has included learning how to take care of a 14-year-old cocker spaniel who suffers from separation anxiety; marketing/selling my condo; putting almost everything I own in storage; moving in with my son and daughter-in-law, putting their town house on the market and planning and building a new home together. Whew!

Trying to Embed Audio

2007-06-19T11:44:00.000-04:00

Linking to a PPt

2007-01-31T16:14:00.000-05:00

This time I'm just going to add a link here to my PPt hosted on SlideShare. Let's see if it works.http://www.slideshare.net/burgosm/tips-for-quest-garden

Uploading a PPt to a Blogger

2007-01-31T14:38:00.000-05:00

I searched the Blogger help groups and found this information.
You would need to upload the powerpoint somewhere and then place a link in your post that says Download powerpoint presentation here.

The key seems to be that your PPt has to already be located somewhere on the web. Using Ellg as a host and snipURL to shorten the URL, I was able to insert a PPt in the sidebar. Now I'll try to insert it here in this post. Quest Garden Tips

Okay. By using the same html code that I used in the sidbar, I was able to insert this PPt in the post. It's very unnerving because I am just copying code without knowing what it means. To do the same thing in Word Press is much less comlicated.

Expressing My Opinion

2007-01-28T16:56:00.001-05:00

I'm glad to live close enough to D.C. to participate in this type of rally where I can voice my political opinions.

How to Upload a Video

2007-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

Re Road Blocks

2007-01-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I learned that to switch my Blogger account to the new version, on the page asking if you had a Google account I had to say No even though I do have an account.

The next page then let me input my Google account. I love technology, but sometimes I can't follow the logic of the programmers. I guess one thing I have to keep relearning is that you have to try all sorts of solutions to come up with the answer to a problem!

Road blocks

2007-01-01T16:37:00.000-05:00

I just signed up for the Electronic Village Online group on web publishing. I'm hoping that will be my motivation for trying new things especially podcasting.

Today I tried out my new Belkin TuneTalk stereo recorder for my video Ipod. I was able to create some memos, but I have to keep working with it to see how long a recording I can make. As I learn new things, I will post them here for myself and anyone else who may be learning how to use these tools.

I ran into a problem today when I accessed this blog. I haven't updated it in a while and it says that I can switch i t to a newer version. Supposedly there are 2 steps. The first one (entering your ID and password and checking an agreement box are fine. However, the second page asks if you already have a Google account. I do, but under "yes" all I see is a blank box and there doesn't seem to be any way to registser my "yes" answer. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Adding Power Points to a Blog

2006-10-10T21:59:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I followed directions suggested by participants in the Yahoo group Learning with Computers to set up an Ellg account to upload a Power Point presentation for the purposes of later uploading it to my blog. After that I tried several times unsuccessfully to add the URL for the Power Point to the template of this blog.

Then I used SnipURL (a great little program that allows you to shorten long URLs and assign them names) to shorten the original URL of the presentation. For some reason, the template accepted this and I have now successfully uploaded the presentation.

Networking combined with some experimentation can work wonders!

Expert bloggers

2006-10-02T14:39:00.000-04:00

My students recently created their own blogs following the directions in their text and seem quite interested in using blogs in their future teaching. I asked them to create a blogroll of links to either other students’ blogs or blogs of well-known bloggers.

Practically no one chose the well-known bloggers and that disappointed me because I was hoping that this would be a good way to expose the students to the blogs of experts in the field. Perhaps they will become familiar with these authors when they do their rss feeds, but if not, the next time I teach a similar course, I will require that they link for expert blogs.

How-To Videos

2006-07-25T10:34:00.001-04:00

In reading my rss feeds at Bloglines, I found a delightful site VideoDo in a posting by Alan Levine on his CogDogBlog. This site shows short videos on how-to-do things and allows users to contribute videos to the site. I could immediately see the applicability of this in the classroom as students could make videos when learning process writing in Language Arts or in a second language classroom. Although I don't have a video camera yet, I may try out this tool with my webcam to see what happens. Maybe I could demonstrate how to play a simple rhythm on a dejembe!

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts...

2006-07-18T20:52:00.000-04:00

I am in the middle of reading Will Richardson's new book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. This book is the perfect text for courses I teach for pre-service teachers on educational uses of the Internet. I had previously used a compiliation of recent articles available on the web as the readings and how-to material for the courses, but Will has made my life so much easier. I'll have to tell him so.Each chapter or two in the book covers a web tool. Besides the ones mentioned in the title, he covers RSS and Flickr as well. Will has presented the material in a pedagogically pleasing way and covers the "why" as comprehensively as the "how-to." I really highly recommend that educators who are interested in these topics or teach about these topics check out Will's book.

As I finish reading each chapter, I'm going to try to post additional relevant links about each of the topics because, although Will's book was published in 2006, there are already updates on topics such as podcasting.