Omnivorous Surfer

My intent with most of these posts is simply to introduce interesting sites and information I find, so that's what I did awhile back regarding Tagul and Wordle. If you were intrigued by the concept of Wordles but weren't quite sure how to use it (or Taguls) in the classroom, you might be interested in a wiki entry I just found. More Than Wordles has links to lots of sites with ideas for using Wordle in the classroom and for gifts, and some interesting ways to make them more attractive or communicative.

Here is a sampling of the ideas you'll find described in more detail by using the links on the More Than Wordles site:

• As a starter activity for students to guess what the day's lesson will be about

• Preview of an article to be discussed (as examples, above and to the right are a tagul and a wordle of a research article linked to from the More Than Wordles wiki):
• Use for students to check their own work for repetitions (did they use any words too many times)
• Enter an essay for an overview of what has and hasn't been included
• Enter grade criteria so students can see main areas to concentrated their efforts
• Combine students' class expectations to make a poster for the class
• Find out what ideas were most important in a famous speech
• Compare/contrast themes in two pieces of literature
• Pre-reading (using the reading text) or post-reading (for discussion using students' responses to prompt) activity

Note: If you decide to use Wordle in the K-12 classroom, you will probably want to read "How to make Wordle safe for classroom use."



If you were intrigue by the concept of Wordles, this More Than Wordles wiki is definitely worth checking out!

Using wetoku, a web cam, and a microphone, you can interview an expert while wetoku records it. wetoku then makes it available for you to post on a blog, YouTube, or other website. Oh, and wetoku is FREE.

I haven't found a good FREE source for celebrity (business, entertainment, sports, etc.) contact information. You can use the Contact Any Celebrity website for 7 days for $1 (autobilled $29.97/month unless cancelled). A cheaper option would be to purchase the Kindle version of The Celebrity Black Book 2010; the paperback version sells for $97. You don't need a Kindle, as you can download free Kindle software for iPhone or iPod Touch,  PC, or Mac. Of course, many may already have access to contact information to local, nearby university, and state individuals without needing such resources.

Suggestions of successful strategies for contacting celebrities are included in several books by Jordan McAuley and in The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.

The wetoku website pitches to bloggers, but my focus is naturally on education. I think about a student planning and conducting an interview with an expert on a topic he is investigating, perhaps as part of a senior project as is completed at our local high school. Or interviewing a student in another country, perhaps in a foreign language. I know there are many other possibilities. What a great experience something like this would be, and how seriously the student would approach it. Almost makes me wish I were still teaching so I could use it with students!

A thank you to Jody Britten for making me aware of this website, which was included in a list provided for a training she's conducting for our local school corporation.

YUDU is a site where you can read, publish, buy and sell content. With a FREE option, it could be useful for classrooms, teachers, or anyone who would like to publish "beautiful e-books, e-catalogues, music, audio books, photos and presentations" on the web. Pay accounts offer more capabilities. Documents published here (displayed as flash movies) can be viewed from the site or can be embedded on your own site.

If you just want to read, browse the site's offerings; you can do a tag search, or you can make selections by category (Art & Literature, Business, Comic Books, etc.) and then by type (books, newspapers, reports, photos). You'll find all kinds of public-domain books (e.g., Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Frankenstein), specialty magazines, catalogs, organizational publications and more; there are professional publications as well as those published by students and other individuals. When your chosen "book" opens, simply click on the bottom right page corner to turn the page. I searched but found only one that was clearly student-produced (written and illustrated), Scarlet's Story. Having nearly finished reading the entire Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters, I then enjoyed Feline-faced Dieties of the Underworld.You'll surely find something here that matches your interests.

I was surprised not to find more student work, as I think students would really enjoy seeing their products published in this manner.

I find I'm featuring others' blog posts (mostly educational in nature) here more often than before. That's partly because I'm reading them more, and partly because I'm hoping that some non-blog-readers who find their way here will be encouraged to check them out and begin searching for ones that match their interests, oh, and maybe begin blogging themselves.

Today I enjoyed the "Technology-Transformed Learning Environments" post on David Warlick's blog. Having a long-standing interest in using technology in the classroom, I appreciated his description of what technology-infused learning looks like (definitely read the blog for the details):

• learning fueled by questions
• students engaged in a way that provokes conversation
• learning situations responsive to the learner's actions
• learning experience compelling a personal investment by the learner and contributing to the learner's identity
• learning resulting from significant opportunities to safely make mistakes

If you're interested in and decide to read that post, be sure to also read a follow-up post, "Some Good Tech-Transformed SD Questions."

There's much to think about in these two posts. The level of benefit from the use of technology in education is obviously dependent on good teachers, those who know how to use it to its fullest potential for students. Teachers need to be constantly evaluating technologies and their teaching methods to see how they can more effectively engage learners and help them reach new levels of thinking, understanding, and knowledge.

Among the webinar casts mentioned in a Classroom 2.0 email was one entitled "Can You Digg It Web Applications for Research: Alternate Search Engines and Media Repositories" which I watched and found to be very useful (to view it, click here). I have since watched another of her webinars, one on social bookmarking, which introduced me to the wonderful world of diigo (subject of a future post). I highly recommend both of these webinars, as I found them to be of outstanding caliber and packed with good information.

In searching for more on the presenter, Rochelle Rodrigo, I found Can You digg It, a wiki she created for her own purposes, but which presents a lot of information valuable to others as she documents some of her resources and processes related to various projects.

One of my favorite aspects of the wiki is the MultiModal Research Matrix, a full matrix showing how different technologies (alternate search engines, blogs, forms and surveys, maps, mind maps, etc.) can be used for each of the steps in a scaffolded research project. You have the capability from there of choosing any of the technologies (by clickin on the column heading/technology for more detailed information. From the left pane of the window, you can choose to see the steps in more detail.

I haven't plumbed the depths of this wiki yet, but I will be doing more exploring as I search it for even more information to use.

I thought the video in this post would be interesting to many who don't know why we had Daylight Saving Time in the first place. Interesting, also, to see its effect on power usage according to current research.

I think students would find this quite informative.

Free Technology for Teachers: Has Anyone Seen a Missing Hour of Sleep?

I'm probably way behind on this one, so it may not be new to you. Google Voice is available by invitation only at this point, but there is a link to request an invite on the website. This is not like Skype; you do not use it to make phone calls from your computer, but it is used with an existing phone. The web interface looks very much like the gmail window, and a mobile app is available for iPhone, Blackberry, an Android-powered phones.

The regular account, using Google Voice with an existing phone number, has a number of features. 1) Your voicemails will be transcribed to text and can be kept and searched in the same manner you do your emails. These can be viewed and listened to online or on a smart phone. 2) In addition you can set Google Voice up to send the transcribed voicemails to your email account. 3) Voice messages can be forwarded to others, just as you might with an email message. 4) You can set different greetings for individual callers. 5) You can use Google Voice to make inexpensive international calls.

It appears to me that most of the features which are added if you choose to have a Google phone number would be functional only with a smart phone, which I do not have or expect to have. If I did, I think I would choose this option. 1) A call to the Google number would ring all my phones or no phones or any phones I choose, based on the caller or time of day. 2) I could screen calls, listening to incoming voicemails without answering or before answering, just as I can do with my home answering machine. 3) I could record calls and make conference calls. 4) I could receive SMS text messages online, and reply to a text message as I would an email, with no charges for an outgoing text.

For more information, you might wish to view the videos Google has prepared.

I have requested an invite for regular Google voice to use with my existing number. It appears to me that most of the features for Google phone number would be functional only with a smart phone, which I do not have or expect to have. I have requested an invite and will post back on my experience if and when I am able to use it.

I've had a couple of posts about portable apps (Portable Freeware and Gimp), applications you can carry around with you on a flash drive and use without installing on a computer. I just found PortableApps Suite. One download gives you a collection of apps for just about any use you might have: web browser, email, calendar/tasks, antivirus, instant messaging, PDF reader, password manager, games, audio player, and office suite. Sweet. suite!

If you're studying vocabulary for ACT or SAT tests, or just want to improve your vocabulary, Gotbrainy provides a fun way to do that. You can view Brainyflix (videos) or BrainyPix (photos) posted by students to Gotbrainy. If you're a student, you can enter your photo or video representation in the Gotbrainy contest for a $600 first-place (deterined by votes) award. Both the video and photo contests have ended for this year, so watch for next year's entry information.

Tagul clouds are flash objects which can be imbeded on a web page, as this one is. I like them as a different way to present links for navigation.

Another FREE site, Wordle, is a bare-bones cloud creator without shape options or link capabilities, but it does produce a nice cloud very simply. A Wordle cloud can be printed or viewed on the wordle site. To use a cloud as an images requires capturing a screen shot and trimming it. A number of the clouds shown in the gallery were created by students. If you should decide to use it in the classroom, however, you will probably want to read "How to make Wordle safe for classroom use."

I think tag clouds would be a different way to graphically present typical bar-chart data where more precise relationships are not critical. It would be a fun way for students to enter poll or survey data (words) and see the results. Wordle would probably be better suited to this application, since Tagul's links would not be needed and might, in fact, be in the way. Wordle is also somewhat easier to use.

I had no idea I could add locations to my Garmin database using external data. Thanks to another Kim Komando tip, I found directions on Google's site for sending business listings found in Google Maps to several navigation devices, and it looks so easy, at least for the Garmin. I won't put details here, as you can look them up for yourself using the link above. In addition to Garmin, there are directions for Mercedes, BMW, Audi, TomTom, and ClarionMiND.

You never know what you'll find when you follow a photo to it's origination! I saw the image above in a teacher's blog post about three student bloggers in her Web 2.0 computer applications course. Curious about the photo as I thought I might have some use for it, I traced it to flickr, where I saw its title given as "MOO cards for blogging workshop." The explanation was that these were cards with questions on the reverse to be used in a blogging workshop for journalists. "MOO cards? What's that?" I asked myself, thinking perhaps this was some new educational concept. It was not.

MOO is a printing company that creates postcards, business cards, minicards, and notecards with a twist, well, a couple of twists. First, each pack includes a number of different images (an example is shown at left) instead of identical cards, and second, you can place content on both the front and the back of each card. You can use your own photos or graphics, or you can use images from their designers.

I can see using the business cards or postcards for workshops or classes, as the flicker member mentioned above did. The business cards would be perfect for photographers or craftspersons to promote their businesses. It might be nice to order postcards or notecards using your own photos for your own use or as gifts.

The journey from photo to source and beyond took me to a very interesting business. I wonder where the next image might take me. Where will yours take you?