Voki

Posted on February 23, 2009 by slav

Voki is a resource that enables users to create a talking avatar, a fun way to jazz up (dare I say pimp?) your blog.

Voki homepage

There are lots of avatar types to choose from; people, animals, anime characters and so on. Once you have chosen your avatar, you can change the colour of its hair, its lips, select glasses and so on. You can also select the type of background; holidays, travel, outdoors, sports, nightlife or insert a background from your own picture collection. Voices and accents can be selected if you decide to type your message in via the computer keyboard. Otherwise you can record your own voice via mobile phone or microphone. The Bright Ideas voki took about five minutes to create, have a look here and also at the one on the sidebar.)

Sue Waters has created a post explaining how to add the voki to Edublogs, WordPress or Global teacher. Following her instructions, adding the voki was simple and took about two minutes. Helen Otway also lists interesting ways you can use vokis in the classroom (please note the terms and conditions of Voki; students must be over the age of 13 to sign up for an account):

Students can create avatars that are similar in looks or personalities and record a message that tells about themselves.
Students can exchange these avatars with e-pals either within their own setting or anywhere in the world.
Students can generate questions to ask their avatar e-pals.
ESL (English as a Second Language) students can use the speaking avatars to practice and listen to their speech. They may use the computerised voice first then record their own voice when they feel more comfortable. Writing, reading and pronunciation are all practised.
Students can create an avatar that resembles a character from a story, add a setting and give it speech. The speech could be from the story or a creative point of view (POV) from the character on an event.

Vokis can be a fun way to communicate and the advantage is that students can maintain their anonymity when publishing to the world.

Jing update

Posted on February 20, 2009 by slav

A previous post looked at the screencasting tool Jing. The people that developed Jing have also developed a tool called ‘Screencast‘. Screencast allows users to record, store and share any content from Jing such as videos, images and presentations.

Screencast homepage

Screencast.com has some new information about:

Screencast is free, although there are premium offerings that can cost US$99 pa. The free account includes 2GB storage and 2GB bandwidth per month. Screencasting is a great way to teach others how to use a particular computer resource or Web 2.0 tool.

GiggleIT Project

Posted on February 14, 2009 by slav

The International Association of School Librarianship has created an innovative and exciting project, GiggleIT.

GiggleIT home

From the IASL’s media release:

The GiggleIT Project is a global collaborative publishing project hosted by the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL), working in partnership with the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL).
Designed to help children around the world improve their English language literacy skills, the GiggleIT Project encourages students ages 10-14 to contribute their writings to an online book (eBook) celebrating stories and humour from their culture. Humour, just like tragedy, is a vehicle that can be used to promote cross-cultural understandings and collaboration for children and young adults around the world. Children’s work will be published internationally and will identify their culture through literature.
Written by children for children, the eBook will contain children’s stories, jokes and poetry. The project will inspire children to be creative and make cross-cultural connections with other children from around the world as they learn about humour from other countries, while improving their literacy skills.
A range of competitions, and teaching and learning packages, will motivate and stimulate reading and writing skills whilst supporting the teaching and learning with examples and worksheets which can be downloaded into handouts for the class.

Registration is free. GiggleIT sounds like a fantastic way for students to improve their literacy, have fun and collaborate with other students.

A Pod of Poets – Podcasting by the ABC

Posted on February 11, 2009 by slav

Thanks to Nicola Fern, Marketing Manager of ABC Radio National for the following information.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has partnered with ABC Radio National’s Poetica program and the Australia Council for the Arts to bring listeners of their regular Poetica program ‘A Pod of Poets’. Eleven programs feature Australian poets speaking about their writing and reading some pieces to the audience.

Each of the forty minute podcasts can be found on the ‘A Pod of Poets’ website. The website also contains transcripts, photographs and biographical information on each poet. ABC Radio National is also broadcasting these programs on air on Saturdays at 3pm (repeats Thursdays 3pm) throughout 2009. The first program airs on Radio National on Saturday 14th February at 3pm. Podcasts are available now.

Poets featured include Robert Adamson, Les Murray, Joanne Burns, John Kinsella, Gen X-Y (Josephine Rowe, Craig Billingham, L.K. Holt and Aidan Coleman), Jayne Fenton Keane, Samuel Wagan Watson and Martin Harrison parts 1 and 2, Kathryn Lomer and Esther Ottaway, John Clarke and Jordie Albiston.

The ABC intend to keep the ‘A Pod of Poets’ website live for an extended period of time.

This is a fantastic resource for students and teachers interested in and/or studying Australian contemporary poetry.

Elluminate Masterclasses – Developing Virtual Classroom Experts

Posted on February 6, 2009 by slav

Thanks to Tamara Carpenter and Kate Jeffrey, from the DEECD Knowledge Bank Online Conferencing Team for the following information:

Elluminate Masterclass – Developing Virtual Classroom Experts

What is it?

The Innovations and Next Practice Division Online Events team are running a series of Elluminate Masterclasses to Victorian educators who are interested in developing the skills to extend their teaching and learning into virtual classrooms and becoming “masters and mentors” for others. The program is being offered as a series of four Masterclasses available from February through May 2009. If you have used Elluminate before as a participant or moderator and would like to:

Develop your online facilitation skills
Learn how to use virtual classrooms in different teaching and learning contexts
Understand how to adapt different teaching and learning styles to the virtual classroom
Experiment with the use of multiple tools in an online session
Become part of a network of virtual classroom leaders

These sessions will offer you a chance to work with a highly skilled e-facilitation expert and become part of a network of virtual classroom experts. Carole McCulloch will lead the program. Carole is a skilled virtual moderator, e-coach and e-mentor who has been involved in education throughout her working life. Carole has worked as a secondary school teacher, a lecturer and coordinator in TAFE (community colleges), then as an instructional designer, flexible learning manager and senior project officer for TAFE frontiers in Melbourne. Since 2005 she has worked as an independent e-learning consultant working on national and state based e-learning projects.

Who is eligible?

This program for Victorian teachers and educators (both government and non government schools), education policy officers and researchers with some experience of using and/or participating in virtual classrooms in their professional life. Applicants will nominate how they plan to use their virtual classroom skills on completion of the program.

When will it be held?

The program is being offered as series of four Masterclasses. Participants will attend a series of four sessions. Each session will start at 3.30pm and run for 1.5 hours. Each series will be offered over four weeks. Applicants are invited to nominate one series only:

Series 1: Feb/March 2009 (Feb 19, 24, 27, March 2)

Series 2: March 2009 (Mar 4, 10, 16, 23)

Series 3: April 2009 (Apr 21, 24, 27, 30)

Series 4: May 2009 (May 1, 13, 22, 27)

Where will it be held?

The program is offered online in Elluminate. You don’t need to leave your desk – the program comes to you. We expect that you commit to attend all sessions but in the case of unforeseen circumstances, session recordings will be available.

How to sign-up

Places for Masterclasses are strictly limited. If you are interested in attending a series of the Masterclasses, please email the following information to knowledgebank@edumail.vic.gov.au by the closing dates indicated. Your registration information will be reviewed and we will notify selected applicants within a few days of the closing date.

Application: Elluminate Masterclasses – developing virtual classroom experts.

Name

Job title

Organisation/school

Which Masterclass Series are you applying for?

Series 1: Feb/March 2009 (Feb 19, 24, 27, March 2) – applications close Tuesday 17 February 2009

Series 2: March 2009 (Mar 4, 10, 16, 23) – applications close Wednesday 18 February 2009

Series 3: April 2009 (Apr 21, 24, 27, 30) – applications close Tuesday 7 April 2009

Series 4: May 2009 (May 1, 13, 22, 27) – applications close Friday 17 April 2009

Are you online? Your blog, wiki, website etc. address

Where did you hear about the program?

Do you have previous experience with virtual classrooms? (eg have run own Elluminate sessions, attended events, etc.)

How do you plan to use virtual classrooms in your professional setting? (<100 words)

More information

For more information, contact Tamara Carpenter (03 9637 3010) or Kate Jeffrey (03 9637 1820) or email knowledgebank@edumail.vic.gov.au

Hakia update

Posted on February 6, 2009 by slav

A previous post focussed on the Hakia search engine that prides itself on its credibility. The people who have joined Hakia as a member receive an occasional email update. From their latest update, Hakia says:

Imagine a digital newspaper of your own, a Web page where you can park searches or even better your questions. A system monitors new information from news sources with semantic precision everyday just for you. When you open your digital newspaper page, all relevant news articles are then displayed in an alignment of your choice. WE HAVE ALREADY BUILT THIS SERVICE FOR YOU! Go to my.hakia.com and customize your own digital newspaper.

Customising your own page is quick and easy. News headlines for Australia are available (but weather is not). Users are able to move customised selections around the page (even after selecting Australian headlines, US and Europe headlines were featured at the top of the page, however, bringing Australian headlines up to the top of the page means that it sticks there, saving the user having to scroll through the page.

Hakia are keen to hear from users about ideas to make Hakia and the web even better. Drop them a line at myidea@hakia.com with your thoughts.

edmodo

Posted on February 4, 2009 by slav

edmodo is a communication platform specifically designed for students and teachers. Being designed specifically for this audience, privacy of students was a main concern for developers.

My edmodo Homepage (no link as page is private)

As the edmodo blog states:

‘What is edmodo? edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.
How does it work? Teachers sign up for accounts, and then create groups. Each group has a unique code which is distributed by the teacher to the class. Students then sign up (no email address required) and join the group using the code.
What is the locker? All users can add any post or reply to their locker. After posts have been added to a user’s locker, they can be organized and filtered using tags. Posts can also be sent directly to a user’s own locker.
What are the edmodo and supportgroups? During the initial stages of edmodo, when a teacher signs up they are automatically added to the edmodo and support groups in order to give all early-adopters a chance to connect and report bugs.’

edmodo has the facility for teachers to upload assignments and also for students to click on the ‘turn in assignment’ button which uploads their responses. Teachers can even send their assessment and feedback to students via edmodo. edmodo developers are keen to hear from users about this idea and how it has worked (or not worked well) with classes.

edmodo also provides comprehensive ‘how to’ documents in the form of a wiki. There are currently four guides; a how to for teachers, a how to for students, posting to edmodo and uploading an avatar. A how to use edmodo video can be accessed here.

edmodo seems to be a very interesting and potentially valuable tool for classroom teachers and students. A bonus is that students do not need an email address to use edmodo.

ToonDoo update

Posted on February 1, 2009 by slav

Since writing the post on ToonDoo in mid-December, ToonDoo has made some interesting additions and modifications to its site. An email from ‘ToonDudette’ Meera explains the following:

‘Thanks to concerns (related to inappropriate content) from many educators, we will soon be offering exclusive school domains (such as schoolname.toondoo.com) Many schools have already signed up with us for this service. Here’s how it will work:

We will provide a separate domain for each school (for example: http://www.schoolname.toondoo.com/).
ONLY students of that school will be able to create toons at this domain but any one will be able to view them on the internet, embed them in blogs,wikis etc.
We will let the teachers completely own the editorial rights in this case. That would mean they can monitor the content, block inappropriate toons and also do the editor picks.
The domain will be free of charge during the beta testing phase of six months, post which there would be nominal annual charges for it.’

My understanding is that toons can still be kept private, shared with selected others or viewed publicly, depending on the wishes of the students and the school. It will be interesting to see what the ‘nominal’ charge will be. If you are interested, please contact Meera Sapra:meerasapra@toondoo.com.

Worldcat

Posted on January 30, 2009 by slav

Worldcat is a catalogue that links users to approximately 10,000 libraries worldwide and contains details of over 1.2 billion items.

People interested can use Worldcat just as a catalogue, to see if an item is available in a library near them. The advantage of using Worldcat is that if you are a member of several public library services, one simple Worldcat search can list where the item is located. By simply selecting what type of item you are looking for (books, DVDs, CDs and articles), entering a search term and then your postcode, Worldcat will then list the libraries nearest you that hold that item. Often Worldcat can give you the distance from your postcode to the nearest libraries with the item. Users can also set their ‘favourite’ libraries which will be listed first. Currently some of the Victorian libraries that have their holdings listed on Worldcat are:

Please be aware that some results pertaining to libraries holding particular items are not always 100% correct. Some items are listed in Worldcat results and some are not. Not sure whether that is a Worldcat issue or participating library issue.

However, users can also signup for a free account that enables them to add content to the Worldcat website. Currently lists (think Librarything or lists created in Amazon), bibliographies and reviews can be added to the site. Users can modify or delete their own review, ‘but other users can edit information that has been contributed under Details (similar to Wikipedia).’

For those library staff out there that occasionally need to do some original cataloguing if items cannot be found on SCIS, Library Link Victoria or Libraries Australia, Worldcat is a great last resort before having to invent the wheel yourself.

Worldcat are also currently trialling Worldcat mobile where according to their website, users can:

Search for library materials—Enter search terms such as keywords, author or title
Find a WorldCat library near you—Enter your ZIP, postal code or location in the Libraries Locator
Call a library—Highlight and click the phone number in a library listing to place a call
Map a route—Find the fastest way to a WorldCat library using the mapping software already on your device

: Worldcat mobile

Currently this service is only available to residents of the US and Canada, but here’s hoping for wider coverage once the trial is complete.

School Library Association of Victoria

Category Archives: Web 2.0 tools