Discovering that podcasting was this week’s Web 2.0 focus I had to quickly determine where I had placed my computer microphone. It has been over a year since I created my first podcast in a previous graduate course. Actually that was also the last time I had used the microphone. While my experience as a creator is limited, my experience as a podcast consumer is a little more extensive. Once I found my microphone, it was time to begin the process of recording. The recording application I had used in the past was Audacity. This 'easy-to-use' application is great for recording and editing audio files. It is also the recommended program of choice by Will Richardson in chapter 8 of his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Remembering the simplicity of Audacity’s editing features was reason enough to use it again for this course. My initials thoughts on recording a podcast was to show how I could incorporate this tool into a primary school setting. I chose to read a picture book titled ‘So, What’s It Like to Be a Cat?’ by Karla Kuskin. Having book talks or audio book podcasts available for young students with reading difficulties or disabilities is a way to provide differentiated learning and a great way to promote the library collection, reading and literacy to students. After the recording process was complete it was time to choose an application to upload and share my podcast, and I chose to use PodOmatic. The process of uploading the mp3 file to PodOmatic was not terribly difficult but it took me some time (mainly due to my unfamiliarity with the program) to complete all of the steps required to post a podcast. The final step was to upload the podcast to my blog…and the process was complete.
Education, Podcasts and Podcasting
If podcasting is a new concept for students and educators, I recommend showing them Podcasting in Plain English created by Lee LeFever at Common Craft. This video gives a simple explanation of podcasting whether you want to create your first podcast or you simply want to listen to podcasts. LeFever lists three reasons as to the rising popularity of podcasts:
-Podcasting is a digital medium accessible for all computer users
-Podcasts are available through subscriptions making following favourites an easy task
-Podcasts are just not limited to listening on computers, there are numerous mobile gadgets that serve as portable listening devices
Podcasts are created so that digital consumers and learners can listen to shows on demand at their own convenience. What makes this form of learning inviting is that there is an over abundance of free podcasts for all subject areas. Kathy Schrock, one of the bloggers I am following, has created an online podcast rubric so that educators can take time to evaluate What Makes a Good Podcast. Many educators take time to analyze the content of websites, however it may not occur to everyone to evaluate a podcast with the same care. Kathy provides a printer friendly PDF version for teachers to follow thirteen educational guidelines to evaluating the quality of podcast in an educational setting. Below is a partial screenshot of the podcast checklist developed by Kathy.
What influence and implications do podcasts have on education for students…for teachers?
-Provide differentiated instruction by adapting content in response to student learning profiles.
-Supports verbal-linguistic learners using Garndner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
-Allows students and teachers the ability to have access to professionals and educational experts worldwide
-Facilitates professional development and distance learning for educators
-An exciting Web 2.0 format for engaging learners
-Asynchronous learning that allows students to review, replay and revisit information
Managing Your Podcasts
Many bloggers (readers and creators) recognize the importance of an RSS aggregator to help manage the continual updates blogs receive on a regular basis. Doug Johnson’s article Don't underestimate the importance of the aggregator echoes the value of managing current Internet feeds. I use Google Reader as my main application for updating Web 2.0 information sources, but have taken time to view the following tools as well:
Bloglines
FeedReader3
Pageflakes
ZoHo
Something that I had not experienced until this week was managing podcast subscriptions using iTunes. As LeFever stated in ‘Podcasting in Plain English’ one needs a podcatcher. On occasion I would find podcasts, listen to them through my laptop, and place them in an audio file for future reference. This was a timely and disorganized way to find, listen and store podcasts. This past week I set up a handful of my favourite subscriptions and now have an orgainzed central location to locate and listen to podcasts…now and forever.
There are many free podcasts on the Internet, too numerous to list. I conducted a few searches this week, finding podcasts for a variety of educational subject areas. One website of particular interest was The Education Podcast Network. This site arranges podcasts by subject area and is host to podcasts created by professionals and students alike. Here is a random sampling of podcasts I found searching through the Education Podcast Network:
Japanese Pod101.com
Learn to speak Japanese through free daily podcasts.
The Bobby Bucket Show
A podcast site for teachers, students and parents focusing on authors and reading.
National Geographic
Free science, nature and video podcasts.
Sax Tips Podcast
Music lessons, tips and technique for playing the saxophone.
Eash, E.K. (2006). Podcasting 101 for k-12 librarians. Computers in Libraries. Retrieved http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/apr06/Eash.shtml
EdTechTalk. (2008). Woman of the web show #65.
Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/219581
LeFever, L. (2008). Video: Podcasting in plain English. Retrieved from http://commoncraft.com/podcasting
Johnson, D. (2008). Don't underestimate the importance of the aggregator. Blue Skunk Blog. Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/236172
Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Schrock, K. (2008). What makes a good podcast. Retrieved from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/evalpodcast.html
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Blog #4 The Audacity of Podcasting
Will Richardson (2006) defines podcasting as “the creation and distribution of amateur radio” (p. 112). Ester Kreider Eash, author of the Podcasting 101 for K-12 Librarians article defines podcasting simply as “a digital audio file that’s created, shared, and heard” (2006, p. 1). Eash (2006) writes that there are two fundamental reasons for using podcasts in education: (1) a method to retrieve educational information authored by others and (2) to distribute information through personal creating and sharing.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Blog #3 A Del.icio.us Recipe for Success
Visiting Wikipedia Social Bookmarking gave me an interesting overview to the history of social bookmarking. I was surprised to read that this concept dates back to 1996, with some of the major players (Delicious and Furl) around since 2004. How did this Web 2.0 tool escape my knowledge over the past couple years? The first I heard of social bookmarking sites was during a professional development workshop I attended last winter, hosted by well-known technology specialist Judi Wolf from Ohio. The session was titled ‘Best of the Best Websites that Enhance Instruction and Learning’. Judi guided the session through her Delicious account, showing an enthusiastic educational audience the wonders of social bookmarking.
After that presentation I had created a basic Delicious account of my personal (with private settings) bookmarks, though not exploring further the many features this tool has to offer. To tell the truth my original account has sat idle for a couple months as I have not updated links or visited my universal bookmarks – not sure why? Last week I decided to create a second account, this time housing all of my professional websites with a public sharing setting (username cmt1). Two features that I wanted to check out first were the ‘subscriptions’ and ‘network’. I was a little hesitant of using the subscriptions feature, not knowing if my account would be inundated with thousands of links automatically. Not the case. Subscriptions is basically a ‘holding tank’ for millions (yes, millions) of bookmarks under the tag(s) requested. I set up a subscription to ‘Web2.0’ and was shocked to read that I was now a subscriber to over 3 million websites tagged with the same name. The second new component in Delicious I engaged in this past week was the network feature. I added a small collection of classmates usernames to my network and now have their professional collection of bookmarks on hand for reference.
What are some of the implications for instruction and learning?
Social bookmarking is set up to provide universal collaboration for students and for teachers alike. Searching, investigating and learning through the Internet provides users (both students and educators) with an overwhelming wealth of exploration and knowledge, not always easily managed. However, using a site like Delicious can assist in the learning process by providing a unique opportunity for collaboration, information management and social sharing. Students have the capacity to build an online resource bank of Internet sites applicable, and tailored to, their learning environment. In Trailfire #8 “Taming the Beast: Social Bookmarking” Will Richardson writes about the importance of students building digital resources by stating “so not only are they collecting sites for themselves, they are collaboratively building a classroom resource” (Richardson, 2007, p.1). There is an obvious ‘working together’ theme that can emerge from using these applications in everyday learning situations.
Thinking about my own school setting I can envision several approaches to creating a school account or assisting teachers setting up grade level accounts within the K-6 division. As teacher-librarian I can either take on the task as a technology leader or support grade level teachers in creating one shared account housing general educational tags, grade level tags or combination tags that focus on subject and grade level themes. Delicious is an easy application for beginners to understand and utilize in the inquiry and research processes.
The Internet is changing the way we find and collect digital information and Educause makes a salient statement by saying “It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using a framework created by and shared with peers and colleagues (Educause Learning Initiative, 2005, p. 2). As a teacher-librarian I still believe it is important to recognize and reference where information comes from, but it is becoming equally important to have a universal storage and retrieving system for digital information. One observation I have noticed the past several years (and including this year) is that teachers still use ‘old school’ practices by having young students write down Internet addressed before visiting the computer lab. This method is arduous, time consuming and for some young students just an impossible keyboarding task. Having a universal Delicious school bookmark in the browser will eliminate wasted instructional time.
It is time to support and encourage our colleagues who already value the importance of learning through such initiatives as ‘Professional Learning Communities’ and move them into a socially collaborative sharing environment...online.
I checked out the list of social bookmarking sites on Wikipedia and found it remarkable that there were 24 listed. Also interesting were the listings for similar social sites in areas such as social cataloging and social citations. While Delicious is my chosen site for social bookmarking I decided to check out a few other options out there to see how they compare.
Jooce
Jooce allows users to organize their Internet sites, digital files, photos, and emails, creating a universal desktop for digital customers always on the go. Site provides users with unlimited space for storing information with a private/public accessibility option.
Digg
Digg is a site for users to share Internet content from news, podcasts, and blogs. Digg promote online community conversation about the Internet topics people are most interested in. The creators of this site have limited users to only registering for one account.
Faves.com
What is interesting about this site is it has a corresponding Faves.com Blog. This social bookmarking site was launched in 2006, boasting that is has a strong international audience of online users – top three countries using this site are the United States, Italy and Japan. A toolbar icon is available for quick saving.
MyWeb
Another branch of Yahoo! is MyWeb where three simple themes ‘Share, Save, Discover’ are featured for those wanting to maximize their Yahoo! account. This was the only bookmarking service that I found had an age restriction in their ‘Terms of Service’ agreement stating “parents of children under the age of 13 who wish to allow their children access to the Service must create a Yahoo! Family Account” (Yahoo! Inc, 2008). MyWeb was introduced to Yahoo! fans in 2006.
CiteULike
Developed in England this site is different from all the others. CiteULike is set up as social bookmarking, but focuses completely on bookmarking citations from academic research and papers. Users can store small bookmarks of text from research journals thus building online bookmarked bibliographies and references to share with colleagues. I did not find this site easy explore which leads me to believe that this site is definitely for a narrow audience of specific academic users.
Educause Learning Initiative. (2005). 7 things you should know about…Social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/199340
Richardson, W. (2007). Taming the beast: Social bookmarking. School Library Journal, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/199339
Yahoo! Inc. (2008). Yahoo! Terms of service. Retrieved from
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
After that presentation I had created a basic Delicious account of my personal (with private settings) bookmarks, though not exploring further the many features this tool has to offer. To tell the truth my original account has sat idle for a couple months as I have not updated links or visited my universal bookmarks – not sure why? Last week I decided to create a second account, this time housing all of my professional websites with a public sharing setting (username cmt1). Two features that I wanted to check out first were the ‘subscriptions’ and ‘network’. I was a little hesitant of using the subscriptions feature, not knowing if my account would be inundated with thousands of links automatically. Not the case. Subscriptions is basically a ‘holding tank’ for millions (yes, millions) of bookmarks under the tag(s) requested. I set up a subscription to ‘Web2.0’ and was shocked to read that I was now a subscriber to over 3 million websites tagged with the same name. The second new component in Delicious I engaged in this past week was the network feature. I added a small collection of classmates usernames to my network and now have their professional collection of bookmarks on hand for reference.
What are some of the implications for instruction and learning?
Social bookmarking is set up to provide universal collaboration for students and for teachers alike. Searching, investigating and learning through the Internet provides users (both students and educators) with an overwhelming wealth of exploration and knowledge, not always easily managed. However, using a site like Delicious can assist in the learning process by providing a unique opportunity for collaboration, information management and social sharing. Students have the capacity to build an online resource bank of Internet sites applicable, and tailored to, their learning environment. In Trailfire #8 “Taming the Beast: Social Bookmarking” Will Richardson writes about the importance of students building digital resources by stating “so not only are they collecting sites for themselves, they are collaboratively building a classroom resource” (Richardson, 2007, p.1). There is an obvious ‘working together’ theme that can emerge from using these applications in everyday learning situations.
Thinking about my own school setting I can envision several approaches to creating a school account or assisting teachers setting up grade level accounts within the K-6 division. As teacher-librarian I can either take on the task as a technology leader or support grade level teachers in creating one shared account housing general educational tags, grade level tags or combination tags that focus on subject and grade level themes. Delicious is an easy application for beginners to understand and utilize in the inquiry and research processes.
The Internet is changing the way we find and collect digital information and Educause makes a salient statement by saying “It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using a framework created by and shared with peers and colleagues (Educause Learning Initiative, 2005, p. 2). As a teacher-librarian I still believe it is important to recognize and reference where information comes from, but it is becoming equally important to have a universal storage and retrieving system for digital information. One observation I have noticed the past several years (and including this year) is that teachers still use ‘old school’ practices by having young students write down Internet addressed before visiting the computer lab. This method is arduous, time consuming and for some young students just an impossible keyboarding task. Having a universal Delicious school bookmark in the browser will eliminate wasted instructional time.
It is time to support and encourage our colleagues who already value the importance of learning through such initiatives as ‘Professional Learning Communities’ and move them into a socially collaborative sharing environment...online.
I checked out the list of social bookmarking sites on Wikipedia and found it remarkable that there were 24 listed. Also interesting were the listings for similar social sites in areas such as social cataloging and social citations. While Delicious is my chosen site for social bookmarking I decided to check out a few other options out there to see how they compare.
Jooce
Jooce allows users to organize their Internet sites, digital files, photos, and emails, creating a universal desktop for digital customers always on the go. Site provides users with unlimited space for storing information with a private/public accessibility option.
Digg
Digg is a site for users to share Internet content from news, podcasts, and blogs. Digg promote online community conversation about the Internet topics people are most interested in. The creators of this site have limited users to only registering for one account.
Faves.com
What is interesting about this site is it has a corresponding Faves.com Blog. This social bookmarking site was launched in 2006, boasting that is has a strong international audience of online users – top three countries using this site are the United States, Italy and Japan. A toolbar icon is available for quick saving.
MyWeb
Another branch of Yahoo! is MyWeb where three simple themes ‘Share, Save, Discover’ are featured for those wanting to maximize their Yahoo! account. This was the only bookmarking service that I found had an age restriction in their ‘Terms of Service’ agreement stating “parents of children under the age of 13 who wish to allow their children access to the Service must create a Yahoo! Family Account” (Yahoo! Inc, 2008). MyWeb was introduced to Yahoo! fans in 2006.
CiteULike
Developed in England this site is different from all the others. CiteULike is set up as social bookmarking, but focuses completely on bookmarking citations from academic research and papers. Users can store small bookmarks of text from research journals thus building online bookmarked bibliographies and references to share with colleagues. I did not find this site easy explore which leads me to believe that this site is definitely for a narrow audience of specific academic users.
Educause Learning Initiative. (2005). 7 things you should know about…Social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/199340
Richardson, W. (2007). Taming the beast: Social bookmarking. School Library Journal, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/199339
Yahoo! Inc. (2008). Yahoo! Terms of service. Retrieved from
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
Pay Attention!
I was in Twitter and someone linked the following 21st Century Learning video from TeacherTube into their tweet. An interesting commentary about students, teachers and learning today.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Blog #2 Reel Viewing
'Digital World: Kids Today' from YouTube is an interesting video commentary about social networking and the digital generation of learners today.
Exploring video sharing sites this past week was thoroughly enjoyable! Sites such as YouTube and TeacherTube can offer up online consumers video sharing and video viewing in educational capacities, consisting of a wide range of subject material for all grade levels. I found a couple distinct differences between incorporating video sharing sites versus photo sharing in an instructional setting. First, students and teachers are able to freely access both YouTube and TeacherTube sites in my school (something which was not the case for the photo sharing sites). Also, I am more familiar with using the video sites to compliment or supplement instruction in the classroom and have used video sharing sites much more so than photo sharing sites.
One little glitch I experienced that caused a few days of grief was trying to upload a video into my blog. I could not find the 'edit html' button and kept receiving error messages in the process. I used Blogger help, and thought the instructions were outlined in a straight-forward manner. It took a couple days to figure out that I was missing a default command in my global compose settings. Life was good after the setting was changed and saved.
I invested many hours this past week sifting through both sites and really value the multimedia perspective video can bring into any classroom. Both sites are easy for users navigate through and all viewers will find a plethora of video choices from a vast array of subject areas. The only negative experience researching this topic was the significant difference between the amount of time it takes to load and play a video on a school computer compared to the time it took on my home laptop. much my researching for appropriate videos to compliment lessons at school are usually conducted at home.
I discovered that YouTube is not only used for video sharing but also an avenue for video blogging as another outlet for young people to live their lives 'virtually'. According to Wikipedia video blogging (also called vlogging) is when blogs are embedded into a video format (Wikipedia, 2008). Video blogging has become more popular over the past couple years with regular bloggers. Many vloggers on YouTube have sequential numbering included in their titles, making the process of following video blogs that much easier. I conducted a search of Web 2.0 vlogs on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised to have an over abundance of video blogs to view. My viewing choices included titles such as ‘Web 2.0 is not the future of education’ to ‘Web 2.0 and its benefits for the students’ education’. Comparing those contrasting titles alone tells me that many people have much to share through video blogging. The interesting possibilities are endless when it comes to thinking of ways that students can incorporate video blogging into their learning. This format would lend itself to be a creative format for students to record an inquiry project from start to finish.
There are a couple features about TeacherTube that I appreciate as an educator. The top menu bar on the screen displays helpful links to guide users through the most popular, most viewed and favourite videos on the site. This quick reference can help educators see what others find worthy of viewing. Through the online sharing format, TeacherTube continues to meet one of their goals of trying to promote the online educational sharing of instructional videos.
Last year in the spring my school hosted a school-wide ‘Literacy Week’ to promote literacy, authors, and reading. During this week I hosted a Comic Café to launch new comic books and graphic novels purchased for the school library collection. As I promoted this genre throughout various grade levels, I discovered that there was an enthusiastic fan base of graphic novel readers in the school. What was really interesting was that a couple of students indicated to me that they were excited about some of the new graphic novel series added to the school collection because they were fans of the manga videos posted on YouTube. Posted here you will see one short video excerpt from the original manga series Fruits Basket. I had no idea that YouTube contained videos to compliment the Japanese print series. Since learning from my students that manga videos were available on YouTube I began using short video clips to promote various books, authors and reading.
Exploring around Beth’s Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom blog, I found one past post where she had posted a wiki listing of all of her favourite videos, podcasts and slides to share regarding 21st century learning and technology. What a wonderful idea to have a narrowed list of quality videos that have been viewed and approved of by a leading educational technology expert!
Some other video sharing sites I chose to explore this week include:
One World TV
This site based out of the UK is an online video sharing community focused on climate change and global justice.
Big Think
Contains accessible interviews from today’s leaders, academic thinkers and celebrity activists.
Yahoo! Video
Not only is Yahoo a popular search engine, but also host to an online video sharing community.
Yes, there are plenty of choices to make when it comes to video sharing and video viewing sites personally and professionally. Educators must take time to determine which online communities are appropriate to use and which sites work best for potentially uploading and/or sharing educational video experiences at school.
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. (2008). Video Blogging. Retrieved
September 26, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog
Exploring video sharing sites this past week was thoroughly enjoyable! Sites such as YouTube and TeacherTube can offer up online consumers video sharing and video viewing in educational capacities, consisting of a wide range of subject material for all grade levels. I found a couple distinct differences between incorporating video sharing sites versus photo sharing in an instructional setting. First, students and teachers are able to freely access both YouTube and TeacherTube sites in my school (something which was not the case for the photo sharing sites). Also, I am more familiar with using the video sites to compliment or supplement instruction in the classroom and have used video sharing sites much more so than photo sharing sites.
One little glitch I experienced that caused a few days of grief was trying to upload a video into my blog. I could not find the 'edit html' button and kept receiving error messages in the process. I used Blogger help, and thought the instructions were outlined in a straight-forward manner. It took a couple days to figure out that I was missing a default command in my global compose settings. Life was good after the setting was changed and saved.
I invested many hours this past week sifting through both sites and really value the multimedia perspective video can bring into any classroom. Both sites are easy for users navigate through and all viewers will find a plethora of video choices from a vast array of subject areas. The only negative experience researching this topic was the significant difference between the amount of time it takes to load and play a video on a school computer compared to the time it took on my home laptop. much my researching for appropriate videos to compliment lessons at school are usually conducted at home.
I discovered that YouTube is not only used for video sharing but also an avenue for video blogging as another outlet for young people to live their lives 'virtually'. According to Wikipedia video blogging (also called vlogging) is when blogs are embedded into a video format (Wikipedia, 2008). Video blogging has become more popular over the past couple years with regular bloggers. Many vloggers on YouTube have sequential numbering included in their titles, making the process of following video blogs that much easier. I conducted a search of Web 2.0 vlogs on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised to have an over abundance of video blogs to view. My viewing choices included titles such as ‘Web 2.0 is not the future of education’ to ‘Web 2.0 and its benefits for the students’ education’. Comparing those contrasting titles alone tells me that many people have much to share through video blogging. The interesting possibilities are endless when it comes to thinking of ways that students can incorporate video blogging into their learning. This format would lend itself to be a creative format for students to record an inquiry project from start to finish.
There are a couple features about TeacherTube that I appreciate as an educator. The top menu bar on the screen displays helpful links to guide users through the most popular, most viewed and favourite videos on the site. This quick reference can help educators see what others find worthy of viewing. Through the online sharing format, TeacherTube continues to meet one of their goals of trying to promote the online educational sharing of instructional videos.
Last year in the spring my school hosted a school-wide ‘Literacy Week’ to promote literacy, authors, and reading. During this week I hosted a Comic Café to launch new comic books and graphic novels purchased for the school library collection. As I promoted this genre throughout various grade levels, I discovered that there was an enthusiastic fan base of graphic novel readers in the school. What was really interesting was that a couple of students indicated to me that they were excited about some of the new graphic novel series added to the school collection because they were fans of the manga videos posted on YouTube. Posted here you will see one short video excerpt from the original manga series Fruits Basket. I had no idea that YouTube contained videos to compliment the Japanese print series. Since learning from my students that manga videos were available on YouTube I began using short video clips to promote various books, authors and reading.
Exploring around Beth’s Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom blog, I found one past post where she had posted a wiki listing of all of her favourite videos, podcasts and slides to share regarding 21st century learning and technology. What a wonderful idea to have a narrowed list of quality videos that have been viewed and approved of by a leading educational technology expert!
Some other video sharing sites I chose to explore this week include:
One World TV
This site based out of the UK is an online video sharing community focused on climate change and global justice.
Big Think
Contains accessible interviews from today’s leaders, academic thinkers and celebrity activists.
Yahoo! Video
Not only is Yahoo a popular search engine, but also host to an online video sharing community.
Yes, there are plenty of choices to make when it comes to video sharing and video viewing sites personally and professionally. Educators must take time to determine which online communities are appropriate to use and which sites work best for potentially uploading and/or sharing educational video experiences at school.
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. (2008). Video Blogging. Retrieved
September 26, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Blog #1 Dare to Photo Share
I have perused photo sharing sites in the past, but have not used any sites to personally or professionally upload photos for sharing. The two main sites I explored this week were Picasa and Flickr. My experiences exploring both formats were quite different and I have some unresolved problems yet to figure out. One being unable to upload a movie of photos I created Picasa, the other one not being able to establish different photo sets in separate photostreams.
In the initial creation of my blog I used Flickr to upload book cover images of my favourite children’s books and place them in a slideshow. My immediate response to Flickr was ‘wow, this is easy and fun at the same time’. However, this past week presented multiple challenges that in the end were not resolved as stated above.
After the fiasco of having my travel pictures mix into the same photostream as my children’s literature pictures, I decided to investigate the workings of Picasa 3. Couple key elements that make Picasa a great photo sharing tool include:
- Great editing, tuning and special effects
- Collage and movie options
- Direct ‘sync to the web’ into Google
- Post photos directly to a blog
I spent time creating photo collages and movies, editing pictures and creating photo files to get a sense of all of the possibilities these two photo sites had to offer in the world of education…actually the possibilities of creative learning are endless. One project I would love to try out would be to create a digital photo portfolio for students, documenting their school year through photos and keeping them organized chronologically in files. At the end of a school year students would have a great digital album to take home.
My biggest concern with sites like Flickr and Picasa is that in order to have students experience these sites they must create online accounts. Students in my school district do have open access to sign up for Google or Yahoo accounts as both sites are blocked.
Through reading Kathy Schrock’s ‘Kaffeeklatsch’ blog this past week I was introduced to Dumpr. Dumpr is an easy to use photo site for creating fun photos to save, share, print, blog or upload to social networking sites. Users are not required to create accounts to upload and print pictures. There is would be a great learning opportunity to teach young students how to upload digital pictures, choose a fun format in which to view the picture and print.
I did check out some of the recommended sites from the “Digital Storytelling” article by Linda C. Joseph. One site worthy of mention is BubbleShare. I did not explore the inner workings of this site (as I just didn’t need to register for another online account this week), instead I surfed the site on the surface. This site really plays to the younger audience with enjoyable clipart, fun frames, and a calendar maker. What differentiates this site from Flickr is that it promotes unlimited space for users.
Photo sharing sites promote ‘digital storytelling’ through the photo lens of the user!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
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