23 Things - Web 2.0 at its best

The librarians of Macom County have created a fun list of activities that will instantly get educators involved with the best Web 2.0 tools and concepts. They have picked the best; flickr, rss, blogs and wikis. Along the way you record your experiences and challenges and if you complete the 23 tasks in a given amount of time, you get a prize! Yippee. And if you get stuck they suggest you consult the other staff members in your school for help. A wonderful concept. Planning to try it in my school next fall. I might even plan it out as an iGoogle adventure through their list of Web2.0 wonders.

Adobe PhotoShop Express

Adobe is now making it possible to do a quick fix to a photo and also save it online, right in the fix-it shop. Crop, adjust color and lighten images. Also apply simple effects and wipe out red eye. Nice gallery feature, too and direct access to other sharing sites. Wish you could get to flickr... but maybe in time.

PHUN - a new fisicks toi

Just heard about this new physics interactive free downloadable "toy" for experimenting . Picked it up from a twitter post on Saturday morning... Thanks Remote Access and glassbeed.

Finally tried VoiceThread - it's awesome!

I made a tiny voicethread about my favorite April vacation spot.

This is all free, and if a teacher wanted to use it for a project, they would be able to create different users and have their students comment along with the teacher in a class thread. I've made some alias's to show how this works.

bookr!

I just made this tiny book using bookr! It took less than 5 minutes. I accessed some photos from my flickr account using a link right from this site. Great flickr toy!
bookr!


Also view it like this:
walk with me by sue

And here's another one about Christo's Gates:
Christo's Gates by Su
And this one about Nantucket:
frame finding by Su
And this one about our swap to Paris
Paris Swap 7_07 by Su
Couldn't forget Wellfleet
wellfleet by su

Check out all the flickr toys @ http://www.pimpampum.net/toys/

A SMARTBoard in every room!?

I've just read Will's post about using a Wii remote with infrared pens to make any surface that has a projected image interactive the way a SMARTBoard or ActiveBoard is interactive. The video that describes it by Johnny Chung Lee, makes it look very simple. You don't even need the Wii system, just the remote and the infrared pens and the software from his website. I wonder how long it will take for someone to package the whole deal and make it possible for every classroom to get SMART?

This is how twitter works

It is extremely hard to describe twitter to anyone who has not actually tried it. I was reading over the tweets this evening and there was a shout out to Steve Sokoloski's post. He has written a beautiful description of his experience with twitter and lurking. It is very close to my experience, too. Thank you Steve for getting the words to come together.

Going from reading blogs to actively participating in Twitter is like going from the garden hose to the firehose. In reading blogs I could pick up an idea here, and idea there. With Twitter, it is a constant flow, in real time. Really smart people, talking in real time to other really smart people and posting links about what they are checking out. The pace of new ideas has grown exponentially.
Twitter has provided a view into other professional’s lives. They all do not do exactly the same job as me but as others have tweeted I have found that lots of other tech educators are like me. They have their computers on beyond work hours. They work hard at their jobs in the hours beyond work. They try to balance family and technology. I am not nuts to do what I do. There are people like me out there. Lots of folks are puzzled, confused and trying to make sense of all of this stuff, and working hard outside of school to try new things and work it all out. They are thoughtful, wise, kind, and funny.

Steve Sokoloski

Giant Global Graph

Tim's blog has a very lengthly, yet fascinating explanation of the Internet - the Web and his new term, the Graph of links. Tim has been promoting the Semantic Web and the ability the semantic web would provide to connect bits of data across the web, so that web pages are no long the important bookmark, data is. Using rdf tagging, and other software types, information may be linked and reused separate from the page on which it appears. It is very exciting, and something I've been following for the past several years, as Tim continues to explain it and promote it. Here's his description of the graph:
In the long term vision, thinking in terms of the graph rather than the web is critical to us making best use of the mobile web, the zoo of wildy differing devices which will give us access to the system. Then, when I book a flight it is the flight that interests me. Not the flight page on the travel site, or the flight page on the airline site, but the URI (issued by the airlines) of the flight itself. That’s what I will bookmark. And whichever device I use to look up the bookmark, phone or office wall, it will access a situation-appropriate view of an integration of everything I know about that flight from different sources. The task of booking and taking the flight will involve many interactions. And all throughout them, that task and the flight will be primary things in my awareness, the websites involved will be secondary things, and the network and the devices tertiary. tim berners-lee

There's a word for it

It's a multilingual dictionary that will translate any word from a website that you open from within it. It defines words and also will translate into several different languages. You may even keep a list of words for yourself.

I just found this site

I just found this

top 100 tools - for learning

Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has published a list of Web2.0 tools that enhance learning. It is available as a .pdf document and is sorted and annotated in several useful ways. Includes direct links to each of the tools. You may even request next year's update of the list. Good collection... mostly free tools. Did I see Google in there many, many times????

Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is the free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install! You may export the video clip in QuickTime as a .mov file. It is also available as a URL that you may link to, and also send in an email.
Test your mic, pick a screen size and even leave notes if you pause the capture. You can back up and redo a capture that hasn't been encoded yet. Viewable in many browsers.

Map of Future Forces Afffecting Education

Look around the map. Explore it. While we'd never suggest that this map contains all of the answers and perfectly predicts the future, it does offer a clear point of view based on countless hours of research, analysis and expert opinion. Think of the map as a provocative tool, as the beginning of a movement, or, at the very least, part of a good conversation. Join in. And help us shape the future. kwfdn

VoiceThread

Create a photo album and add voice comments to the images. Easily capture voices that narrate a field trip that is documented with images. Add the finished scrapbook to a blog or web site. Easy and free. Great for young children still learning to write.

As good as Inspiration....well almost

Collaborative online mind mapping - MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool - only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like! All for free. I gave it a quick try and was excited to find out you are able to export a .gif image of your final map and then post/share it in a discussion forum, or a blog, or wiki, or whatever.

OM for Sir Tim

The Queen of England just awarded Tim the Order of Merit.

The Order of Merit is one of the most prestigious honours - it's given as a personal gift from the monarch and recognises exceptional contributions in arts, sciences and other areas. The Order is restricted to just 24 living members who are entitled to use the initials OM following their name.

Audacity

Use Audacity @ www.sourceforge.org to record and edit.

Did You Know?

Last fall Karl Fisch showed his faculty a PowerPoint that told the new story. It is a story that needs to come into every school and every school room. The video version is posted on You Tube and currently has had 225,000 viewings. Watch it carefully, it will move you.

I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these "stories" to our faculty, I could get them thinking about - and discussing with each other - the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms.
Karl Fisch - August 15, 2006

Introducing the Book

Imagine dealing with a Book as new technology for the first time. There were some issues with opening and saving and how to consult the manual, too. Technology issues have not changed much, even though the technology has changed.
a good laugh

Web2.0...The Machine is Us

Watch the YouTube video that shows you the power of Web2.0 while zipping you through some of the great apps available out there now. See flickr, blogger, del.icio.us and google all integrating into the power of the web.