Category Archives: Web 2.0 tools

Beware of Books

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To celebrate World Book Day, here is a site for upper secondary students who are interested in books and reading.

 Beware of Books is an online site from OzProjects (hosted by EdNA) which is aimed at 15-19 year olds.

Beware of books homepage
Beware of Books homepage

 Teachers/librarians who have not been able to set up their own book blog, or those who want their students to communicate with a wider audience should check out Beware of Books.

Beware of books forums
Beware of Books forums

As Beware of Books has forums, students are able to discuss books, themes and ideas with others. It is suggested that students use an avatarand the link given by Beware of Books is one where students can select an animated avatar. This gives students an online ‘identity’ while keeping their own image private. The forums are monitored and inappropriate postings are removed.

There are book reviews as well as items such as an online interview with Twilight author Stephenie Meyer and occasionally authors such as Felicity Pulman and Melina Marchetta are guest discussion participants.

Dimdim

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Dimdim is a free web conferencing service where users can communicate quckly and effectively.

Dimdim home
Dimdim home

The Dimdim website says that its features are:

  • It’s Easy, Open & Affordable
  • No Install to Host/Join meetings
  • Easy Share Screens & Webpages
  • Audio & Video Conferencing
  • Present PowerPoint and PDFs
  • Private & Public Chat
  • Whiteboard & Annotations
  • Record and Playback Meetings
  • Open Source and open APIs

As with many of the Web 2.0 tools now available, there is the option to upgrade membership from free, basic account to a premium paid account.  The fee structure is as follows:

Anyone wanting to set up a web conference either for professional development or for schools to communicate and work collaboratively, the Dimdim free account gives users the opportunity to do this.

ICT Toolkit

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Anesti Anestis, the Whittlesea Network Coach for the Department of Educaton and Early Childhood Development‘s Northern Metropolitan Region Ultranet Team, is one of the people responsible for a sensational ICT toolkit wiki.

ICT toolkit homepage

Anthony Oldmeadow, Tennille Blake and the remaining NMR Ultranet Coaches joined Anesti in developing the wiki, which is home to all sorts of ICT tools.  Anesti says,

Since its inception in March other state Ultranet Coaches have also contributed, notably Krystie Alleaume. We have designed it as a resource that any teacher looking to apply various ICT ‘class tools’ has a choice of over 40 categories, with each category linking to and listing anywhere from 5-20 tools.  On last count, there are over 500 different tools teachers can explore!  The site links to other powerful wikis and the epotential resource (which provides student and teacher examples of some of the tools). In addition to class tools 1 & 2 there is detailed support for elearning leaders undertaking the job of eplanning in a school.  Many of the resources are custom made by Ultranet coaches (like the epotental analysis spreadsheets) to assist with greater interpretation and analysis of school data.

A - Z of online tools
A – Z of online tools

The wiki is not locked and is open to any member who would like to share their work, findings and ideas. Look forward to seeing you in and around the icttoolkit wikispace!

 Thanks to Anesti, Anthony, Tennille, Krystie and all of the other educators who have developed such a useful resource.

Who wants to be a MillionHeir?

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For anyone who is still unsure about the educational worth of videogames, here is a personal example of just some of the things I learned in a few days from a ‘G’ rated Nintendo DS game called Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir  (showing in a Wordle word cloud).

This is not an advertisement for the game (Bright Ideasdoes not accept sponsorship or products), I purchased it with my own hard-earned dollars (approx. A$35 from JB HiFi). However, it is a lesson in how children (and adults) can be engaged in their favourite pass time and still learn many things that we would normally teach them in a more traditional manor. It is also a great activity to share with the family.

This game also has the ability for up to four players to either compete against each other or work cooperatively by using one Nintendo DS each, but only one copy of the game is needed. You can set time limits for tasks, set the number of hints for each player and the number of locations used in the game. In a nutshell, you can set the game to whatever level suits you or your students.

Using Case Files: MillionHeir in an English class, students could study the crime genre by writing back stories for the characters in MillionHeir, watching classic movies, read crime fiction, write their own crime stories, explain features of the genre, developed plans of the MillionHeir’s house, etc.

Will Richardson podcasts

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The podcasts from Will Richarsdon’s presentations at the  SLAV Perspectives on learning v2 – March 23, 2009 are now available:

– “Network literacy: leveraging the potential of a hyper-connected world” – Conference keynote

(Link to weblog
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 16Mb approx. )

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

– “Podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, livestream nation ” – Featured address

(Link to weblog
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 11Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 13Mb approx. )

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

– “Weblogs in schools ” – Plenary session

Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 15Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 17Mb approx. )

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

Two Web 2.0 presentations

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Recently Donna DesRoches, a Learning Resources Consultant from the Living Sky School Division in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada shared two of her presentations with the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). Donna has agreed to share her presentations with us here at SLAV’s Bright Ideas as well.

Selection 2.0: Using RSS to enhance print, multimedia and web-based resource selection

(Description) RSS, a web-based application that allows the training of information to come to us, can be used to carry-out the professional selection responsibilities of teacher-librarians. This workshop will explain RSS, demonstrate a variety of formats for organizing incoming information and provide a number of sources for print, multimedia and web-based resources.

http://www.netvibes.com/donnadesroches#General

In this session I showed teacher-librarians how to use delicious feeds to create updated lists of resources for teachers and students. I suggested using NetVibes and using the private pages as the ‘messy’ pages where the feeds from things such as book blogs, and other tools with RSS feeds e.g. CM, Open Culture, Librarians’ Internet Index and Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day – much like the pile of selection tools that ends up on our desks.

As teachers find sites that meet the learning needs of their staff and students they add them to their delicious account tagging them appropriately. The feeds for the specific delicious tags are added to their NetVibes public pages resulting in a collection that could look like this….

Using Emerging Technologies to Build a Personal Learning Network

(Description) Teacher-librarians are specialists with unique learning needs that are not always met through school or division-based professional development. This workshop will provide teacher-librarians with the tools and the knowledge to create networks that will lessen the isolation and provide global connections that will enhance their own learning and benefit the teachers and students with whom they work.

My slide show and supporting links can be found at http://teacherlibrarian20.wikispaces.com/pln

If you have questions about the presentations – please contact Donna.

Thanks to Donna for sharing her presentations with us here in Australia.

One to one professional learning

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Have you had a tough time getting Web 2.0 tools on the agenda at your school? No matter what you try, those in power aren’t listening? Then why not try the idea of ‘one to one professional learning’. The idea here is that you chip away at people until they give in to the power of Web 2.0 – one by one.

One to one professional learning can be held during spare periods so that staff do not feel that this is ‘just one more thing to deal with after school’. By teaching one person at a time, the sessions are casual and fun, without the need to monitor large groups who need their hands held. And one of the philosophies behind the program is that the person you teach goes on to teach another person that particular tool. This takes the strain off library staff and empowers learners to teach and reinforce their learnings. This survey  may help you to introduce the topic to staff via a group email. Good luck!

Online surveys

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There are some useful free survey tools available on the internet. They include Google forms and SurveyMonkey.

Google forms can be accessed through Google Docs. Once in the docs account, just click on ‘new’ and select ‘form’. Questions can be added and edited quite easily and users can select from a number of different question options such as multiple choice, text box and so on. Once  the survey is finished being written, users are given a link to email or embed into a website. Here is an example of a survey  created with Google. Responses are then automatically recorded by Google docs for analysis at a later stage.

SurveyMonkey comes complete with themes and supports the use of any language. It is easy to write questions and SurveyMonkey gives guidance and options about type of questions as well as having the option of a spellchecker. Once the questions have been written and the survey is ready to be sent, users are given the option of a URL or having a survey pop up on their web page. If the URL option is selected, then the URL can then be added to a blog or wiki as a link or the URL can be emailed to contacts.

SurveyMonkey home
SurveyMonkey home
Data collection from survey responses can be limited by date or number of respondents. Survey results can be viewed in real time and converted to charts and graphs. There is a limit of ten questions for the free account, however that can be overcome by splitting surveys into two parts.
SurveyMonkey does have a premium service and there is at least one school in Victoria that subscribes to it. As they survey all students in relation to Principles of Learning and Teaching and SurveyMonkey does complex analysis for them, they see the investment of US$200 p.a. as a good investment. SurveyMonkey is infinitely more attractive than Google Forms. Here is an example  of what can be achieved in minutes with  a free SurveyMonkey account.
SurveyMonkey is an extremely useful and usable tool and their surveys have a more attractive and professional look than Google forms.

Essay map

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Essay map is an intuitive online essay planner for students.

Homepage

Homepage

Students do not to have sign up for an account or register an email address. They simply enter their first name and topic and away they go.

Introduction

Students can move between screens as their ideas develop and become clearer.

Ideas

Ideas

They only downside is that essay maps cannot be saved. However, they can be printed out before exiting.

Review of map

Review of map

Thanks to Julie Squires of Casey Grammar School and Lynda Santolin of Parade College for the tip off about Essay Map.

bubbl.us

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Looking for an online brainstorming tool? bubbl.us could be the answer.

The bubbl.us website says you can:

  • Create colorful mind maps online
  • Share and work with friends
  • Embed your mind map in your blog or website
  • Email and print your mind map
  • Save your mind map as an image

    • bubbl.us is ideal for student collaboration and as the mind maps can be simply saved, printed or embedded into blogs, etc. students can include their brainstorming and planning in their assignment submission.

    An encouraging comment from a teacher via the bubbl.us blog:

               Ben Davis describes how Bubbl.us helped his students to network.

    Typically I have trouble getting them to get excited about word webs. However, they were VERY excited about doing this. The guys loved how the bubbles exploded when you deleted them, and the girls loved the colors. However, the thing they seemed most interested in was the fact that they could network.”

    Julie Squires of Casey Grammar also uses bubbl.us. with her VCE students (thanks Julie for alerting Bright Ideas to bubbl.us) and her use of it and other tools will be featured shortly.