Diigo

Diigo and Delicious are both bookmarking sites. The key idea is that it’s a collection of your bookmarks that you can reference very easily, find related bookmarks and users or others who are interested in the same subject as you.

A few key differences are in the way that the bookmarks are classified. Diigo makes it very easy to find others interested in the same topic as you. For instance searching “education” brings up a number of others who have bookmarked education related topics. You can then click on their links to see the topic. Delicious works differently in that you can search by a topic but it returns a list of bookmarks rather than a user. Delicious seems to be a wider ranging resource in that the search returns are and can be tangentially related to the topic whereas the Diigo search returns users who have bookmarked the topic with more specific results.

You can filter the search by topic at delicious by tags, but once again it seems to return much broader results than diigo.

I currently bookmark sites in Firefox and create folders for the various bookmarks. This can be unweildy at times but it seems to work just fine for me. One of the shortcomings for this method is accessing my information from other computers. With either diigo or delicious, I can access my bookmarks from any internet enabled computer.

For educational purposes, I like the way diigo works over delicious. I like the ability to search for users with the same interests as mine. I feel that it might be useful to use diigo, for my students to search for me/or give them a direct link to my bookmarks and I could bookmark articles of interest or of use to my students.

Second Life, limited uses for education

I found Second Life an uncomfortable platform for learning. It would take students some time getting familiar with the format of the world and how to do what they wanted to do. I see this as a replacement for the personal interaction that can be obtained in most learning environments.

When doing research on Second Life for this project something came up that I found very interesting. Some global companies are using Second Life as a meeting place for people in different locations working on the same project. I am going to link to an article about IBM's use of the platform. New employees are trained on Second Life as part of the general new hire training. This ensures that they can navigate through meetings and other work environments without looking awkward. This gives the co-workers that personal connection to one another. This is necessary in some company were co-workers never meet.



About a month ago my husband and I along with a group of friends saw an exhibit at the Nelson Adkins Museum in Kansas City, RMB City Opera. It is very controversial and in some scenes pornographic. The exhibit is the cross or difference in the cyber world and the real world. It touches some of the issues that come about when people portray themselves online as someone they are not. Below is a link to the article about the exhibit.



I personally don't see Second Life as anything I would use in education. There are so many other things you can do to connect learners that are more comfortable to the greater public. I am a little silly and took a picture of myself making muscles by the UCM flag. If you can't have fun in life...........

Smartphones

I will just tell you that I am partial to the Iphone, but the Android system has some great features as well.

Pro's-
I have a foreign exchange student that has an ap to translate meaning of words to help her with assignments.

Purdue has a program called Hotseat. It's where the students can give the instructor immediate feed back and chat with other students about the discussion, in real time.

Polleverywhere.com is a great way to get feedback on a question.

Wiffiti is an interactive whiteboard for the class. Students can add comments or make corrections to other students work.

Many of the aps that came up on my research were education games for younger children, but I am interested in the high school age.

My high school is looking at opening up the wifi to free access for everyone and every device. Students will be able to bring their tablet, laptops, and phones to school and use them for their schoolwork. This is an exciting prospect to me. I think students want to get the information in the easiest way, and many times that just can't happen in school. In that case students get frustrated and give up on trying to get the information.

Cons-

Multiple aps running, some of the android phones get bogged down by having everything on and running at the same time. There are ap killer aps out there but the jury is still out if that is effective.

Wifi connectivity, if you need to install a new ap you may need to use your computer or at least be connected to wifi. This actually happened to me last week. One of my high school students had installed an ap on her android phone for some animal sounds for her preschool lesson. Her phone was about out of battery so I offered to use my phone for this activity. I found the ap and tried to download it and the phone would not download until it was connected to wifi or my computer. Planning for future lessons was needed at this time. If you have an ap that you want your students to get on their phones, you need to assign that at least the day before the activity planned.

There are more aps than I can mention in this blog for the smartphone. The staples of Wikipages and Dictionary are always needed. Depending on your content there are many more. Most of the aps that I found for Child Development were pay aps, which I am not sure how to handle that. If you are using one at school and requiring student to have the ap, I think it needs to be free.

One other thing that I find exciting about education is that our district is going to pilot two classrooms going paperless. They will get ipads and work pretty much just on them for all of their classroom work. The ipads will stay in the class and the teacher will use them throughout the day. This is a whole new side of teaching that I just haven't thought about. I use technology, but not exclusively, very exciting. Education is changing, stay current!

Camtasia Studio is the winner!

Camstudio caused me nothing but problems. I have Windows 7 on both of my machines and I was getting that flashing and could do nothing with my computer to control the video. Camtasia was a different story. I do love Jing and Camtasia was a souped up version of Jing. Same company, just more features and options. The editing was wonderful once I figured out what the software wanted me to do. The tutorials on the site were very helpful.

The internet is doomed to fail!

In 1995 an article in Newsweek prophesied that the internet was doomed to fail and that we would all soon tire of it.
This prescient article indicates that "no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."
I'm sure that we as users of the internet as a regular and increasingly large part of our lives will be somewhat surprised at the death of the internet if and when it happens. What will we ever do with our time?
Full article

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has fostered a change in the educational environment that has made it easier to provide an educational environment that is changing the way we look at the educational process. Quickly defined Web 2.0 is “commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web” (Wikipedia).

Information sharing and interoperability are, I feel, key phrases in the definition of Web 2.0. These are key phrases that when applied to education and becoming more and more important. For instance, information sharing has become an integral part of the educational environment. With Web 2.0 applications like Google Docs it has become easy to collaborate on papers or other projects and to share the information.

User centered design and education meet in applications like Animoto and Jing. Both are applications for creating video that can then be easily shared. Animoto creates an engaging way to pass information on by the addition of music and the interesting way the slide shows are presented. Movement and an interesting and engaging background help to create videos that can be used again and again. It’s very easy to present information for a classroom in an engaging way using Animoto. Jing on the other hand allows for the creation of videos that while not as exciting as those produced in Animoto, are interesting and engaging in their own right. The Jing application allows for the creation of a detailed presentation that can then be turned into a video and very easily presented to whomever, where ever as long as there is an internet connection.

Web 2.0 has created an environment in which learning and teaching rely on technology but that technology is very easy to use and facilitates a greater, richer learning environment.

Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com allows you to create and edit a blog very easily. You can change the apperance, add widgets and manage content quickly. I think that the end result is a professional looking blog.

A few other apps that I thought were interesting or would be useful in an educational environment were Flickr, Delicious and Google Docs.