Category Archives: Web 2.0 Tools

Posted on by

K-12 Online Conference

Wesley Freyer tagged everyone who reads his blog to list 3 reasons why teachers should “attend” the 2007 K-12 Online Conference. Well here are mine:
1. Because I never have
2. Because I want to learn from others without leaving home
3. Because I can

What are yours?

From the K-12 Online Conference Web site:
“The K-12 Online Conference is for educators around the world interested in innovative ways web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This is a FREE conference run by volunteers and open to everyone, no registration is required. The 2007 conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Everyone is invited to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asychronous conversations taking place here and elsewhere online”-.

Posted on by

Best of Web 2.0 Tools

The Independent School listserv I subscribe to has been a buzz with new products or software. In an effort to keep up, I will blog about them.

VoiceThread allows users to add their voice to images they upload. The resulting movie can be shared privately via an email

Phanfare allows users to try it for free for 30 days before they subscribe. After that it is $6.95 a month or $55.00 a year. Could be a great way to share images and videos in a classroom.

Animoto says it is the end of slideshows as it takes your images and adds music to create a movie. It is presently beta (most Web 2.0 tools are).

The best news today is that Google has released their new Presentations online software. Accessed via the regular Google Docs site. My first attempt proved pretty easy.

Ning.com allows anyone to create a social network. That is the good and bad news. Lucy Gray wrote a good piece on the use of Ning in schools. This is her main site done in Typepad.

More to come as we keep up with the changes.

Posted on by

Embracing e-writing

A great article on e-writing was shared by Michael Ulku-Steiner with the Upper School faculty deserves a wider audience. Full disclosure would mean that DA parent, Lucy Martindale get credit for sending it to Michael. This is how connected learning happens when done in bits and bytes or ones and zeros and not in an analog form factor. We live in a new learning environment where we have new tools to incorporate into our teaching and our learning.
I did orientation this year for all students in the Middle School and asked them this question: “Can you use Instant Messaging Language or IM when you are writing messages in Moodle?” They all answered no, as they are good students and figured there was no way a teacher would let them write CUL8R or IMHO. Most mouths opened a bit when I said, of course you can as it is appropriate language for messaging. I went further by asking who invented it? IMers. Are there other languages that are confusing if you do not know them? Ever talked to a computer teacher when he said something like the CPU was 2.25 GHz with 2 GB or RAM or the IP address lease was not renewed by the DHCP server. We all use languages that are useful for what we are discussing or in the case of IM language, appropriate for the quick exchange of information. Therefore, I was glad to read this post/article by a professor of a institution of higher learning as it supports what I think is most important. Writing for an audience and know the difference between formal writing and IM.

Thank you to all who I learn from on a daily basis.

Posted on by

Scratch…Programming from MIT

A long time ago there was Logo which allowed users to interact and program a turtle to do certain actions. My predecessor, Rachel Avery wrote books on Logo. Logo still exists although it is now done via MicroWorlds or Terrapin Software. I remember conversations I had with the parents of students in the Lower School who wished I taught students some basic programming as a way to demystify how a computer program works as well as to introduce them to the power of programming languages. I was not successful in this as the schedule was always too tight or there were other skills or topics that needed addressing. Lost in all of this was the chance for students to tinker around with software and programming. I regret that I was not able to accomplish that in the Lower School which is why I am hopeful for the Lego Mindstorms NXT Club that will be starting soon in the Middle School. While still not a mainstream class, it will at least be offered as a club. Small steps still take you on a journey.

I listened to a podcast by Wesley Freyer who also writes a blog at Moving at the Speed of Creativity. He had a interview with his son Alexander who played with using Scratch from MIT. The value of tinkering is not lost on the youth of today. I remember tinkering with my dad’s old cars when I grew up as it was mysterious to me how they worked. I often could not put all of the pieces back which meant it no longer worked. Of course, I never tried this with a working car so there was no real harm done. I learned a lot with these adventures into a V8.

Today, students are able to tinker with all sorts of technology. Scratch is another wonderful tool. Alice is another that I will be exploring in order to bring programming to girls in the Middle School.

So, scratch the programming itch and tinker away.

We will have it installed soon on the computers at school.

Posted on by

If I gave an 8th grader a GPS?

I gave Nat G. the Garmin GPSmap 60CS to take on the coastal trip. I asked him to set some way points and see if he could collect as much data as possible. Actually, I gave it to Dr. Ward who gave it to Nat. I included a 150 page manual which I am sure was useful as a seat cushion for the long trip to the beach. What I got back was an incredible log of the trip as he set waypoints when they stopped at a rest area, Food Lion, as well as when they were driving, eating, and each activity that they did for the week. It is an awesome digital diary of the exact location on earth on what they did and when they did it. Here are some screen shots, although if you want to download the CoastalTrip_07 .kml file, you can open Google Earth and then use File – Open to travel the route yourself. Leaving DA

Here is a shot of where they lived and learned for the week.
Trinity Center and Carrot Island

The Rachel Carson Preserve on Carrot Island is a culmination of the trip. See where they saw the horses and where they went swimming.
Rachel Carson Preserve

So, if I gave an 8th grader a GPS means I will connect them to their learning in ways that only enhance the learning they receive by walking the walk, wading in water, and sighting a horse. Of course, now we have data as to where the horses were this year. Is this the normal location? Will next years group find them in the same place? How much do they move in a year? Where are you in relationship to the horses? As more and more devices have GPS, what will we use the data for, or will we use the data?

Posted on by

Open Source Learning: How well do you share?

Tech Learning Educator’s eZine appeared in my email today. Instead of clicking on it to delete it because I was too busy, I thought I would take a look as a title grabbed my attention: Open Source Learning: How well do you share?. The article by Cheryl Oakes hit the spot with me. I am thinking about topics the Technology Task Force has been considering for the future of Durham Academy. One topic that is of great interest to me is the Virtual Learning Environment which we started to build last year when we set up the DAILE Moodle. The adoption rate has been incredible and even today, I heard a seventh grade student say that she loves Moodle. Now, it could have been because she had 5 or 6 messages from friends waiting for her or it could be that she finds it more useful in accessing information for class. I did talk with students yesterday about messages using DAILE Moodle. They brought up a good point in that they liked it since they could communicate with friends they may not see at school during the day. It is a way to stay in contact. Hence, it builds community. While we may not like it that students can not always talk with their friends during school, the reality is time constraints affect them as much as it does us adults.

Cheryl talks about colleagues that she has worked with or listened to who have helped her move forward. Many of the people she listed are folks I have followed as well. I met Will Richardson in Memphis this summer and he felt like an old friend. Reading her article brought up a great link called VoiceThread.com that allow users to upload an image with narration. Once done, users can share it will parents or friends. Teachers can use it for free with their classrooms. While it is still beta and I see no revenue stream, it is a powerful tool.

This also brings up the use of Moodle over proprietary Virtual Learning Environments. Open source gives me 10,000 of developers who are committed to creating parts of a product better. I see the road map for Moodle and am impressed. Mahara will be built into Moodle version 2.0 due out next summer. This is a solution for our learning community as well.

Would we have this roadmap with a closed proprietary system?… Maybe, but at what cost?

Posted on by

Learncasting and Podcasting

I came upon a new term and resources that demonstrate the reality of my earlier post on Wikinomics. On a side note, I seem to be getting a lot of underlined words as I type, meaning I am writing about subjects using words that are being coined and presently are not in dictionaries that are installed on my computer. Living in the red squigglies…

The University of Adelaide’s Center for Learning and Professional Development’s Allan Carrington has designed a learning module in going from Podcasting to Learncasting. This is a free learning cast that can help anyone learn how and why we should think about including these resources into our teaching. While the focus may seem to be higher education, it is no less applicable to k-12 schools. Allan shares his Del.ici.ous bookmarks for module 1. They are using Articulate to create the lessons. While it is Windows only software it is pretty cool how it creates Flash lessons with embedded audio, images, etc..

Podagogy is a site that is connected to Allan although it is the work of Randy Meredith at Spring Arbor University in Michigan.

I plan to spend more time investigating this site and the many resources linked from here.

Posted on by

Wikinomics – A must read!

I have been “reading” the book Wikinomics while driving to work and on my morning walk. I read it by listening to it on my iPod. I think all educators as well as business people need to read this book as it illustrates the dramatic changes that “mass collaboration’ or “peer production” is causing in the workplace and school systems. Wikipedia is the largest collection of information with 700 million articles in 200 language that is mass produced with only 5 paid employees, but legions of Wikipedians who give of their time to either add content or police content added by registered users.

Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, Vodcasts, and other forms of disruptive technologies are here to stay and they are indeed changing the way businesses work. As a school we need to be prepared for these changes which is why I am so glad that we have started to use The DAILE Moodle as it represents peer production since it is open source software that thousands of schools and universities are helping to write and perfect daily. I love the fact that there are nightly builds of Moodle done to fix or patch problems discovered.

Some believe that open source software is done by people who have long hair and live in their parents basement. While there is nothing wrong with having long hair nor living in your mother’s basement, if you so choose, it is important to note that the authors of Wikinomics note that at present, IBM and Intel are the two largest companies that donate time and resources to the further development of Linux. What companies are realizing is that there are more people outside of an organization that can solve problems then they have inside.

I think teachers should start to use wikis with their classes as a way to create content. Imagine a wiki report on Dovey Coe? What would that look like?

California Open Textbook Project is trying to create textbooks using wikis. Curriki is a wiki global learning community attempting to create a knowledge and learning platform for all learners around the world. There are some big names behind this organization.

A must read for all of us in education as change happens here after industry but we are preparing students for their future, which is being created as we speak.
“Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” (Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams)

Here is a short example of the book on WikipediaWikinomics Snippet on Wikipedia

Posted on by

Global Connections At DA

As Durham Academy works on developing an enhanced global program as part of our strategic plan, it is great to know we have folks who are already investigating resources. I have been involved with The UNITE Project since 2003. I hope to take students to Uganda in 2009 so the can meet the students and tour the schools that our efforts have built. They will also be able to go on a safari at Queen Elizabeth National Park.

While at the Laptop Institute in Memphis, I learned about a Global Social Networking site organized and run by students. TakingITGlobal. This site will allow students, teachers and schools connect to projects around the world.

+++++++++++++++++

Upper School Teacher, Tina Bessias traveled to Egypt this summer to attend the iEARN annual conference. Following is her post to the faculty.

There’s an organization called iEARN, the International Education and Resource Network, that held its annual conference in Cairo this summer. I attended it and would like to share information about it with any division or group of teachers who is interested. Our school will be joining in in the next few weeks, and I’ll send out login information when it’s available. There’s much you can see now, though, if you go to the web site: http://www.iearn.org/ The organization facilitates collaborative projects between classes of students at all grade levels, including a teddy bear exchange, discussions of heroes and war experiences, comparing chemical analyses of river water, and lots of other topics.

My message about my summer grant experience also mentioned Just Vision: http://justvision.org and the documentary, Encounter Point, about Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers: http://encounterpoint.com

And just for good measure, here are a few more links:
Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem holocaust museum: http://www.yadvashem.org
the News Hour profile of poet Agi Mishol: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_mishol.html
the Bible Lands Museum: http://www.blmj.org/