Usual Web 2.0 Suspects

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Videos....

Blogs are relatively simple. For me they are a natural and obvious evolution from the webpage in school. Scholars make their work public. Via the comments section, they can engage in peer review. Of course by publishing they are passing it on. There are many sites offering Blog applications. Four of the more popular Blogs used in schools are Google, EduBlog, Blogmeister, and WordPress. I've spoken about Google before. The key is to get a Google account and use the Blogger tool. All Blogs have editing tools and are very intuitive. The scholars get it very quickly. Teachers should start using a Blog for hir class assignments and to begin discussions. I used my Blog for a "Do Now" exercise. Upon entering the class, the scholars login and use the Blog to comment on the "Do Now." I have seen teachers use the Blog as the class webpage. If the teacher spends some time using the Blog before introducing it to the scholars, its use should go much smoother.

The teacher should put links to the scholars' blogs on hir blog. Each scholar can use the editor in the blog or prewrite in another word processing program and copy and paste. The scholar can also save a draft before publishing. I featured "Stairway to WV" a while ago as a good school use of the Blog. Tomorrow you will see some examples.


Wikis are an interesting interactive collaborative tool. Wikispaces and PBWiki are two popular free wiki sites online. Everyone has access to the same page in a Wiki and everyone has editing capability. It may seem chaotic at first. Users can only log in one at a time otherwise if multiple users are on at the same time, then one user could overwrite another or cause another user's work not to be saved. It is a collaborative tool where users can share a document online. One very cool and important feature is the history of the edits by the users. If this tool is used in class, the teacher has access to whom the editors are, when they edited, and what they edited or added. Here is a very good tutorial about wikis. Tomorrow you will see some school based wikis in action.

Podcasts are a fun tool. They are audio files created by the scholars using a recording tool like Audacity or GarageBand. Audacity is a free software that can be used on Linux, Mac, or PC platforms. GarageBand is a high end Mac application. Audacity is a simple tool to use. By doing a Google search: "How to use Audacity" you will find dozens of great tutorials. A few of my favorites: This tutorial is excellent. Here is a great Word Document. There are many other good tutorials online for Audacity. GarageBand is a higher end tool for the Mac and is very professional. I use a SnowBall and/or a headset with built-in microphone for podcasts. Tomorrow you will see a good use of the podcast in the classroom.

Scholars should write a script before creating the podcast. This will eliminate lots of editing and redoing. The script is a good writing assignment and satisfies writing components before speaking components are satisfied.


Video tools are a bit more complicated and require more technical expertise. You need either a good video camera or IMac Intel with iSight. On the Mac, I record with IMovie. IMovie is a great and easy tool to use. On the PC, use the Windows Movie Maker. However you record the video, be sure the camera has a quick and easy way to transfer the shot video to the computer WITHOUT any third party software. If you have the wrong camera and the shot video cannot be transfered to the computer easily, you will get frustrated and it might get expensive. So determine the computer on which you edit your video. The Mac is better, IMHO, to the PC in this area. Be sure the camera you purchase or use will allow you to download the shot video and begin editing in IMovie. Once you get the hang of this, it is fun and you will wonder how did you survive in the classroom without it. Creating scripts before creating videos is crucial. Like the professionals, consider Cinematic techniques.

TeacherTube

Here are five videos from TeacherTube that help explain how teachers are using Web 2.0 tools in their English classrooms. Let's use this as a taste of what is being done and give us some food for thought about our own classrooms. TeacherTube is a phenomenal resource for us. Unlike YouTube, TeacherTube is educationally oriented and should get past school filters.

The first video is from an English teacher in Barcelona, Spain. His interests are in the emerging technologies of Web 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Videos as they affect 21st Century Learners. In addition he speaks briefly about Second Life, deemed Web 3.0. The Webheads of Second Life are initiating educational uses for digital learning. One of his biggest points is publishing student work. This of course was the basic tenet of CyberEnglish. Again Web 2.0 is not much different from CyberEnglish.


Graham Stanley, November 2006
graham.stanley@gmail.com
http://blog-elf.blogspot.com

In this second video an English teacher shows how he is using the Blog in his class. Students speak about their blogs and uses. This was produced by Christine, a student teacher in Mr Sheehy's English class. Search "sheehy" on TeacherTube for more.

An English teacher, Jim Hatten, at Tartan High School in Oakdale, Minnesota provides the third video. His class has been using the usual suspects of Web 2.0: blogs, wikis, podcasts, surveys, and webquests. Students comment on their work and the process. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect was watching Jim prowl his own classroom while the scholars work. It is a student centered class!!

Rachel Boyd, let her 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them! This fourth video is the introduction to her presentation for a New Zealand Online Conference.

From http://t4.jordandistrict.org, the final video is about paying attention, a term I have been made more conscious of after hearing Cindy Selfe utter them many years ago about our use of technology in education. We still need to pay attention for many of the reasons stated in this lovely video. It is a lovely compilation of Gardner, Bloom, Prensky, Gates, Carnegie Foundation, students, Daggett, Warlick, and others. I love the haunting music that suggests some urgency and the quote: "engage them, don't enrage them."

Now after viewing these remarkable videos, I hope you have a better understanding of what can be done with technology and where you can go and search for more inspirational examples and videos you can use in your classroom.

Eventually you will want to create your own. We will talk about that.

KISS Storage

Living in NYC, I know about space, living space. Optimizing space is an art form in NYC. Multiple uses of our objects makes those objects valuable. Using all spaces in the apartment wisely is always sought by us. Innovative ways of using space is always a topic of discussion and brings awe from friends when they see great usage of space. Companies make money helping residents optimize their living space. We have storage companies dotting the city, so residents who don't have attics, cellars, or garages can store those items they rarely use or those seasonal objects. Some storage locations can be elaborate or they can be simple. It all depends on how much we are storing and how often we need access.


The same is true in the world of technology. We have space issues on our computers, on our cameras, on our thumb drives, on our websites, in our email. How do we manage all of our gigabytes? We are gatherers and we are gathering more and more digits. We have learned that digits take up far less space than atoms, so we collect and gather so much. All of a sudden we get a warning message telling us we are running out of space, or we don't have enough space to perform a certain task. We are flummoxed. Do we buy a new computer, camera, another thumb drive? No. Many folks are using free online resources to store data. I've written about Google before and there are lots of online locations a person can store stuff to share it with others or to access from another computer. I have a list of such places on my 2dotzero webpage.

A new site has recently come to my attention, BOX. I love the simplicity of this site. All the user does is upload files. The user can share them with others. The files are downloaded to the computer and worked on the computer. The site does not have the capability of editing files as some other sites have. This is a great site for schools and business. the original documents are passed on and worked on by the the original user or a collaborator and then returned to storage. Users have control of programs used and aren't dependent on a second party editor that may not be compatible with the original user's computer. It is a simply a storage and share website. Simplicity is sometimes the best way to go.

As we know and see everyday there are so many ways to store and save data on the Internet. We each have our own needs and methods. Box is one of those sites that provides a very simple solution to one on the go, a simple solution for one in need of some more space, simply a place to place something for later use without all the bells and whistles of editors and other distracting toys and tools. Box is a good example of KISS.

A Good Quote

One must learn by doing the thing.
For though you think you know it,
you have no certainty until you try.
Sophocles (BC 495-406, Greek Tragic Poet)

I have used this quote in many ways. I have used it in my email signature, on my class syllaweb, and here. Quotes are powerful tools. They provide a truism common to all readers. They give us a way in, a segue to what we want to say, by pulling our readers into the same mind think. We read the quote, we interpret the quote, and now that we are on the same page, we can discuss how this quote leads us to our current conversation. Another neat aspect of quotes is who said it and when. In this case we are talking about a really old concept. A concept that is central to me as an educator and that is "we learn by doing." It is central to my work in that I am a constructivist. I want my scholars to construct, to generate projects that demonstrate their learning. We can read about things and we can hear about things in the world; but we don't know about them till we do them. Secondly, we must always try to do those things, otherwise life is wasted. This quote is a powerful one to have a conversation around in any class or gathering of people.

"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."
Benjamin Franklin

I first heard this quote in eighth grade from my math teacher. I think it took me years before I really understood it. This is another quote I use in my classes. Most recently I used it to introduce a lesson about Wikipedia. This was an eye opening exercise for my scholars. So many instances in our lives are cluttered with things we hear and see. What do we believe and what don't we believe? I use a sports analogy here to help make this more clear. We speak about using video replay from many angles to see if a foul was committed, a touchdown was scored, or if his knee was inbounds or not. We discover that we need different perspectives on things. We need to investigate, challenge, and question everything to arrive at our own conclusions.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism)

I have used this quote often in class. Whenever a scholar asks me how to spell a word or another question that is better answered by the scholar who does some work to find the answer then by me simply giving the answer, I reply, "I don't know, let's figure it out." The concept is that they must earn it. An analogy I use with them. If you find twenty dollars how carefully do you spend it as compared to the twenty dollars you earned through labor? I am a teacher and wish to teach my scholars how do do something rather than give them the answer. This is why I use computers in my classroom and not a lectern.

In New York State we have a section on the English Language Arts (ELA) exam called the "Critical Lens." It asks the student to examine two pieces of literature through a critical lens, which is a quote. The state provides the quote and asks the student to first interpret the quote and then to select any two pieces of literature that support the interpretation of the quote. In my class, I have used quotes as a "Do Now." I provide a quote and ask them to interpret it in on the class blog so we may use our interpretations in class. I have asked the scholars to select quotes that they think are appropriate segues for their own essays and to include them at the beginning as many authors use quotes at beginnings of chapters in a book or in the beginning of a book. On my class syllaweb, I have a link to "Quote of the Day" so that I have a fresh quote on my syllaweb each day as a Do Now.

Quotes are powerful tools. Authors, speakers, politicians use them to provide some authenticity to their own work, to give their enterprise credibility, to let them associate themselves with greatness. When an audience hears or sees a recognizable quote or a quote of good sense, the audience is joined with the speaker, the author, the politician around a common thread, a common idea, a common adage; that is a good segue to where we are about to go. Quotes in the classroom are powerful tools. I love them for their power and diversity.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Buckminster Fuller

Differentiated Instruction

Differentiated Instruction (DI) is today's educational buzzword. In a nutshell, DI suggests that students learn in different ways, so the teacher needs to find the different ways to help each student learn, in hir way. DI is the culmination of Multiple Intelligences and of Ron Edmunds. In the late 60's and early 70's, Edmonds was deputy chancellor of education in New York City. In one of his reports he said, "All children can learn." He was involved in "Effective Schools."

Edmunds' original list to identify an effective school had five elements on it. The first is that the principal is an instructional leader. Secondly, the school has high expectations. Thirdly, the school is a safe and humane climate. The fourth is a focus on basic skills. And the fifth is an effective use of student data, as kids progressed. Many students of Edmunds and critics point out that he left out a couple of important factors, parent involvement and faculty teamwork. The concepts of the Effective School movement and practice uses these seven elements and others to be effective.


Now we are in another phase of the educational revolution, differentiated instruction. It accepts "that all children can learn" and that we all have "multiple intelligences." DI incorporates the parents and demands faculty teamwork. DI suggests we be aware of the differences students have. Teacher need to be aware of the scholars' prior knowledge, language, learning style, and readiness to learn. Technology is ideal for this environment. With technology, we can assess prior knowledge, adjust to different learning styles, and provide different time and sequencing activities to meet all the special needs of all students. We agree that no two student are the same nor do they learn in the same way. This is why computer technology is so powerful and useful in achieving effective classrooms for the DI model. DI reflects Bloom's Taxonomy. There are increments in accessing the content. Accessing and absorbing the content is key and the steps used to help the students absorb the content is a crucial part of DI. Perhaps the most frequently used word in most definitions and descriptions of DI is "flexibility." Students and teachers must be flexible in all aspects of DI. When it comes to flexibility, those of us who use computer technology, we know about flexibility. We can provide different lessons instantly to our scholars. We can adjust the level of content in nanoseconds. We can provide different time limits or none and provide for multiple uses of content. In all cases the scholars are dependent upon their own knowledge of the computer technology. Access to content in various forms is constantly available. The scholars can change the font size, can have the text read to them, and can do other fun things to the text. The teacher has many online surveys to help them determine the learning styles of their scholars.


For example, in CyberEnglish (CE), my scholars were working on different parts of their pages. They chose the work they needed to accomplish in what order they select. Some worked on vocab, some on reading, some on the content of an assignment, some were revising work, some were reading email. In all cases they were in charge of their own learning based on need and necessity. The computer technology allowed all of this to happen without much control from me. It allowed me to move around the class to assess, to conference, to coach, and to encourage the scholars. I had a Smartboard on which I could do quick little mini lessons for one, a few, a group, or for the whole class. Since the scholars were publishing to the web, I had constant access and could use their work as the content of the mini lessons. CE meets all the criteria of DI and more. As I have said, CE has allowed me to be as close to a brain surgeon as I will ever get. While sitting at my computer, I can login to watch each scholar work and therefore think. I am watching their brain work. It was my introduction to brain research. I wrote about this in my March 27 Blog. Brain research plays a bigger role in the classroom now, because of the introduction of Differentiated Instruction.

Now I use DI in CyberSchool.

Make em Laugh

The sentiments of Donald O'Connor's classic says it all, "Make em Laugh."

We all love cartoons. Whether we read them in the New Yorker, a local newspaper, see them on the television, or on the Internet; we all read and laugh or chuckle or groin from reading a cartoon. Much of what we read can and is expressed by a cartoon. Everyone gets the reference to following cartoon from Frost's poem:

Cartoons provide the visual representation of a good sentence, a juxtaposition, a pun, a witty interpretation. A cartoon is a good use of Multiple Intelligences. Using a cartoon format so that the scholars can extrapolate the meaning of a poem, a short story, a play, a novel is just one more way we can help our scholars express themselves. A cartoon can augment the essay or other method we ask our scholars use to demonstrate their learning. The cartoon can be included in the final project as a grabber or merely as illustration placed strategically within the final project. Cartoonists have relied on literature to help create their cartoons and in some cases the cartoon becomes very important. Consider the famous Pogo cartoon, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The phenomenon of a cartoon show like The Simpsons is an important event. This show uses cartoon format to ridicule, comment, and otherwise satirize the viewer in a very entertaining way. I find the shows dealing with education very useful in my own graduate classes and in my high school classes. Laughing at ourselves is healthy, otherwise we might take ourselves too seriously.

There are many software cartoon generators as well as online cartoon generators. A relatively simple one to use is Make Beliefs Comix. The user can make 2, 3, or 4 panel cartoons. the programs provides a plethora of characters with many options in manipulating them. There are many dialog boxes and balloons as well as other options. There is no save feature, which means the creator must complete the cartoon in one sitting. Printing and emailing it are options, so the user can present the finished product to the teacher. Obviously some planning is necessary before logging in, so completion can be done in a class period. The email option allows the user to embed a link to the comic as an image in the associated project.

The comic strip maker on ReadWriteThink does pretty much the same thing as Make Beliefs, except email the strip to yourself or anyone else. This program provides stock backgrounds, characters, balloon dialog boxes, and props. Another simple program to use. Again good planning before using will make the experience worthwhile and fun.


Another interesting cartoon generator is actually a Blog, Stripgenerator. Blog entries are cartoon strips. Stock characters and tools are available. The fun aspect of this is that then user can generate a new cartoon every day and repeat characters just like the newspapers. The user not only can create a strip motif, but also an audience, which is always important in writing, peer review.

Programs that allow the user to save work and edit it later on, may cost money and must be loaded onto the computer. This of course takes away from the Web 2.0 experience. Comic Life comes bundled on the Mac. Scratch is a new MIT product in development. These are just two cartoon generating programs one can install on a computer and work on saved cartoons.

Cartoons are just another Multiple Intelligences tool, a way to differentiate instruction, and to provide some fun in the writing process in our classes. They can be good tools to assess whether or not our scholars really understand what they are reading if they can create a satirical, ironic, illustrative cartoon to demonstrate their learning. A Google search for "cartoon generators" or "cartoon makers" will yield many more applications. The key is to have fun and to have a good sense of humor. Remember, "Make em Laugh."

Hypertextopia

Hypertextopia is a free hypertext story writing program similar to the more expensive Storyspace program. It is a program created by Jeremy Ashkenas from MIT. It is a space where the user can read and write stories. They are hypertexts and more. In hypertext, the author does not have as much control as non-hypertext. Ashkenas uses axial hypertext, which gives the writer a bit more control to complete a train of thought to move the story along without interruption. Ashkenas explains axial this way:

The axial style helps the author to maintain narrative coherence in a hypertext by insisting on a beginning, an end, and a thrust of rhetoric that connects the two. After a reader has completed an axial hypertext, they should understand the point that the author is trying to make. This style is often contrasted against fully networked hypertexts, where the reader is free to enter at any point, proceed to any other point, and may leave at any time she chooses.

Some may be familiar with another such hypertext program called Storyspace. I was first introduced with Storyspace in the early 90's with a story by Michael Joyce called "afternoon, a story." This program from Eastgate is widely used and costly. It requires commitment. The results however can be astonishing.What I love about the concept is how the reader becomes so involved and engaged in the story. Reading is not passive, instead it is engaging and active.


Hypertextopia is a great experimental web 2.0 program that permits the teacher to let hir scholars play around with hypertext stories, to read them, and to gain a better understanding of hypertext. The glory of hypertext is that it imitates the mind. By that, I mean that with hypertext, we the reader are able to pause and take a sojourn down a path of thought initiated by a text being read that has a hypertext link to a site that provides further reading on a topic so that the reader may be better informed about the original text and inspiration provided the writer. It helps the reader become equal with the writer, it allows the reader to have access to the knowledge that the writer has. There is a democracy aspect about hypertext that we don't find in traditional print texts where the reader needs to have access to the inspiring texts which is not always possible given physical location and proximity to a library or bookstore. The text may also be unavailable completely. The concept of hypertextual writing coupled with the axial concept provides a dimension to writing and even to reading, heretofore unaccessible in print writing and reading. It gives a physical depth to reading and writing that may make the process of both more accessible to more people and might even be a way to introduce Multiple Intelligences into the reading and writing process in our schools and for our scholars.

Learning about Hypertextopia is easily accomplished by viewing stories in the Grand Library. The library is filled with inspiration and great learning. The scholars will be awed with wonder and inspired to write and to consider hypertext. This is a worthy program, a good experiment to explore. It will give our scholars great opportunities to grow and to see reading and writing from a different perspective.