Tag Archives: web2.0

Developing a ning… #tcea2010

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Live blogged: Please excuse spelling errors or awkward phrasing!

This session was presented by Elizabeth Perrin and Amanda Jost from Houston ISD, Educational Technology department.

Communication is a huge challenge for a district the size of Houston ISD (200,000+ students) and they were looking for a way to create a network of collaborators. Some options considered were: email, listserv, wiki, blog, ning, skype and video conferencing.

Why a ning? A ning was chosen due to cost (free with ads), personal presence of members (social aspect), voice, multi-dimensional (can do much more than just a wiki or blog – it is a true social network that is targeted to specific groups), easy to use, can be private/secure.

Amanda did graduate research on using a ning to create a valuable professional learning community with teachers in the the district. Background research told her that members needed direction and motivation to participate in the ning. Members would come when the site was first launched for the novelty, but need motivation to keep visiting.

In order to increase usage, the facilitators redesigned the ning, used it to provide links to new resources, discussed issues, and made site visits to campuses. Usage stats show that people used the ning when something was posted. Email reminders and other members posting encouraged ning visits. Lack of participation by members discourages use.

Recommendations for building a ning:

Design – keep it simple and user friendly. Have a prominent spot for announcements, district news links, videos, forum. Have personal pages for members to post photos and other info. Members can have personal communications, chatting, uploading of files.

Resources – Keep resources organized, accurate and updated. Provide RSS feeds for news, district resources, links to safety resources and web 2.0 tools. Ask members what they want.

Gathering feedback – Plan for feedback in advance: how will you get it and what will you do with it? HISD uses Google Analytics, questionnaires and their own observations.

Promoting the ning – Talk about the ning whenever you get a chance!

Things to think about:

Determine what you will post. Have a clear purpose for the ning. Enlist the support of your IT department in keeping the ning open and not blocked by your filter. Post a usage policy for the Ning: what can be posted and who can join.

Maintenance – answer unanswered posts. Review the ning daily and check membership at least yearly. Check how the ning looks to members and how it works in various browsers. Work at developing the ning but give it time to grow.

Future plans – Looking for ways to deepen discussions on the ning.

handouts posted at amandaj.wikispaces.com

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Cool updates to Voicethread

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Voicethread is one of the favorite tools that we introduce in our version of the 23 Things class. Joyce Valenza’s recent post in the Neverending Search blog describes Voicethread’s new relationships with New York Public Library and Flickr Creative Commons that give their users access to over 700,000 digitized images. Read the entire post for more details.

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Wolfram|Alpha

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The tech world has been buzzing recently about the newest information tool on the block – Wolfram|Alpha.

Named after its creator, Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is not a search engine like Google that helps you locate information. It is a “computational knowledge engine” that “generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”

For more information on this amazing tool, read Joyce Valenza’s summary of Wolfram|Alpha‘s features or watch Wolfram|Alpha’s creator do a demo.

Play around with Wolfram|Alpha. I think you will find a new tool to add to your information toolkit.

Using Web 2.0 for Professional Development with Kathy Schrock

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I’m testing a live blogging tool called Cover It Live today with Kathy Schrock’s webinar on web 2.0 and professional development. If you are watching live, you can see the text come up as I type it, kind of like an instant message. If you come upon this post after the fact, click on the Replay button to see the updates from the webinar this afternoon.

New portal for book related media

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Have you ever wondered why there isn’t a “go to” place for educator-created media that promotes books, reading and literacy? Well, some of the great thinkers in our profession have. Not only have they been thinking about it, someone (Joyce Valenza) has done something about it.

Bookvideoning.com is a new portal where teachers, librarians and students can share media (in any digital format) to promote books, reading, and literacy K-12.

In my travels around the web, I have seen lots of great video book trailers, Voicethreads, Animotos, and other digital storytelling efforts. What a fabulous idea to have them all collected in one online space.

I encourage you to participate and upload your creations. Here is my contribution.

Glogster for educators

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Right before school started this year, I learned about Glogster from a post on the Neverending Search blog. I visited the site, created an account and in less than an hour had a cool new home page for our Library Policies and Procedures wiki. (It took longer to create the custom images than it did to make the “glog” itself.)

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According to the web site, Glogster is a way to “mix graphics, photos, videos, music and text” into a poster-style format called a “glog.” Glogs can include links to other web sites and be embedded into any site that allows users to paste in JavaScript code.

Now Glogster has introduced Glogster for Educators and I can see this tool being used for all kinds of student projects. Take a look at these examples of student-created glogs:

What a great web 2.0 way to re-invent the traditional poster project!

Print What You Like

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School librarians everywhere deal with students (and others) who use reams of paper when printing information from the web. Many web sites don’t have a printer-friendly option and a lot of those printouts are taken up by ads, graphics and formatting that the student doesn’t need.

Enter PrintWhatYouLike, a “free web page editor that gives you control over how web pages look when printed” and has the following features:

  • Edit any public page in your browser – no installation required!
  • Change page font size and type, remove the background, and remove images
  • Edit any part of the page by clicking a page element or selecting text
  • Any selection can be removed, isolated or widened
  • All changes are undoable
  • Combine multiple web pages together – edit and print them as one document!

Looks like a really handy tool for those who want to save money paper, ink, and the environment.
Hat tip to Joyce Valenza for the link.