This striking image was created using “Tag Galaxy“, a fun tool that allows the user to create their own global collage using photos from Flickr using tags. Just type in a starter word - nature in this case- and a spinning sphere appears with other related terms orbiting around it. Narrow your search terms, choosing related words that appeal to you. You click on the sphere when you are happy with the number of images.

I think this would be a good tool for students to use to add images to blog pages, poetry, stories and projects. More creative than cut-and-paste, but effective and simple to use. it could be time consuming though - so save it until after the hard work is done!

MPS students love creating digital animations.

Here are some examples of their work.

Power Point Animations

View Animation

Second Life is a virtual world. You download the software to your lap top and then you can enter this world. When you do, your avatar represents you. An avatar is a digital representation of yourself. When you select this avatar you have to give it a name. I named my avatar Mazarine Rhode. I have just spent an hour or so changing Mazarine’s look from this:

to this:

Of course she looks nothing like me (I have blonde hair and wear red glasses!) but that’s part of the fun of it. You can change all sorts of details of your avatar - the size and shape of any body part, how far or narrow set the eyes are, skin colour, freckles, height, weight etc. I must prefer Mazarine’s new look! I hadn’t spent much time playing around with appearance until now. Now I’m ready to party!

A few weeks ago I went into Second Life with a few other teachers from the OZ/NZ Educators network. It was a session for newbies like me. We spent the time on the island of Jokaydia. I took a quick video so you can see a very little bit of what Second Life looks like - in an art gallery! I recorded this with SMART Recorder and the quality isn’t great, but it will give you a bit of an idea if you are interested!

I never thought I’d be really interested in this sort of thing. I’m not into computer games at all, and so I didn’t think I’d like it. But, it’s great fun, and there is heaps of potential for education and business! People are making real money in Second Life doing all sorts of things. Lots of conferences on all themes are held in Second Life. Just search ’second life conferences’ in Google and there will be a whole bunch listed.

I am hoping to spend some more time in SL and start thinking about using virtual worlds for language learning. I’m a member of the Second Classroom Ning, a social network for educators interested in students using virtual worlds. I’ll keep you updated…

I’ve been trying out some of the top 100 tools for learning and thought you might like to see what they are all about. One of the fun ones is “Comic Life”, which lets you create funky comics from photos. Although it is not free, I think you can do a similar kind of thing with word - add speech and thought bubbles to photos. Try it out!

“Animoto” is another tool for uploading images and adding audio - this time with a range of tunes to create funky short videos. You can create 30 second videos and choose a music style to match, or register as an educator and have three months unlimited use.
Here’s one I did with my Year 9 Off Campus Program. On Tuesday 6th May, 21 students travelled to Mailor’s Flat to assist in a revegetation project to save the critically endangered Orange Bellied Parrot. There are less than two hundred individual birds left in the wild and they are endemic to south-eastern Australia, migrating from Tasmania to the Victorian and South Australian coast each winter. Part of the program to build numbers of these pretty birds is a revegetation program to provide roosting and feeding plants, which will increase their chances of survival. Students were able to separate seedlings of woolly tea tree and messmate plants and re-pot 3,000 plants.Takes a little while to load, but worth the wait!

My students and I still enjoy using powerpoint as we all have confidence in its use, it can produce great results and is user friendly.

Slideshare is a web2.0 tool which is also userfriendly and will convert MS Powerpoint presentations to be embedded into blogs and wikis, for online collaboration or use. However, if you are an educationalist, check that the site is not blocked at your institution or at the school you wish to share with.

The following instructions for using this tool are based on my experiences with uploading powerpoint to slideshare.

Instructions:

• Goto www.slideshare.net and register>activate your email>Signin
• prepare MS Powerpoint presentation
• text needs to be a large size, especially the headings. Headings should be approx 66 points and other text 48points or greater
• images need to be resized to keep the file size small. My experience, indicates resizing to 380 x 170 up to 500 x 233 and must be jpg
• insert the image into the slide. It will be quite small>grab the corner handles and resize to fill the slide or appropriate area
• When finished, test and edit, if necessary
• Save as filetype ms ppt 2003-2007 as slideshare does not recognize yet, the latest office edition.
• goto upload>browse and select files>select powerpoint>open. Insert a heading, appropriate tags and choose the appropriate privacy settings>publish
• After a period of time, the slideshare is ready. Goto ‘my slideshares’>double click on appropriate selection>goto rhs of screen>choose embed (wordpress) if working with wordpress, or if edublogs use, choose the ‘embed in your blog’ option>select all>copy code and embed in your blog or wiki.
• Options for editing and deleting exist

Enjoy!

Several of my dear blogging friends at LeEnchanteur, (whom I have sadly neglected but will get back to, I promise!!) and soul food cafe and the wildgarden, have asked me what a wiki is, and I am sure many of you out there do not know either, so I shall write a post re wikis.

To me, wikis can be used for various purposes:-

• a resource bank and storage area
• a web page for a school or business
• an interactive and collaborative tool where either selected persons or everyone can add to, delete, edit etc
• and many more, dependent only on the imagination of the user

I started with wikis about 6 months ago and now play an important role in my web2.0 life now, including my teaching application.

The following is a definition from the largest and best known wiki of them all:- wikipedia. A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

Above is a screenshot of one of my wikis that I use for filing all my resources.It is constantly updated and open for all to view but not to edit. It has a vast collection of links, blogs, urls and documentation for the web 2.0 journey I am sharing with my students. They can be accessed by clicking on the links. It is easy to embed videos, podcasts and other web2.0 html. They can be used interactively and collaboratively. A discussion site is present and the history tab allows you to see any editing.

I am also a member of various other educational wikis eg eduwikius, Women of the Web etc My classes have been part of collaborative wikis between other countries. Students have created a talking voki (computer animated ID) and introduced themselves to a school in NZ and in Las Vegas. Teachers in both countries had administrative rights and could add to the wiki or delete as necessary. Time is always a factor and they are still work in progress. I love this wiki of Graham Wegners shared with a school in Alaska. It shows the power of a wiki for collaboration.

Currently, our students are working on 1001 flat tales project at an elementary level (grade 3 and 4) and at the middle school level (years6 and 7). Four schools from USA, two from Canada and two from Australia are involved. Students will each be given a page or space of their own where they will start to put up a little about themselves and start writing their stories. Their partner in another country will comment on their ideas, storylines, accuracy, sentence construction, word fluency, conventions and mechanics etc over a period of time using the 6 traits to effective writing.

Wikis can be closed to public viewing or open with permission for all to edit, add to and delete (this is how wikipedia came about) or may be viewed but not edited unless permission by the space manager is given.
Some of the most popular wiki tools are:

• Wikispaces – easy to use, great backup service, free to educationalists (make sure you register for the free version if you are in education as it is ad free as well)
• Wetpaint Our school cluster uses wetpaint as its wiki tool as do other individual members of our school staff. If wetpaint will come to my post and place a comment on it, (which they have done twice)  they deserve 10+ out of 10. They have reminded me that their wikis are free and their educational wikis are advertisement free. Due to their personal interest, I am certain that their support service would be great. Checkout their wikisineducation site. And further,  if you find you like a Wetpaint wiki in the classroom, you can be featured at http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/page/What+the+Bloggers+are+Saying
• pbwiki
  

Other examples of wikis are

http://aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com/ I love this one by DS Waters - lots of resources and tutorials for web2.0
Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Twitter is one of the fastest growing uses of the internet. It is the equivalent of a one minute blog completed in 140 characters. In the short time that I have used it, my knowledge of web 2.0 has been on another steep learning curve due to the virtual teamwork involved.  I will outline how to use twitter in its basic format. There is much more but that can wait for another time.

Register with twitter and activate the resultant email. (Some people have several twitter names.)

Search for people who you know are in twitter and click follow. Add as many as you can and return to the home screen.  Tweets by  people you are following should show up on the screen.

Key in what you are doing at the moment and press update. Just keep on tweeting until someone replies or simply watch everyone else’s tweets.

Click on an avatar, go to next window and a direct message link will show up on the RHS side bar. Key in a direct message to that person and it is then kept private from the general tweeters and goes directly to their email account.

To add more interesting people, click on one avatar and look at who they follow. Choose some of these people to follow. Some of the experienced users will take a very caring and sharing approach if they know you are a newbie. Many will suggest some good people to follow. If you join in, people will want to follow you.

A person can be removed or blocked from your list if the need arises. Click on their avatar and look for the links.

140 characters is the limit to a tweet.

Uses in education

Twitter is a powerful social networking tool and this is where I see its greatest benefit. I started with 3 people to follow and one week later have 89 and 58 following me. Some of the most popular tweeters state that 150 is a good number and may not wish to follow more. However, unless they are selective, you can still follow their comments and learn.

A blog in a minute.

Quick communication and feedback tool.

Follow sites like edtechtalk and be informed when their live shows are on. (Highly recommended.)

Possibility for classroom uses.

There is so much more to twitter but give it a try. However, careful, it can be very addictive.

Using Vokis
School holidays are always a welcome relief from the pressure of lesson plans, assessment, general adiminstration and report writing. It can be a time to catch up with some genuine web 2.0 research, establish social networks and explore some of the improvements to existing web 2.0 software and discover new applications.
One software that I revisited,  was the rather ‘kitchy’ voki website at www.voki.com These little computer animated vodcasts allow you to customize your own personal ID, add your voice or use a computer generated voice to communicate online or via a mobile phone. Students love using these and even the shyest don’t mind talking into the microphone.

See examples of student vokis used on a collaborative project at http://anzaconnection.wikispaces.com/Introductions Be patient as it will take a while to load!

Steps in using vokis

First register for the website with a user name and password. If a student ensure they use an unidentifiable user name and if they are under the age of 13, let them access your voki logon as many vokis can be created under one user name.
You must activate your account from the email you have directed registration towards. (do not forget or you will not be able to save your vokis.)
Return to voki website and login. Click create a new voki.

(If you have already created a voki choose use existing scene to keep your voki consistent. Choose one of your existing examples. (The audio message only is changed.)
Choose your face, clothing, glasses, backgrounds and even an audio player style by clicking on the approprate icon and build your little voki. The illustrated voki above  allows messages to be shared by clicking on the little notepad icon in the bottom right hand corner (just above the player) If the cube in the lefthand corner is selected, it will choose a random character for you.
When satisfied with your voki, it is time to “give it a voice”.

Choose from telephone, T or microphone. We use the microphone (making sure you allow access) and press the record button. Wait until you see the little wheel going around and it actually says ‘recording’ and start talking. A written script ensures that the audio flows smoothly. When finished, click done. If student is too shy or recording does not work, choose the T which allows text to be keyed in and an accent chosen for the mechanical voice.

Replay your message and when satisfied, click done. Save to your hard drive. You are then returned to your startup window, so that you can now find the code required for your site. I choose the small dimensions, agree to conditions and then copy the code that appears. This code can then be used to embed into a wiki, blog or webpage for collaborative use by pasting it in the usual manner.Some voki characters allow you to add messages. This opens up further educational value. Eg discussions between students or teacher/student on an initial statement made by the original voki.
Some possible classroom uses
·  introductory  purposes between students from other schools or countries with class member vokis all embedded in a table on a wiki.
· Allow questions to be posed and answered between classes.
· To introduce a topic in an interesting manner on their wiki, blog or web page
· If a character allows insert message, then a discussion can take place on the one voki between students.

If you use vokis or wish to use them, please add a comment and let us know how you use them.

Being an absolute beginner at web 2.0 until June, 2007, I am going to reflect on the 10 web 2.0 sites that I have enjoyed using most this year. I am following the lead of my friend Chrissy, Teaching Sagitarrian who helped start me on this amazing journey. See her favourite 5 web 2.0 in the classroom.

Mine are as follows but not necessarily in order of popularity:-

1. http://del.icio.us.com this was where I started
2. www.bubbl.us used widely for brainstorming
3. blogs at www.wordpress.com with a lot of help and encouragement from Heather Blakey and Jess of technolote
4. www.wikispaces.com used for classroom use and also for summarizing my ejourneys with the students.
5. docs.google.com for online sharing of documents and spreadsheets with classes in other countries.
6. www.skype.com - videoconferencing with powerful learning applications, used with NZ and Korea
7. www.voki.com for fun, user protected podcast applications
8. www.podomatic.com for hosting our student podcasts
9. www.teachertube.com for hosting our videos
10. www.surveymonkey.com for easily created online surveys