http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WWIAEboqOQ

Pro D Videos

2nd video

Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



Part 7



Part 8



Part 9



Part 10



Part 11



Part 12

Cyber Bullying In School Workshop for Pro D Day

Cyberbullying by Proxy

Direct Attacks

Types of CyberBullies and what to do with them

More Info

Final First List

Megan Meier

Megan Meier Foundation

Will life be a drag after EDES 501?

What does this dragstrip video have in common with EDES 501? Probably more than you might think! On your mark, get set, go!

So here's the deal: I am the driver in this video -metaphorically at least, and the 46 seconds represents the nearly 4 months journey called EDES 501.
Preparation is the key...in the video you'll see the preparation as the warming up of the tires (the "burnout") and getting to the line... in the class my preparation included joining Twitter setting up this blog and following blogs and Twitter folks, and reading the two assigned books prior to the class.

The books are a great staring point for this course. I believe there is a synergism between these books as Davies and Merchant in Web 2.0 for Schools are documenting the phenomena of Web 2.0 tools and talking about them from an academic point of view while Richardson in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts ans Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms primarily explores the tools themselves and relates practical classroom applications for each tool.  A good example of this difference is Davies and Merchant (2009:89) postulates that the wiki could be the death of the author while Richardson (2009:55) praises the wiki as a great collaborative tool. Richardson also uses more screen shots of computers for examples and discusses in greater depth the use and application of the web tools as they apply to practicing teachers while Davies and Merchant pose more theoretical and ethical questions. Together these texts are great companions for one another as they broaden the scope of the conversation regarding the use of Web 2.0 tools in education. I was one of the lucky ones who had the books early as I had ordered my books from Amazon and had them to read over the Christamas break. Having a basic understanding of the Web 2.0 world from these readings I moved toward the starting line  and was ready to begin the course.

Moving down the light tree is how a drag race is started...moving through a list of set-up activities is how I started EDES 501. The start for me in EDES 501 was exactly like the start in the drag race...things seemed to be going very smoothly, for a while at least...that first week I set up my Twitter account and "followed" the people I  found on the assigned list and tried to add others (this became easier after tweeting for a while as I made connections for peole to follow through blogs and other tweets), created my blog, my aggregator (Google Reader) and Classsroom 2.0 for my Ning. I already had a Facebook account so that part was completed. Then I completed the "Getting to Know You" form for the discussion forum as our class introductions to complete my start-up procedure.

Then just like in the drag race things started to get hairy!! And just like the video of the race there were unexpected twists and turns and steep and shallow learning curves... at times I felt like that car in the video veering out of control not really knowing how to handle the power of the machine that I was operating...the number of web tools that I never used before was the main reason that I felt out of control at times...it wasn't the difficulty of each tool, but rather the short amount of time that I could allow for the exploration of them. The toughest tool for me  personally was Twitter...I really didn't get it. There was a lot of digital noise surrounding Twitter that was meaningless such as the Starbucks seat episode and "I am now at the airport in ..." tweets. Then I loaded tweetDeck and this made the journey through Twitter that much easier...Learning the language of Twitter and the use of hash tags was a big step and similar in nature to other tools we looked at. Flickr is a good example of learning enough about the tool to get by but one that I need to revisit to learn in greater depth...I have an idea about using it to collaborate on my yearbook next year...I think if I set up an account for the school name then anyone can add pictures that I could then decide whether or not to use them for the annual....such is the way with the pace of this course though...I think after this post I'll take a break from these tools let my experiences with them move around in my brain for a while and see where in my professional and personal life I will be able to apply them.

Professionally I  see that these tools have great value, as I said above I can see making the school yearbook a more collaborative work by using Flickr not only to upload pictures to but so the students themselves are creating captions and sorting the photos using tags....this is usually an immense job taken on by one teacher and a few dedicated "yearbook club" members. Using Flickr can give ownership to many more students while lessening (I hope) the workload for the people directly involved in the production of the book.

Student journals can also be completed using blogs that can be shared with a very broad audience which could include all members of the educational community or those who have a stake in education. Realistically Web 2.0 tools would completely tear down the walls of the classroom and expose our educational practises to the entire world....a really good way for true openess and accountability in education unlike the ranking of schools on one time provincially mandated skills tests that we currently have in British Columbia.

Podcasts can be posted to school websites for students who miss lessons, wikis and nings can be set up for discussion groups within classrooms or between schools in a district or beyond allowing many educators' ideas to be shared with colleagues and students. There truly is an endless list of applications from the tools that we learned in this class and through reading blogs taking part in live sessions through nings such as Classroom 2.0 I feel confident that my professional growth from this course will be one of the many legacies from my course work in the TL-DL program.

The potential of these tools of course also comes with the risks that are inherent on the internet. As Nicola Kuhn pointed out in her blog on Facebook she tries to keep separate her personal and professional identities when dealing with Web 2.0 tools. Many companies and some school districts have teachers write disclaimers that what they are presenting on the web does not necessarily represent the school or district but is the teacher's own work, opinion or view. The social nature of these tools makes the identities easily blurred and it has been pointed out in my earlier post that we must be very aware of what we are posting as it will be seen by someone somewhere. Leah Betancoourt discusses ways to protect your online "personal brand" to prevent these types of problems.


Despite any pitfalls we must move forward and use these tools to strengthen our commitment to making meaningful, educationally sound choices when inspiring our students to be life-long learners because just like the race car inthe video they will have their squirrelly moments, but we can be their crew and help them along their journey. Like my dad always used to say "If it doesn't kill ya, it makes you stronger!" Well I have survived and may I boldly suggest thrived the "Very, Very Wild Ride" that was the journey through EDES 501  and feel much stronger for what lies ahead in teaching, learning and sharing with my educational and personal networks.

An Epiphany about an Aggregator...or Blogs and RSS by the Headlines

I feel some pressure for this week's blogpost as I have been cut from the grid due to a major wind storm here on Vancouver Island... but alas this gave my brain the rest it needed to have an epiphany about Real Simple Syndication (RSS) and blogging. I went with my family to Denman Island for the Easter weekend but the vacation and the anticipated rest and relaxation were short-lived as my wife (who worked a night shift and was to accompany us to Denman after her sleep) called and said that our temporary garage had been blown over by the wind. Luckily the ferries were running, despite the wind,  and I made my way over to see quite a mess in our back yard...about three hundred square feet of tarp surrounding a mangled and tangled  tubular frame which resembled H.G. Wells'  Martian tripods after a good dose of bacteria got to them. After a quick (three hours) job of moving equipment and supplies into the emptied wood shed I made my way back to Denman where both the power and telephone lines had been brought down by trees...Yikes! No internet...how will I get my course work completed!? I simply commuted between Denman (no power or phone) to my house with power and internet connection...the epiphany happened on the morning of "Easter Monday" I was reading the newspaper and realized that because I only had a 10 minute ferry trip that I was skimming the headlines and looking for articles that I found particularly interesting or relevant to my situation...EUREKA!

This is the world of RSS! The mundane act of reding the local newspaper in the context of this short ferry trip solidified for me what I had read the night before and I finally understood why Will Richardson (2009) wrote "it's the one technology that you should start using today, right now, this minute. And tomorrow, you should teach your  students to use it."

Learning about the Tools.

Of course the use of RSS is directly related to the main topic this week which is blogging and blogs. Through RSS the updates of blogs that I have been following come to me saving me scads of time and energy. I didn't know anything about RSS until this course. Like most web users I would mismanage my time by opening the websites that I found interesting and search for new updates. Now using Google Reader the updates come to me and like the newspaper I can scan the headlines and see if anything catches my attention or is relevant to my situation. Signing up for RSS was simple as I already had a Google account. As Lee LeFever says there are just two steps...I had already signed up now I just needed to add some subscriptions. That was easy as we were given the list of blogs that we were to follow as a course requirement. We also had to add ten of our own and that waas more challenging as I didn't really follow blogs. Luckily most blogs have an icon that you can use to save the RSS feed to your aggregator. It looks like this:

Currently I could add ten blogs every day about various things that I am interested in through sites like Technorati, reading other related blogs or by word of mouth, but then that would be overload! This is a part of the growth of blogging where one blog leads to another  and soon there is a great web of blogs that I have been following both professionally and personally.

Personal Learning and Blogging

It's a big web, a huge web incredibly massive. According to Wikipedia there are over 112, 000,000 blogs being indexed by Technorati. There are an incredible number of blogs to follow and the there are many methods I have discovered for finding blogs of personal interest. Searching through technorati is one way, networking with people of similar interest, reading blogs that link to other blogs, talking face to face with people about technology and blogging, our courses...the list goes on and on... Here are a couple of recent journeys and how I found out about some blogs that I am following... My brother-in-law, Jeff, told me he is now a blogger...so I checked out his site, Double Whammy, which is beginning to chronicle his life with both Celiac Disease and Diabetes. He has a post discussing transplant which linked to Eva Markvoort's blog, 65 Red Roses which is the battle that she had with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) which, sadly, ended on March 27th of this year.  In Eva's honour I will also add the links to BC Transplant (Organ Donation) and  the Cystic Fibrosis site. Jeff also talked about his upcoming wedding and the anxiety raised by needing to have a cake that would be appropriate for the celiacs that would be in attendance including himself and his sister who happens to be my wife. This lead to a link to the Gluten Free Vancouver blog which is a great storehouse of information such as restaraunts, grocery stores and other bits of information of concern for those with Celiac Disease.  From here I discovered the Sweet Tooth cakery site. Each of these sites led me to other related sites and so it is with the social web that we can learn both personally and professionally as a community of learners that are linked to each other in ways that we have to experience to discover.


Teaching and Learning and Blogging

Much like my personal learning my  professional use of blogging seems to have no limits. Classroom teaching, professional development, communication with the educational community are areas where blogging has a place.

In the classroom students will be able to make meaningful reflections on their work on their own blogs, make comments on each other's blogs and find blogs of interest to follow. To help them I can now use my experiences in blogging and finding blogs to give them starting points and offer tips on safety, but after that the journey will be theirs and it will be unique...of course I will need to use an RSS feed (thanks google Reader) to follow their progress!

Blogging is all about creating and maintaining community. To this end Mark J. Stock makes an important point for school adminstrators- use blogging to maintain a relationship with stake holders "Blogging, he says, provides education leaders with direct, personal access to stakeholders..." He goes on to mention that this method of communication may have less turbulence than a relationship with local media.

In terms of professional development it takes the idea of a pro-d day and makes it seem like a senseless activity. By linking with other blogging educators my ability to collaborate about trends in education, ideas for curriculum and all other aspects are limited only by my imagination and time constraints. One example of a recent feed from my Google Reader is Will Richardson's Webblogg-ed site on Connected Teaching where he quotes the American government's  new National Educational Technology Plan: “…using technology to help build the capacity of educators by enabling a shift to a model of connected teaching.” Obviously, this implies much more than being “connected” in the we-all-have-access sense. As the plan goes on to say, it means that “teams of connected educators replace solo practitioners” and that “connection replaces isolation.” Teaching can be isolating at times as we and our students are bound by the four walls of our classroom...blogging for both myself and my students can break apart these walls as we connect with others across the planet. A great example of this comes from Buffy Hamilton's blog The Unquiet Library entitled Why Student Blogging Matters. Here student Nolan tells of a real world person who linked to his blog who happened to be an expert in the field that Nolan was studying...ceratinly a more enriching experience than he would have had locked up in a classroom with walls as boundries.


Pro-D days have a noble goal..to help develop we teachers as professionals, but often they are over and done with and we head back to isolation...this does not need to be the case with blogging and the social web  I think it was best said on the PLP website that education should be an experience not an event; a community, not a course. This integrates nicely with our view that the web and social learning need to be integrated into classrooms....by educators that are connected and understand the value of blogging...as a teacher-librarian I now feel compelled to keep blogging and to get students and teachers in my school and district to do the same...but first I need to check the headlines of my aggregator to see what else is new in the blogosphere!

Sometimes I feel like a Twit!

So this is the blog we have been waiting all term for...the Twitter blog! Well I can't honestly say that this is really the case for me. I can hardly wait for this course to end so I can pare down my Twittter list so I don't have to know who is at what airport or going to what town...On the bright side I realize by the number of parodies of Twitter on YouTube that I am not alone...here is but one example. This may sound quite negative, but I really don't get Twitter. Of all of the social networking tools that are available to us Twitter is the one that I don't seem to be able to weed out the good stuff from the "digital noise" as William Ferriter calls it of daily events that I do not need to know in people's lives. Maybe this is because I read to much of everything and haven't been able to skim well enough for Twitter. Perhaps it is because I don't have a cell phone and Twitter is more for the mobile set. After all is it important for me to know that there are no seats available in the Detroit Starbucks - when I live in Union Bay? Do I need to know that @Mastermaq is "sleeping as of 22:31 via Ping.fm" ( and by the way how can he type that tweet while he is sleeping? -that seems suspicious to me!)  But aside from the mundane and the banal what can Twitter really do for me? If I could sift through all of the sand and various other sediment and debris flowing down the river of life in Twitter tweets I'm sure I can find some really valuable particles of gold. But like all prospectors it just doesn't seem like I'll strike it rich when nothing seems to sparkle in the bottom of my pan for such a long time. But alas I shall track my Twitter journey in the three parts starting with...

Learning About the Tool

I created my Twitter account at the beginning of the course in January. Prior to that time I had heard of Twitter but really wasn't interested in it; after all there are blogs, wikis, webpages and emails to read, write and make note  of...who has the extra time? I would log onto the Twitter site and catch up on what people were talking about...at first just the other members of our class and the people on the list we were told to follow for the class. Gradually I added a few others, Andrew Hallam a teacher turned investment advisor whom I taught with many years ago, the Twisst site which I read about while browsing tweets and others of personal interest. I now follow 32 different "twitterers."

Twitter, I have learned,  has its own language including hashmarks, retweet, direct message and others as found on this video from butterscotch.com.  (The complete series of 10 videos to learn about Twitter can be found here)Learning the language makes it easier to navigate around Twitter and understand the flow of conversation that is constantly buzzing around as well as making better use of the limited s[pace you have to "tweet." I particularly find the hashmarks useful as one quick entry into the search area of the appropriate hashmark and I can see if there is any news for the group. For instance if I want to know what people are talking about in Edmonton I can type #YEG (yeg is from Edmonton's airport code) into the search and any hashmarked tweets will appear! For this course I use #tldl in the search box. I have to admit that the program is pretty slick..the feature for direct messaging is really fast...just type a 'd' at the beginning of a tweet  and the "What's happening?" title becomes "Direct Message:" although this does cost a couple of the 140 allowable characters per tweet!

I have also changed the look of my Twitter page using the "settings" and then the "design" buttons. These are fairly limited, but there is also the offer to use Themeleon to customize your page further. I didn't use time to explore this option as it required registering on another site and I'm happy enough with the simple customization offered on the design page.

The last thing I'll talk about are the links in Twitter. To me they are the most useful part of the whole Twitter experience. When I take the time to sift through the airport visits, coffee shop hassles and other bits of useless information I am left with the links... the golden sparkle in the bottom of my pan, the lifeline to new ideas and information that relate to my career, personal life and interests. Due to the immediacy of Twitter I have never followed a link that has been out of date... the information is always current. This is a big step up from some websites that seem liken they are rarely updated. This is where the list of peole I follow begins to make sense to me... the sharing of resources and information...maybe Twitter isn't so bad after all?!

Using the Tool for my Own Personal Learning

Personally I  can see Twitter as a way to find and share resources, but as I mentioned before Twitter is the "right now" medium and as I do not have a cell phone I feel left behind by its 'What are you doing right now?" type format. I think my use of Twitter tells me that I am of an older generation of web users that seek information and not of the "new" Web 2.0 generation that use the web socially. My brother-in-law is a great example of a Web 2.0 user as he sends updates to say he is at the ferry line-up or at the Starbucks or whatever...this drives me nuts...I don't need to now this stuff! But there is stuff that I need to know and that is as my role of parent...currently my children are very young and are not using Twitter but if they were I'd definitely want to know what they were sending out....Jeff Ramone in his article "Private Eyes Are Watching You: Twitter Oversharing and Its Bizarre Real-World Consequences" brought to my attention that using FourSquare and Twitter actually allows people to know where you are...this also means where you are not which relates to the public awareness that is being raised at Pleaserobme.com. As a parent I am concerned about my children oversharing their information and becoming vulnerable to harm in some form. Having said this as an example of the dangers of twitter I must balance this with the lighter side of Twitter...the website Overheard.it quotes silly or sad quotes and I have found many gems here including the hashtags #whywecantfireteachers and #Educationiskey which leads me to...

Using the Tool in terms of Teaching and Learning

This picture is definitely worth a thousand words...many of the things that can be done using Twitter in Edcuation.
Much like wikis and nings I can see a huge potential for Twitter in teaching and learning. despite my earlier rantings of the digital noise produced by Twitter there are many reasons to embrace this technology. In William ferriter's article "Why Teachers Should Try Twitter." he outlines the most obvious which is to make new contacts to share resources, but he also talks about how the use of Twitter has deepened his understanding of using technology to differentiate learning for students.

Twitter can also be used for other activities as cited on the TeachPaperless site here. The article this link leads to also stresses that Twitter can be set up to only allow certain followers  (ie a class) which addresses some of the safety concerns of Web 2.0 use in the classroom. Once again through this article I can see that we need to teach our students the proper and responsible use of sites like Twitter which is only possible if these sites are not blocked at the district level. I really see a need to free up the access of the internet including Twitter to help our students make sense of their digital world...gee it looks like I'm fighting for Twitter...I've come a long way in just one blog post!!:) Sometimes I feel like a Twit for not seeing all the good of Twitter at first!

When Facebook gets too scary...the Ning is the Thing!

It seems that everyone has a Facebook account these days. Well maybe not everyone, but according to the latest Wikipedia article Facebook has a staggering four hundred million registered users and My Space logged its one hundred millionth user way back in August of 2006. Clearly many folks are taking advantage of the social networking opportunities being offered. According to Will Richardson (2009, page 6) more than sixty percent of adolescents in the US are using social networking sites which is a figure that surpasses the use by educators.



Learning about the tools.

Facebook (FB) and Ning are the main tools that I explored this week. Although I opened an account on FB prior to this class, I have used it very little primarily to keep in touch with family and share photos and the “What’s happening this week” type of thing. I have had an FB account now for some time although I could not find a record of the date that I opened the account. I remember it being very easy to open an FB account. The truth is anyone who is over 13 years of age and has a valid email account is welcome to open an account on FB. Finding and adding friends is the cornerstone of Facebook. Davies and Merchant (2009 page 16) say that establishing and maintainingconnections between participants is the salient feature of social networking sites. To establish these relationshipsis a quick (usually) and easy process. The snag to the quickness is that if the friend you are trying to find has a very common name you may end up searching through many similarly named people to find who you are looking for. This problem is compounded as many people do not show a photograph on their profile page unless you are already a friend making identification very difficult. Add to this the fact that they may not even be a registered member of the group and the search may be in vain. This happened with two people I tried to locate this week.

Once establishing a group of friends their information will appear on your “feed” and this will keep you up to date with them.

Unlike other web 2.0 sites that I have explored FB doesn’t have an affinity that links the members together such as the photos in Flickr or the videos on YouTube but rather you are "mapping' the set of connections that everyone has in real life.'" (Davies & Merchant 2009) page16 In FB you choose who you are connected to (or they choose you with your permission!) Once a member with a list of friends you can update your own profile by adding text to the "What's on your mind" box which is very much like a Twitter feed.

There are many ways to waste time on Facebook including numerous games. I have not played any of these games, but often would receive “updates” and “invites” to games from people who are my FB “friends.” One of the best things that I learned about FB is that you can “hide” any of these updates which remove some of the clutter on the feed.

I do not belong to any groups although I just discovered that we have a group on FB for this class…did I miss something? I have requested to be added as a member…

I also recently discovered that FB lists all of the birthdays of my friends by the month…no more excuses for missed birthdays…I did wonder why I got birthday wishes from people on FB…now I know!


FB also suggests friends to add based on friends of friends ( a good example of the Common Craft video!) The site will tell me how many mutual friends |I have with the suggested person. FB also prompts me to send friends a message or “poke” them…I really think many of these features are a waste of my time as I really only want to share some photos and keep in touch with a few friend and family members…speaking of which the younger members of my family and my friends children all seem to have most of the four hundred million people listed as their friends! Well no…not actually but my nephew has over three hundred and my friend’s daughter has two hundred sixty-five…this number is down significantly from the six hundred and fifty-eight she had when her father entered the fray and limited her participation…she also had the security settings completely off so anyone could see her information…

For many of the reasons outlined above I prefer Nings. They are like FB but better…at least better for the education system as a teacher, school or district can have all the advantages of Social networking without the risk of being completely public.

I recently joined the Ning for Comox Valley Teachers. The advantages of Nings are that they are subject to approval for membership…this prevents many of the pitfalls I see with the commercial social networking sites such as FB. There are privacy setting on FB that allow users to limit who sees what information and this is automatically set for account holders registered as being ages thirteen to fifteen for their protection.

Tools In Terms of My Personal Learning

FB is not for me for my personal learning…the opposite is true for the various Nings that I belong to. FB is used for personal communication with family and friends and now that I am able to limit the amount of SPAM in FB by using the “hide” button it is more streamlined for this purpose. As a parent I would certainly be aware of and try to communicate openly with my children regarding their use of any social networking site like FB. I am not sure that most of the friends on many people's lists are truly friends that they have a real relationship with as suggested by the founder of Facebook Zuckerman (Davies & Merchant 2009 page 16)

Unlike FB the Comox Valley teachers Ning and other Nings that
I belong to (Classroom 2.0 for one) have limited application for personal learning but I use them more for professional learning.

Tools in Terms of Professional Learning

The Nings are great for education as they remove the threat of inadvertent or inappropriate content or contact as they are by membership only. Kevin P. Brady (2010) alerts school adminstrators to the use of both Elgg and Ning which "have been developed specifically for the education community while simultaneously addressing safety concerns voiced by school leaders." The possibility of a good social network exists, but within the guidelines of the administrator of the Ning. There are many different Nings available and I have recently become a member of one focused on our school district as well as one that focuses on history and social studies. Each of these contributes to my professional life through collaboration with other educators in the same field as me.

An important aspect of social networking sites was the divide apparent between educators (specifically adminstrators) and the views of parents and students. According to Brady (2010) "more than half of the education leaders wanted to prohibit the use of social networking sites in their schools, a majority of the parents and students expressed high expectations about the positive role social networking technologies could play in students' lives." As a professional educator I can see that this divide needs to be closed as the some of the effects on students  "include Internet learning, tutoring, time management, career exploration, peer support, stress, cheating, frustration, boredom, student responsibilities, dress code, and cyberbullying." (Strom et al 2010)

If students are "puzzled by the fact that teachers seldom employ the Internet to motivate them or to improve their capability for self-direction" as described by Strom then we as educators need to address the use of social networking in schools and as Brady suggests lift the limits that have been set on these sites in education to more fully engage our students in the digital (arguably their) world!

Aside from the student needs there are also institutional needs. According to Meredith Farkas institutions  need to create terms of use agreements for their employees to ensure that they are not being misrepresented on social networking sites as she sees the "blurring online of the divisions between professional and personal can impact organizations." (Farkas 2009) Farkas goes on to suggest that "you may also want to think about how your library represents itself online. The best way to promote and protect your brand is to have a strong presence and consistent message in the spaces your patrons frequent."

So engaging students as well as protecting both students and the reputation of your instiitution become professional concerns that need to be addressed when contemplating social networking sites. And remember when Facebook gets too scary...the Ning is the thing!


References

Brady, K.. (2010, February). Lifting the Limits on Social Networking Sites. School Administrator, 67(2), 8. Retrieved March 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1950191201).

Davies, J., & Merchant G. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Farkas, M.. (2009, December). Governing Social Media. American Libraries, 40(12), 35. Retrieved March 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1919602251).

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other PowerfulWeb Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Strom, P., Strom, R., Wing, C., & Beckert, T.. (2010, February). Adolescent Learning and the Internet. The Education Digest, 75(6), 10-16. Retrieved March 19, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1938473731).

MultiMedia Sharing Sites: EVERYONE can get into it!

French conversation group Paris
Originally uploaded to Flickr by LetThemTalk

Is this image a thing of the past? People actually talking and learning about something without technology seems at once refreshing and old school after spending this week using Animoto and Voicethread.

This image is in stark contrast to the Voicethread "classroom of the future?" discussion found here. 

Reflections on the Process of Learning about the Tool

This week I examined two new tools that I had never used before and that I feel may be able to create classrooms without walls as visioned in the introductory voicethread.  I had seen Voicethread used once before in one of our earlier courses but had never even heard of Animoto prior to exploring multimedia sharing sites.

I began with Voicethread and created the usual account that was free and only took a couple of minutes to register for. This part of the process has become quite automatic and is the same pretty much for all of the sites I have explored to date.  Once registered I was encouraged to start my first voicethread. I uploaded and made comments on two pictures. I typed the comments and then recorded further comments on
using a microphone. Setting up a Voicethread was very quick and easy.

I have had two class members add to my Voicethread which is kind of cool! It does give a sense  of community. But for me the best part about learning about Voicethread however is seeing how others are using it. One example is this cool game that plays audio clips from movies and asks people to guess which movies the clips are from. I also liked how people are using it as a presentation tool as in this example where "Monster Cards" are presented and commented on... more on the uses in the next two sections now I need to look at Animoto.

Animoto was a very easily setup account and a really great interface to create a good quality video very quickly. Having said that the free version is quite limiting as the final product is only thirty seconds long. Of course it is interesting to note that televison commercials are packed with information and images and they are the same thirty seconds long. There were three easy steps to create the video.

In the first step I was able to add images and video to the mash-up (they say it is an MTV style video) It took only a few minutes to add sixteen large pictures...had I resampled the pictures (used fewer pixels)  I am certain I could have reduced that time by nearly half. The pictures appear on an array and at this point you are able to move them around.

I next clicked on Step 2 and I chose one of their songs to use as my background music. They had a great selection of genres of music each with many selections to choose from. I f this wasn't your bag you ar were also allowed to upload your own files for music. At his point it is clearly stated that the user must have the rights to use the uploaded file...I suspect that many would upload popular songs that they wouldn't have the rights to and I am not sure this would be actively pursued for enforcement especially if the site is popular. Davies and Merchant (2009) devote some space to their chapter six discussing copyright issues using Napster and the court challenges that it has faced as examples and I think that there is the potential for this type of lawsuit for these mash-up sites as the music is being used perhaps illegally. One way around this was the excellent selection of songs offered right on the site which have been cleared for copyright infringement. This is a good deal for the artists too as they get exposure to a larger audience by letting the site use their music. There were links to the artists' websites as well as a link to buy the track. A real win-win relationship much as described by Cory Doctorow on his website when he discusses his reasoning for releasing his book "Little Brother" for free in many electronic forms.

With the music out of the way it was time to create the video. The third step was called finalize and it rendered the video into a usable form after analyzing the pictures and music choices. The final screen before rendering offered a chance to make a title for the video as well as a description and the name of the producer of the video. After creating the video I found a number of ways to save and share the video. I chose to embed the video and it appears here:
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

While exploring Animoto I really had the feeling that they are all about selling then upgrades to unlimited video length (remember the free version limits you to 30 seconds) and other "premium" features. This is fine because the potential of the free version is great for school use. Another feature that I want to mention is the link to their pitch for musicians and artists. There is a page dedicated to recruiting these groups by offering to give free exposure to the artists in return of free use of their original work. I think this is a win-win situation!

The Tool in Terms of My Own Personal Learning

I am not sure that I will use these programs so much for learning, but I woulds definitely use them for sharing pictures with family. In this way it overlaps with Flickr, but I like the interface of these tools and to create an occasional video as a different way to share pictures would be refreshing!. As a parent I would encourage my children to present their ideas on these sites, warning them of the potentiel risks outlined in Davies and Merchant (2009) page 78 including exposure to inappropriate contact and breach of copywrite. The Voicethread can also be used much like a wiki. In fact I sort of see it like a wiki with the authors shown in chronological order adding to the conversation.

The Tool in Terms of Teaching and Learning

Any topic that requires discussion could be the subject of a voice thread. Students could share their work as an image or as a video and others could comment on it. Peer reviewing could be done with the whole class instead of just "exchanging papers" The linked examples earlier in this post are examples of a few of the unlimited uses for these tools. Whether the sites are used for sharing learning about |Canadian History (I want to do a Prime Minister video) or sharing a story these sites are a unique way for studetns to express themselves and become part of a meaningful conversation in an asyncronous way at their own convienience.  I can recall having students share work and when one student had to wait for another to share with... here everyonne can be a creator and a critic and these tools are truly social as they let everyone get involved!

Why the Wiki? Collaboration is Key!

Organizing group work through email can be incredibly difficult...the trail of mail really leads nowhere and there is little coordination of the information to organize it and make it valuable to the members of the group. I know this sounds a little bit like a summary of the Creative Commons video entitled Wikis in Plain English, however it is also my experience in a project that I worked on with one of our University colleagues, Geoff Orme.

Geoff and I became partners for a project and began by emailing and later telephoning (can we remember that technology Web 2.0 ers?) each other to set up our project  and to figure out what each of us would contribute to the project. During one of our conversations Geoff suggested that we use a wiki. I said sure not really knowing what a wiki was but after he gave me the quick notes version of how we could use it we were on our way. And true to form for the Creative Commons video it really was as simple as "edit, write and save." We completed and presented our entire project using the wiki.

I didn't fully understand the potential of the wiki then, but did realize that it was a great tool. For this course I have expanded my knowledge of the wiki but still feel I have a far way to go to exploit the vast potential of this interactive and collaborative Web 2.0 tool.

Reflection on the Process of Learning about the Tool

To reacquaint myself with wikis I viewed many wikis through the trailfire for this week but more on that later. Both Richardson (2009) and Davies & Merchant (2009) spent a great deal of time using wikipedia as a model for all wikis. It is highly successful and demonstrates all of what a wiki can become once we lose the fear of vandalism, and let go of the authority for information as Davie & Merchant point out with the encyclopaedia example at the beginning of their writing on wikis. Using what I had read in these two articles as a starting point I went to Wikipedia to look up Union Bay which is the small town which I call home on Vancouver Island. There is an article for Union Bay and I compared the information that was there to a history of Union Bay book that I own and it was amazingly accurate. One of the knocks against Wikipedia has been that because it can be edited by anyone that it may not be accurate. In fact Davies and Merchant have titled their chapter on wikis "Wikis:The Death of the Author?" I think that may be correct on the level that there may no longer be one author for an article, but perhaps many who will write, edit and collaborate thanks to the medium of wikis. So really wikis can be considered the birth of many authors!

Another point I found repeated in the various readings I did on wikis was that of citizen journalism which brings about the discussion of the speed and ease of creating new information using wikis. The term wiki reportedly comes from the Hawaiin term wiki-wiki which means quickly (Hawaii 5-0 enthusiasts will remember Chin-ho saying this often!) mixed with the word encyclopedia giving us a quick encylopedia. Davies and Merchant use the example of the London bombings to illustrate just how quickly information can be put on to Wikipedia through mobile devices such as cell phones. The first article appeared less than 2 hours after the attack and there have been over three thousand revisions since that time. Both numbers are impressive, the speed deomstrates the immediacy of this medium and the number of revisions demonstates what multiple authors can contribute.

As part of learning about wikis I created a wiki and posted its address to our class discussion for anyone who wanted to look at and contribute to it...at the time of this writing Tom took me up on the offer and wrote comments on the wiki. In cretaing the wiki I just registered with zoho.com for a free wiki site and then editted the wiki. It was a simple process. As with many web 2.0 sites I was encouraged to add tags to my wiki which I did. On the right side column of the wiki it at first said that I had no tags and that I should add them to make my wiki more easily found, however it took me a while to figure out thta the + sign near the edit button was where the tags were to be added. Other parts of the swetup were much easier. I used the templates that they supplied and found them very easy to use. I added a second page to further work with the wiki and this worked well including automatically linking it as a subpage to the home page. Having built websites using HTML I find the easse of wikis a thing of beauty, although I do feel a loss of control as things such as page layout and fonts are preset for me. I feel confident in the basics of wikis and feel that I can use them both personally and professionally in the future.

The Tool and My Own Personal Learning

The main use I see for my personal learning is collaboration. When a project requires collaboration I will immediately suggest a wiki instead of using email to coordinate tasks on a project and contributions by the various members of a group. I think that wikis can replace emails for these types of projects because not only can I share information about the project, but I can also create the project using wiki software. Wikis simplify the process by posting the information once for the whole group to see compared to emails which need to be opened and refered back to often multiple times to share the same information with colleagues.

The Tool and Teaching and Learning

There is limitless potential for wikis to be used in educational settings. In all area of the curriculum wikis have a place. I currently have a homework page for math, but I am considering creating a wiki to link lessons, review, homework and real life applications of mathematics together. This could alos be a place where students are able to support one another in their learning by asking and answering questions reagrding their work.
I have created a Flickr page for my yearbook and we treat it somewhat as a wiki to share the photographs and fundamentally it is based on the wiki premise that everyone is the editor in chief and evreyone can make a contribution. I will look further into creatinga wiki for the yearbook as well as the Flickr page.

One of the keypoints that I got from Vicki Davis in her Cool Cat Teacher Wiki was to begin slowly and build the wikis carefully. I feel that this week has sparked the interest in wikis and that I need to look at the goals for my students and how to achieve them using wikis...

PODcasting ---an audio journey!

This is my test "podcast"

I put the link to my test podcast first because it was the result of more work than I would have thought necessary! Here is my story...or

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

Podcasting or making audio files available for Playing On Demand is actually quite simple. My process this week reminded me however, of my Grade 9 Math class because as we study the introductory algebra I keep telling them that the steps are simple, but the number of steps makes it more complex. In my process of learning this week the number of new (never before completed) steps made the task that much more complex.

The first step was to create a recording to be played by others on demand...that was the easy part for me this week as I've already done this as part of a prior assignment. I used Audacity which I like more every time I have a chance to use it. I created five tracks on Audacity and then exported them as an mp3 file which automatically mixed it into a stereo file with a left and right channel.

Now that I had my file I had no clue how to make it become part of my blog...in the previous assignment I just uploaded the files to the discussion of our class website... so I went to the help section in Blogger and looked up instructions on how to add a podcast to my blog.   

The help was very helpful...it gave me the choice to link to third party files or to create my own (podcasting) I chose the latter option  and followed the instructions with I hope some degree of success... but of course there was another set of steps needed to rookies such as myself...that was setting up an account so that my files could be "hosted" or uploaded to a site that my blog could then link to...enter Box.net

Then next step I needed to take was to open an account with a hosting site. The help section in blogger suggested box.net and I tried it. It was relativly easy to start a free account which allows me to store up to 1 gigabyte of files to share otr link to.

Finally I made the link at the start of this post which unlocks my "test" podcast. 

Each of these steps is rather simple, but much like the algebra my grade 9 students are learning as I add more steps the whole process becomes more complex and time-consuming! It is the time that it takes for each step and the learning of the technologies that  I find difficult, not the actual learning. I complete learning how to use the tool at a minimal level which is frustrating because \i can see the use of these tools and would like to explore them in greater depth, but alas that will have to wait until the course ends and I find more time for it...this leads me to...

My Own Personal Learning

The main use of podcasting in my personal life has been through the master's program at the U. of Alberta. In our last course together Joanne had introductory podcasts for topics throughout the course. My colleagues pointed out the convenience of these as they could travel in their cars or do such tasks as gardening while learning about various facets of the course through podcasts. As a non-ownwer of an mp3 player of any kind I was jealous of the freedon that the podcasts were giving to my fellow students as I was chained to my computer. This leads me to believe that while I do not own a portable means of accessing the files Podcasting probably isn't for me... having said that I do like learning how to use audacity, however, the "Sound Recorder" that comes with windows could also make decent enough audio files.... this covers the fact that I likely will not be creating a number of podcasts in the near future, however, I have visited sites such as the Willowdale school site and see enormous potential for podcasting for my students which leads me to...

Teaching and Learning

Podcasting has enormous potential as a medium for students to share information within the class and outside of the class. In order to create good podcasts students will have to research the topics that they are discussing and with guided learning practices the sky is the limit on the curricular areas that can be covered in podcasting. I just finished listening to the Willowdale Elementary school podcast about the Olympic Games and it was very well done...I can see the social opportunities as a group of students plans, reserarches and records the podcast. They added music clips to segue from each topic and this is another area a student would have to gain some expertise in to create a good quality podcast. Will Richardson (2009) talks about the ease of creating a podcast and the fact that Willowdale includes students as early as Grade 1 indicates the ease of which he speaks. richardson also writes about the risk of putting children from schools on the web but the Willowdale example tackles this by only identifying first names of students in their radio shows.

The big con I see with podcasting is that it is only a "half medium" meaning that we are so used to having both audio and visual that I see audio only as a weakness...videocasting is where i see the future of web applications... Richardson points out that podcasting can be used for interviews, but in videocasting we can see the interview...allowing us to interpret body language of the speakers as well as voice cues... I grew up listening to radio and enjoyed the Network Replays of such shows as "The Shadow Knows" but still see video as a better option for today's students... I am fortunate enough to have a set of digital camcorders available for my students to whom I teach media... this is perhaps why I am partial to video... I must concede that not every school has this luxury and Richardson (2009 p. 113) points out that it is very inexpensive to run a radio station with a web connection and very little equipment... this is the main advantage I can see for the audio podcasts...I personally and professionally prefer videocasts.

WOW! You can do that with social bookmarking?...

Photograph originally uploaded by Greg Easton Photography

Perhaps like most everyone else who has used the internet I have experienced two fundamental truths; one, that you can find just about the perfect whatever it is you are looking for on the internet and two, once you leave the website that contains it you'll never be able to find it again. Ever. Even with Google and, if necessary, a good fortune teller with a crystal ball. Of course I should bookmark the site which is made both fast and easy as all browsers have this capability built into them and in two mouse clicks I could save myself both time and grief. Well this old solution was better than nothing, however I travel from work and back and use different computers and bookmarks or favourites do not travel through the air with the greatest of ease...time for a new solution... enter social bookmarking! Now not only are my bookmarks portable, I can share them and find people with similar interests or vocations who may also have other bookmarks that will be valuable to me as mine may be to others.


Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

I can sum up what I knew about social bookmarking in one word...nada! I must admit to not even having heard of social bookmarking. Bookmarking, yes, but social bookmarking? Nope!
So I decided to sign-up for a delicious account and get into the fray...a very simple process and now that I seem to be signing up for everything I have my user name and password figured out already. Then as I started using delicious I got sidetracked into the following link after link of interesting, but not course-related websites...much like a maze and at some point I realized that I had gone down a particular path too long and it was time to re-establish my purpose and get my bearings back.
Something on delicious just didn't feel right for me...I didn't add the menu bar buttons while signing up and found it difficult to try and put them on afterward...so I thought that I'd explore a different site...in her article Using Social Bookmarking to Organize the Web Kirstin Fontichiaro (2008) named delicious and Furl.net as the two best-known websites for social bookmarking so I thought I would try Furl...I have not discovered what has happened to Furl, but it appears to have been taken over by Diigo... by default I arrived at Diigo and I am very happy that I have.
From the first welcome screen I very much like the feel of Diigo...this screen included a short video demonstrating the uses of Diigo and how easy it is to use. I signed up for an account and then downloaded the Diigo toolbar...I didn't want to repeat my button mistake like with Delicious! I am looking to build a playhouse for my children so to explore making some bookmarks I decided to check out some of those sights and add them to my Diigo account.
The process was very simple as shown in the demonstration...I just found a site I was interested in and clicked on the bookmark button on the toolbar and presto up pops a dialogue box which already had the URL and a title for the website and gave me options to add tags and a description and even gave me suggestions for tags that I had used earlier. When I revisited my site I was able to make a list called playhouse plans and voila I am organized and feel that I'll be able to find the sites of interest with no difficulty.

I also checked out the ability of highlighting and adding sticky notes to the web pages that I saved. Both worked flawlessly and I am excited to add them to my research capabilities! I have accessed my account from school and home and this truly is a vast improvement over the old favourites and bookmarks included with internet explorer...I hope to make contacts on the site to share information and use this social aspect of these sites work for me as well...

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning.

I think my own learning will be enhanced as I have better control over saving my own bookmarks, but also because with a quick search I can find other sites that have been saved by people who have similar interests to me. Likewise I will waste less time in trying to find sites of interest. The advantage that social bookmarking has here for me personally is that the tags that I added can be used instantly to sort all of my saved websites unlike the old folder in a folder in a folder method that I employed using the browser's where I might forget where I put a particular bookmark that applied to more than one area.
I also wonder if these bookmarking sites will slow ndown the number of websites being created...I teach grade 9 Math and have found many useful sites either for blackline masters or videos explaining a particular content area...because they are so easy to find I didn't have to create and post new but similar if not the same resources this perhaps could help slow the need for new websites because the existing ones are more readily found using this bookmarking system. Similarly I am not the only person who is looking for playhouse plans...infact when I did a community -wide search I found 58 tags for playhouse...some were for theatrical playhouses, but I did find some good sites. It is always good to hae a selection available before making a choice and certainly the selection I found was adequate to give me some great ideas.

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning.

All of the savings of time and energy and the great selection of sites available from my personal learning apply above apply to teaching and learning. Having said that I read an article that got me thinking about how we are going to deal with academic integrity. David Jakes(2009) has written an article called Cheater or Collaborator in which he sets up a scenario where a student goes to other students sites and gets their bookmarks and uses these sites for information... many might consider this cheating, however it is using social bookmarking for exactly what it is for...finding appropriate sites and sharing them...as teachers would we view this differently if the student took the bookmarks from an anonymous member of Diigo? What would make it different if we would treat them differently? I see this a shift from independent research to collaborative research, but the final paper or assignment would still be the students own work (I'd hope!)

The uses of social bookmarking in the class are vast...it supports the model of teachers as learners and learners as teachers as each individual can add to the growing list of resources available to the entire learning community.

As a network administrator in my school district I see social networking as creating a vast network of the whole web as it was envisioned to be since its conception...as an example some students are amazed that they can log on to any computer in the school and find their work at that computer and then next class use a different computer and still all their work is resident (apparently) on the new computer. Likewise I can log onto any computer that has web access and now find the bookmarks that I made at home or at school or anywhere...this is a truly powerful application of the web and this power can be demonstrated to students as they can find good quality sites in just a couple of clicks of the mouse...then there will be two new truths to finding anything on the web; one, that you can find just about the perfect whatever it is you are looking for on the internet and two, once you leave the website that contains it you'll always be able to find it again because of social bookmarking!

References

Fontichiaro, K.. (2008, May). Using Social Bookmarking to Organize the Web. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(9), 27-28. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1466959301).

Jakes, D.. (2009, July). Cheater or Collaborator? Tech & Learning, 29(12), 50. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1793097561).

You Tube and "Banned"width...Frustration from the converted!

Videosharing week would be so much better if we were allowed to share videos freely in our school district. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Reflections on the process of learning about videosharing

Akin to Flickr YouTube was fun to learn although I must admit more time consuming. Much like the rest of the "connected" world I was already familiar with YouTube and the idea of video sharing but I had never attempted to upload a video to the site nor had I been a member, although I had previously watched many videos on YouTube. Well now I am a member and I've posted my first ever video called Videosharing Guru (see below)...although I'm not a Guru at all as outlined in the video. I like the search feature which always brings up amazing results if only too many. One instance is the "How to" videos. My wife has been teaching our daughter to knit and our daughter asked me to help her tie the yarn on the needle to get her started...I have no idea how to knit so...YouTube! Sure enough I now know how to cast on and have found a great site for introductory knitting from the video. I also like the ability to link videos directly from YouTube to my blog (or is that vice-versa?) and the fact that you can at least in a limited way customize the appearance of the video on your personal blog. I chose to put two videos on this blog to demonstrate that I found and can use the customize feature and present the second video now...



...this second video I made at a site that I discovered from the first...such is the "hyperlink" - does anyone else even refer to them as that anymore? - world that takes one idea or concept and leads to the next and so on...

There are some other features that are available on YouTube which I explored and thought were worthy of mention...the "Share" feature which allows one to share in any number of ways including a link to put into email or instant messaging or you can put an email address and YouTube sends it for you... the "Related Videos" section also is norteworthy because it instantly gives you videos with similar tags and can help explore a concept or idea more fully. One example of this was the number of "Confederation" projects completed by students...my favourite features "Johnny Mac" for our first Prime Minister...of coure the quality of some are better than others and this leads me to the amount of time it takes to find good videos in the sea of average ones.

An important note on learning about the tool is that I had to limit my time and try to stay focused on learning about YouTube as opposed to watching videos which I ended up doing a number of times...this is important because my students are also likely to let one video lead to the next and "stray" off task. As a Social Networking site ( SNS) YouTube is similar to Flickr, but for me at least I don't see myself becoming an active member. I will address this further in the next section on my Personal Learning.

You Tube and My Own Personal Learning

I use YouTube all the time personally. From guitar lessons to home improvements I have watched videos to learn a vast array of different skills. The number of videos is expanding at a tremendous pace and I have always been able to find a video that is helpful...one example is learning how to make dovetail joints in woodworking...I bought a new jig and tried to follow the instructions that came with it, but found that frustrating...Solution? YouTube! The Porter Cable jig I have was featured in a video which helped me see what I couldn't get from the instructions...very helpful! From this same video there were the "Related Videos" section and I spent some time following the trail of videos and going to different websites exploring more ideas of joinery and cabinetry related to bbut quite far from my original search.

The video at the top of this blog was found on YouTube...I searched for YOUtube banned in schools and it came up and led me to the site where I made my own video...this type of personal learning is a great benefit of YouTube.

YouTube and Teaching and Learning

Really in my school district this is a moot point as we do not have access to YouTube as it is blocked at the district level... having said that I see the great potential for the use of YouTube in education...students who are away could watch parts of lessons that were recorded and uploaded by teachers (many already exist and it does not have to be me presenting to my class for instance but rather I could link a particular Math concept video on my homework page)...visual learners can watch videos and learn in their best way...videos are a great way for students to demonstrate their knowledge in creative ways...the main thing for teachers to do is to lobbytheir districts to get access to YouTube so it can be used as a resource and as a presentation tool...my first video demonstrated that some districts allow access to schools and only the principal need sto be lobbied...others like my own district need to be lobbied at the School Board level...we need to let these boards know that although YouTube does have the reputation of "anyone can publish anything" we also need to change their way of "protecting" the children by avoiding potentially harmful sites to educating our children as Will Richardson writes "wouldn't it be better to teach students how to deal with less-than-salient content that they see when they get home?"

Photo Sharing Makes Me Want to Scream!

The Big A having fun!
Originally uploaded by ToddEDES501Student

...sometimes with joy other times through frustration!

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

The first and most important point about learning about photo sharing is that it is definitely an ongoing process. There are so many features on these sites it is mind-boggling if not overwhelming at times. Here is an example... I have created two blog posts this week each one originating from a photosharing program...this one from Flickr and the previous one titled "Picasa photo sharing Part 1" from Picasa. On the Picasa upload I mentioned how cool it was to be able to press a button, "Blog This!", and be on my blog as it was part of the Google suite of products, well it turns out you can do virtually the same thing with Flickr...the key difference is the joy I had with Picasa was replaced with the frustration I felt with Flickr...I stumbled upon the Flickr "Blog This" button and thought "Cool!" so I pressed it and it took me to a screen that said I had to set up permissions with Google by logging into my account...which I did, this part was easy and seamless; it lead me right to a login screen and then returned me to Flickr where it gave me some layout options for the post I was creating...still cool, still seamless...then it dumped me onto a "you have now set up your blog account successfully" page and I had no idea how to get back to my picture or the "Blog This" button...I spent some time trying to retrace my steps throught the maze of hyperlinks until I again stumbled upon the correct way to "Blog This!" Now it is as seamless or at least apparently so to me as the link from Picasa. However this process took me a little over half of an hour.:(

Time was saved however as the learning of uploading and manipulating images is very easy on Flickr. The picture that I experimented with was easily placed on the map for "Geotagging" which is one of many ways that the photos can be categorized and organized. Placing photos into sets is a simple drag and drop and there is a sets tab at the top of the Organize and Create page that allows easy access to the sets that you have created and has a button to create new sets.

All of these features are intuitive for those people who have spent some time on the web and dare I say that they are easily learned. (Of course except when you are taken for a good ride then left on the curb ...I suspect that is Flickr's way of punishing me for using Google's Blogger for my blog!:)

I have purposefully left out any details regarding the social aspect of Flickr as I have yet to explore this area in any great detail, however, Davies & Merchant in Web 2.0 for Schools discuss the social implications for learning in some detail. Specifically they explore how tags can be used to find others with similar interests and use Merchant's Padlock example to indicate how you can "accidentally" become the member of an affinity group due to the content of your pictures or the tags related to them.

Photosharing in terms of my own personal learning

I see a great deal of potential for photosharing in many facets of my personal learning...from making new contacts to finding out (visually or through social interaction with others) about the places and things that are displayed in the millions of photographs on Flickr...Here is one example that I stumbled upon...while editing my picture on Flickr I noticed that under the heading "Addition Information" it labelled the camera that I took the photo with and that it was a hyperlink...so naturally being assigned to explore photosharing I followed the link... it gave me reviews of the camera, a graph of the use of the camera on Flickr and offered that I could "explore *istDL content" meaning look at pictures that others who own a camera the same as mine took...this could lead to social interaction to discuss technical questions with people who purchased the same camera...

Photosharing in Terms of Teaching and Learning

Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms(BWPOPWTC) outlines many uses for Flickr across a broad range of curricular areas. He includes vitual field trips, dissections using the labelling feature, geography when linked with Google Earth (although Flickr has its own map, but without the views -satellite, streetview, that Google offers), story starters, photo stories...the list really is endless and is dependent only upon the creativity of the user.

As a teacher and a teacher librarian I can't wait to put some of these ideas into my teaching... but first a technical point...my district's technology department is quite good in terms of having relatively up to date computers and such but I think I will need to use Flickr instead of Picasa because Picasa is a download and it will take some persuasion to get it included in the data sets which are downloaded to each of the work stations on our network...having said that I liked how Picasa found every picture that was on my computer and made them into an easy to use directory...much easier than the Kodak "EASY"share software which is also a downloaded program. So although I liked many of the features and the look of Picasa I think I'll use Flickr for the time being as we access it through the web without having to download a program to our workstations....photos can be stimulating for many students who are reluctant to engage texts. The textual work that accompanies the interaction with photos may seem less daunting for these types of students and can include sorting, tagging and observation type assignments. Certainly there are cons to using Flickr in a classroom setting...not all content on the site will be appropriate for school-aged children and parents would need to know what steps you have taken as a professional educator to deal with photos that students may encounter... Will Richardson(BWPOPWTC p.100) sums up this by placing the onus on the teacher to "take the time to become familiarwith the potentials and the risks of Flickr before you bring it into your clasroom, and make time to convey your expectations and teach appropriate use of the site to your students."