learning 2.0 - 23 things

Welcome to Learning 2.0 - 23 Things!

2008-12-12T13:00:00.001-06:00

Welcome to Mesquite ISD's Learning 2.0 - 23 Things staff development class.

Learning 2.0 -23 Things is an online learning experience that is designed to provide MISD staff with an introduction to emerging technologies on the web that are changing the way people, society, schools and libraries access information and communicate with each other.

Ready to learn more?
Visit the About page and the FAQs, then take a look at the list of 23 Things (details on each Thing will be posted as the class progresses).

Image citation: Networked Teacher uploaded on January 3, 2007 by courosa and used under an Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike license.

23 Thingsters - Fall 2008

2008-12-12T11:24:00.004-06:00

The authors of these blogs completed the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things course during Fall 2008. They all did a great job and learned a lot - take a look at some of their work!

The ABCs of It All
Barn's Blog
Gibzchats
Here to There and Back Again
I Wanna Talk About Me
Learning is the Key
leprechaun'slog
Lifelong Beach Bum
Massey's Memos
My Blog
RockChalkJayhawk
Symphonic Sue
Tales from a Hopeless Romantic
Technological Dummy
The Ins and Outs of 2.0
Things I learning in 2.0 - 23 and more
Web 2.0

Thing #9 - Play in the wiki sandbox

2008-10-08T14:55:00.017-05:00

Introduction

The best way to gain experience working in a wiki is to just jump in and try it!

Most wikis have a special page called a sandbox. The sandbox is a designated area where new users can "play around" with wiki formatting, features and editing.

For this "Thing," we have a whole wiki site to use as our sandbox!

Image Citation: Sandbox.
Uploaded on June 17, 2007 by .michael.newman.
Attribution-Noncommercial-No derivative works license.

Discovery Exercise:

Visit the wiki sandbox and complete the activities that are listed there on the home page.

MISD 23 Things Wiki Sandbox: http://misd23things.wikispaces.com/

When you have finished playing in the sandbox, return to this page and complete the Learning Activity below.

Everything you need to know to survive the sandbox:

Wikispaces Quick Reference Guide (PDF)
03-08_Wikispaces_Cheat_Sheet.pdf

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Learning Activity:

1. Write a reflective blog post about your experience in the sandbox. Describe the steps you went through to complete the discovery exercise and your feelings as you played in the sandbox.

2. Be sure to include a link to your personal sandbox page in your post.

3. Include "Thing 9" in the title of your post.

23 Thingsters - Summer 2009

2008-09-01T10:16:00.000-05:00

The authors of these blogs completed the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things course during Spring 2009. They all did a great job and learned a lot - take a look at some of their work!

23 Things
Aurora's 23 Things
B's Babble
Baby Biker
Busy Lady
Coplin Clause
DevotedBookmama
Finished My First Year
GeekEZ
gwm23blog
Helms Headlines
Hoopla
Hot Topics
Jeffries Jabber
Knight Reader
Latte Lilly
Learning by Longhorn Mom
Lessons from an Aggie
Morland's 23 Things
Mouse Pad
My 23 Things
nana51
Out of My League for Sure
The Rantings from Room F-1
Rosey Reflections
The Running Reader
sassafrass
schoolchatter
Short n Sweet
Songstersister
Stovall's News
summerthoughts863
Sweet Little Lambs
This Crazy Life
Troutman News
West's Words
With a little help from my friends :-)
yakityyakdjtalksback

Thing #7 - Creating community through commenting

2008-07-21T17:23:00.003-05:00

Introduction

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. A blog is a vehicle for a group of people with common interests to communicate, share, and learn in spite of barriers of time and distance.

While blogging starts with reading, commenting is what keeps the conversation going. In this Thing, you will learn why commenting is important, when commenting is appropriate and have a chance to leave some comments of your own.

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Discovery Exercise

Read 3-5 of the following blog posts about the importance of commenting:

How to Comment Like a King (or Queen!) from Cool Cat's blog.

10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog

Your comments?

Are you contributing to the general discussion?

Edublogger Etiquette: Responding to comments

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Learning Activity:

1. Make at least one comment on each of the blogs that you "adopted" in Thing #6.

2. Make at least one comment on some (more than one) of the blogs that you added to your RSS reader in Thing #6.

3. Write a reflective blog post about the importance of commenting and your experience making comments for this activity. Be sure to include Thing #7 in the title of your post.

4. Leave a comment on this post telling us how you are doing in the course so far or listing any questions that you have.

5. Continue to comment on your adopted blogs and others that you read throughout the class.

Thing #0 - Get Ready!

2008-07-20T09:39:00.017-05:00

Introduction

Welcome to Learning 2.0 - 23 Things! This is your first official course "lesson," organized with an Introduction, Discovery Exercise and Learning Activity -- a format which will quickly become familiar to you. Reading carefully is, for better or worse, a pretty essential key to success in this course. You will also find lots of embedded HELP resources along the way within the Discovery Exercises and Learning Activities -- placed at the point of need.

Before you get started, it's important that you read over the site so that you understand exactly how the course works. The four pages everyone should read in their entirety are:

Home - what the course is about

About - general description of the course

FAQs - most everything you might want to know

The 23 Things - a list of course topics which will provide the links to each week's lesson as it is posted

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Discovery Exercise

Please note: you must complete the Learning Activity (below) after you complete the Discovery Exercise. This will be true of every course lesson.

PART 1: For this course, you are asked to use a GMail account (part of Google) to sign up for all of the services you explore. Using GMail will allow you to store all of your sign-up info in one location, keep your school email uncluttered, and protect your "digital footprint" if desired (you may use any username you like for your Google account, as long as it's school-appropriate). A Google account gives you access to all sorts of Google goodies, such as Google Reader and Google Docs, both of which we will explore in later weeks. Throughout the course, we will communicate through Gmail -- NOT YOUR SCHOOL EMAIL. So go and sign up for a Gmail account

Note: In order to avoid confusion, it is recommended that your Gmail account name be different from your Mesquite ISD e-mail account name. For example, if my name is Bob Johnson, my MISD e-mail account would be bjohnson. Instead of also using bjohnson as my Gmail account name, I might use bobjohnson, bobj, bojo or anything else I can come up with.

HELP Video: How to sign up for Gmail

PART 2: Get Firefox. Firefox is the Web browser of choice for this course, as many of the tools we will explore just seem to run more smoothly in Firefox. Firefox itself is a "Web 2.0" browser - open source (free to use and build upon), with lots of great features -- one of the best of which is "tabbed browsing," which means you can open up several web pages at once INSIDE one browser window, and switch between them using tabs -- as opposed to them piling up on your taskbar. Make sure you have Java and Flash installed for Firefox as well.

NOTE: Check under (All) Programs > Mozilla Firefox to see if you already have Firefox. If so, after you launch it, go to Help > About to check your Firefox version. If you are not running the latest version (currently, version 3.5.2), click here to get it..

HELP Video: Installing Firefox -- plus Java and Flash

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Learning Activity

PART 1:
Complete this form to send us your information for the course. We will send you an invitation (via Gmail) to view a Google spreadsheet which we will use throughout the course to track your progress. You MUST remember to check your new Gmail account. We will not email you through your school email accounts! Throughout the course, we will communicate through Gmail.

PART 2:
Send an email from your new Gmail account to misd23things (at) gmail (dot) com. In the email, include your full name and school name and any questions you have about the course. Confirm for us that you have Firefox (just humor us). We will use these emails to create a contact list for the course.

HELP: How to send a message with Gmail

Congratulations! You are now ready to begin your Learning 2.0 journey!

23 Thingsters - Summer 2008

2008-06-04T17:44:00.003-05:00

The authors of these blogs completed the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things course during Summer 2008. They all did a great job and learned a lot - take a look at some of their work!

ictbailey
Technocricket
Boog-Phil
mathteachermrscpb
mborden
Wendy's Wanderings
A W.M.C. View
MsBrownie's Blog
sassysayswhat
Science7
"23 Things"
LifeIsGoodClantonism
Vision Teacher
Cricket's Corner
Doran's Documents
Coach D's Corner
TechSavvy
GALLOWAY
Loving Summer
Learning Something New
Kathleen's Blog
50 Days
A Teacher's Summer
learningthingsterAMSHisteacher
Howlands 23
teachartiscool
Valerie's Views
JJs Summer Time Fun
Tara Johnson's 3rd Graders at Rugel Elementary
Autism Teacher's Connection
Things to the Twenty-Third Power
50 Year Learner
Music Notes
Our Class Journal
parmentersplace
Read and Giggle
Reese Readings
RedRivera's Reviews
Kimberly's Corner
Mandy's Mailbag
MMS Notes
Teddy Bear Blog
mimiswordsofwisdom
Gigiread
Web 2.0 - Wow!

Is it the end or only the beginning?

2008-06-04T17:19:00.011-05:00

Wow! You’ve completed the 23rd thing. Give yourself a pat on the back for finishing this program!

We hope you have learned many new things during Learning 2.0 - 23 Things. And one thing you have learned is that Web 2.0 is anything but static. Changing, challenging, and exciting are hallmarks of Web 2.0. Here are some other things we hope you have learned:

It really doesn’t take that much time. You have some new tools—Bloglines, del.icio.us, RSS, calendars, to-do lists, and others that make finding news about new tools and ways to use them easy. You know how to use them to make keeping up easier. Of course, you can spend hours (and hours) playing around with Flickr or YouTube or other tools, but that counts as "improving your skills."

You know you can do it. Sure, there were trials and tribulations as you learned the new tools or struggled with glitches in the products, but you did finish and you did get the tools to work. That means the next time you see a new tool, you will be ready to figure it out and make it work for you. No fear!

It's fun to know and use these tools. Admit it, YouTube can be entertaining--and you can even see some uses for it in school. Some of the tools have more toy-like features than others which have a more obvious use. It is amazing what people will think of and more amazing what they create to enhance Flickr, Google, or whatever.

We need to keep informed. It is easy to get so involved in the day-to-day of teaching. In spite of all that work, we do need to stay up on what our students are using, talking about, and asking us for help with. As technologies continue to evolve, we need to be informed to evolve with them and guide the evolution.

Learning Activity

1. Please give us some feedback by reflecting on your learning journey in one more blog posting. Here are some questions to guide you:

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher or school librarian?

How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.

2. Where do you go from here? Some things you might want to do now are:

make a resolution to maintain your blog, use the tools you now know, keep up with new tools, and apply them in your classroom, library or job. Give yourself the gift of time—15 minutes a day, a Webinar now and then, conversations with colleagues about web 2.0, whatever—but don't quit now! Put your resolution in writing in your blog!

every day, ask yourself, "What did I learn today?" Record your responses in your blog.

add your blog URL to your e-mail signature line

re-purpose your blog as your classroom/school library blog
share your blog with your colleagues and administrators
continue your learning by subscribing to the RSS feed for the Learning 2.1 blog

Thank you for joining us on this journey. Our hope is that this not the end of our learning together, but rather it’s just the start of something amazing …that will impact the way we work with our 21st century learners.

Now, a little housekeeping...
In order to get credit for the course, you will need have a completed scantron and evaluation.

Unfortunately, the scantron cannot be done online. Please come to Library Services at your convenience but before November 20 to fill one out. We are located at the Service Center, 800 E. Kearney. Building hours are 8:00am to 4:30pm, Monday through Thursday, and 8:00am to 4:00pm on Friday.

Click here to complete the Staff Development Participation Evaluation.

Thing # 10 - Creative Commons

2008-06-04T17:13:00.020-05:00

Introduction

Relax...this "thing" will not be hard, but it is incredibly significant.

Fair use guidelines enable teachers and students to use copyrighted materials within the classroom for direct educational purposes. But fair use is restrictive, can be confusing, and more-or-less stops at the campus door. All of those fantastic images you found via Google search and pasted into that wonderful Powerpoint presentation cannot legally be shared back out on the Web, even with proper citation because citation does not equal permission. As educators, it is our responsibility to teach students about the ethics of content gathering and use, whether for a research paper or a digital storytelling project.

(Do not despair -- we actually have broader fair use rights than many of us may realize -- we just have to understand some important guidelines. Legitimate fair use can be determined by criteria such as "transformativeness" and benefit to society -- see the "note about 'traditional' copyright" below for a phenomenal resource that can help educators de-mystify copyright).

One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is the creation and sharing of user-created content, and tools like Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Thinkfree, Archive.org (and hundreds of others) make uploading, sharing and obtaining digitized content a snap. But with the free exchange of content comes the responsibility of determining how it is shared, how it may be used, and how to properly credit the author or creator.

Enter Creative Commons, the best thing to happen to Copyright since, well, ever...

"Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally"

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Creative Commons celebrated its seventh birthday in December 2009. Currently, there are millions of photos, books, songs, poems, artworks, videos and other media shared on the web under Creative Commons licenses. This course, 23 Things, is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, you are given permission to remix and share.

One place for good information about what's going on with the Creative Commons is Lawrence Lessig's blog. Lawrence Lessig is one of the Creative Commons developers and a Stanford University professor.

An exciting development in Web 2.0/Creative Commons culture for educators is the OER Commons -- a site where users can find and contribute to the collection of thousands of Open Educational Resources.

The most highly-rated content in the OER Commons comes from the MIT Open Courseware (OCW) project -- an online repository of free lecture notes, exams, and other resources (including, increasingly, audio and video) from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum. MIT recently announced a subsection of OCW called Highlights for High School.

Many Flickr users have chosen to share the photos that they have posted under a Creative Commons license, making it a great place to look for images to use in projects and presentations.

Cool, huh?

************************************************************************************************************ **Note about traditional copyright:
Creative Commons is an amazing evolution in copyright, but it does not magically erase the need for proper citation, and ethical use. Neither does it solve our confusion about "traditional" copyright, which still applies to most works or art and intellectual property. What to do, what to do? Well, I am glad you asked.

The Media Education Lab at Temple University has worked with a number of expert groups to develop a newly released Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Education, which "helps educators gain confidence about their rights to use copyrighted materials in developing students' critical thinking and communication skills." EVERY educator should read this guide, share it with colleagues and practice applying these guidelines thoughtfully with their students. If your time is limited at least watch this slideshow that hits the high points:

Finally The End To Copyright Confusion Has Arrived

View more Microsoft Word documents from Renee Hobbs.

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Discovery Exercise:

Now, back to Creative Commons, which is really the focus of this Thing!

Click on the links below to watch videos that give a little history and the basic concepts of Creative Commons.

Get Creative

Wanna Work Together?

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Learning Activity:

Write a blog post reflecting on how you think Creative Commons may affect you professionally and/or personally. Be sure to include "Thing 10" in your post title.

Some prompts:

Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? Did you wonder what it meant?
Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? How?
Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)?
Do you ever share content on the web?
Who owns your teaching materials?
What are some potential negatives for using CC?

Stretch Task
Check out some Creative Commons resources from the OER Commons, the CC Content Directories, or try out the CC Search tool and see what you find. Extend the blog post above to share about your findings. Include a link to any resource you mention.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Thing #17 - Podcasts: no iPod needed!

2008-06-04T16:42:00.015-05:00

Introduction
The following podcast was included in the original Learning 2.0 program. Turn up your speakers and click the Play button to listen:

powered by ODEO

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries (like the one used at the beginning of this post) to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this "thing" participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Google Reader account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

To find out more about podcasts we'll start with our friends from the Common Craft Show - Podcasting in Plain English.

Also take a look at the PodGrunt: What a podcast is and how it works video on YouTube.
Finding podcasts
There are many, many podcast directories and other tools to help you find podcasts. Here are just four of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, don't require a software download:
- Education Podcast Network - A directory of about 2,000 education-themed podcasts, organized by subject area.
- Learn Out Loud - A directory of about 1500 free "podcasts you can learn from."
- NPR Podcast Directory - A directory of 619 high-quality podcasts from National Public Radio and affiliates.
- Skip the Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World
- PBS Podcasts - About thirty quality video podcasts from PBS.
- Podcastdirectory.com
- Podcastalley.com
iTunes Store (requires download and installation of iTunes -- you are NOT required to install iTunes to complete this "Thing!) - Like it or not, the iTunes Store is the "mother of all" of podcasting directories, offering a catalog of gazillions (estimated) of FREE podcast titles, including over 10,000 titles specific to education.

Discovery Exercise

Part One:
The best way to learn about podcasts is to listen to a few of them. Sample a few of the educational podcasts below:

Jamestown Elementary Podcast Project
Radio WillowWeb
Our City Podcast
Cranbrook Composers' Podcasts (middle school)
Think Youth Live (high school)

For educators:
The Tech Teachers
Teachers Teaching Teachers
TechPodZone
Geek!Ed!
Wisconsin Center for Education Research News
Education Podcast with John Merrow - PBS
Dragon Page with Class

English/Reading

Math

Science

Social Studies

History Podcast
PRI's The World - GeoQuiz (click on Podcasts)

Part Two:
Find and subscribe to a podcast. (Pick either Easy or Stretch - or both!)

Easy
Find a podcast (or two) that interests you using one or two of the podcast directories listed above -- ideally, related to your teaching/professional role -- and subscribe to it using your Google Reader. (Locate the RSS or Subscribe icon and click it, then select your Google Reader, or copy and paste the feed URL into the Subscribe field in your Google Reader). Listen to a bit of your subscription(s).

Stretch
Download and install iTunes. Find and subscribe to one or more podcasts of professional interest using iTunes. You can add any podcast feed to iTunes (even if it's not listed in the iTunes Store -- see the podcast directories above) by copying the podcast feed URL, then opening iTunes and selecting Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast and pasting the URL). Listen to a bit of your subscription(s).

Help Resources for iTunes:

Get iTunes 8.1 - You do not need to provide your email address -- just UNcheck the email alert boxes!
Apple iTunes Tutorial: Get Free Podcasts (~2 min)

Learning Activity

Write a brief blog post sharing your initial thoughts about podcasting in education.

Points to include in your post:

Which podcasts did you preview?
What did you think?
Which directories did you search and were you able to find podcasts of value?
Do you have any ideas about incorporating existing podcasts into your classroom or professional learning?
If you already use iTunes (or other podcatcher) and/or have an iPod or other MP3 player that you use for podcast listening, please share a bit about your experiences.
If you are a podcaster, or have used podcasting with students, please share a bit about that as well.

Please include "Thing 17" in your post title.

Thing #12 - Create a slideshow!

2008-06-04T16:40:00.018-05:00

Introduction

In Thing 11, you explored Flickr and selected several digital photos from the Creative Commons collection. There are many Web 2.0 services that allow users to easily create and share slideshows by embedding them in a blog, wiki or website. In this thing, you are invited to use your selected Flickr photos to create and embed a slideshow.

Embedding is the act of publishing media such as a slideshow or video clip WITHIN a blog, wiki or webpage. The embedded media can be viewed, played or "interacted with" directly in the blog post or the wiki page -- instead of being a link that requires you to download the media or takes you to a different webpage to view it. Most of the videos you have watched as part of your discovery exercises during this course have been EMBEDDED.

You want me to do what? Some basic instructions about embedding are included at the bottom of the page, and hints for each particular site are included in the descriptions.

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Discovery Exercise

Check out each these sample slideshows. Each is embedded in the page. You may be able to guess that my chosen theme was to retell the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. I created them using several photos from Flickr Creative Commons. Please note the ATTRIBUTIONS I have provided below the slideshows. Each includes the photographer's username and a link to the photo page in Flickr. Be sure to create a similar attribution list for your slideshow.

Rock You! - http://rockyou.com/

This site adds rock music as a standard, and there are dozens of song options, but you can choose "no music" if you prefer, which I did because it would play automatically when the page loaded. It has lots of options for the look of the slideshow.
You do not have to register to use RockYou.

NOTE: Just use the MYSPACE code (copy the code in the yellow box) for RockYou!

Slide.com - http://www.slide.com/
Roll over each image to see the caption. This is not the best choice for my particular presentation, but just going for effect. This site also offers dozens of themes, features and options for your slideshow. You do not have to sign up to create a slide show.

NOTE: Just use the MYSPACE code for Slide.com. Copy the code in the white box and ignore the rest of the steps.

Animoto - http://animoto.com/

(Click the Play arrow to view - no captions in this one. Animoto analyzes your images and creates a 30-second "music video" style presentation. There is free music on the site, or you can upload your own (mindful of copyright, of course). You must have at least 10 images and register to use Animoto.

NOTE: You can find the embed code under the "thumb tack" icon, select embed and choose "other sites."

Bubbleshare - http://www.bubbleshare.com/

Click the orange Play arrow to view. This is the most basic of Bubbleshare options. They have lots of themes and sliding shows. The text is actually speech balloons. Bubbleshare is extremely easy to use. You have to register to use Bubbleshare.

NOTE: Click Blog Album to access the various slideshow formats and get the embed code. ALSO -- It's a good idea to leave lots of white space in your speech/text boxes (if you use them). Sometimes words get mysteriously cut off.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Create and Share Crafts

Pikistrips - http://www.pikistrips.com/

(Okay, not a slideshow, but how cool is this? Pikistrips searches Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-licensed photos for your use in creating a comic strip and automatically puts the attribution on the corner of the photo. Or you can upload your own photos. Pretty awesome. The only downside of this site is the public gallery -- unfortunately, people create some tasteless stuff).

NOTE: The EMBED CODE for Pikistrips is MESSED UP -- so, just download your comic as a JPG and insert as a picture (instead of embedding) on your wiki page or blog post.

Photo Credits (it took me eleven photos to tell the story)
1. Brown Bear by memekode
2. Red Cardinal (Cardinales cardinales) by NatureFreak07
3. Yellow Duckling by gamenerd
4. crazy horses by nicephore
5. Green Tree Frog by Stephen Barnett
6. Fluffpuff madness! by Eggybird
7. happy dog by mbtrama
8. Black Sheep by BrianForbes
9. Plump gold fish by tanakawho
10. Happy Mother's Day Mom! by kevindooley
11. The beautiful children by karynsig

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Learning Activity

Create and Embed your own Slideshow! There are many possibilities for using slideshows to enhance classroom learning, and most slide show tools are fun and relatively easy to work with. Also, embedding is an essential Web 2.0 skill. A crucial part of becoming technology literate in the 21st century is being able to "figure stuff out." Thus, I am not providing training-wheel help resources for each slide show site. Play around and see what you can do!

One task, three steps....

Select one of the slideshow tools above and create a slideshow using your 3-5 (or more) Flickr CC photos from Thing 11 .
When you have finished your slideshow, EMBED it in a blog post. Be sure to include proper attribution for all photos -- link to the photo and name of both photo and photographer.
Write a brief blog post describing your slideshow. Be sure to include "Thing 12" in your post title.

Thing #18 - You too can YouTube

2008-06-04T15:57:00.009-05:00

Introduction
Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog, coming in at #4 on the list of most visited sites in the US and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to library dominos and a video of 200 people freezing in place in Grand Central Station. You can even see school administrators doing a parody of a Nextel commercial.

As you explore YouTube and its educator-friendly companion, TeacherTube, you will encounter many familiar Web 2.0 features, such as RSS feeds, user comments/ratings, groups, and, of course, tags. Like many resource-rich websites, much of the content on YouTube is not school appropriate. The comments are unfiltered, so even a perfectly benign and educational video can have reams of inane text posted below it. But there is also a vast wealth of "good" stuff there as well, so it's definitely worth a look. (Plus, now that you know how to EMBED, you can present JUST the video content you choose to students, without visiting the YouTube site directly!)

Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

If you're interested, here's a four minute video detailing the History of YouTube...
If you're not, move on to the Discovery Exercise!

Discovery Exercise:

PART 1: YouTube Scavenger Hunt

Have a little look around YouTube. You may want to set a timer, or you'll be posting angry blogs about losing hours of your life. Try tagging your video discoveries to your delicious account for easy reference!!

Your challenge is to find four videos:

Find two videos that relate to your teaching content and/or professional learning interests.
Find one video that teaches you "how to" do something. (Will Richardson recently told us that you can find out how to do anything technological by searching YouTube!)
Find one video that's just fun, nostalgic or interesting to you.

Search tips:

Enter one or more keywords into the YouTube search tool to find videos having those terms in their titles, tags and descriptions.
Check out your results and preview some videos. Also check out related videos.
Click "more" next to a video description to view its tags. Click a tag to see more videos tagged as such.
Try the advanced search tool to narrow your search results.
Set "safe" search to filter out "adult" content:

PART 2: Explore TeacherTube (YouTube "alternative" for Education)

TeacherTube, launched in March 2007, aims to provide a "more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners" to share instructional videos and student media projects. TeacherTube currently offers free unlimited uploading of educational video. TeacherTube relies on its user community to keep the site student-safe by flagging inappropriate content.

Additional Resources

Educause: 7 things you should know about YouTube
Education World: Using YouTube in the Classroom
Spiral Notebook Blog: A Teacher's Tour of YouTube

Learning Activity

Write a blog post sharing your YouTube and TeacherTube findings. Tell about the videos you discovered and share ideas you have for using video to support classroom or professional learning.

Embed one of your discovered YouTube or TeacherTube videos in your blog. (Feel free to embed a video into your wiki sandbox page as well if you want to experiment).

Include "Thing 18" in your post title.

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.

Thing #23 - Beyond MySpace: other social networks

2008-06-04T11:47:00.013-05:00

Introduction

MySpace and Facebook may grab the headlines in social networking, but there are many other social networks. Social networks are online communities created around interests with people-to-people recommendations and communication. These specialized social networks allow like-minded users to find and interact with one another, whether around crafts or cars or any other shared interest. In this Thing, we'll take a look at some of these networks.

Gather
Gather describes itself as the “leading social networking and media site for adults, with some of the highest quality user-generated content on the internet.” Most of the discussion on Gather is in a debate format, focused around a single issue, book, or theme to appeal to busy professionals. American Public Media is heavily invested in this site as an outlet for National Public Radio listeners.

Ning is a social networking site with a different focus. With Ning, you can set up your own social network based on your particular interest or join one that someone else has already created. There are several educator networks from which to choose. To learn more about Ning, check out one of the librarian or school related groups below.

Video demo of Ning by its CEO Gina Bianchini

School-related groups on Ning: Classroom 2.0, Teacher-Librarian Ning, Texas School Librarians, Teachers 2.0

Wikipedia list of social network sites

You get the idea; there is a social network for everyone. And, on the chance you can't find a social network that matches your interests, start one of your own.

Discovery Exercise:

Explore Ning and uses of Social Networking in Education.

NOTE: You are NOT required to join the Classroom 2.0 network to explore its resources, but we hope you will. It's an amazing resource.

Increasingly, educators are beginning to leverage the positive aspects of social networking to improve student learning. Ning is a service that allows anyone to easily create and manage a free (ad-supported) social network for any purpose. Last fall, Ning announced "ad-free" networks for educators using the site with students in grades 7-12. Ning sites may be private (viewable only to members) or public, and the site creator/administrator has lots of control over how users join and how they can participate/contribute.

In early 2007, Steve Hargadon created Classroom 2.0, a Ning social networking site for educators "interested Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in the classroom." The site currently has over 13,000 members sharing ideas and resources, asking questions and discussing ideas and concerns about using these new technologies to support teaching and learning. Exploring this site is a good way to learn more about Web 2.0, and to get a feel for how a social networking site can be used in education.

If you begin to feel overwhelmed by the amount of content, remember that you are not supposed to keep up with everything on a site like this, but rather to skim, explore and focus on those areas which are of real interest to you. In networked learning, the important ideas always come back around. Also, if you can't imagine managing this with students or colleagues, remember that you won't have 13,000 of them participating in your network, and that it's perfectly okay (preferable, even) to start small and limit the scope!

As you complete the exploration exercises, consider how you might incorporate social networking to benefit:

Your own professional development / lifelong learning
Classroom teaching and learning; Student learning
Personal interests, hobbies, community, family, social causes, etc...

PART 1 (~60-90 min): Visit Classroom 2.0. Have a quality look around (see tips immediately following). If you don't spend some time exploring, you won't really get a feel for the site or the potential for this type of tool in education.

Tips for finding your way around Classroom 2.0

Forum - (click Forum tab at the top of the page). Here you will find discussion categories with threaded discussions under each. Find a couple of discussions that interest you and read some of the posts and replies.
Groups - (click Groups tab at the top of the page). Here you will find special-interest discussions and resource sharing. Members interested in the topic can join the group and participate in the discussion. Find a group that interests you and explore the discussions and other content for the group.
Tags - (right sidebar on Main page) Click a link to find all discussions tagged by tool, subject or area. Or click a tag anywhere within the site (e.g. at the bottom of a discussion post) to view all resources tagged as such.
Members - (click Members tab at the top of the page). Click any member's profile picture to view his or her personal page, including their groups, discussion postings, personal blog, comment wall, friends and other self-selected content.
Latest Activity - (left sidebar of Main page) See the most recent activity by all members of the site.
Videos - (click Videos tab at the top of the page). View videos uploaded and shared by site members.

PART 2: (~20-30 min) Check out this wiki-based list of Ning networks related to education. See if you can find one that interests you, or that applies to your subject area (it is possible that a few of these may be private, especially those that are for students) and take a look.

Further Resources (for your reference)

EDUCAUSE: 7 things you should know about Ning
Schools and Online Social Networking - article by Nancy Willard presents both positive and negative aspects of social networking, as well as suggestions for schools.

PART 3. (~30 min.) MISD 23 Things has a brand new Ning network. Join it and do at least 2 of the following:

Leave comments for another member
Upload your photos or video to the Ning
Add the Ning badge to your blog
Add another of the Ning widgets to your blog

Learning Activity:

Write a blog post reflecting on your exploration of Classroom 2.0 and any other Educational Ning network you explored. Label your post Thing #23 and address the following questions:

What were your overall impressions?
Did you find any discussions or resources of value?
Do you have any ideas for using social networking in your own professional or personal learning, or in classroom learning?

Thing #22 - Explore social networking

2008-06-04T11:39:00.016-05:00

Introduction
A social network is an online environment in which people connect around relationships, content, shared interests and ideas. During this course, we have already encountered a number of sites and tools that incorporate social features such as tagging, commenting, user profiles and online groups, to add value. Human beings have always been social learners, and, increasingly, we learn in digital networks as well as "real-life" networks.

Networked learning is based on the belief that when one of us gets smarter, we all do. When used effectively, online social networking can play a powerful role in both classroom and lifelong learning. As Steve Hargadon describes, "'Social Networks' are really just collections of Web 2.0 technologies combined in a way that help to build online communities."

You have probably heard of mainstream, massive, youth-oriented sites such as MySpace and Facebook. You may even use these sites (or similar ones) personally or professionally, or, like many "skeptics," you may view them as, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a sign of the decline of civilization. Whatever your view, your students (especially in grades 5-up) are definitely connecting via social networking sites and, increasingly, so are professionals, parents, hobbyists, educators, social activists, and all manner of people and groups looking to share, build and organize around content, conversation and ideas.

A recent study by the National School Board Association, entitled "Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social -- and Educational -- Networking" found that that 96% of kids ages 9-17 with Internet access have used social networking technologies, and that 50% have used those technologies to talk specifically about schoolwork. The final report (only nine pages with lots of graphics -- not required, but definitely worth a read), in addition to presenting some really interesting findings, offers guidelines and recommendations for school boards regarding the uses of social networking in schools. It's worth considering -- if we don't model productive, responsible uses of social networking tools for our students, how will they learn to be productive, responsible users of these tools?

As you watch this overview of social networking by the Common Craft guys, think of it as a community where we can LEARN, GROW and CREATE together. Try substituting "find jobs, meet new friends and find partners" with "explore ideas, build understandings, and share resources."

^{If you're still trying to wrap your brain around this concept, here's a written overview:
What Is Social Networking?}

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Discovery Exercise

1. Set up an account with MySpace or Facebook. If you are uncomfortable using your real name, use an alias.

Here are some resources to help you with this exercise:

What Is MySpace? from about.com
Create a Myspace Profile from about.com
YouTube tutorial - How to Start a MySpace Account

About Facebook
How to Use Facebook video series from ExpertVillage.com

2. Search for schools, libraries, authors or people you know and add them to your friends list.

3. Explore the various ways that you can communicate publicly and privately using these sites.

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Learning Activity

Write a blog post about your experience. Include a link to the profile you created and answer these questions in your post:

1. Why is it important that educators know how social networking works?
2. What new insights did you gain about these popular sites?
3. What did you like or dislike about each of the sites you explored?
4. Which site had the most useful features?
5.Can you see an educational application for any of these sites?

Thing #15 - Social bookmarking and tagging with Delicious

2008-06-03T19:45:00.021-05:00

Introduction

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e. Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data any way they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored one site – Flickr --that allows users to take advantage of tagging. Now we want to take a look at how tagging enables people to share their favorite web sites with others by using a social bookmarking site.

There are several social bookmarking sites available, but the most popular and widely-known is called Delicious. Delicious allows you to bookmark a web page and then add tags to categorize your bookmarks. Many users, however, find that the real power of Delicious is in the social networking aspect, which allows you to browse and search to see what sites other users have saved and tagged. Users can also subscribe to others' bookmark collections or to specific tags to create a personal resource network. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

Start your exploration of social bookmarking by watching this video by the Common Craft guys.
(NOTE: In August 2008, Delicious had a major facelift, so it looks a bit different now, but the concepts are the same.)

A Few "Delicious" Features

Import all your existing bookmarks/favorites from your browser with a few clicks.
Access (and add to) your bookmarks from any computer! Never lose another link, email links to yourself, or paste into a document for sharing access. (Here, for example, is how I saved my Flickr photos for "Thing 11" -- I used delicious to save and tag each photo as "brownbear" as I discovered it. Sure makes citing sources a lot easier!).
Discover great resources saved by millions of delicious users with a keyword search, or by browsing specific tags or individual user collections. Try searching Delicious as an alternative to Google when looking for resources for a particular topic.
Mark any bookmark as private by selecting "do not share" when you save it. (Only YOU will see these sites when you are logged into delicious).
Let others do the work for you!
- Add users to your Network (click "Add to my Network") to automatically track all their sites (displayed on a separate page from your own). You can also share/recommend a site to any user who is in your Network (such as a colleague!)
- Subscribe to a specific tag (go to Tags > My Subscriptions > Add a Subscription) to receive all users' sites saved with that tag (or even narrow your subscription to a specific user and tag).
Display your own and others' bookmarks as a list or in a cloud, sorted by tag name or count (frequency of use). The larger a tag appears in the cloud, the more times that tag has been used.
Easily share and collect bookmarks with others!
- Share all your bookmarks with students or colleagues by giving them a single URL for your delicious username
  (e.g. http://delicious.com/misd23things).
- Share sites for a specific tag (i.e topic) by providing the link for that tag only, (e.g. http://delicious.com/misd23things/blogs -- where the user is misd23things and the tag is blogs).
- Subscribe to the RSS feed of a specific user, tag or user/tag combination in your RSS reader, or display the feed results on a blog, wiki or other webpage to share with students or colleagues.
- Create a special "shared" tag to collect resources along with others for a particular purpose or topic, for example "misd23things." If you want to share a site with our group, use 'misd23things' as a tag along with your other chosen tags. (Here is what the RSS feed for the misd23things tag looks like, embedded in a wiki page). Imagine how you could leverage this capability for student research, sharing sites with colleagues, or for the school library!

Five ways of "looking at bookmarks" in delicious:
(If you take a moment to look at the structure of each link, it's easy to see how delicious is organized).

by User: http://delicious.com/memw (all sites saved by user 'memw')
by Tag: http://delicious.com/tag/web2.0 (all sites tagged 'web2.0' by all users)
by Tag Intersection: http://delicious.com/tag/web2.0+podcast (a "Tag Intersection" combines two or more tags to refine/narrow a search. This link displays all sites tagged with both 'web2.0' and 'podcast' by all users).
by User/Tag combination: http://delicious.com/memw/web2.0 (all of 'memw' sites tagged 'web2.0')
by User/Tag Intersection: http://delicious.com/memw/web2.0+podcast(all of 'memw' sites tagged with both 'web2.0' and 'podcast' )

A Few "High Profile" Ed Tech Delicious Users (Not a Representative Sample)

Will Richardson - http://delicious.com/willrich
David Warlick - http://delicious.com/dwarlick
Vicki Davis (coolcatteacher) - http://delicious.com/brightideasguru
Alan Levine - http://delicious.com/cogdog
David Jakes - http://delicious.com/djakes
Wesley Fryer - http://delicious.com/wfryer
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach - http://delicious.com/snbeach50

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Discovery Exercise

Part 1: Explore delicious.

1. Go to delicious.

2. Search for something that interests you. (You can do this more than once). Enter one or more keywords in the search box at the top of the page.

3. Review the results and begin browsing. Things to notice: additional tags used for each site, number of other people who have tagged the site (numbers in blue boxes), usernames of those who have tagged the sites (click any username to see all sites saved by that user).

4. Explore the results of your search by following some of the "delicious" information -- click a related tag, a username, a blue "saved by X other people" box. HINT: To actually visit a "discovered" site, try right-clicking the link and selecting "open in new tab" or "open in new window". That way, you won't lose your delicious results.

5. When viewing a particular user's saved sites, explore his or her tag list, top 10 tags and tag bundles on the right side of the page. Use Related Tags to narrow your search results. Use Tag Options to switch between cloud and list views, and alpha and count order.

6. Basically, search and browse around, and see what you can figure out about how delicious works and how it may be helpful to you.

PART 2: Get Delicious

Sign up for a delicious account.

Basic Registration Steps:

Step 1: Go to Delicious and click "Join Now!" Fill in the registration form. Pay attention to the password rules. Use your Gmail account.
Step 2: Install the Delicious Extension Buttons (Delicious can tell whether you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer; If you use both browsers, you must install the buttons separately in each browser from here: http://delicious.com/help/tools.
(NOTE: If you are using the Safari browser, choose the Alternative bookmarklet buttons).
Step 3: For now, skip the step that invites you to import your bookmarks! You can do this later.

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Learning Activity

Complete the activity below, then write a blog post sharing your thoughts about delicious and what you learned/noticed in your exploration and initial tagging experiences. Include any ideas you have for using delicious in your professional practice. Include a link to your delicious links in the post (http://delicious/USERNAME). Please include "Thing 15" in the post title.

Do the activity below, then complete the blog post as requested above.

Activity
Part 1: Log into your delicious account and practice adding and tagging 7-10 sites. Give some thought to your choices of tags -- think about all the different ways you would categorize the site -- remember that each tag is a SINGLE KEYWORD and you must leave a space between each tag. Don't be afraid to use several tags, they don't cost anything and the more tags the better. Also give some thought to the Descriptions (site titles -- the "link" you will click) and Notes (site descriptions). Click the "Delicious" button (checkerboard) on your browser toolbar to go to your account and check out the results of your tagging spree.

HELP: Steps for Tagging a Site in Delicious:

Go to delicious and log into your account.
Go to a web site of interest (either perform a search, or select a familiar site).
While viewing the site, click the TAG button on your browser toolbar. Fill in the notes and tags fields, and edit the title as desired. (If other users have tagged the site, tag suggestions will be provided and you can just click them. After awhile, your own tags will be suggested as well). Remember to separate each tag with a space. Also keep in mind that (to a point) "over" tagging is better than "under" tagging -- more tags are better than fewer.
Click Save. Repeat for several sites.

POWER TIP: Try highlighting a bit of text on a page before clicking the TAG button. The highlighted text will be added automatically to the description field when you save the bookmark to delicious!

PART 2: Add the 'shared' tag "misd23things" to a couple of sites that you would like to share with our group. Check out the wiki page to see what happens after you tag a site using misd23things.

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Stretch Activity (OPTIONAL)

Try one or more of the following:

Add a subscription. Find a tag that interests you and subscribe to it (click Subscriptions > Add a Subscription). You can refine/narrow a subscription by using a Tag Intersection (multiple tags joined by + e.g. poetry+shakespeare
Add someone to your network. You can add Mary (memw) or Debbie (dkswartz), one of the Ed Tech gurus listed above, another colleague, or anyone else you wish. (click Network > Add a user to Network). It's a great way to pool resources and share with each other.
Create a Tag Bundle (click Tag Options > Manage tag bundles) to organize your tags. Bundles are really helpful for keeping your bookmarks in good order. This is most meaningful when you have a lot of sites.

Stretchier Task

When you are feeling brave, import your existing bookmarks into delicious (log into your account, click settings, then import/upload). Be aware that they will come in unfiled and public -- you will need to tag each and click "do not share" for any that you want to keep private). If you have a lot of bookmarks, this can be a big project, but it will be well worth it, and we predict you will never revert back to the "old" way of saving bookmarks.

Image by cambodia4kidsorg, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/260004685/

Get organized with web 2.0 tools

2008-06-03T18:42:00.010-05:00

While it may seem that the Internet is populated by people with endless time on their hands who are out to torpedo our productivity, there really are Web-based applications that can improve productivity--or at least make some things easier.

These applications fall into a variety of categories including online office tools like the spreadsheets and word processing tools we learned about in Thing #13, calendars, start pages, project management tools, to-do lists, personal organizers, sticky notes, online collaboration tools, and much, much more. A search on “online productivity tools” turns up many lists of these tools.

RSS aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader from Thing #10 also help your productivity by helping you keep up with the news and information you need.

In this Thing, we have selected several organizational tools for you to try. These are tools that have use in schools and libraries, as well as at home.

1. Customized start page

A customized home—or “start” page— like the one above, lets you collect and organize all of the information that is important to you on one page that displays whenever you open your browser. Since it is online, you can access your start page from any computer anywhere. iGoogle, PageFlakes, and Netvibes are three examples. Each lets you choose headlines, weather reports, links to your email and RSS feeds, and dozens of other widgets (or gadgets, in Google) to manage information—or your life. Note that many widgets require a download.

2. Online calendars

Online calendars all offer similar features—add events, get reminders, search, repeat events, coding, etc. and of course, the hallmark of Web 2.0, the ability to share your calendar with others. Google and Yahoo! Calendars integrate with their other services and features. Choose a calendar from this article and try it out. Other calendars include 30 Boxes and Scrybe.

3. Online to do lists

Try one of these online list tools to manage your activities. Ta da list or Remember the Milk or Jott.

4. Some tools roll multiple features—calendars, lists, reminders, etc--into one service. Take a look at Backpack's features.

But wait, there’s more! In addition to the tools listed above, here are some other productivity/organizational tools to explore.

Discovery Resources:

Top Ten Productivity Web Sites
Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps to Improve a Student's or Professor's Productivity, Online Education Database
2007 Guide to Free Software and Webapps
Lifehacker is a Web site that provides daily updates on tools and applications. Add it to your Bloglines account if you want to really see all that is offered in the name of productivity.

Getting Things Done

Stikkit - personal organizer

StickyNotes.net and MyStickies - sticky notes (requires download)

CutePDF (requires download) - PDF converter

PDFConverter - converts files to portable document format (PDF) so they can be read on any computer

Zamzar - This program will covert one file type to another.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Look at the intro pages for each of the customized start page tools and choose one to create your own customized start page. Add, delete, and re-arrange the features and widgets on your new homepage.

2. Create an online calendar or to do list using one of the tools above.

3. Choose one other tool from the lists above to explore.

4. In your blog post for this Thing, address the following questions:

Which start page did you choose? Why did that one appeal to you? Will you make it your permanent home page?

How can the online calendars be useful to you?
What about the to-do lists—helpful, too much work…?
Did you find a tool that has some uses for you at the school or at home? Which tool(s) would you recommend to others?

Challenge (optional)

1. Have a big project that you need to complete? Online productivity tools can help with complicated tasks involving multiple people, deadlines, and activities. Compare and contrast these project management services. Write a blog post and let us know what you think.

Project Management Services

2. Explore more tools from any of the lists above. Share any you find especially useful.

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tidalotter/538731706/

Thing #14 - Go with the flow

2008-06-03T18:02:00.001-05:00

Who's a freak for flowcharts? I know I love 'em. They can make concepts easy to grasp and solutions easy to find. When describing complex relationships or presenting a variety of choices and outcomes, they're wonderful at keeping important points from getting lost in translation.

Mind maps (an offshoot of the same idea) are similarly useful, though I think they work better for the creator than the reader. They're good at uncovering the relationships between multiple ideas and are not restricted to linear concepts like time and work flow.

So, here are some web-based tools that I've used for projects in the past (I just hate installing stuff):

Gliffy (flowchart)

Bubbl.us (mind map)

Flowchart.com (flowchart, duh)

mindmeister (mind map)

Discovery Exercise:

Choose at least two of the above (one flowchart, one mind map) and set up an account.

Note that flowchart.com will have you request an invitation which should arrive within the day (mine took 15 minutes).

Explore the differences between mind maps and flowcharts, and consider using (or at least testing) one of these tools with a real project that you may have coming up.

Enjoy, and leave a comment here with your thoughts on these or other similar tools.

-Russ

(originally posted on Explore...Discover...Play: Learning 2.1 and used here under a Creative Commons license)

Thing #13 - Web-based applications

2008-06-03T17:56:00.002-05:00

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past two years and for good reasons! These powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop applications. Some experts speculate that this emerging trend may mean the death to Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office. But no matter which side of the office suite platform you side with, on this both sides seem to agree; web-based applications ("apps") have their place.

One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easily accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs* (formerly known as Writely) to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called Zoho Writer, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog. If you're up to the challenge, you might even export your document as an HTML file or publish it through Zoho to your blog.

Discovery Resources:
A short list of web-based productivity applications – Note: This list was authored in ZohoWriter and exported as HTML.

Discovery Exercise:
1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer
2. Explore the site and create a test document or two.
3. Try out Zoho Writer’s features and create a blog post about your discoveries.

Optional: If you’re up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s publish options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Google Docs, Google's online word processing/spreadsheet/presentation applications, as an option for this exercise.

BTW: Here’s a Zoho-created document (viewable as a webpage) about some of the beneficial features of Zoho.

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niallkennedy/374276243/

Thing #21 - Google's not just for searching anymore

2008-05-30T12:15:00.004-05:00

Introduction
Google is the most famous search engine on the web these days, with the very name becoming a verb in our language. Here's Wikipedia's entry on this phenomenon:

The verb to google (also spelled to Google) refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web. For example, "Mary googled for recipes." A neologism arousing from the popularity and dominance^[1] of the eponymous search engine, the American Dialect Society chose it as the "most useful word of 2002." ^[2] It was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006,^[3] and to the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006.^[4] The first recorded usage of google used as a verb was on July 8, 1998, by Larry Page himself, who wrote on a mailing list: "Have fun and keep googling!"^[5]

Although we generally equate Google with web searching, that's not what this "thing" is about. Google also has a variety of free web tools that can be particularly useful in education. Some of these are:

Google Alerts - will e-mail the news to you as it happens. Just enter a search term (news topic, person, event, sports team, etc.) that you would like to keep tabs on. Whenever that topic appears in a news item or on the web, Google Alerts will send you an e-mail.

Google Calendar - lets you organize your schedule and share it with family and friends or co-workers.

iGoogle - gives you a customizable home page where you can add links, news feeds, gadgets, etc. (Be sure and look at the gadgets - these are really fun!)

Google Notebook - lets you clip and collect information into an online notebook as you do research on the Web. It can be shared with others.

Picasa Web Albums - similar to Flickr; Google's version of photo sharing

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Discovery Exercise

Review this list of Google Products and explore a few of them that look interesting to you. Each tool has its own Help Center and some even have "tours" to help you learn their features.

If you're having trouble choosing, consider the tools listed above or some of these:

Google Book Search - Search the full text of books

Google Earth - Explore the world from your computer (requires downloading some software)

Google Custom Search - Create a Google-powered custom search engine to search only the sites you specify

Google Sites - Create a share a group web site

Google SketchUp - Build, modify and share a 3D model

Remember that finding, experimenting with and evaluating new tools, determining whether they have value for us in creating, organizing, communicating or problem-solving -- without an instructor's explicit guidance -- is an essential 21st Century skill, part of lifelong learning, and certainly the sort of capability we want to foster in our students.

For the really adventurous: Take a look at Google Labs. These are the Google products currently in development. You can play with them and send your feedback straight to the Googlers who developed them.

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Learning Activity

After looking at each of Google tools, choose two of them to explore further. Try setting up an alert, calendar, notebook, picasa album or iGoogle page and using it. If sharing is an option for the tools you choose, make them public. Blog about your experience with both tools and include a link to your creation(s). Be sure and include possible educational uses in your post and (as always) Thing # 21 in your post title.

Thing #6 - Feed your reader: find & subscribe to feeds

2008-05-30T12:09:00.007-05:00

Introduction
One of the key concepts of "Web 2.0" in education is the understanding that we are all becoming "networked learners." The tools connect us to an expansive, interconnected web of experts, ideas and resources, and allow us to participate and contribute. A core element of your learning network is your RSS reader (also known as a newsreader or aggregator). Fill it with quality feeds and the expert knowledge, learning and ideas come to you!

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Discovery Exercise

PART 1: Find 2-3 educational blogs of interest to you and add them to your reader

You will have to invest a little time to find the first couple of bloggers whose voices really resonate for you, but once you find a couple of folks you really like, adding others becomes easy.

Probably the best way to build your "feed library" is to find one or two bloggers you like and check out their "Blogrolls" to see whose blogs they read. In the "blogosphere," you will find that the voices you value are often connected to one another.

Read this post from The Cool Cat Teacher blog for some great suggestions on how to select good RSS feeds: How to Create Your Circle of the Wise.

A few other places to begin looking for education-themed blogs

EduBlogs Magazine - Who are the Top Edubloggers?
Pick someone from this list, check out their blog, then check out their blogroll to find other voices.
Edublogs Home Page: Popular Tags and Categories
Check out the "Tag Cloud" at the bottom of the Edublogs homepage. Click any tag (keyword) of interest to be taken to recent posts (from all Edublogs users) marked with that topic.
Livemocha: Top 100 Technorati-Ranked Edublogs
2008 Edublog Award Winners and Nominees
Check out the winners and nominees in about a dozen categories. Also includes links to winning blogs from 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
TechLearning Blog: Meet the Bloggers
If you like the postings of any of the contributors to TechLearning (one of your RSS subscriptions from Thing 5), you may want to subscribe to their personal blogs.
Support Blogging! Links to School Bloggers -
An un-vetted but rich list of possibilities. Many recognizable names, some hopefully serendipitous finds.
OEDb: Top 100 Education Blogs

PART 2: Use blog search engines to find one or two blogs of interest to you and add them to your reader. These can be educational blogs or fun topics that you enjoy.

Using Blog Search Engines to Find Feeds
Use these tools as you would a "regular" search engine to search for blogs or news feeds on your particular area of interest.

Google Blog Search
Type your terms into the search field and click Search Blogs. Use multiple keywords and phrases just as in a regular Google web search. Adding clarifying terms such as "education" or "elementary" to your main topic may be helpful.
Technorati
Technorati is the recognized authority in what's happening on the "World Live Web." To learn more about Technorati, click here.

To search Technorati, enter one or more keywords in the search box at the top of the page and click Search. (Search Tips: You may want to include terms such as "education" or "elementary" along with your other keyword(s); Try looking at results on both the Posts tab and the Blogs tab; Authority ranking indicates how many other blogs have linked to a blog).
Google Reader "Discover"
Perform a "Feed Search" from right inside your Google Reader. Click Discover, then the Browse tab, type your search terms in the Search and Browse field, then click Search for Feeds.

PART 3: Adopt two of your classmates' blogs

Subscribe to the blogs of (at least) two classmates. You can find a list of 23 Thingsters blogs on the sidebar of the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things site.

Send a Gmail to misd23things@gmail.com listing the two blogs that you are adopting. On the Google tracking spreadsheet we will make blog addresses BOLD to indicate that they have been adopted. Ideally, everyone will be adopted by at least one other participant plus the facilitators -- please try to pick people who don't have a BOLD blog address before picking those who do!

PART 4: (OPTIONAL) Add a "Fun" Feed to Your Reader

Daily Dilbert Comic - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip
Movie Reviews from Rotten Tomatoes - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/help_desk/syndication_rss.php
Flickr "Interestingness" Photos Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/flickr_interestingness
Dictionary.com Word of the Day - http://dictionary.reference.com/help/linking/wordoftheday-expert.html
Read DaVinci's Notebooks one Page at a Time: http://www.interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/
Family Fun Feeds - http://familyfun.go.com/utilities/global/feature/content-syndication/
Follow Your Favorite Sports Team - http://sports.yahoo.com/top/rss
Horoscope - http://www.astrology.com/feeds/
Weather - http://www.weather.com/weather/rss/subscription
Answers.com Daily Feeds - http://www.answers.com/main/answers_rss.jsp
Amazon.com Daily Gold Box Deals - http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=cs_top_nav_gb27/104-2450860-6665567
Currency Exchange Rates - http://www.currencysource.com/rss_currencyexchangerates.html
Daily Jigsaw Puzzle - http://www.flashpuzzlezone.com/
NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle (Podcast) - http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=4473090

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Learning Activity

1. Check your Google Reader daily or every other day for 5-7 days. Practice skimming and scanning through your feeds.

After completing the discovery exercises above, you should have about 6-10 feeds in your reader.

(NOTE: You are not required to retain the original 3-5 feeds from Thing 5 if you do not want them. Go to Manage Subscriptions in your Google Reader and click the Trash can next to the feed(s) you want to remove.)

2. Write a blog post reflecting on your experience and sharing one or more items of interest from your reader.

3. Include links to any posts you refer to.

4. Be sure to include "Thing #6" as part of your post title.

PLEASE NOTE: You will be asked to complete this same task (blog about something interesting from your Google Reader) at two other times during this course. Please continue to check your reader at least every other day throughout the course. It's the only way to actually build a reading habit. See note below.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT YOUR READER: The content in your reader can be overwhelming because it will continue to "pile up" endlessly. BUT -- it's not actually there -- it hurts NOTHING for you to skim and skip items and mark them as "read" just by scrolling past them. You aren't actually deleting anything. In fact, learning to quickly scan and process a lot of news items is an essential part of RSS literacy and information management -- the important ideas will always come back around, and you will also learn to pare down your subscriptions as you go. If you feel compelled to thoroughly read every item, you will remain completely overwhelmed and quickly "quit" your reader. Keep trying -- it gets easier!

Stretch Activity - Create a Custom News Feed.

One of the most powerful features of Google News is that it allows you to create a custom feed that checks 4,500 news sources for whatever keyword(s) you choose.

To set up your feed, go to Google News: http://news.google.com, enter your desired search term(s) and click "Search News" (Use advanced search features to refine your search as needed). While viewing your results, click the RSS link in the left sidebar, and copy and paste the feed URL into the Add Subscription area of your reader. After monitoring the feed for a couple of days, write a brief blog post describing the feed you created and sharing about an interesting item or two that has appeared in your reader as a result of the feed.

Thing #4 - Blogging begins with reading

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Introduction

Like other Web 2.0 technologies, blogging connects people and ideas. There are, of course, blogs addressing pretty much every topic imaginable: Personal interests and family, education, politics, news, entertainment, arts, culture, sports, lifestyle, hobbies, social causes, technology, business, self-help, etc... Technorati's "State of the Live Web" for April 2007 reported tracking over 70 million weblogs and counting. If you can think of it, someone's most certainly blogging about it.

Blogging is more than writing. Blogging is reading, reflecting, questioning, researching, synthesizing, linking, conversing, teaching, sharing and expressing ideas. Blogging is about writing, but blogging begins with reading.

Photo source: On the Internet... uploaded on April 20, 2007 by cogdogblog.

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Discovery Exercise

Read at least five of the blog posts below. They are intended to give you just a tiny sampling of a few voices and blogging styles (BY NO MEANS EVEN REMOTELY REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL THAT IS OUT THERE!) of teachers and students in the "EduBlogosphere," which is the category encompassing education-related bloggers and blogs. Take some time to read the comments as well, as commenting is one of the most significant aspects of blogging. In the next "thing", you will set up your RSS reader and subscribe to a few blogs that spark your interest.

As you read, consider the following questions (feel free to adapt and expand on any of these or add your own):

What do you notice about the genre of blog writing in general?
How is blog reading different from other types of reading? How is it similar?
How is blog writing different from other types of writing? How is it similar?
How does commenting contribute to the writing and meaning-making?
Is there a "blogging literacy?" How does blogging affect the way we read and write?
How can blogging facilitate learning?

Sample Blog Posts (Select Five)

dy/dan (Mr. Meyer): Why I Don’t Assign Homework
There are 86 comments on this post as of January 31, 2008. You don't have to read them all - says something about the provocativeness of the post, though!
Mrs. Edmison's Class: Questions for One of Our Favorite Authors: Grace Lin>> Third grade students receive a special blog comment from a beloved author answering their questions about writing.
Mark’s Edtech Blog: Is this SSR 2.0?
A third grade teacher describes a "new" kind of Sustained Silent Reading.
SP-817 Math Blog: Boeun's Scribe for December 4th
This is an example of a "Scribe Post," as "invented" by calculus teacher Darren Kuropatwa, in which a student (8th grader in this case) reviews the classroom learning for the day or week. The teacher sets guidelines for the quality of work and students who exceed the requirements have an opportunity to be nominated into the "Scribe Hall of Fame."
CoolCatTeacher (Vicki Davis): Spies Like Us
Vicki Davis talks about the realities of teaching in a society where every cell phone is a recording device. Vicki Davis is someone you want to know about!
Extreme Biology: Imagine Turning On the Faucet and Nothing Coming Out
Classroom blog of a high school biology teacher in an Atlanta-area private school. Students post about different topics related to the study of biology. This is the most-read post on the blog. Check out the comments in response to the student's question at the end of her post.
EduBlog Insights (Anne Davis): A Rationale for Educational Blogging
Anne Davis, an edublogging pioneer from Georgia State University, has been blogging with elementary school students since 2002. In this post, she enumerates her reasons for blogging with students.
Discourse About Discourse: The Ripe Environment
A proposal for getting beyond the tools to the teaching and learning.
Students 2.0: Teaching Brevity
The author of this post is a fourteen-year-old. The Students2oh blog is collaboratively written by a group of high schoolers from across the U.S. and beyond. These outspoken, articulate students have garnered a huge following in just a few weeks of publishing.
NeverEnding Search: PowerPoint Reform - A First Chapter
High school librarian Joyce Valenza shares highlights from her presentation for senior English classes on how to stop making miserable PowerPoint presentations.Good points and good resources.
Patrick's Update: 5th Grade
This post was written by an at-risk fifth grader who struggled with writing and school success in general. Anne Davis shares it as an example of the importance of comments in blogging.
Weblogg-ed (Will Richardson): Why Can't We Do This?
Ed tech visionary Will Richardson takes a break from "blog-vangelizing" to ask a question about plastic grocery bags.
Andy Carvin / Learning NOW: An Open Letter About Cyberbullying
Andy Carvin responds to a nerve-striking "humor" article in Wired Magazine.
Wandering Ink: How To Prevent Another Leonardo Da Vinci
An argument about the ways in which the current education system and adolescent culture discourage creative thought. (If this interests you, you may want to view Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity?).
Duck with a Blog: Second graders Write About Our Missing Duck
Award-winning elementary blog about an unexpected guest. Be sure to click the duck to read the students' stories.

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Learning Activity:

PART 1: Create a blog post in response to the exploratory reading and questions listed above. Feel free to reflect on anything that struck you about the posts themselves itself or the genre of blogging in general. Be sure to include a link to any post(s) you refer to and include "Thing #4" in your post title. (NOTE: Because blogs are frequently updated, the "front page" content is always changing. When linking to a blog post, you need to use the Permalink, which is the direct, permanent link to that post.

HELP video: Adding links from blog posts

PART 2: Visit the blogs of two participants in our Learning 2.0 group (listed on the sidebar of the Learning 2.0 site or within our Google tracking spreadsheet) and contribute a comment in response to one of their posts. Try to include specifics in your comment, relate to your own experiences and even ask questions. Include a link to your own blog in the website. Early finishers may have to check back later in the week to find blogs to post to.

HELP:

Thing #3 - Submit your blog information

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We hope you are enjoying the adventure so far and are having fun. Remember to share with your colleagues whenever you have any knowledge or experience that may help them out if they get stuck or vice versa!

If you’ve made it this far, you already have two items or “things” completed of the 23 that are required to earn your staff development credit.

Now that your blog is created, you MUST submit it to the MISD Learning 2.0 team by completing the online form.

****IMPORTANT****
Until you submit your blog information, you aren't officially doing the class with us and won't receive credit. The Learning 2.0 team must receive your information for you to be added to our group. You will receive an official "welcome" e-mail when your registration has been received. (The e-mail has to be sent manually, so don't panic if it doesn't come immediately after you register. Just go ahead with your work on the Things. If you still haven't received it after 48 hours, please e-mail and let us know.)

Other things to remember:

This course will be entirely online.
There will be NO face to face meetings.
You have the entire fall session to complete this course. All postings must be made by midnight on December 5, 2008 in order to receive credit.
You must make at least one substantive post on each "Thing" in order to receive credit. "Substantive" means that we expect you to write as if you were describing the "thing" to someone who doesn't know anything about it and include the information asked for in the Discovery Exercise for each "thing" in your post.
Clearly identify the "thing #" in the title of each post.
There should be a separate blog posting for each "thing." Please do not combine "things."

Discovery Exercise:

1. If you haven't done it already, submit your blog information right away. You will then be officially registered and eligible to receive your staff development credit upon completion of all 23 Things!

2. For your Thing #3 post, write about ways that you might use a blog in your library program or school. For some ideas, click on over to Edublog Insights by Anne Davis.

It’s really that easy and just think, now there are only 20 more things to go. :)

Thing #1 - Lifelong learning and learning 2.0

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Introduction
Congratulations! You are at the beginning of a self-guided learning journey. As educators, lifelong learning is one of those core values that we use to guide what we do each day. Even so, it will require a bit of dedication and determination to keep moving through this course, past hiccups and technical glitches, past the overwhelming feeling of what will be, for many of us, learning about completely new tools and concepts, past the competing pressures of incredibly busy lives and schedules.

As you begin to work through the course. you will notice a pattern in each "Thing" (activity/topic) -- Introduction, Discovery Exercise, Learning Activity. To complete (and get credit for) each "Thing," you must work through all parts of the Discovery Exercise AND complete all required parts of the Task, typically reflecting on your experience in a blog post (you will set up your blog in Thing 3).

It is helpful to read through each entire "Thing" before completing the Discovery Exercises and Learning Activities, so that you know where you are headed. Along the way, you will be offered an occasional "Stretch" task. These are not required, but will help you to further explore -- everyone should try at least some of them, especially if you are already familiar with a particular tool or concept.

Ready to get started? Now is a great time to reflect on your stance as a lifelong learner.

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Discovery Exercise:

To complete this exercise, you will need a headset or computer speakers (make sure they are plugged in and turned on). View the online tutorial 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners to hear about some helpful lifelong learning strategies.

(NOTE: During "Thing 3", you will complete your first blog post reflecting on the 7 1/2 Habits, so you may wish to take a few notes).

As you review the 7 1/2 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners, consider three things:

Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your Learning 2.0 - 23 Things experience?
Which habit(s) will be easiest, or is most resonent for you as a lifelong learner?
Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?

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Learning Activity:

In the top right corner of the tutorial, there is a link for "attachments." Click the link and download the learning contract.

If you have trouble downloading the contract from the tutorial site, you can also get it here.

Fill out the contract and send a copy to misd23things@gmail.com.

The 23 Things

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Discovery Exercises and Activities
Each week, you will complete two or three Discovery Exercises and Learning Activities ("Things"), as listed below. Remember, you are in charge of your learning journey. This course is about exposure, exploration and experimentation, not about "doing it right." Your co-participants and Learning 2.0 team are here to support and encourage you!

Stretch Activities
Along the way, you will also encounter a few Stretch activities accompanying some of the "Things." Stretch activities are designed to enrich and extend your learning. Everyone is encouraged to try at least some of them, but they are not required. If you are already comfortable with a particular tool or concept, you should definitely complete the Stretch activity!

Click the link to view details about each "Thing."

The 23 Things*

Fall 2009 Schedule

Week One (9/14/09) - Introduction and Blogging

Thing #0 - Learn about the course, get yourself a Google/Gmail Account and get Firefox.
Thing #1 - Review some strategies for lifelong learning.
Thing #2 - Learn a bit about Web 2.0 and why it matters

Week Two (9/21/09) - Blogging

Thing #3 - Set up your blog at Blogger and write your first two posts
Thing #4 - Explore some uses for blogs in education

Week Three (9/28/09) - RSS and Aggregators

Thing #5 - Learn about RSS and set up a reader/aggregator
Thing #6 - Feed your reader: find and subscribe to feeds
Thing #7 - Creating community through commenting

Week Four (10/5/09) - Wikis

Thing #8 - What is a wiki? Explore educational uses for Wikis
Thing #9 - Set up your own page on the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things sandbox wiki.

Week Five (10/12/09) - Images and Slideshows

Thing #10 - Learn about Creative Commons
Thing #11 - Intro to Photosharing and Tagging; explore Flickr
Thing #12 - Create an online Slideshow using your own or Creative Commons photos

Week Six (10/19/09) - Discover & Reflect

Thing #13 - Play around with an online image generator; Comment on other participant blogs
Thing #14 - Explore one or more tools of choice (Gliffy, Quizlet, Ta-Da List, SketchCast, etc)
Thing #7a - Blog about something interesting you've found in your Google Reader

Week Seven (10/26/09) - Social Bookmarking & Tagging

Thing #15 - Intro to Social Bookmarking; Set up a Delicious.com account and begin adding and tagging resources
Thing #16 - Discover LibraryThing

Week Eight (11/2/09) - Podcasting and Videosharing

Thing #17 - Intro to Podcasting; Explore some educational podcasts
Thing #18 - Intro to Video Sharing; Explore YouTube and TeacherTube.
Thing #19 - Combine audio, images and video with Voicethread

Week Nine (11/2/09) - Get Productive

Thing #20 - Use Google Docs to create and share collaborative documents, spreadsheets and presentations
Thing #21 - Learn about other cool tools Google has to offer
Thing #7b - Blog about something interesting you've found in your Google Reader.

Week Ten (11/9/09) - Connect with Social Networks

Thing #22 - Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are the way many people communicate. Explore one or both!
Thing #23 - MySpace and Facebook get all the press, but there are other social networks.

One last thing:
Summarize your thoughts about this course.

Thing #8 - What in the world is a wiki?

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Introduction

A wiki is a website that anyone can edit. The first wiki was developed in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who named his project after the Hawaiian word "wiki-wiki," meaning "quick." If you can use a word processor, copy and paste, and send an email attachment, you can create a wiki.

A wiki site may be as basic as a single page containing information and links by one author, or as complex as Wikipedia, the collaborative web-based encyclopedia, containing over 9 million articles in 250 languages, written, edited and constantly updated by thousands of users.

Wikis in Plain English

Some of the benefits that make the use of wikis so attractive are:

Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
Earlier versions of a page can be rolled back and viewed when needed.
Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.
A wiki's "permissions" may be set to Public, Protected or Private.

Public - Anyone can view and edit the pages;
Protected - Anyone can view the pages, but only approved members may edit pages;
Private - Only approved members (who are logged in) can view or edit the pages.

A wiki site includes the ability to track page changes via email or an RSS feed. That's how Wikipedia vandalism/errors are corrected so quickly!
Most wikis include a Discussion feature for each page, allowing users to leave comments or discuss page contents.

Why Wikis in Education?
Wikis encourage shared knowledge construction, as they are often built and edited by many users at once. Teachers and students can use wikis for publishing, organizing, and sharing virtually any kind of information – professional, creative or academic. Wikis are democratic tools that, implemented effectively, can enable students to take responsibility for learning outcomes, plan and make decisions, work together, publish to an audience beyond the classroom and, perhaps most importantly, teach others.

At is simplest, a wiki is a really easy way to make a website. At its most robust, a wiki is a collaborative, participatory, living, evolving content repository. (Of course, the quality of the content is what matters). Wikis can be used to support classroom learning, professional development, collaborative document writing, planning and resource-building. Essentially, a wiki is anything you want it to be.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, schools, libraries, and individuals all over the country have started to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, professional conference wikis and even best practices wikis.

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Discovery Exercise:

Check out a few (say, 5-7) of the "educational" wikis below. Explore their organization and content. While there are essentially endless professional and administrative uses for wikis, we have slanted the selection towards those that include collaborative, student-produced content. As you look at the sites, consider how you might use a wiki to support student learning and/or your own teaching or professional goals. (These are not offered as the absolute best or most comprehensive wiki projects, just a variety of examples). Before you get started, read the learning activity below, so you know what your blog post will require.

1001 Flat World Tales - An ongoing global writing workshop emphasizing peer editing and revision. The challenge: "You are a modern Scheherazade. You must tell an 'amazing' story that keeps your King interested in order to stay alive. You will have an advantage over Scheherezade, though: you can draft and revise your story until the 'King' -- three or four of your classmates -- judge your story is good enough to allow you to survive."
Code Blue - Sixth grade students learning about the human body open their own online "medical clinic."
Discovery Utopias - Middle school students answer "all of the great questions" of society (What is the role of government, What is the responsibility of the individual, etc.) and come to a collaborative consensus about what a society truly needs in order to reach for perfection and sustainability. Click the Discovery Utopias link at the bottom of the navigation area (just above the visitor map) to view the student projects.
Dr. Reich's Chemistry Wiki - Wiki site providing resources to support high school chemistry course and to showcase student projects.
FHS Wolves Den - Site to support eleventh grade English and U.S. History classes. Hub for class lectures, essays, novels, projects, links, learning applications, discussions, and more.
Flat Classroom Project - Award-winning global collaboration between high school students in U.S. and Bangladesh. Students studied and reported on each of the ten "flatteners" presented in Friedman's The World is Flat, using a variety of Web 2.0 tools. This is true 21st Century collaboration.
Go West - Third graders share their learning about Westward Expansion along the Oregon Trail.
Grazing for Digital Natives - Resources for educators about using new technologies in the classroom.
Holocaust Wiki Project - AP World History students create "branching stories" about families in the Holocaust. "They have to come up with realistic decision points, describe the pros and cons, address the consequences of each decision, and fill it in with a narrative that reflects their research on the Holocaust." (Click Period 1, 2, 3 or 4 at the bottom of the page to view student projects).
Kindergarten Counting Book - Photos to show each number from 1 to 100. (Wetpaint now offers ad-free education wikis).
Math 12V Outcomes Portfolio - Twelfth grade math students create an online review for the entire math curriculum.
Primary Math - Primary students share their math learning with students around the world.
Room 15 Wiki - Sixth grade classroom wiki. Includes book reviews and creative works by students, as well as class information. (Click Sidebar to see links to wiki sections).
Salute to Seuss - Elementary students celebrate Dr. Seuss by reading his books and creating an online presentation. Click Student Gallery to view the final projects.
Schools in the Past - First graders interview parents and grandparents to find out how schools have changed.
Thousands Project - Each month, Mr. Monson's fifth grade class posts a new question, hoping to receive 1000 responses from students and visitors from around the world.
Turn Homeward, Hannalee - Fifth graders created a comprehensive study guide for this Civil War era historical novel.
Welker's Wikinomics - Award-winning project supporting the teaching of AP Economics. Be sure to check out the Discussion Forum.
Westwood Schools Computer Science - Classroom wiki for Vicki Davis' (coolcatteacher) high school computer science courses.

A Few Further Resources (provided for your reference)

TeachersFirst Wiki Walkthrough - Useful overview of basic wiki features and concepts, plus lots of ideas for classroom wiki projects in many subject areas, including a specific section for younger grades.
EDUCAUSE: 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis (PDF) - Don't let the techno-speak in #3 scare you.
Wiki While You Work - Mark Wagner's introduction to wikis presentation from the 2006 K12 Online Conference. It's long (1 hour) but really good.
Wiki Wisdom: Lessons for Educators (PDF) - Article from Digital Directions

A Few Sites for Creating a Wiki (provided for your reference)
In case you just can't wait to start your wiki, here are three good options, each of which offers Ad-Free, hosted wikis for K-12 Education. The features vary a bit, so you may want to investigate a bit before settling. One way to do that is to create a "regular" free wiki (ad-supported) to explore the features before asking for your educator site.

Wikispaces for Teachers - http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers100K
PBWiki for Educators - http://pbwiki.com/edu.pb
WetPaint for Education -http://www.wetpaint.com/category/Education

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Learning Activity

Part 1

A. Read Vicki Davis' blog post Wiki Wiki Teaching about her first experience using wikis in the classroom. Do you think there may be a wiki in your future?

B. Write a blog post sharing your thoughts and observations about the educational wiki projects you have explored. Provide details/examples from at least three wikis that you actually investigated -- e.g. What did you notice about their organization, content, tools used, learning outcomes? What was missing? What could you do differently or better? In your post, please also share initial ideas you have for wiki use in classroom, professional or personal learning.

C. Be sure to include "Thing 8" in the title of your post.

Part 2:
Don't forget to check your Google Reader at least every other day this week -- remember, you are skimming and scanning for items of interest, not reading every single entry! You are always welcome to adjust your subscriptions (delete some, add new ones, etc...).

Stretch Activity
1. Check out a topic of interest in Wikipedia. Does the content seem valid, complete, well-written?

2. Visit the Discussion tab to see if there has been any conversation or controversy about the article.

3. Also look at the History tab and explore a few of the revisions.

4. Post a blog entry reflecting on your Wikipedia experience. Be sure to include "Thing 8 - Stretch" in the title of your post.

Thing #13 - Online image generators

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Introduction
Generators? No, we're not talking about those gas powered back-up things. The generators we're talking about allow you to easily manipulate image and graphics to create fun images like these:

Flickr also offers programs called "mashups" that allow you to make custom images from your Flickr photos. For this Thing, we want you to have fun and play around with these fun tools.

Discovery Exercise:

If you did the stretch activity on Thing #9, some of this Thing might look familiar! If you didn't, you get another chance to learn how to create custom images that match up perfectly with your needs.

First of all, we need to talk about "mashups".

Wikipedia offers a great article that explains mashups. Basically they are hybrid web applications that take features from one application (like Flickr) and mash it up with another (like Google Maps). In this example, you get Mappr (http://mappr.com).

Like many web 2.0 sites, Flickr has encouraged other people to build their own online applications using images found on the site. Through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces), many people have created third party tools and mashups that use Flickr images.

1. Choose a couple of the Flickr mashups below and make a custom image or two:

Mappr - allows you to take Flickr images and paste them on a map
Flickr Color Pickr - lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
Mosaic Maker – create a photo mosaic from photos found on Flickr.
Trading Card Maker - make a trading card from any digital photo
Spell with Flickr - see Thing #9 for an example
More mashups, web apps, and Flickr tools.

2. Another way to create your own images is by using an online image generator. Use one (or more) of the image or text generators listed below and create a custom image.

Comic Strip Generator
Custom Sign Generator
Image Chef
Happy Face Generator

There are literally hundreds of text and image generators out there. To find others, try a Google search for online generators, text generators or image generators or visit the Generator Blog which lists new text and image generators almost daily.

3. Be sure that you save all of your creations to your computer.

4. Add at least one of your creations to your blog. Often adding the image you mocked up to your blog is as simple as copying and pasting code that the page provides. If not, you may just need to right click on the image and then save it to your hard drive before using Blogger’s image button to add it to your post.

If you’re having difficulty getting your image added to a post in your blog, ask a colleague for help. In looking at several of your blogs, it’s easy to see that we have lots of people in the district who have figured out how easy it is to add images to their blogs.

Learning Activity:

1. Play around with the image generators and Flickr mashups listed above.
2. Create several different types of images and save them to your computer.
3. Post some of your creations to your blog and describe your process for creating them.

Note: Be sure to include a link to the image generator(s) you used, so other participants can discover it too.

4. Write a reflective post about custom image generators. Be sure to include how you might use these in your classroom, library or in your personal life. Label the post Thing #13.

Take some time and have fun with this activity. (And remember to be tasteful too!)

23 Thingsters - Spring 2009

2008-05-27T14:56:00.000-05:00

The authors of these blogs completed the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things course during Spring 2009. They all did a great job and learned a lot - take a look at some of their work!

Words of Wisdom
Together at Last
Terrified Traveler
Pithy Thoughts
My Reflections
23 Things
Mikey's Thoughts
Bio Junkie
Echols' Expressions
Waterfrontview
Crafty Lady
What Was That
Learning New Things
Keep'n up with this Jones
leaping to the future
K's Korner
Megan Leigh
World of Journalism
23 Thingster
Joel's Science Update
Inktrack
Reluctant Blogger
vikingman1
Zach's Equations and Antics
What's for dinner?
Imagining Life Better and Living That Life Now
Learning 101
BrideToBe-jessica
Working It Out

Thing #8 - Flickr mashups

2008-05-27T14:48:00.006-05:00

What is a "mashup"?

Wikipedia offers a great article that explains mashups. Basically they are hybrid web applications that take features from one application (like Flickr) and mash it up with another (like Google Maps). In this example, you get Mappr.

Like many web 2.0 sites, Flickr has encouraged other people to build their own online applications using images found on the site. Through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces), many people have created third party tools and mashups that use Flickr images.

Discovery Resources:

Here are a few examples of mashups that use Flickr:

Mappr - allows you to take Flickr images and paste them on a map
Flickr Color Pickr - lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
Mosaic Maker – create a photo mosaic from photos found on Flickr.
Clockr - uses random photos to display the time.
Big Huge Labs offers a round-up of Flickr tools.
Spell with Flickr - spells out your word or phrase with photos from Flickr.
Splashr lets you present your Flickr photos in a different view.
Create puzzles from your Flickr photos.

Discover more mashups, web apps, and Flickr tools.

Discovery Exercise:

Your discovery exercise for this “thing” is to:

Explore some of the fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are listed here.
Use the mashups to create something then upload one or more of your creations to your blog (most will give easy to follow instructions somewhere on the site about how to copy the code needed and where to place it on your blog).
In your post, talk about some ways Flickr and/or Flickr mashups could be used in your classroom, library or personal life. What are your feelings about sharing photos online?

Have some fun discovering and exploring some of these neat little apps, but be careful. Playing with these tools can be habit-forming. You may discover that you have a new hobby!

PS: Play image above created by Spell with Flickr.

Thing #7a and #7b - Google Reader revisited

2008-05-26T14:51:00.002-05:00

Task
Check your Google Reader (again, the goal is to build a habit of checking daily), and share a brief blog post about something interesting you have read. Include a link to the post (the permalink from the original site, not a link from inside your reader). Please include "Thing 7a" (or 7b) as part of your post title.

A WORD ABOUT MANAGING RSS OVERLOAD: If you are feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of feeds, remember that the information is not really "in" the reader, and that you are not supposed to try and read all of it, but to skim and scan for items that DO interest you, and mark them with a star for true reading. Flip past most and mark items as read. Even if you "delete" everything from your reader, you can always get it back by clicking show "all items," so don't be afraid to weed your reader. Learning to make quick, effective choices about "what to ignore" is a new kind of literacy that we all need to develop and teach our students in this age of information overload! In the blogosphere, the important ideas will always come back around!

Thing #11 - Photosharing with Flickr

2008-05-21T17:48:00.036-05:00

Above images created by Spell with Flickr, using Flickr One Letter photo pool. Click any letter to see original image with attribution and CC license.

Introduction

Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first websites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site.

You may have noticed that nearly every lesson in this course includes a photograph or image that relates visually to the content. Most images used in MISD 23 Things come from the Flickr Creative Commons collection. In Thing 10, you learned how Creative Commons allows users to publish their original work on the web, and give legal permission to others to use, adapt and remix the work. "Flickr CC" currently includes over 60 million photos, from users all over the world.

This video from our friends at Common Craft explains what photosharing is all about.

Online Photosharing in Plain English

In fact, the social power of Flickr comes from tagging, which is the process of adding meaningful keywords to photos (or any type of content). If you’ve ever used a subject heading in a library catalog or written names or places on the back of a photograph, you’re already familiar with tagging! Flickr's public photo tags are visible to the whole community, so the entire collection becomes organized and categorized, searchable and browsable. Flickr users can also comment on each others' photos and create Groups to develop photo pools (shared photo collections) and have discussions about any topic or interest.

IMPORTANT! Tagging and Folksonomies - Two Defining Attributes of Web 2.0
Photo tagging is an example of a folksonomy, an important Web 2.0 concept that refers to the collaborative organizing of content by everyday users. Unlike a highly structured, professionally developed and controlled taxonomy (such as library subject headings), a folksonomy evolves over time, as more users add more tags to more content. Tagging is a bit messy, can be very individualized, and is non-heirarchical (i.e. there are no "sub-tags"); For example, a photo of your dog may be tagged as dog, beagle, rover and even cute if that means something to you. (Also, tags cannot have spaces, e.g. chocolate chip cookie is actually three tags, whereas chocolate_chip_cookie (or chocolatechipcookie) is one tag.

The concept of tagging is not unique to Flickr. Many Web 2.0 services incorporate tagging to add user-defined value and organization. Bloggers often tag their posts, and clicking on their tags may take you to a listing of all of their own posts tagged as such, or possibly a listing of ALL KNOWN blog entries tagged as such.

You may recall that in the Thing 2 video, The Machine is Us/ing Us, in reaction to the explosion of digital content on the Web, Michael Wesch asks the question: "Who will organize all this data?" His answer (the answer): We will - using TAGS!

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people, schools, and libraries are using Flickr for. The Library of Congress even has a Flickr account with more than 3,000 photos that you are invited to tag!

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Discovery Exercise:

NOTE: The discovery exercises and task do not require you to JOIN Flickr, but you are certainly welcome/encouraged to do so -- a good place to start if you want to join Flickr is the official Flickr Tour.

IMPORTANT! Please be mindful as you explore Flickr that not all images are free to use! Just because you can view it and you know how to capture it doesn't mean you have permission to use it. The good news is, Flickr currently has over 60 million images licensed under Creative Commons, and also, many Flickr photographers will graciously give permission for educational and classroom use of their photos. Incidentally, this same concept holds true for Google or other image searches. We are responsible for honoring copyright, seeking permission, citing sources and teaching these essential ethics to our students. Don't forget to check out that WONDERFUL Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Education.

Expect to spend at least an hour "roaming" in Flickr -- the time should fly by, as you are exploring an amazing resource and this should be FUN!

Part 1: Explore Flickr (~15 min)
Spend a few minutes just getting to know Flickr. One of the best ways to do that is visit the Explore page, where you can check out: Most Interesting Photos, Most Popular Tags, Places & Maps, Groups, and general Search. (Try browsing and sample searching in each of these modes). Flickr treats each search word as a separate tag, so you may have better results using phrases, e.g. "long island" or compound tags, e.g. long_island or longisland. You just have to experiment.

Part 2: Find some photos in the CC (~15-30min, depending on your personality and chosen search task!)
Pick a concept, topic or theme of your choice (preferably something you could use in your teaching or professional learning) and search the Flickr Creative Commons to find 3-5 (or more if you choose) photos matching the theme (or telling the story, or supporting the idea or topic).Download the LARGE (unless it's really big) size of each photo (easiest to save them all to a single folder), being sure to save the photo page URL and photographer's username (try pasting them into a Word document or bookmarking them on your computer) so that you can give credit.

You will be invited to use these images to create an embeddable slideshow in Thing 12.

An easy way to search all CC photos is to use Flickr Advanced Search and check the box that says "Only search within CC licensed photos." (If you click the regular Search without entering a keyword, you will return a search box that allows you to select Advanced Search).

Part 3: Explore some Educational Possibilities for Flickr (~15-30 min)
You can't help it, you are teachers, and you want to know about the educational possibilities of Flickr. For a mere start, take a look at some of these resources and examples:

Collections of Ideas

David Jakes - Classroom Uses of Flickr
A blog post full of ideas for using Flickr to support classroom learning, including Carl Sandburg Meets Flickr, in which he uses images to illustrate a poem (think poems, quotations, vocabulary, figurative language, literary passages, also think slideshow or digital story).
Alan Levine - What Can We Do With Flickr?
Flickr Lesson Plans from Education Grad Students (discussions posted in a Flickr Group -- using the tool to explore the tool!)

Individual Lessons/Examples

Teacher Dude - Teaching Vocabulary Using Flickr
Darren Kuropatwa (via CoolCatTeacher) - Fascinating Flickr Assignment to Teach Math (A high school Trigonometry project. Be sure to check out the student projects and the project rubric!)
MisterTeacher's Flickr For Teachers - Blogging Photos Part 1; Blogging Photos Part 2

Further Resources (provided for your reference)

David Jakes - Flickr Resources
Anne Davis - Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools: Flickr
Josh Lowenstein - Newbie's Guide to Flickr
Flickr Services, FD's FlickrToys and the Great Flickr Tool Collection
All kinds of cool "stuff" to help you get creative and extend your use of Flickr.
Jeff Utecht - Getting to Know Flickr (Screencast from October 2006))
Educause - 7 things you should know about Flickr

A Quick Word About Photo-Posting Etiquette
When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors), is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent) and always give credit (and a link) when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog, wiki, slide presentation or digital story.

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Learning Activity:

Select one of the themed/topical photos you downloaded in Part 2 above. Insert the photo via link or by upload, so that it appears WITHIN a blog post (see this page for help) in which you reflect on your Flickr experience. Please share some things you learned about Flickr, the topic/theme you selected for your search, and any ideas you have for using Flickr (or other photo sharing tool) to support your own teaching and learning. Be sure to post an attribution -- or, credit -- to the photographer, in the form of his or her username and a link to the photo page). Be sure to include "Thing 11" in your post title.

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Stretch Activity

Like many web 2.0 sites, Flickr has encouraged other people to build their own online applications using images found on the site. Through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces), many people have created third party tools and mashups that use Flickr images.

Here are a few examples of mashups that use Flickr:

Mappr - allows you to take Flickr images and paste them on a map
Flickr Color Pickr - lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
Mosaic Maker – create a photo mosaic from photos found on Flickr.
Clockr - uses random photos to display the time.
Big Huge Labs offers a round-up of Flickr tools.
Spell with Flickr - spells out your word or phrase with photos from Flickr.
Splashr lets you present your Flickr photos in a different view.
Create puzzles from your Flickr photos.

Discover more mashups, web apps, and Flickr tools.

Your stretch activity for this “thing” is to:

Explore some of the fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are listed here.
Use the mashups to create something then upload one or more of your creations to your blog (most will give easy to follow instructions somewhere on the site about how to copy the code needed and where to place it on your blog).
In your post, talk about some ways Flickr and/or Flickr mashups could be used in your classroom, library or personal life. What are your feelings about sharing photos online?

Have some fun discovering and exploring some of these neat little apps, but be careful. Playing with these tools can be habit-forming. You may discover that you have a new hobby!

Thing #5 - Getting started with RSS

2008-05-20T22:06:00.018-05:00

Introduction
So everyone participating in Learning 2.0 - 23 Things now has a blog and we told you to read your fellow learners’ blogs. Are you thinking, “What, I have to click on 20+ bookmarks to see if anyone has updated?!? Forget it; waaaay too much time.”

But what if you could visit all those blogs and more information sources in just one place and all at the same time? Would that be valuable to you? Well, you can! A lot of smart people out there who like to keep up-to-date and save time have created services to make it easy to follow your favorite blogs and other information sources. It’s called RSS.

RSS is a special type of computer code that allows users to know automatically when new "stuff" is added to their favorite websites. An RSS feed is an incredibly powerful, amazingly useful piece of Web 2.0 technology. RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, allows web users to subscribe to multiple websites and have new content delivered to them automatically in one place. The place where your subscriptions are delivered is called an RSS reader or aggregator. Instead of visiting each website to check for new information, the user simply checks his or her reader, which has collected and organized all of the updated information using RSS. In short, when you set up an RSS reader and subscribe to the content (feeds) you choose, it's just like creating a customized newspaper or magazine containing only the stories, media and information you want to read, delivered "fresh" to you every day - spam-free, ad-free, and just-plain free!

Why is it called a feed?
With an RSS reader you are being fed new content (news, blog posts, journal articles, book and movie reviews, images, podcasts, etc). You don't have to go out and get it. It just comes to you.

What do I need to take advantage of this wonderful RSS stuff?
There are two basic parts to using RSS:
1. The feed, which will be available as a link or icon on the website or blog you want to subscribe to
2. The reader (or aggregator), which is the container that manages all of your subscriptions (or feeds). There are a number of different readers available. For this course, we will use Google Reader, a free, simple, browser-based reader.

Basically, it works like this : You visit a website you like, click the RSS feed/subscription link and add or paste the URL into your reader. Then, when you want to see if any of your sites have anything new, you visit your RSS reader.

How can RSS help educators?
Educators can use RSS feeds to keep up-to-date with news items, favorite blogs, journal articles, book reviews or updated items from any area of interest, keep current in educational trends, track student blog posts or changes to a class wiki site, and share news or media items with students, colleagues and parents. (For more information and ideas, see Will Richardson's RSS Quickstart for Educator's Guide).

Watch this video for a great overview of the topic - RSS in Plain English

More RSS explanations that may be helpful:

It Really Is Really Simple: RSS for Educators
(article)
The ABC's of RSS - Article by Will Richardson
Blogging Basics - Explanation of blogs and RSS by Technorati
Getting Started Using Google Reader

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Discovery Exercise:

Set up your Google Reader and subscribe to some feeds.

For this course, you will use Google Reader as your RSS aggregator.

To get started, everyone will subscribe to the same 3-5 feeds. (In Thing 6 you will learn how to begin finding and subscribing your own preferred feeds).

Different sites present their feeds using different icons and links. Most commonly, you will see an orange icon, like the one at the top of this post, or a link that says Subscribe or Syndicate, RSS, XML or ATOM. With a little practice, you can learn to easily locate and use the various subscription icons and links.

To subscribe to a feed, you simply click the icon or link for the feed and you will then see either a button to click to add the feed to your Google Reader, or a page of "scary code" from which you copy the URL and paste it into the Subscription field of your Google Reader.

To set up your Google Reader, simply visit http://google.com/reader and log in with your Google Account. (The first time you log in, you will see a welcome screen containing a brief introductory video).

Then, in another browser tab or window, visit the following sites and subscribe to the feed (or to a selected feed). For instructions on how to subscribe, take a look at How to Subscribe to a Feed in Google. In the Learning Activity below, you will find instructions for "what to do" with the feeds after you have successfully subscribed.

The Three Required Feeds

Students 2oh - http://students2oh.org
A blog co-authored by several high school students who are interested in the future of education. The posts and comments are truly impressive.
Infinite Thinking Machine -http://www.infinitethinking.org
A group blog "designed to help teachers and students thrive in the 21st century." Only updated about twice a month.
TechLearning Blog - http://www.techlearning.com/blog
An excellent introduction to a dozen or so prominent edublogger voices in 21st Century teaching and learning, offering one to two posts a day by a featured blogger. NOTE: Do not subscribe using the orange XML icon in the left sidebar -- that will get you everything on TechLearning. Instead, scroll all the way down and click the link that says "Subscribe to this blog's feed."

Two Stretch Feeds - Go Beyond Blogs...
Your Google Reader can read any kind of RSS-syndicated content, such as news stories, images, video clips, bookmarks and podcasts. Try adding a news feed and a podcast feed to your reader. It works the same as a blog feed.

New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html
Subscribe to any area of interest, such as education, books, music, health, top stories.
NPR Podcasts - http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php?type=topic
Subscribe to any of 616 podcast offerings in a wide variety of categories. (TIP: Note duration of podcast before subscribing.)

HELP TIP: If you can't find an RSS feed/subscription icon or link on a blog, just copy and paste the main blog URL (site address) into the Add Subscription box in your Google Reader, then click Add. The reader will "sniff" the site for a feed.

A couple more Google Reader resources (for your reference):

Webware: Newbies' Guide to Google Reader
Lifehack: How to Get Started with Google Reader

(NOTE: Do not select any predefined information channels during the set up process. If you do, your reader will be pre-populated with a lot of feeds that you may not be interested in.)

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Learning Activity

PART 1: Get comfortable using your Google Reader. Read through (and listen to) the "new items" from the above subscription feeds in your Google Reader. This brief video shows you how. You are not expected to read every item thoroughly, but rather to scan and skim all items and read those that seem relevant, thought-provoking or interesting. You will need to click the blue title of an item to go to the actual site and read any comments. Be sure to star any items you want to save for later reference.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT YOUR READER: The content in your reader can be overwhelming because it will continue to "pile up" endlessly. BUT -- it's not actually there -- it hurts NOTHING for you to skim and skip items and mark them as "read" just by scrolling past them. You aren't actually deleting anything. In fact, learning to quickly scan and process a lot of news items is an essential part of RSS literacy and information management -- the important ideas will always come back around, and you will also learn to pare down your subscriptions as you go. If you feel compelled to thoroughly read every item, you will remain completely overwhelmed and quickly "quit" your reader. Keep trying -- it gets easier!

PART 2:
A. Write a reflective blog post telling about an item of interest from your reader.
B. Provide a direct link to the item within your blog post. (NOTE: You will need to visit the actual blog or website to get the link. Do not try to add a link from inside your reader -- your reader is just "pointing to" the actual content.
C. Be sure to include "Thing #5" in your post title.

HELP Video: Using Google Reader to Read Your Feeds

Getting your news, personal and professional information via RSS is the wave of the future. Ride the wave!

Thing #14 - Discovering web 2.0 tools

2008-05-20T21:56:00.010-05:00

Introduction
Listed below is a "baker's dozen" (or so) of Web 2.0 tools -- by no means representative of all (or even a good bit) that's out there. Finding, experimenting with and evaluating new tools, determining whether they have value for us in creating, organizing, communicating or problem-solving -- without an instructor's explicit guidance -- is an essential 21st Century skill, part of lifelong learning, and certainly the sort of capability we want to foster in our students.

Discovery Exercise
Pick a tool (or two, or more if you are so inclined) below, see what it does and see what you can do with it. Depending on the tool you choose and your particular learning style or worldview, you may do more exploring than experimenting or vice-versa.

While you are exploring and experimenting, consider whether the tool may have a practical application for personal, classroom or professional learning or productivity. Also pay attention to any social aspects of the tool -- is it collaborative, sharable, does it allow comments, discussions, ratings? We will talk more about social features in Web 2.0 in upcoming weeks. (Flickr, which you explored last week, has many social features, including tags, groups and commenting).

Many of these tools are completely free, and all offer at least a free version. Also, most are embeddable in a blog, wiki or webpage.

Think of this "Thing" as focused play. Or think of it as miserable, frustrating work... it's up to you ;)

(HINT: To begin exploring a tool, look for demos, tours, an "explore" or "features" link, examples, galleries and/or FAQ pages).

The Tools

30boxes - http://30boxes.com
Calendar application that includes to-do list, phone reminders, sharing and many other features.
Blabberize - http://blabberize.com
Turn any photo into a talking cartoon.
Gliffy - http://www.gliffy.com/
Collaborative concept mapping tool (like an online version of Inspiration).
JigZone - http://www.jigzone.com/
Digital jigsaw puzzles - upload your own photos, graphics or scanned artwork
LetterPop - http://letterpop.com/
Easily create drag-and-drop newsletters, scrapbooks and flyers using your own photos and ready-made templates.
MixBook - http://www.mixbook.com
Create interactive books using original photos or artwork.
TimeGlider- http://mnemograph.com/
Use text and images to create an elegant, interactive timeline.
Picnik - http://www.picnik.com/
Edit digital photos in your browser.
Pikistrips - http://pikistrips.com
Create custom comic strips using your own or Flickr Creative Commons photos.
PollDaddy - http://polldaddy.com
Create custom polls and surveys to embed in any web page. Results displayed in a graph.
Quizlet - http://quizlet.com/
Create and share interactive study materials. Keep track of your progress automatically.
Ta-da List - http://www.tadalist.com/
Easy to use to-do list. Add items, sort them, share them, check them off as you complete them.
ToonDoo - http://www.toondoo.com/
Create and share your own comic strips using an array of characters, settings and custom speech balloons.
Weebly - http://weebly.com
Create a drag-and-drop website in minutes -- no technical expertise necessary!
Wordle - http://wordle.net/
Create colorful, graphical 'word clouds' from text that you provide. Apply custom layouts, fonts and colors, Super cool.
Writeboard - http://www.writeboard.com/
Create a collaborative document that you can share with anyone by sending them the URL and password.

Learning Activity

PART 1: Create a blog post telling about your experience, providing a link to the tool you chose to explore. Include any ideas you have for using the tool to support learning or productivity. Also comment on any "social" features you may have noticed and your thoughts about their value. Be sure to include "Thing 12" in your post title.

PART 2: Visit the "Web 2.0 Tool Reviews" page on our Sandbox Wiki. Under your chosen tool, add your ideas for using it to support learning or productivity. These should be brief bullet points, not dissertations. The idea here is to create a collection of ideas that we can all use (To paraphrase Will Richardson: When one of us gets smarter, we all get smarter.)

Thing #2 - What is web 2.0 and why does it matter?

2008-05-20T21:18:00.024-05:00

Introduction
The term "Web 2.0" can be applied across broad categories of emerging technology tools and design principles, social and economic shifts, business philosophies, participatory media and culture, etc.... Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking and social bookmarking sites, tagging, photo- and video-sharing, RSS, etc...) are collaborative, browser-based and user-driven. They include platforms and tools for publishing, connecting, sharing, organizing and remixing.

A popular synonym for "Web 2.0" is the "Read/Write" web, which suggests that users are contributing, creating and collaborating rather than just consuming web content. "Web 1.0" or the "Read-Only" web was a place where the average user didn't publish content, because it required technical knowledge (HTML and other programming code) and money (to purchase server space and software). Web 2.0 tools allow users to easily participate and to customize their online experiences.

At its core, Web 2.0 is about powerful Web-based technologies connecting people and ideas.

So, what is Web 2.0?
Here are a few "one-sentence" definitions, and one that is slightly longer:

"It's not a web of computers, it's a web of people." - Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web
"Working on the Internet is the same as working on your desktop." - Sarah Bresee, Outcast
"Web 2.0 is the two-way web where content finds you." - Ron Rasmussen, KnowNow
"People doing things together on the web." - Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation
"Web 2.0 is all the Web sites out there that get their value from the actions of users." - George Jones, InformationWeek
"The new WWW: Whatever. Whenever. Wherever." - Tom March, Educator, Inventor of WebQuests
"Less than a decade ago, when we were first getting used to the idea of an Internet, people described the act of going online as venturing into some foreign realm called cyberspace. But that metaphor no longer applies. MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren't places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live." - Steven Levy and Brad Stone, Newsweek [emphasis mine]

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Discovery Exercise:

Why does Web 2.0 matter? Please watch the following videos to find out.

The web is changing...
The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch

The world is changing...
Shift Happens/Did You Know 2.0? by Karl Fisch

Students are changing...
A Vision of K-12 Students Today

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Learning Activity:

What might Web 2.0 look like in school?

Read the article "A Day in the Life of Web 2.0" by David Warlick. Consider the ways in which Web 2.0 tools might change (or have already changed) your professional practice. How might you be able to use these new tools to to engage today's "digital learners?" Why would you want to? In Thing 3, you will be asked to complete a blog post reflecting on your initial thoughts about Web 2.0 and its role in 21st Century teaching and learning, so please write or type some notes -- OR... use Writeboard (see below).

Stretch Activity (optional)
Writeboard is a simple, collaborative word processor that works in your web browser. Using Writeboard, anyone can create a document and invite others to add to it simply by sharing the web address and password -- no registration necessary! Use Writeboard to compose a 1-2 paragraph response to the above task. Next week, you can copy and paste your Writeboard text into your blog post. (Be sure to save your Writeboard link and password so you can get back to it)! If you just want to play with a Writeboard document, visit this sample Writeboard (password = learning) and experiment with adding some text.

Thing #3 - Become a blogger

2008-05-20T18:46:00.029-05:00

Introduction
A blog is one of the core publishing/communication tools of Web 2.0. A blog, at its simplest, is a website containing an archived series of posts (newest on top), organized by categories (or tags), with a place for readers to leave comments. Readers can subscribe to the blog using a special type of code called an RSS (or similar) feed. A blog may have one or many authors, and can be about any topic, from personal to political to professional.

Blogs connect ideas and people.
Blogging can provide teachers and students with an authentic opportunity to express themselves, synthesize ideas from many sources, engage in discussion and debate, write for an audience beyond the classroom, reflect on their own learning, teach and mentor others, and connect with peers and experts around the globe. As you work through the next few "Things," and the remainder of the course, you will begin to learn more about blogs and their powerful potential for personal and professional learning, reflection and communication.

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson writes:

...what really distinguishes a blog from your run-of-the-mill Website is much more than process; it's what you'll find there. Weblogs are not built on static chunks of content. Instead, they are comprised of reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated every day (if not three or four times a day). Blogs engage readers with ideas and questions and links. They ask readers to think and to respond. They demand interaction.

We're using blogs in this course because of this interactivity. The blog you are about to create will be a place where you can write reflections on the tools you are playing with and the experience you are having. Other participants in the program can read your postings and you can read theirs. We hope to have lots of commenting and sharing going back and forth across blogs during this program. The more you share with each other, the richer the learning experience will be. And don't forget that your blog is out there live in the "blogosphere." Other people interested in Web 2.0 tools might also read and comment on your posts.

Today, the primary goal is to get you "up and blogging." Your personal blog is the most important component of the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things course. You will use your blog to document your learning, discoveries and experimentation throughout the course. It will also serve as your course portfolio, or record of completion. For tips on using Blogger and maximizing your Learning 2.0 blogging experience, visit the Blogger Help Center.

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Discovery Exercise:

As you watch the video below, consider the term "NEWS" as meaning any content or topic that is relevant to you and/or your students.

Blogs in Plain English

Getting started:

There are several free online blog hosting services including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad or Edublogs. For this course, we're recommending that you use Blogger, because it is extremely easy to use. (Inside the district, you will probably have to override the filter to access it, but its ease of use outweighs the inconvenience of dealing with the override.)

Creating a blog using Blogger takes just three steps:

Go to the Blogger home page and sign in using the Google account you created in Thing #0.

NOTE: You may choose to blog under your real name or a pseudonym/username, but your blog content should always be school appropriate. Course facilitators will know who you are, but the "world" doesn't have to.
Name your blog (view screenshot)

(NOTE: Remember that the whole web world can see your blog title and blog address, so you probably don’t want to use your real name. Consider creating a blog name that’s anonymous, yet uniquely you. The URL for your blog will look something like these examples:
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/
http://preilly.wordpress.com/
http://topshelf.edublogs.org/
These are real blogs so you can't use any of these! ;-) )
Select your template (view screenshot).
Blogger has several templates - have fun choosing one for you!

HELP Video: Creating a blog using Blogger

Once you’ve created your blog here are two important things to know:

To add posts: You will need to sign into Blogger each time you want to add, edit or configure your blog. Be sure to write down your login and password.

(NOTE: It's a good idea to get a small notebook in which to write all the usernames and passwords that you will have to create during this program. All of the tools that we will play with will require you to create an account. Unless you can find a way to use the same sign in information over and over, you will want to have a place to keep all this information together.)

To view your blog: Your blog address is http://(xxxx).blogspot.com, (xxxx)=the unique identifier you entered in Step 2. Be sure to also write down your blog address.

(NOTE: This is a good time to "bookmark" your blog for easy access throughout the class.)

If you run into problems or would like more information about blogs and using Blogger here are some resources you can use:

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

Your blog will serve as the record of your learning in this course. If you are wondering how long your blog posts need to be, please visit the FAQ page. Before you get started blogging, please consider the following:

Tips for a Richer K12 Learning 2.0 Blogging Experience

Your blog will be as meaningful as you make it. Invest in your reflections and spend a little time crafting your posts. Take time to link, format your text and add images. Feel free go beyond the minimum posting requirements. The blog is truly yours.
Be brave when posting and celebrate your learning. We all struggle and experience frustration and can benefit from hearing about others' experiences. We also want to hear about your discoveries and problem-solving triumphs!
Be generous in commenting on other participants blogs. Blogging is meant to engage readers in two-way communication. We are a community of learners. If you take a little time to encourage and respond to others' posts, they will respond in kind.

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Learning Activities:

Activity 1: After you have set up your blog, write the following two posts. Be sure to include the Thing # in the Post Title.

POST 1: Thing #1 - Reflections on Lifelong Learning
Write a reflective blog post based on the 7 1/2 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners. You may write about anything related to your own experiences or beliefs about Lifelong Learning, and your thoughts about this course. The three things you were asked to consider were:

Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your Learning 2.0 experience?
Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for you as a lifelong learner?
Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?

POST 2: Thing #2 - Thoughts about Web 2.0
Complete a blog post reflecting on your initial thoughts about Web 2.0 and its role in 21st Century teaching and learning. Consider the ways in which Web 2.0 tools might change (or have already changed) your professional practice. How might you be able to use these new tools to engage today's "digital learners?" Why would you want to? How might you be able to use these tools to support your own learning?

Activity 2: Register your blog with the Learning 2.0 team. Send a Gmail message to misd23things@gmail.com and include the following information:

1. Your full name
2. The title of your blog
3. The URL (address) of your blog.

Once we have received your blog address, it will be added to the list of participants on the sidebar of the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things site. That's how you can find other participants to cheer on and connect with!

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Stretch Activity #1
(P. S. We hope everyone does this one!) Blogging is meant to be a conversation and we are a community of learners. Check the sidebar of the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things site towards the end of the week and visit the blogs of two (or more) colleagues. Read their Thing #1 or Thing #2 post and leave a comment in response! Type or paste the URL of your own blog in the "website" field so that they know where to find you. Early finishers may have to check back later in the week to find blogs to post to.

Check out these resources for great tips on commenting:

How to comment like a king (or queen!)
Your comments?

Stretch Activity #2
(This one is lots of fun!) Create an avatar for your blog.

An avatar is an online representation of yourself. (You'll notice the avatars for your Learning 2.0 leaders, Mary and Debbie, are at the top of this post.) Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/ and design an avatar with a background of your choice. (You will have to set up an account in Yahoo if you don't already have one.) Save your avatar and export to your blog.

Video: Here's how to export your avatar to your blog.

or Step by Step

1. From the main Avatars page, find the blue rectangle on the right side of the page, titled Yahoo! Avatars.

2. Click "EXPORT: Use your avatar in web pages and blogs and more."

3. In the center of the page, look for a box labeled "Copy the code below and paste it into your web page or blog."

4. Click the Select All button, then press CTRL-C (PC) or Command (Apple)-C (Mac) to copy the code to your computer's memory.

5. Go to the Dashboard of your blog. Click "LAYOUT."

6. Click Add a Gadget. (This is what you do to add fun things to the sidebar of your blog.) Scroll down to find the HTML/Java Script gadget; click the plus sign to choose it.

7. Click in the Content box of the window that opens. Press CTRL-V (PC) or Command (Apple)-V (Mac) to paste in the code you copied earlier.

8. Click Save. The box will close and you will see the new gadget right under Add a Gadget in the Layout screen.

9. Click Save, then click View Blog. You should now see your beautiful avatar in the right sidebar of your blog!

Web 2.0 Hints

2008-05-20T14:53:00.000-05:00

Many Web 2.0 tools are in beta--not the final version of a product or Web site, but close enough to show in public and work the bugs out. But the bugs may still pop up when you are using a site. Here are some hints if you encounter a bug:

Flash is required to view many of the applications. Chances are this is already installed on your computer, but if it is not, click here for a free download. Adobe Reader is required to read a few of the links. If you do not have it, you can get it free here. Always check with the MISD Helpdesk before downloading anything on a school computer.
Java needs to be enabled in your browser for many of the applications, too. Here are instructions on how to enable Java.
Be sure you are using the site as designed. You may not be able to use the back arrow, for example; the site may require you to click on a link to return to previous page. Read any instructions the site offers on uploading, exporting, labeling, or whatever you are trying to do.
Not all sites like all browsers equally. Switching browsers may solve your problem. Most sites seem to work with Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Check that your browser is up-to-date. Services may work only (or the best) with the latest version of Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Click the Refresh button to make a stubborn tool wake up.
Try closing the site/browser/program and re-opening. This often solves the problem.
Not all links work all the time. Since there are often multiple links on a page to get to where you want to be, try clicking on another link. This often works in Blogger.
Firewalls and filters can limit access to sites or block actions on sites. Try clicking on a different link to that screen or just click again. If you are trying to do this at school, you may need to work on your home computer if you can’t do what you want.
Check your browser settings—you may need to enable pop-up windows, allow cookies, and make other setting changes to see if that works.
Some sites require plug-ins like Flash to operate. Be sure you have the up-to-date versions installed on your computer. Do a search on the plug-in name to find the download, then follow the directions to install.
Most sites like Blogger, Bloglines, Google, Flickr, & YouTube will have a Help or FAQ section. Use these to solve your problem.
Ask another participant for help. And offer your expertise on another "thing" to them.
Type a description of your problem ("can't change font size in blogger," for example) into a search engine. Odds are good that someone else had the problem and you might find the answer in a forum or group discussion.
When all else fails, move on to something else and try again later.

Keep in mind, too, that things change. Beta sites change a lot--you will see on the Blogger Dashboard where the Blogger Blog is, that Blogger is adding stuff all the time. Flickr, Google, Yahoo, and the others are continually adding and improving.

This recent New York Times article suggests some ways to Defang Scary Technology. It may help you think beyond the "which button in which order" approach to learning.

So if something looks different, something disappeared, or has a new name, the functionality is probably still there. You just have to explore the site some more. That's life in the Web 2.0 world--challenging, exciting, changing.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

2008-05-20T14:36:00.012-05:00

How does this online learning program work?
This is a self-guided course is delivered entirely online via this blog. There are a total of 23 learning activities or "Things" for you to complete over 10 weeks. Each week is organized around a particular topic or theme relating to Web 2.0. You will decide when and where to complete each week's activities, and you will be responsible for "keeping up." You are encouraged to form "buddy groups" to work through the content together -- sharing, helping and encouraging each other.
What are these "things" you keep talking about?
The "23 Things" are learning activities related to Web 2.0 tools and concepts. You will complete 2-3 "Things" per week. Detailed instructions for completing each "Thing" will be provided as you work through the course, linked from the "23 Things" page. Each "Thing" will introduce (or expand upon) a new tool or concept through one or more discovery exercises, followed by a learning activity. The discovery exercises are "where the learning really happens" and are necessary for you to complete each task successfully.
How long will it take me to do the work each week?
Some tasks and weeks will be more involved than others. The content is organized into themes/tools. There are a number of additional variables that will affect this, but the general answer is an average of 3-4 hours a week, depending on:

Your general level of computer literacy

Your experience with Web 2.0 tools to date

Your interest in and excitement about the tasks and tools

Your basic "lifelong learning" stance

What are the dates for the course?
The class begins on September 14, 2009 and ends on November 20, 2009.

How do I get started?
Read over this site so that you understand exactly how this class works. The four pages everyone should read in their entirety are:

What technology do I need?
You need an Internet-connected computer with an updated browser (preferably Firefox, plus Java and Flash add-ins), and speakers (or headset). See the Web 2.0 Hints page for other technical information.
Where do I go for help?
By design, you should be your own first help resource throughout the course. Throughout this “discovery learning” experience, you will likely encounter a number of small challenges, depending on your level of Web 2.0 experience. Each time you teach yourself something, find a solution or accomplish a task, you will feel empowered and be that much more tech savvy!

Most sites offer highly understandable Help files, FAQ pages and tutorials. Additionally, you will find many short training movies and help pages with screenshots embedded at the point of need as you complete the course.

Use your "human network:" Colleagues, students, and your Learning 2.0-23 Things facilitators. In "real life" we seek help from experts when we need it! But remember, if your expert helper does the work for you, you won't be learning.

What if I fall behind?
Because some "Things" may be more challenging than others, and because we all have responsibilities and priorities and unexpected derailment, the course is designed to allow for a bit of flexibility in completion. Each week's "due date" is not a drop-dead date, and you will have one week after the official "end" date to complete any outstanding tasks. That being said, please do not interpret this flexibility as an invitation to procrastinate -- you should not be chronically behind. If you are having serious issues, please connect with your Learning 2.0-23 Things facilitators.
How will I/you track my progress for each of the 23 Things?
You will record your progress by posting to your blog and elsewhere as directed. Your Learning 2.0 - 23 Things facilitators will subscribe to your blog via an RSS reader (you'll learn about those later) and track your progress. We will mark off the things that you have completed on a shared Google spreadsheet that you will be able to view.
How will you know I have completed all the "things"?
You will write about each thing as you complete it (See previous question.) We will be reading your posts and commenting as much as possible.
How much do I have to write in my blog postings?
Your blog posts should be as long as they need to be to meaningfully express your thoughts about each "thing" and reflect on your learning. You will get out of the class what you put in. Since your blog is out on the web, others (besides your facilitators) will be able to read what you write and (hopefully) learn from what you post. What kind of work would you want your own students to submit in a similar situation?

If those guidelines don't help...aim for at least 125 words. You will be notified if you need to add more to a post to receive credit.
How can I protect my identity while working online?
Transparency and sharing of experiences are some of the hallmarks of 21st century teaching and learning on the web, but there are a couple of ways you can keep your "digital footprint" to a minimum, if you have concerns.

As part of your course prep (Thing "0"), you will set up a Google/Gmail account.You can specify an address/username for your account that does not display your actual name. You will use this account to register for all of the tools you will be exploring during the course.

You can set up your blog (Thing 3) so that your blog address and username do not include your actual name. Only your Learning 2.0 - 23 Things facilitators will be aware of who you "really" are.

Will there be any instruction offered to show us how to do this?
No, this is a self-directed learning program. If, after reading all the information, watching the tutorials, and following all the links in each "thing," you feel you need assistance with an item, you are encouraged to be resourceful and to find a friend, family member or another participant who can help. Reading other participants' blogs can help, too. The Learning 2.0 team will provide helpful hints, encouraging words and post comments on your blogs from time to time. We are also available by e-mail to answer your questions.
Is there any tech support for this course?
The Learning 2.0 team can help you with questions about the course, but not with your computer or Internet connection. Here are some hints about Web 2.0 tools that may help you.
Do any of the Things require downloads?
Flash is required to view many of the applications. Chances are this is already installed on your computer, but if it is not, click here for a free download. Adobe Reader is required to read a few of the links. If you do not have it, you can get it here for free. Java needs to be enabled for many applications too. Here are instructions on how to enable Java.

A few of the Things have activities that may require a download. However, most of the Things have options that can be done without downloading anything extra. Most of the 23 Things are Web-based applications that do not require additional downloads or plug-ins to work. Many Web-based applications have third party features that require downloads. These are not required—although they are often fun and add functionality.
Once I complete all 23 things, how do I get my staff development credit?
The Learning 2.0 team will provide the names of participants who have completed the program to the MISD Staff Development department after the program officially ends on November 20, 2009. If you complete the 23 Things list after November 20, staff development credit will not be provided.

Don't find your question answered here? Then enter it is as comment below.

About Learning 2.0 - 23 Things

2008-05-20T14:34:00.005-05:00

This blog has been set-up as part of Mesquite ISD's Learning 2.0 - 23 Things project to encourage MISD staff to experiment and learn about the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the context of information on the Internet today. The objectives of this program are to:

encourage exploration of Web 2.0 and new technologies by MISD staff
provide staff with new tools (that are freely available on the Internet) to better support MISD's mission: to educate all students and empower them to expand their opportunities
provide staff development credit for MISD staff who complete the program
provide MISD staff with opportunities to think about how these new technologies can be used in their schools

The Learning 2.0 - 23 Things program is based on the Learning 2.0 program that was designed by Helene Blowers, Technology Director at the Charlotte Mecklenburg County Public Library system, with the support and assitance of several staff. Helene's program was loosely based upon Stephen Abram's article, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006) and the website 43Things.

The design of this online program was completely built on Web 2.0 technologies that are freely available on the Internet. These sites include: Blogger, Flickr, Wikispaces, YouTube, PBWorks & Google Reader.

This course is about play and possibility, exploration, discovery and experimentation, rather than "doing it right." We want participants to make connections and become inspired along the way. Please be aware that learning this way is messy, but "mistakes" often lead to new and better understanding!

Over the next 10 weeks, you will complete "23 Things" or learning activities designed to help you become familiar web 2.0 tools and concepts. You will complete 2-3 things per week. Each "Thing" will introduce (or expand upon) a web 2.0 tool or concept through one or more discovery exercises, followed by one or more learning activities. The discovery exercises are "where the learning happens" and are necessary for you to be able to complete each activity successfully.

You will record your progress by posting to your own blog. Your blog will serve as your personal learning journal - a place for you to record your experiences, frustrations, ideas, discoveries, questions and reflections. It will also serve as a portfolio for your web 2.0 creations; a living artifact demonstrating your successful completion of this course. Participants will give (and receive) feedback and encouragement through each other's blogs. Don't worry! First graders can blog and you can, too!

This course offers no formal instruction. You will be your own mentor, with support from your colleagues, other participants and your Learning 2.0-23 Things facilitators. You will decide when and where to complete each week's activities, and you will be responsible for "keeping up." You are encouraged to form "buddy groups" to work through the content together -- sharing, helping and encouraging each other. Throughout this “discovery learning” experience, you will likely encounter a number of small challenges, depending on your level of Web 2.0 experience to date. Each time you teach yourself something, find a solution or accomplish a task, you will feel empowered and be that much more tech savvy!

Thing #19 - Voicethread

2008-05-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

Introduction

Voicethread is a Web-based digital-storytelling application that allows users to share their stories through audio, images, videos or text. It also allows visitors to make comments on stories in five different ways: 1) voice with a microphone, 2) or voice with telephone), 3) text, 4) audio file, or 5) video with a webcam. The stories can be shared with anyone in the world or they can be kept private for selected individuals. Like many Web 2.0 applications, you can get a free basic account as well as a VoiceThread Pro account with unlimited creation and advanced features for a fee. However, VoiceThread is offering free educator accounts for all k-12 classroom educators. These free accounts are identical to the Pro account in almost every aspect.

VoiceThread is a great classroom tool and has a great potential in education. The interface is very user-friendly and creating and sharing a video thread is a simple process, requiring only a microphone or WebCam. Teachers and students can upload their PowerPoint slides (saved as JPEGs) and expand on the info with audio snippets. Teachers can even set up an account for individual classes that allow students access to the account for group projects. Also, VoiceThread presentations can be embedded in blogs and Web sites.

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Discovery Exercise

Watch the VoiceThread presentation, What is VoiceThread Anyway?

Explore a few Voicethreads created by students and teachers in the classroom or library:

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Learning Activity
Write a reflective blog post about Voicethread and how you might use it in your personal and/or professional life.

Stretch
Locate a Voicethread you might be able to use with your students and post it to your blog.

Stretchier
Create a Voicethread of your own and post it to your blog!

Thing #16 - LibraryThing: Where Books Meet Web 2.0

2008-05-01T08:34:00.000-05:00

Introduction
When you are taking a course monitored by librarians, you have to expect there will be something in it about books - even if it is a technology course!

With nearly 400,000 users and over 25 million books in its system, LibraryThing is a great example of how a website can incorporate tagging and other social features to connect people, ideas and information. LibraryThing allows users to catalog AND share their book collections (up to 200 titles for free, $25 for LIFE), to connect with readers sharing similar collections and interests and to find new books based on recommendations, favorite titles, authors, browsing and serendipity! Cataloging books is as easy as typing the title, author or ISBN number to access the book's complete information from Amazon, Library of Congress and open access library records, including cover images and Dewey Decimal numbers. Users can tag their books, post book reviews and discussion topics, and join or create public or private groups for virtual conversation on any topic/theme of book-related interest. And, of course, users can keep track of group postings using RSS!

And, just in case this is interesting to you, last year, LibraryThing held a contest:

"In honor of hitting the big 10 million book mark this week, we're having a book pile contest bonanza. We're combining three contests into one here—Valentine's Day, President's Day, and of course, ten million books. The challenge. Start taking pictures. Your book piles can be love themed, president themed, or just the coolest dang book photo you can create."

Here are some of the entries as tagged in Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/librarything10mil/

If it's not obvious yet, this SOCIAL thing is a Web 2.0 theme...

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Discovery Exercise

Check out LibraryThing! (You are not required to JOIN).

PART 1:Take the Library Thing Tour

PART 2: Explore LibraryThing
Some suggestions for exploration:

Try a search by title author or tag, then follow the results as far as you can. (Be sure to drill down to a specific Author page and Title page to check out its composition).
Check out the Zeitgeist -- try the Author and Tag clouds (the bigger the tag, the more items tagged as such). Follow any links that interest you.
Check out Groups. Select a featured group, or search for a group by keyword. One group to look at is 50 Book Challenge. This theme could really be carried into a classroom.
Use the Suggester to find recommended titles based on a book you love; Use the UnSuggester to find "un"recommendations.

Stretch/Optional
Create a LibraryThing account (no email necessary!) and catalog 10-15 of your books.

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Learning Activity
Write a blog post sharing about your LibraryThing experience. Can you imagine any ways you might use LibraryThing for professional, personal or classroom learning or organization? Be sure to include "Thing 16" in your post title.

Thing # 20 - Google Docs

2007-11-17T18:21:00.004-06:00

Introduction

One of the "hallmarks" of Web 2.0 technology is the idea of the Internet becoming not just "a place we go," but an application, allowing users to perform "software" tasks (such as word processing and image editing) online, inside a web browser. Probably the best example of this trend is the development of several online office suites, including ThinkFree, Zoho Office and Google Docs, which allow users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online, for free.

All of you have been using Google Docs since the day you began this course, by monitoring the "Things" in the course spreadsheet. That should give you an idea of how useful a tool this can be.

While it doesn't include every advanced feature of traditional desktop office software, Google docs has many attractive features including some that traditional desktop software can't match. And they are always adding new features. Here are a few of the highlights.

It's free. Microsoft office costs a home user about $300, a student or teacher at least $100.
It's easy. If you are familiar with the basic toolbar functions in Word, Excel and Powerpoint, you should find Google Docs fairly intuitive to navigate..
Documents are stored online and accessible from any computer. There is only one copy of each document, and you can never lose it.
It's compatible with Microsoft Office (and other file formats), allowing importing/uploading of existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and downloading/exporting of files to edit in Microsoft Office.
It's collaborative. Share documents with other users and edit them simultaneously! One useful classroom application would be for a teacher to give feedback on a student essay or paper within the Google doc, rather than on a printed version. Also great for peer-editing.
It offers built-in revision history. Google saves every version of a document with a time stamp and username (like a wiki), allowing users to
- Compare any two versions of a document, seeing exactly what has changed.
- Know precisely which content was contributed by each user. (e.g. teachers can evaluate and track student contributions over time).
- Easily revert to an old version at any time.
Chat feature: Google spreadsheets allows users to discuss a file while working on it. Google presentations allows viewers to discuss the presentation while watching it online!
Instant forms: Create a survey, poll or other form and email it to selected respondents, or publish it to the web and send the link to desired participants. Results are instantly stored in a Google spreadsheet.
Many sharing and publishing options.
- Documents can be public or private (unshared); Collaborators may be invited as editors or only as viewers.
- Documents may be Published to the web for viewing as a web page. Simply share the URL on a website or in email.
- Spreadsheets and presentations are embeddable in other web pages (such as wikis).
- When you make changes to a Published document, the Published version updates automatically when the document is saved.
- Use Google docs as a simple way to create web pages that share links (Example - Peek's Page)
- Track changes to any published document via RSS feed.

Discovery Exercise

Explore Google Docs: http://docs.google.com

GENERAL TIP: The best time to complete this exercise may be the next time you have a REAL need to use Microsoft Word to create a document (unless you are under inordinate stress/pressure). I am asking you to share the document, so it's probably best if it's not something sensitive.

SHARING TIP: You may want to begin a document and invite one or more participants as collaborators so that you can work on it together. A single collaborative document can "count" for each person's completion of this exercise, as long as everyone contributes to the document.

PART 1: (~15-30 minutes) Log into Google Docs using your Google username and password. Create a new "word" document Practice using the formatting tools and features. As you explore, consider ways you might incorporate Google Docs into your classroom, professional or personal life.

When you have finished exploring, SHARE your document with Debbie (debbiekswartz@gmail.com) and me (misd23things@gmail.com) and anyone else you might want to share with. (Click Share > Share with Others and enter our email addresses where it says Invite people (as collaborators), then click Invite Collaborators). Be sure to save often.

Things to try while exploring:

Format text - change font and font size, make text bold or italic, change font color, add bullets or numbers, change alignment.
Insert a picture from your computer or from a web URL (Insert menu) -- btw, Foreign Language teachers, the Insert menu also has a special characters feature!
Add a table and enter some text in the cells. (Table menu)
Add a link - Two ways: Simply copy and paste a URL into the document; Embed a link by highlighting some text and clicking link on the toolbar to paste the URL. Note the option to"open link in new window").
After you have Saved your file several times, check out the Revision history (File menu).

TIP: Again, the best time to complete this exercise may be the next time you have a REAL need to use Microsoft Excel or Powerpoint.

PART 2: (~15-20 minutes) Explore either the spreadsheet or presentation tools (or both if you are having fun -- we don't mind if you blog about how you lost another precious hour of your life exploring a remarkably useful tool). Begin a new file and see what you can "figure out." Again, think about how this tool might fit into your classroom, professional life, or for personal use.

PART 3 Stretch/OPTIONAL (~15-20 minutes) - Upload, Download, Forms and Publishing

Upload one or more existing documents from your computer to Google Docs. See how they "look." when uploaded. (Upload link)
Download your Google document, spreadsheet or presentation in a format of choice (File menu)
Check out a sample form. Remember this form? I created it using Google spreadsheets. (Instead of sending an email invitation, I simply linked it here). To create your own form, begin a new Google spreadsheet, then select Form > Create a Form. I can think of a hundred ways to use this with students and for administrative tasks!
(OPTIONAL) Publish a document (obviously, make it something you don't mind the world seeing). Share the URL for your published document as part of your blog post for this task.

Learning Activity

Write a blog post reflecting on your initial experience with Google Docs. Include at least three ideas for using Google Docs (and spreadsheets and presentations) in classroom learning and/or professional learning/productivity. At least one idea should reflect a collaborative use. Please include "Thing 20" in your post title.