Needless to say, these last few weeks I’ve been, well, hectic-crazy! For the ones that are in my twitterfeed (tom_turner) or I skype/IM with on a regular basis (tom.turner19 for skype, mithrass19 on yahoo; feel free to add me and message me anytime) you know what I’m talking about. Over the next few weeks, it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up as the list just continues to pile up. One of the things that continues to grow and grow is my RSS aggregator. I think I’m up to about 500 articles that I need to get read. I get it down to about 350 and BOOM! It goes back up.

I was able to get through TechCrunch today and saw this article from the 27th of August. Andrew introduced to his readers FotoFlexer – another online photo editing site. As you know, and would agree, we teachers are all about FREE stuff. BigHugeLabs.com is one of my new favorite places to go to create stuff, because of it’s functionality with Flickr. I can see myself really liking FotoFlexer as well, as it integrates with Picasa, Flickr and Facebook (ok Yahoo and MySpace as well, but I don’t use those!)

I’ve only perfunctorily used the site so far, I will delve deeper once I get home. I will state the obvious to you Mac users that are out there. I KNOW that you can do this with the iPhoto suite. That was the first thing that I said when I looked at the original images on the TechCrunch website. Someone in the comments even posted to the same effect. Thing is, if your school or district is not 100% on board on the Mac OS platform, why not have any and all tools at your disposal?

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: images editor photos education technology

Thanks to Darcy out in Arizona, I was able to befriend Diana L. while out on the DEN excursion. It’s always nice when someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, you’re Tom…Darcy told me to find you and hang with you and all would be ok.” Thought that was a good way to start a friendship. Her and I were skypechatting the other day about some free resources to share with my teachers and she ripped off a couple that I have DEFINITELY never heard of. Trackstar being one of them. Here’s a direct quote straight from the Trackstar home page that pretty much sums it up better than I can.

“TrackStar is your starting point for online lessons and activities. Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators.” (http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/)

I’ve not created one of my own as of yet, not that I’ve had much time. I asked Diana to pick out one that she wanted to share with everyone. She chose this one that revolves around the Flagstaff Film Festival of 2007. The really great thing about Trackstar is that you can search by Track # or author, even better is the keyword search. As Diana cautioned me, read the terms of use before creating your own. Because there are copyright issues involved with the use of it.

Several implementation ideas I have for it, and will share with my teachers when I do my online resources session. Diana’s pointed out that for her, “it’s a great way to get them focused and into the activity in the lab the second they walk in.” The author of the “track” is doing the research, the students find the results/answers. I think I referred to it as a place to house organized “online scavenger type hunts.” Second would be to have students create their own tracks at the conclusion of a unit. Working collaboratively, give students a list of about 10 vetted and appropriate websites, and let them create their own. I’ve not gone through and searched to see if this has been previously done, and I’m sure it has. Apparently this site’s been around for a while, I think she told me 10 years, so anything is possible.

I’ve had some great conversations with some of my teachers on campus over the last few days. Most revolving around the use of the word ’stealing’ ideas to use in their own classrooms. I’m VERY quick to point out that in my eyes we are all collaborating with each other to make each other’s jobs that much easier. It pains me to see teachers, who are Really good at what they do, hoard great ideas. Support each other! As I’ve been so apt to hear over the weekend, “We’re all in this together”. I cannot really believe I just quoted a lyric from High School Musical. But really, isn’t it appropriate?

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: edtech Trackstar technology education

I’ve been very lucky to see Steve present for the first time at last year’s DEN National Institute in Silver Spring, MD. Since then, I’ve sat in on a few more and always walk away feeling like I’ve learned something. When I saw that he would be presenting on his Top 7 Free Collaborative Online Tools, I just had to ask him if it was really necessary for me to be there (Thinking: I’m on a cruise, stuff I’ve just seen him present on at NECC, have talked to him in private conversations about, sitting in the pool on the sundeck). I’m glad I stayed as I did learn something. I’ll go down his Top 7 List one by one and add my thoughts to each of them.

1. Second Life: I’ve blogged about my thoughts on Second Life before. I still can’t get over the smut that can be found there. I know Tom…get over yourself. I had a very good conversation with fellow DEN member and DEN SL Leadership Council Anne as we were going down to our cabins following a session. She convinced me in that conversation to basically give it another chance. I’m doing it, baby steps of course. I’ve seen some cool places since I’ve returned from the Bahamas. NOAA and NASA being probably the best 2. Steve used a pretty great term, I’m sure it’s been out there I’ve just not really paid that much mind to it, “Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming”. As an online MMORPG gamer the acronym MMOEG came to mind. Why not? It sounds cool.
2. Bloglines: RSS aggregator to pick up blogs, news and podcasts. This was the first aggregator that I used. Notice the past tense as I’ve just moved onto Netvibes based in part to Jeff Utecht’s recommendation. However, if you are teaching RSS and RSS aggregators to first time users, I would give bloglines my highest recommendation to teach them. It’s very easy to use, very no muss, no fuss to understand. The only thing that I miss the most from bloglines, that I’ve yet to find a comparable feature in netvibes, is the Save as New check box that bloglines has. I found that to be a great tool to refer back to posts that I found had great links to share, etc.
3. Del.icio.us: Social Bookmarking. Can’t really say more about it than that. I still like diigo better with the fact that you can set up groups. Yes, I know you can make private accounts, etc. But the fact that diigo has a toolbar extension for Firefox is my selling point.
4. Twitter: Don’t really have a great name/description for Twitter. I think that David Warlick coined it best when we were sitting in the Blogger’s Cafe at NECC by calling it “microblogging”. It’s a cross between IM and blogging, with a 140 character max that you can use. See my widget to the >>> side here and you will see my twitterfeed. I’ve looked at some people’s twitfeeds, numbering well into the hundreds of people that they follow. Personally my goal is about 50ish that I want to top at out (at 48 now). I’ve learned quite a bit from Twitter so far, dating all the way back to NECC and following people’s thoughts about certain sessions, etc. Definitely see a role of some sort in the educational arena, even above the use by just the adults.
5. Skype: Combination of text, video and voice chat all rolled up into one neat little package. Again, saw the great use of this by sitting at NECC and being a part of a conversation with someone sitting in their Lazyboy recliner at home, while I’m in Atlanta. See “Learning is Messy” blog to see how great of a tool Skype can really be to a classroom.
6. Gcast: Great way to record, upload and store podcasts. Oh yea…it’s free too. Upload your own audio file, or call in via cell phone to record your podcast. Podcast People is out there as well, I’ve not used it, but I’ve read from others that have used it, and would mark it as comparable.
7. Meebo Rooms: Meebo is another cool tool I fell in love with at NECC. For the better part of the last 2 years, I’ve used Trillian as my primary IM chat tool. It was a sad day when I parted with it, even though in talking with Steve after his presentation, he still uses it, but advised to pay for the ‘pro’ version of it. Back to meebo though. Meebo is a web based IM chat client. You can set up for your msn, yahoo im, aim, ICQ and gchat all in one condensed place. But this is the truly cool thing that I found out in this session that you could do with it. You can create ‘private’ channels and embed them into a blog or webpage. Imagine the great conversations students could have from home, from across the room with regards to topics they are studying in class.

Just for the very last part with meebo, I’m glad I stayed to take part in Steve’s conversation with us. The unfortunate part is, that I know for fact already that it is blocked by my school district, along with skype, twitter and bloglines. Time to start hitting the pavement with my district contacts to get some of these nice tools unblocked.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: DEN DNI07 web20 webtools

One of the things shared at the DEN was FD’s Flickrtoys. Over to the left here is a nice Motivational image tool that you can use uploaded images; flickr or photobucket images; or supply a URL of an image to create any motivational message. Lovely way to use as a ‘hook’ in a lesson, or to get your students to get creative in making some sort of caption for an image.

FD’s Flickrtoys has a wide range of toys to choose from; including: a badge maker, a calendar maker, a mosaic maker, movie poster maker, or a magazine cover maker. These are just to name a few. LOVELY way to incorporate several different types of tech tools into one project.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: FLICKR flickrtoys techtools

Practical for people like me that like to keep 15+ tabs open at a time to help me organize web pages/links, etc for blogging purposes. Numerous instances I’ve clicked on the “Do Not Restore Last Session” button rather than “Restore Session” and lose all my tabs. For you security ‘phreaks, the mozilla description page says it does not collect data. I’ll take their word for it of course and keep an eye on my spybot S&D to see if it does.

Here’s a screen shot of my desktop. The bottom portion of the screen shows the thumbnails of the pages visited and it’s a simple mouse scroll to get to the earlier viewed pages, and vice-versa. At this point I see no classroom application of this extension, other than to save students from the heartache of remembering where the information they searched at previously was located. Which could actually be a good thing, and a time saver in a classroom.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

 Technorati Tags: thumbprints firefox technology software

On reading his post, I’m only using two of the extensions that he uses and that looks to be FasterFox and the del.icio.us bookmarkings. I didn’t know about the Woot! extension, so you best believe that I will be adding that to my reportoire here shortly. I will also have to check out CoCommenter as that looks like something I will definitely use to keep track of my comments from around the blogosphere. As far as StumbleUpon, I removed that a while back, just didn’t use it, nor did I care for it.

Now for my list:

1. No Script: I’m a safety junkie…so if I can block anything from coming into my computer, I will take advantage of it. Can be lethal if you disallow something from loading, trying to get the permission back can be difficult, but again, safety first.
2. AdBlock Plus: Remember the story about the substitute teacher and the popups that just kept coming and coming full of porn. Ever go to a website that has advertisements that just annoy the poo out of you? This nifty little thing takes care of that, all you see is a blank window and the ad doesn’t load at all. One of my favorites.
3. Diigo: I’ve talked about Diigo alot in postings and had some one on one discussions with someone from the company about their great product. So again, here I am pushing their add on because I LOVE using it. Allows you to blog, forward, and annotate any webpage out there. AWESOME for little collaborative projects your students might be working on.
4. Cooliris: This is another nifty little addon that lets you preview a page before clicking on it. I use it when I’m searching for images and just don’t want to be bother with opening something in a new tab or clicking on it. So definitely a time saver.
5. Gmail Manager: Like Steve, I like to know when new mail comes in. I’ve used several of the mail manager programs, but this by far is my favorite.
6. Phishtank: Another safety feature I just added as a precaution. Just sits in the background and shows me if a site is safe.

And there you have it. My extensions.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Here’s hoping that my district, along with others that have Flickr unblocked, will continue with this practice. Working at a school with a 89% Hispanic / ELL population, having another tool at the ready is NOT a bad thing to have. My list for next year continues to grow.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Our supposed laid back gathering turned into a full blown Voki session. Each of us created our own characters. Our homework was to put a voice to the avatar. As Steve pointed out, you can use a microphone, call in, have them call your OR type the text in. I found typing in the text, that you were VERY limited on the amount you could say.

Here I am creating my voki character, and WHOA! What type of laptop am I using here??? Can it be a mac?? I personally think it looks ALOT like me. Not bad for about 10 minutes worth of work on the mac.

And for the finished product…look to the left in the widget bar–>

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

**portions of this post is double posted on the Discovery Educator Network Florida Blog**

To that degree I created my own ToonDoo comic to demonstrating a possibility of implementing comic strip creation.

Rajendran from Jambav.com just sent word that they’ve created a blog here at edublogs to demonstrate possible uses by teachers for ToonDoo in the classroom. It’s just been created, but so far he’s demonstrated several ways to introduce vocabulary terms with your students. Would be a NICE way to get a visual aspect to vocabulary into a lesson!

Hope this helps out, to me, I still think it’s pretty cool. Moreso because I was never very artistically inclined. This allows that creativity to come out in students like that.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Being the Social Studies teacher that I am…I went ahead and created one based loosely on the Three R’s (reduce, reuse and recycle). This is what I came up with: My ToonDoo. Very neat if you ask me, and it was a VERY easy interface to navigate and follow. The interface is Flash based. So enjoy!

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.