Things # 16 : Photopeach and Evaluation

This is first time for me to use Photopeach. It's a good experience to have this kind of toos in the classroom. We can ask students to create a story for their summer holiday using pictures, we can also create a virtual tour and get the students to watch it.

I've created my first photo story using Photopeach.

I believe there are still many tools that we can explore to enhance our classroom experience, and hope that we as educators can enrich each other and keep our spirit to explore all the new things to be shared with our classroom, peers and everyone who has concern on educating others.

Evaluation
As a summary, I'm really enjoy this blogging experience. It force me to think and reflect what I've learned and what I've gone through from each classes. And, I have a believe that by sharing what I've learned to others will encourage me to learn further, it's like a sow and reap principles, if we share more, then we can get more by having feedback, knowledge sharing from other people, etc.



And here is my answer to the evaluation questions:
1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Blogging is one of my favorite discoveries, I've never done it before and this is my first time experience to have a blog and maintain it regularly. Exploring through Web 2.0 tools also became one of my favorite discoveries, many terms that I've heard and this time I have to exercise, try and explore them. Go Animate is one of the cool application that become my favorite.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
This program forces me to put a deep thought on what I've learned and what I've known but I didn't put into knowledge, how to integrate those technologies into classroom. This is good, since we need to share what we have in order to keep our motivation to learn something new. The less we share, the more we thought that we have known everything, and that's a bad impact towards lifelong learning goals!

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Yes, indeed. Before join this class, I've thought that adapting technology into classroom will be an expensive effort and need a lot of resources to make it happen, but it looks like that I got the wrong idea. Technology is there, and many are free and there are a lot of communities that share same passion about educating with technology. So, there won't be any worries for our students that they can learn and experience technology in their classroom without being afraid that they will be lag behind due to economy reason.

4. What could I do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
First of all, there are many links that already outdated, so that will be the first priority to upgrade this program. Then, some guided questions on specific things could be useful to give an idea to whoever join this program about what they do and what will be the outcome by doing the things. Posting each portfolio created by every tools shared in this program will be a good experience too, at least we know that everyone doing their part and explore those tools for real. The last thing that I can suggest is there is a room for improvement to have more hands-on, discussion and case study in the classroom on in this blog by giving video to analyze, example of sites, etc.

I'm really hoping that I can continue to post things in this blog and share it to others, which that will need a huge effort from myself.

Things # 15.5 : Twitter and Linkedin

Twitter, became an active user on it since a year ago. Mostly channel that I joined was news channel, like CNN, Bloomberg, local news channel. But now, I'm following several educations channel like @THE_Journal, @GETideas.org, @kathyschrock and will add many others.

Until today, I haven't define myself as a heavy twitter user, since I'm rarely open my twitter update, just do it once a day and read some interesting tweets and then share them if I feel necessary. But, I have some friends who really heavy user of twitter, he can tweet something every 2 or 3 hours, even though sometimes I feel that is quite disturbing, so I personally choose to do a selective re-tweet or tweet.

If you are using Android, Blackberry or iPhone, you can try to use Ubersocial, I feel more comfortable to use this application rather than using original Twitter application.

Linkedin, I have been using Linkedin for 5 years, but using it seriously by putting my professional information, updates and connections for about 3 years. I knew that some professional job services use Linkedin to find out initial background about people that they want to contact and approach, even sometimes I use it to find out background of persons that apply for a job and prepare an interview. So, I really feel that we have to be very careful in putting our information in Linkedin, since it is a professional networking media, means that we have to put a good resume and proper information to give a good impression for professional recruiter.

Things # 15 : Skype

The first instant messenger that I knew was ICQ, then I knew about Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger (Live Messenger) and then Google Talk. Most of instant messenger now support voice and video conference by utilizing high speed internet connection. I could remember in the past, when people did conference call, there was a second or two seconds delay to hear the complete voice messages from each party. But, with the tremendous evolution of internet speed connection there are no longer any delay in voice conference call.

Now, services like Skype, Yahoo!, Google, Windows Live and many other companies offer video conference through their platform, it is free and easy to connect as long as each parties are connected using same platform. But, if you want to have call conference or video conference through Skype from computer to land lines or mobile phones, or do more than two parties video conference then you will need to pay some extra money on it.

Having a video conference in a classroom will be an interesting experience, especially for lower grade class, how they can interact and talking with other person through computer like meet their favorite author, meet with their favorite movie star, meet with other students from other school and do a collaboration on certain topic or even do a virtual teacher exchange, where teacher from other school (or even other state or country) teach certain subject using video conference tools.

With nowadays high speed internet connection, mobile data technology, laptops and screen projectors it's very easy to do a video conference and share it to the whole classroom.

Things # 14 : Podcasting and Bookmarking

Podcast, first time I heard this term was about 3 years ago when I met a person to discuss about online shopping for the company where I worked for. But, again I didn't put enough attention on what it is and how it works.

Apple share some documentation about Podcast which can help us understand the basic about Podcast beside this article. Starting from earlier this month I have subscribed myself to TED Talks Podcast. A lot of interesting discussion and ideas on that channel.

There are some contents from Texas Education on iTunesU that catch my interest, those are Keep Texas Wild and Humanities Texas Teacher Enrichment. Keep Texas Wild can be enrichment resources to take students on virtual tour about Texas Wildlife, while Humanities Texas Teacher Enrichment will be a useful material to give overview about latest social issues in the US.

Bookmarking is available to help us remembering our favorite sites, images, links, etc without put everything into our memory, but into virtual memory. I use Delicious to do bookmarking for sites that I've visited and plan to visit again in the future.

Pinterest is new to me, and looks very interesting to pin those pictures. I tried to pin several pictures and it's awesome, we can classify those pictures into certain boards. Well, for bookmarking picture i will put my vote on Pinterest, it's very easy and fast.

Things # 12 and 13 : Discovering and Using Youtube

I'm not a great fan of YouTube, since streaming video from YouTube is very slow. What I did usually I will download the video first then watch it once downloaded, so hassle free and no disturbance due to slow connection. But again, download hundreds of megabytes of video is such a painful effort with slow internet connection.

I know that YouTube store a very wide variants of videos, and I once used YouTube to post video for promoting learning science through fun experiments. But, at the end there were some complaints from parents about content safety issues for children, since we know that YouTube also store videos that are inappropriate for children.

Here is a sample of video that i like, about Andromeda Galaxy.

OK, now I'm trying to upload my first video on YouTube. First of all, if you have Goggle account, then you don't need to register anything, just sign up using your Google account, if not, then start to sign up and then sign in to upload your first video. 

I took this video when I visited Niagara Falls last year. The fireworks show was about 5 minutes in total, it was awesome. Enjoy the video!

Well, this is for the first time I hear about TeacherTube and SchoolTube. Those two sites will be very useful for either teachers or students to share their resources on the internet. Sometimes, by sharing ideas on the internet will force us as the person who sharing to be more creative and original in our ideas, especially when we get feedback from people which motivate us to become more and more creative.

I haven't tried to upload anything in TeacherTube, but I will try that feature later.

Things # 11 : Web 2.0 Tools

It's unexpected to see those many Web 2.0 Tools website available on the internet. Even though not every sites is free, but there are some sites that catch my attention.
DoInk Animation is no longer free sites, and now available as an iPad application. But, GoAnimate is really cool and worth to try. It's easy to create simple animation. Here is my GoAnimate first animation!

Web 2.0 Awards website since doesn't work well with me, I can't find complete list of the award winner sites except that from year 2006 on Visual Art category.

Other tools that grab my attention are those from Go To Web 2.0, such as:
Storybird
Storybird is a tools to collaborate on story telling, make a short and visual story, that you can share and soon print them. It will be perfect for those who teach early childhood and if you want to elaborate the students, you can make a group projects, but that is for grade 3, i guess.

Game Classroom
Game Classroom is the right place for teachers who want to grab ideas on teaching math and language arts. They already made it based on topics for each grade.

CutMyPic
This website is really simple, it allows you to upload picture and then do some customize cut on it. It will be a great tools for students who has projects and need a simple tools to do cut customization.

UseKit
This is a simple version to do filing collaboration for certain projects. The free version can be used up to 5 binders and 3 person doing collaboration. Might be perfect for project assignments.

I believe there are many other great tools out there, if you find others, please share it.

Things # 10 : Online Productivity Tools

I was used to use Google Docs to share several documents with some friends, like using share spreadsheet to do some reporting. Zoho is a new tool for me, but it looks like promising and have quite a lot feature to explore.

I try to make one document using Zoho Writer, and it's pretty cool that we can embed a code into our blog and give rights for people to comment on it. Here is the sample that I made earlier.
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Or you can share the link to people who you want to collaborate. I should spend more time on this applications, at least to give an idea what's the difference between Google Docs and Zoho.