Week 5 # 10, 11, 12

I have been playing around with a couple of cool tools this week. Logo Maker, VoiceThread, JibJab, and I am getting better with Clipmarks. I played some with FlickrToys, check out my grandson dressed as Captain Adorable! I was not happy with some of the cartoon makers. They had some rather rude and innapropriate cartoons and I don't want to expose my students to such things. I think I will wait for something better to come along before I use any cartoon generator with students or at least wait until a teacher makes such an app. FlickrToys is easy enough even for my 2nd and 3rd graders to try. And I am so excited about my Voki. I have been wanting to make a Voki for a while but just have not taken the time to play. The background on the voki is actually my library. It has been so much fun playing.
Something I will use with students and what I think is my new favorite toy is Cool Text because I have used it to create some neat text for a wiki for a graduate class. Check out how Hot Cool Text is for yourself.

I already belong to several Nings including the Classroom 2.0 Ning, Syracuse Alumni Ning, TeacherLibrarian Ning, and the Methacton 2.0 Ning which is just for people in my school district. My next step will be to start my own Ning. I am thinking of creating a Ning for students. I got to Level 6 but don't consider my Travel IQ very good. See how far you can get.

I am very impressed with the search roll of the School Library Journal. Rollyo is a new tool where I create a Search Roll. Rollyo is a new tool for me. I am excited to find it. I can limit the websites my students can use in a search. I can make a search roll and choose only the best sites and then have the students search and find what they need on websites that are safe and the ones I want them to use. I just created this Rollyo with news sites like Scholastic, National Geographic for Kids, and Yahoo kids. Try it out:

Select Search Engine...News for KidsSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

District Technology Initiative

Methacton joins the Ningdom. My school district is starting to branch out. The Methacton 2.0 Ning is a great way to foster a positive Web 2.0 presence and introduce Methacton techies to each other. Come join the Methacton 2.0 Ning!

View my page on Methacton 2.0

Wiki social software or collaborative notebook?

I have several social software sites to which I belong, one or two to share my family photos, two specifically help me keep up with my children and their friends, and some for professional and educational reasons. I also have a wiki and belong to several. In my mind I do not count Wikis as social software but that is just my affinity for compartmentalizing functionality. To me Wikis are great for collaboration and getting information out to the web as fast as possible. Wikis are not for building community, they are for building webpages for sharing information. They can help build community but they are more functional than social.
Social software by its nature is for community building. No one ever accused MySpace of being a collaborative tool for committee work, whereas I know wikis are good for such collaborative efforts. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this video I found while using Blip.tv over the summer.

Click To Play

Ok, so what is blip.tv? It publicizes itself as the world's leading videoblogging and podcasting service. It is a free video sharing service that is still in beta. Of course as I go to Blip.tv today, the beta version seems to be gone, it is in the process of changing it’s name and putting advertising on its videos, but it looks like it is still free, so what’s a little advertising between friends? By the way, the new name for Blip.tv is shortbrain.tv. I liked the name blip better. It was shorter and easier to remember than shortbrain.

Anyway, back to the videos. The wiki video above was done by “The Common Craft Show”. The video above is a simple, easy to understand explanation of wikis and their collaborative nature. The Common Craft Show also has a simple explanation of RSS. It is also on blip.tv. It actually is one of my favorites of the Common Craft Show videos.

Click To Play

How wonderful these videos would be to show to students and teachers to alike. Bravo Common Craft Show!

Welcome to the Ningdom

Ning touts itself as a social network that can be created for anything. Wikipedia says Ning is trying to compete with MySpace and Facebook but appeals more to those who have limited technical skills. Steve Gary, my instructor at St. Joseph’s University, wrote in an email, “Ning is a terrific tool that promotes the development of manageable-size networks. Check my blog for an early post in which I comment upon its value and the possibilities of Classroom (and Library!) 2.0.” I agree with Steve, since Nings revolve around a common purpose, event, or whatever, they tend to have less members and therefore are more manageable. Steve’s blog shows that he understands Classroom 2.0’s appeal to the teacher who wants to use technology but doesn’t know where or how to start. The beauty of the Ning is simplicity and ease of use. I love the Nings I belong to because they are so easy to use and I can spend as little or as much time on the Ning as I want. Here is a video of Steve Haragdon. Steve is the founder of Classroom 2.0. He is talking about Ning...



By the way, the Library 2.0 Ning is geared more toward public librarians. I belong to the Teacher/Librarian Ning. It is geared more toward K-12 librarians. In fact, within the Teacher/Librarian Ning there are subgroups for elementary, middle, and high school librarians. As I explained in my last post, I invited all the members of my graduate class to come along for the Ning ride, move into the Ningdom as it were. It will be excited to see how we interact on the Ning. I hope we don’t forget to add each other as friends and start some interesting discussions. :-)

Classroom 2.0... a Ning for Everyone

I am a new member of Classroom 2.0, the Ning for educators interested in technology.



I sent an invitation to join the Ning to everyone in the Instructional Applications for the Internet class. I thought it would be fun to join the same social network so that we can keep in touch as well as see what others in the field are doing with Nings and things! Hope some of my classmates will consider joining me as we explore the social aspect of the Internet.

The Ning I love...