Through my EdTechTalk community I have discovered this treasure. Jing is a system that will allow you to take a screen capture or create a screen video with narration and instantly upload it to share with others. This involves a small program that will download onto your Mac or Windows computer. It is quite easy to do and you can watch a Jing video about this below. It is perfect for tutorials or for getting help from friends with troubleshooting a technology problem. It is extremely easy to use and can be saved as a URL that you can immediately share with others via Skype or email (or post on your blog or wiki). It is created by the makers of Camtasia so if you’re familiar with that this will be very familiar…but this is free. 🙂
Posted by Peggy George on Oct 11, 2008 in Environment
CarbonRally is a fantastic website that provides lots of timely information about very simple ways we can reduce the CO2 in our environment. You not only receive important information but you can make a personal commitment to accept any challenge of your choosing to make a difference. The latest challenge I have accepted is called “Paper Cut.” It taught me how I could (and should) reduce the amount of printing I do of online documents by 25%. This is a hard challenge for me but an important one.
This Challenge asks you reduce your use of paper for printing or photocopying by 25% for one month. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Don’t print anything at all for five work days this month. Print or copy on both sides of the paper whenever you can. Decide not to print emails unless absolutely necessary. Proofread your papers on the computer and not on paper. By cutting back on your use of paper, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by 7.6 lbs for the month. This Challenge lasts for one month and is repeatable.
If you’d like to join me in taking on some of these challenges, please consider joining the AZ Team.
Posted by Peggy George on Oct 8, 2008 in Uncategorized
OneTrueMedia is an amazing online application that allows you to create videos from digital video, photos, and screenshots. You can edit, add titles, transitions, music, audio voiceover and much more. The videos can be shared via URL, embedded on a blog or wikispace, and the most exciting option for me…you can share it with Tivo and view the video full-screen on your own TV (with a wirelss adapter that connects to the internet). You can make your albums public or private and share with others who also have Tivo. If they don’t have Tivo, ou can share the URL and they can view the video on their computer. This is one of my favorite video applications. The videos you create are called montages. I actually created this video by uploading video footage from my digital video camera into iMovie on my MacBookPro, editing to provide photos and transitions and saving the movie as a QuickTime movie. Then the QT movie was uploaded to OneTrueMedia and now I can enjoy it on from my Tivo playlist or my blog. 🙂
This is information provided on the OneTrueMedia site about features and costs.
Creating a video montage and sharing it online is free. You just set up a free account and get started. You can also purchase copies of your creations as DVDs or Photo Books. Please see our Products page for more details. You can also upgrade your free membership to a Premium Account and receive access to all of our editing options, increased storage space and shared views, unlimited monthly uploads and creations, player skins for embedded sharing, premium music, and expanded downloading options. Premium memberships are just USD $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year.
Posted by Peggy George on Oct 8, 2008 in Uncategorized
This is an example of a very easy way to create a slideshow and embed it on your blog. This slideshow was created on Flickr by selecting a set of photos, clicking on share, and copying/pasting the URL and embed code provided to post on my blog. I love this Flickr application!
Last week I helped one of my former ASU-CTEL faculty colleagues facilitate a social networking workshop for faculty. I was mainly a “guide on the side” and mentor/support person. It was very exciting to see and hear all of the interesting things they were planning and creating to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their teacher education courses. One of the participants, Dr. Nancy Perry, shared a tool she was thinking of using for short tutorials and student communication that was new to me. It is called Veeple and is an online, interactive video tool. Registration is free.
Basically, you upload your video (10 min./100mb limit) to the site, then add objects to create “veespots” to the video. These spots can be text, URL links, links to your MySpace or Facebook site, thought bubbles or speech bubbles. You can make any object inside a video interactive and place any interactive image into a video, all through a standard web browser.
Think of a VeeSpot simply as a point of interaction in a video. Using VeeSpots, a person can instantly link a video to a blogpost, website or a friend’s MySpace or Facebook. An eBay Seller uses an eBay VeeSpot to link buyers directly to their auction. Do a search from the video. Link to Wikipedia. etc. A teacher could insert thought-provoking, guiding questions into a video clip for students to respond to in a class blog post. I think it has tremendous potential for encouraging and developing creative thinking. If I were using it in a K-12 classroom I would definitely keep it private for selected people (students) to view, and there may still be concerns about what they might be able to access from the site (inappropriate content) if they stray from the video. Teachers might be more comfortable using it with a small or large group on a Smartboard, pausing it on the veespots to allow students to post their responses on a blog or to write it in their journals.College students could definitely benefit from this kind of online social networking.
Collaborate With Other Video Creators You can use interactive links to connect your videos with those of others enabling all content creators to socially share their videos across numerous websites. http://www.veeple.com/VeepleLabs/WhatsVeeple.aspx
You can upload your videos to YouTube, then add veeple spots to it.You can upload your own thumbnail image to insert a clickable link with URL. A new feature that’s coming is one where you can choose to allow others to add veespots to your video, similar to voicethread for interactive possibilities. When you fill in the “Video Details” from for your video there is a pull-down menu called “Allow Spots.” To allow others to place VeeSpots on your video, simply choose the “Allow anyone to add spots” option. Or you can choose to have only your friends add VeeSpots by selecting the “Allow friends to add spots.” You can also select the “Don’t allow others to add spots” if you prefer that no one add spots to your video. You can set up private network for friends/family or make it public.
I haven’t tried uploading my first video to Veeple yet, but I can’t wait to try it. I’ll share my creation here on my blog soon. If you try it, or have other specific ideas about how you might use this tool in your classroom or professional development, I’d love to hear about it. What do you think? Would you consider using this in a K-12 classroom? Why or why not?
Many edubloggers and people in the Twittersphere have been buzzing about Wordle. I have spent some time exploring it and can see what the excitement is about. It has amazing potential for inspiring critical thinking both for classrooms and in adult professional development sessions. Wordle is a very simple tool (online and free) that allows you to create word clouds from text or tagged bookmarks. Of course, I had to play with it a bit, and created several different Wordles with my tagged bookmarks in Diigo and Del.icio.us.
You just copy text in any language, paste it into Wordle and it will analyze it and create clouds from the most commonly occurring words in the text. You can then edit the shape, the colors and the font in the cloud to make it more visually appealing, and even remove words you don’t like by right-clicking on them (command-click for Macs). Try it out on some text and see what you discover. You could copy/paste text from your school newsletter or a memo from your principal and see if there are any words that emerge as larger images in your Wordle. The more frequently you use a word, the more emphasis it is getting. You could paste an article you’ve written or even a section from your resume to see if you’re over-using certain words or if key words are missing. It was very revealing in my bookmark tags to see what I considered important by what I chose to bookmark. It was amazingly accurate! It is a powerful way to visually analyze information and use it for conversation with others by asking them to share and interpret what they see. Ask a few of your colleagues to create a Wordle of their bookmark tags, print them out and then have a conversation comparing the results. 🙂
Posted by Peggy George on Aug 12, 2008 in Uncategorized
This is a great presentation that is part of a Webquest by Charlie Pitrolo, Marion County Schools, created to introduce teachers to Web 2.0. Webquest can be found here: http://www.questgarden.com/66/37/6/080530203752/
Note: To view the above presentation full screen (much easier to read!), click on the blue icon in the right hand corner below the presentation.
If you’re wanting to find videos and resources to help you introduce the concept of web 2.0 and to begin to lead teachers into conversations about why this is important for their student learning, you might want to explore some of these.
AzTEA on You Tube I have created a special group on You Tube to compile and share Web 2.0 videos with other educators. Videos can be newly created videos by participants and uploaded to the group, or videos found and saved from YouTube. The compilation of videos are those that I’ve found informative, helpful and entertaining related to schools, teachers, technology and Web 2.0. You are invited to submit a request to join the group if you would like to access the videos or upload your own videos. This will provide an easy option for uploading videos to wikispaces, blogs and websites by obtaining the embed code after uploading to YouTube. Please submit your own favorites for inclusion on this site. It will make a great place for you to return and select certain videos you might like to use in professional development events (if You Tube is not blocked in your school/district).
Web 2.0 Technology Videos (video list compiled and managed by Peggy George–feel free to contact me with questions/suggestions) http://youtube.com/group/aztea
Since I wrote about this wonderful tool, I am sad to report that Mixwit no longer exists. According to their site:
“Mixwit is dead, but the spirit of mixtapes lives on through the open source community. We just completed mixwidget.org – a new open-source mixtape project based on our former Mixwit mixtape.
Thanks again for all of your support. You can find us working hard on our new project”
I have removed my mixwit example but decided to keep my blog post since there is hope that their new site may provide us with a similar alternative.
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http://www.mixwit.com
I learned about this program from Konrad Glukowski’s blog. It’s an amazing strategy to use music for engaging older students! His example for classroom use is terrific!
Information from the Mixwit website:
Mixwit is primarily a media mash-up platform.
Where does the music come from?
Currently we’re using two music search services, Seeqpod and Skreemr, to allow users to discover mp3 files that are publicly available on the internet. Our Mixmaker application allows people to save a list of bookmarks to those tracks. The files stay in their original location.
It’s your mix, so make something unique. Add pictures, photos, artwork, drawings… Anything you want. Make a mix of your favorite songs and artists. Post your mixtape to MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, and others. You can post it on a blog, wiki or website too.
I decided to try it out just to see how easy it was to use and to search for some of my favorite “oldies but goodies” to see if they were available for my mixwit. It was both easy and fun to create and post to my blog and now I can enjoy my mini-playlist whenever I want. Give it a try. 🙂
Posted by Peggy George on Jul 31, 2008 in Uncategorized
Scrapblog is an amazing, free online tool that allows you to upload photos, videos, music and more to create special albums, greeting cards and other photo creations. Check it out! This is an example of a Scrapblog I created as a birthday thank you for my North Carolina family. (http://www.scrapblog.com)
Posted by Peggy George on Jul 9, 2008 in Uncategorized
This is a great, free widget you can add to your blog or web site from SurfNetKids. The quotes change each time the page is viewed. Just click on the link below the quote to go to a site where you can get details about adding it to your own site.
