Technology Medley

So, you have created a fabulous PowerPoint that you want to share with your students, parents, or perhaps friends and family. You could always send the presentation by email, but what happens if it’s too large to send as an attachment, or what if the recipient does not have PowerPoint installed on his computer? There are several places on the internet that allow you to upload your presentation and then share it with others.

If your presentation is complete and you know you don’t need to do any further tweaking, upload it to Slideshare.net.  After it has been uploaded, you can edit the privacy settings and share it with specific people or make it public. You can even copy the embed code and make it viewable within your own web page or blog. You can also give others the option to download the presentation as a PowerPoint file to their own computer.

Here is a presentation within SlideShare on creating effective presentations:

If you want to continue working on your presentation, or if several people are collaborating on the same presentation, consider uploading it to Google Docs. Set your sharing preferences as desired. You may even want to start from scratch on Google Docs and bypass PowerPoint altogether. There are a few built-in themes, or you can upload your own background.

For all of those folks out there who still think that social media is a fad, take a look at the information in this video! The world is definitely changing!

If you work in an elementary school, you will love this video created by Karen Rose and her third graders in Melissa, Texas. The video was selected as the winner of a digital storytelling contest this summer at the National Educational Computing Conference.

Listen carefully to the lyrics as you watch. You’ll hear lines such as “Watching videos, hearings audio, yeah, we think they’re ok. But watching out own that we’ve created makes work feel like play!”

Who wouldn’t want to their students to feel this way about their own learning? Enjoy!

NCTIES 2009 Conference Session – Skype

Kathy Beck and Linda Lerch from Iredell Statesville Schools presented a very informative session about using Skype in the classroom.  Skype is a free program that can be downloaded here, and it’s quick and easy to install on both Windows and Mac computers.

There are several sites to help teachers find other classrooms to connect with:

• Skype Other Classrooms Edublogger Post
• Using Skype at School
• Skype in Schools Wiki

Basic Information:

free pc to pc calls
free audio calls (can conference up to 25 people)
free video calls (just one to one)
group chat rooms
instant message
small fee for mobile phones and land lines
requires little bandwidth

high def speed 384 kb/sec
standard 128 kb/sec

Search for contacts – shows country and city so you can narrow it down

If web cam not connected, will only see ‘call’ button
If web cam is connected, can also choose video call

Classroom Ideas

• students can talk with each other
• send files to everyone in group to view and interject with text comments
• keep archives of text messaging conversations
• students can use video to practice for a play
• debates
• organize school events
• work on school newspapers
• collaborative research with students around the world
• learn about students and life in other countries
• learn a language
• ESL
• penpals
• have experts come to them
• hold a poetry reading in which actual poet reads to your class
• brainstorm teaching ideas with a mentor
• virtual field trip w/o buses and entrance fees
• include an ill student in daily discussions (child can unplug camera if he does not want class to see him)
• conduct a conference call for a club
• virtual substitute – monitor your class while you’re away
• quick connection to teacher
• traveling parent for child in midst of homework crisis
• assist children with special needs ~  describe the day
• skype conference with parents who cannot come to school
• hearing impaired could use the chat mode
• blind can use audio mode
• Read Alouds
• have an author read a story over skype
• other readers from local businesses
• local theater groups
• Collaborate with other teachers
• professional development

Need to teach Skype etiquette

dialing etiquette – let it ring once or twice
movement can be distracting while using a webcam (stand still)
have questions prepared
skype from a well lit room
think about time differences

Note: This reminds me of when IM was new and different. The young teachers used it for fun to connect with their friends and families used it to keep in touch. It took a while before teachers learned that these same connection and collaboration skills could be used for professional reasons. Quite often, a new tool begins with personal uses and then reaches out to the school and to the classrooms.

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

NCTIES 2009 Conference Session – Assessment

Vicki Davis uses a Ning with her students. She teaches them to communicate as professionals. They are not allowed to use IM speak. Even though it resembles Facebook and My Space, she does not use Ning for social reasons, but rather for educational networking. She takes advantage of the ability to make the networks private when appropriate and also told us that the good folks at Ning will remove the ads from the site if you email them.

She says her students already know how to use new technology and set up new accounts. To use new Web 2.0 tools, they need to be taught how to create hyperlinks and how to embed code.

We want to build digital citizenship. Online behavior should have offline consequences. Schools should not punish everyone and take the tool away. (You don’t lock a bathroom because of a bad word on the wall!) Use RSS feeds to monitor blogs and wikis that students are using and deal with problems as they occur.

Vicki spent some time talking about various learning styles and how these can best be used in networking:

• linguistic
  • blogging, forums, writing
• logical mathematical
  • virtual worlds, programmers, administration, organizers
• naturalist
  • outdoor video, photography, gcast, roving reporter, google earth, geocaching, maps
• spacial (pictures)
  • photography, camera operator, voicethread, animoto….kids like to be behind the camera, not in front of it
• bodily kinesthetic
  • acting, presenting, get on film, want to move
  • need to learn difference between production quality and content quality
• musical
  • record audio files, audacity, voice thread, animoto
• interpersonal
  • cell phones, forums, blogging or pics, discussion facilitators
• intrapersonal
  • reflections, reading and opinions, debates

Teachers need to let kids write about what they’re interested in and create personal interest projects. She suggests letting them
invent something of their own!

Kids still need teachers, but not as the sage on the stage. They need for the teachers to plan the process and to coach them as they grow and learn.

Some links that were shared:

Think.com
elementary to early middle
have to apply (We have accounts in Salem.)
very strong profanity filter
will disable if not used within period of time

Westwood Schools Wiki
uses wiki for her classes
embed google calendar for assignments
students have own igoogle page

ClassTools.net
let kids create review games for each other

Toondoo
cartoons and embed
fun way to teach how to embed

Here’s a slideshow that Vicki used at NCTIES:

You can find more resources by Vicki Davis on her wiki.

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

NCTIES 2009 Conference Session – Digital Tools

Howie DiBlasi shared numerous online tools during his NCTIES session. His website contains additional links, handouts, and powerpoints that I hope to find time to explore in the not too distant future.

He began by showing a revision of Karl Fisch’s Did You Know video.

Following a brief discussion about how students today are living in a digital world, he shared the following Web 2.0 resources:

Wikipedia

• probably not completely up-to-date
• only one source – students should use additional sources for information
• suggests that students find out something in their community that is not already written up and post and article about it

After asking how many people were using blogs, wikis, and VoiceThreads, he noted that these tools are being used much more often now than a year ago. (See previous posts about blogs, wikis, and VoiceThreads.)

Ning.com

• create your own network and decide who you invite
• similar to a social network but used for professional reasons
• very useful for administrators
  • should create ning for their school
  • use as communication device
  • put all teachers in it
  • upload docs, videos, collaboration group
• need to unblock
• then could open up to community and let parents communicate within the site

Imbee

• a social network for kids
• monitored by adults
• designed as home or school site

Utterli

• crossposts to several networking sites at once
• send videos, messages, and texts from mobile phone

Twitter

• teachers could use to post homework assignments every day
• parents can follow and get news and homework daily
• instant communication

Gizmos

• interactive flash utilities for math and science

Delicious

• keep students materials and sites organized by tags
• use as network for older kids to share links

Fantastic Contraption

• online physics game

GCast

• create a podcast using your cell phone
• use Audacity to change pitch to make it sound like you’re having a conversation with a different person

ePals and Gaggle

• free email
• 191 countries and over 11 million students
• walled garden (safe for students)
• emails are all monitored
• projects are already set up, like people and culture, global warning, habitats, etc.

Jing

• free screen capture
• screencasting tool
• make instructional videos

280 Slides

• like powerpoint
• can upload powerpoints and save back to computer
• web2.0 based

Animoto

• make cool videos with music from photographs
• see example here

My Studyo

• make quizzes online
• can embed into web site

Glogster

• create interactive online posters
• make sure you use ed version

Rock You

• fun effects for use with photos
• add music, text, glitter and more to slideshow

PhotoShow

• another online slideshow for photos
• numerous music choices to add to photo show
• done by Roxio
• will be creating an ed version

One True Media

• combine photos and videos
• add special effects

EduBlogs TV

• safe place to upload videos for kids

Ustream

• record video of presentations
• live stream so others can watch in real time

QuantumShift tv

• can upload videos
• stories about people who are changing the world

YackPack

• connect members of group
• live talk
• messags

Flowgram

• combine powerpoints, web pages, documents
• add your voice to presentation
• share with friends

Pixton

• create your own comics
• special are for schools
• have to pay for the education part

You can download the entire PowerPoint from Howie DiBlasi’s web site if you’d like to see even more!

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

You will soon see a new technology word wall in the computer labs at both of my schools. Each word is either the name of a web site, a program, or a technology term that you and/or your students might find interesting. Each word also includes a link to a site with further information about that particular topic. The VoiceThread below contains each of the words along with links for you to explore as you have the time and interest.

Back in the summer, some discussion arose in Twitter and Plurk about the idea of a technology ABC poster (I’m sorry, I can’t remember exactly who started the discussion to give credit.  If it was you, leave me a comment please).   Through those discussions, Tina Coffey and I came up with the idea of a Technology Word Wall and started adding items to the list that our teachers might use.  If you think of other terms that should be added to our word wall, please leave a comment. If you’re interested, you can also view or print the slides from here.

Want to create a fun video that will make your fellow teachers envious of your editing skills? Head on over to Animoto.com and request an educator account. You can create 30 second videos with their regular free account, but these helpful folks provide free unlimited access to educators! You do have to request the account though and wait a few days for them to send you a link and instructions.

Once you have an account, simply upload pictures from your computer, select music from their library or upload your own, and wait for the magic to occur. They say that every video is different, so if you don’t like the way yours turns out, simply try again. This is such a fun site! Once you create a video, you can copy the embed code (I’ll show you how!) and then place the video on your own class web site to share with your students and their families.

Here’s an example of a video I just created from some pictures I had of South Salem’s 2008 beach party.

Our school division superintendant, Dr. Alan Seibert, will soon join a group of educators who will be traveling through India and visiting schools there. Earlier this fall, he asked teachers who might be interested in doing some collaborative projects to contact him, and Tina Coffey and I then met with him to discuss ways we could facilitate those projects using technology. Thus, Trek 2 India was born!

We created this wiki to help teachers and students follow along with Dr. Seibert on his journey as well as to provide a place for him to share his pictures, videos, and stories. But, as usual we had an ulterior motive! We wanted this to be an example of a way you could incorporate wikis into your curriculum.

What is a wiki? Well, wiki is a Hawaiian word for quick or fast, so a wiki is a quick (and easy) way to create a web page. It can be edited from any computer with an internet connection, and once people join, they can edit the wiki, thus making it a true collaborative project.

Two of the most widely used wikis in education are wikispaces and pbwiki. Students can use wikis for collaborative projects on any unit in social studies or science, or to share reflections on books, or favorite authors….and the cool thing is, those projects will remain on the web for the students to use for review when testing time rolls around in the spring!

You can create simple wikis with just text and links, and that would be awesome! Also, if you take a look around the Trek 2 India wiki, you’ll notice that we also used several “embedded” objects. That means that these objects are actually stored on other web sites and are pulled in when you click on the page. (It’s easy to do! Just ask!)

You might be interested in using some of these yourself! Check out these sites that we used:

• Glogster (poster site – home page)
• VoiceThreads
• Google Maps
• Flickr
• Weather Underground
• Wikipedia (several images from here)
• ClockLink
• Dumpr (fun image editing site)

You can also upload pictures, videos, and podcasts directly into your wikispaces site. If you do set up a wiki for your class, be sure to take advantage of the ad free sites being offered to educators by wikispaces.

Wordle is a fun web site that will create a word cloud from any text that you insert. You can also enter a url from any site that has an rss feed and it will create a cloud from the text on that page. Then you have several options for changing the layout, fonts, and colors.

Here’s an example I created by entering my blog address:

The larger the word, the more times it was found in the text. So, I can quickly see that I’ve used the terms “teachers” and “training” quite a bit, which did not surprise me. However, the words “new” and “year” appeared frequently also, and I’m not sure why I’ve used those so often.

This might be a helpful visual when teaching about the overuse of common words in student writing. Either type in or paste in some text from student projects and let the students analyze the results.

You can also enter the username for anyone who uses Delicious for bookmarking and see what tags they are using. Here’s mine:

It’s simple to see that I have lots of sites tagged with Web 2.0! Enter anyone’s Delicious username and quickly see if they’re interested in sites that you might also be interested in exploring.

One final example: Use this cool tool to create colorful word clouds of student names at the beginning of the year. You can also designate that the words be displayed in “almost” alphabetical order. I created the following cloud using first names of the classroom teachers at my schools.

Classroom uses:

• Visualize overuse of common words in student writing
• Enter vocabulary words and let students practice reading them.
• Enter a passage from a story and see how often particular words are actually used.
• Enter text from a historical document and analyze the results.
• For younger students, use this to practice typing in spelling words. They don’t need an account to use the site, and they’ll love playing around with the results!

Update (8/22) Tina Coffey has a post with several terrific examples for using Wordle in the elementary classroom. Be sure to check it out!

What other ways can you think of for using Wordle in the K-5 setting?