Technology is changing so fast.  As an educator it gets more difficult each day to keep up. For teachers who are trying to integrate technology into their classrooms it is even more difficult balancing personal use of technology with classroom applications and uses.  I  thought that I would put together several posts this month, that address some important new Web 2.0 Tools and applications that I find I can’t live without and share them here. In this way  teachers can come here to my BLOG  to find links  directly and suggestions as to how best to use these tools to stay ahead of the curve.

On PBS, one of  my  favorite Media  sites, I found that a new PBS Frontline series is airing entitled Digital -Nation. It is all about how the Web and digital media have remade nearly every aspect of modern culture, transforming the way we work, learn and connect in ways that we’re only beginning to understand.  This is an important topic for my teachers and what they know about the students they teach today. It is also the topic I am presenting this week at my professional development workshop. Watch this video to see if you are as informed as you think about the digital world of today! 

What should teachers know and be able to do to keep up? For one thing they should continue to monitor EDUCATIONAL BLOGS and new Web 2.0 tools such as the ones I have listed in this post below or the BlogRoll on the sidebar of my blog.

Presenting ideas in the classroom is critical to any teacher.  A new tool that I have just discovered is a Web 2. 0 presentation tool call PREZI. The first time I saw PREZI  was at a Tech conference last fall.  The presenter used PREZI to present his ideas in such a dynamic way.  Once you see and  use PREZI, you’ll never want to use PowerPoint again.  It is so much more interesting and kids will just go crazy over it. Here is an example of a PREZI presentation. You can also see a video on the site to help you get started creating your own presentation or show it to your students and let them give it a try. View this example of a Prezi created about WEB 2.0 IN THE CLASSROOM

Here is another new and useful tool for teachers that exemplifies the creativity that is being fostered by today’s web sites.  WORDLE  is one of my favorites.  WORDLE is a dynamic tool for words and ideas.  It allows ideas to be visualized in many different ways.  If you take a list of words and enter them into WORDLE and run it, you will see what I mean. The uses are endless at least from my perspective.  CREATE A LIST OF WORDS AFTER WATCHING THE FRONTLINE VIDEO AND ADD THEM TO WORDLE.  Here is a WORDLE sample on THE TOPIC OF Web 2.0

One very savvy technology teacher integrated WORDLE into a Social Studies lesson for his students by using it to Summarize President Obama’s State of the Union speech.  Richard Byrne’s blog is one that you should view regularly for lots of updates to new technology and classroom integration ideas. Go to his blog to see the WORDLE created in this lesson.

One problem we face often now, is how do we collect and store all of those favorite web sites that we keep bookmarking? I use tagging and sharing sites. MY favorite at this moment is DIIGO.  Like other  popular tagging sites such as Delicious and Google Bookmarks, they use TAGS rather than folders.  With tags you can match many keywords to one site for multiple uses. DIIGO is different because it allows you to also highlight content on the web page and add a sticky note to comment to the page.  The Stickynote  stays there when you go to the site again. You have to sign up for DIIGO to use it and can share your library of sites with groups or other individuals. TO LEARN HOW DIIGO WORKS WATCH THIS VIDEO. 

To learn more about building a Personal Learning Netowork with DIIGO WATCH THIS VIDEO AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.

Using WEB 2.0 TOOLS FOR CLASSROOOM PRACTICE is an exciting way to make learning enjoyable as well as effective. A number of tools are available on the SmartBoard in the Galleries and Teacher Toolkits however there are a number of links for stand alone game templates that I have found that work independent of any whiteboard software.  One such tool is LINKED UP. With this tool you can easily create interactive games for practicing vocabulary terms, reading word sets, science categories, math facts, parts of speech, foreign language vocabulary etc.  One tool can be used in numerous settings and at varying grade levels.  To access other similar tools go to the home site for TRIPTICO. a site created by educators.

SEARCH ENGINES are not new to the Web.  However this one WOLFRAMALPHA.COM is more than just a search engine.  It is a KNOWLEDGE ENGINE.  The site is an intelligent search engine that connects queries of key words to various bits of information that it sees as a logical connection.  To see what kinds of information you can find VIEW THE EXAMPLES VIDEO AND THEN TRY OUT A FEW QUESTIONS OF YOUR OWN. Your kids will be amazed at the  power of this site.  Homework help is only a search word away for students AND parents.

Most of you are familiar with Social networking and SHARING SITES such as Facebook and MySpace. Another type of sharing site is described here. Have you ever found yourself wanting to have your students or friends send you a file such as an image file or a file such as a Science Project file but the file size was too big to mail or the students did not have an e-mail account in school? Or do you want  a place to drop your files in one place so you can retrieve them from anywhere you have access to the web?  Well this valuable site allows you to do that.  DROP.IO is the place.  To watch a How To video  click here. To add something to my Drop.io site you will need a special address. 

Another sharing site that is often amazing is a photo sharing site FLICKR.  Flickr allows users to upload and share images.  Searching for images is impressive.  Millions of images are available both to view and download.  Users can post images in sets or individually, add images to your personal collections and save images for use off line if the rights to do so is offered.  Its another alternative to Google images and can be very useful when doing projects. The only issue is that on a filtered network such as in most schools, Flickr is blocked. 

Another multimedia creation and sharing site is ANIMOTO.  This site is terrific for creating short videos using photos and video clips. It is an alternative for classes that want to create videos at home or teachers and classrooms that don’t have video editing software installed.  Just take some video footage with a Flip camera or load your own movie files and images and use ANIMOTO to combine them into a personal video.  You can even add sound and music. You will need to sign up for this one as well but it is free for small videos.  Students will need e-mail addresses to create accounts.

It’s important to remember that not all of these tools and applications can be used by students.  Often a teacher will create something to demonstrate a learning concept and will find these tools very useful.  As a professional and educator today it makes sense to know what our students are doing on the Internet and how we can leverage some of these same tools in our classrooms.  Become familiar with one or more of what I have talked about in this post and you will be much more prepared to face the next generation of learners.

NEXT TIME – SOCIAL MEDIA SITES AND PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORKS.

This weekend I attended the Teaching and Learning Convention in New York City.  This was a very worthwhile event, especially for classroom teachers who are enthusiastic about using technology and media.  PBS – Channel 13 and WLIW21 along with a number of other sponsors delivered a fantastic conference.  Whenever I go to an event such as this, I come home with lots of “good stuff”. This time was no exception. I will take the time to share with you some of my finds.

One of the major events at the show was the rebirth of the Thinkfinity web site.  You may know it best as the old MarcoPolo site.  http://www.thinkfinity.com now has much more to offer teachers in terms of lesson plans, student activities, and other resources.  Besides the favorite links to National Geographic, Illuminations (math) and Read Write and Think web resources, there is a new section – the Literacy Network.  This includes resources for parents, ESL and adult literacy teachers. It also offers professional development videos and online tutorials that are invaluable especially if you are involved in any way with literacy programs or teaching literacy in school. It is worth the visit to Thinkfinity.com no matter what you teach. There is no better site for the Best Technology related lessons on the Web.

The last time I published to my blog was about two weeks ago. I know that I promised that this was the start of a regular series of reviews of current resources and best practices in educational technology. For now, I guess every two weeks, give or take a few, is not so terrible.

I have been concerned lately about the direction that educational video is heading.  More and more of my colleagues are turning to video sharing sites such as YouTubeto find school related media content to show in their classrooms. I have nothing against YouTube and the ease of use and the superior technology that has made it the most popular video sharing site on the Internet.  In fact if you do a search of video sharing sites in Google, you will find numerous other sites with mash ups and home movies,  remixed clips and assorted news features  much like YouTube. In a recent search I found 67 such sites reviewed at www.contentinople.com/proddir/dir_list.asp?dir_id=7None however got the ratings of YouTube.

Am I saying that there is no appropriate media on these sites?  No.  However in today’s classroom, that is short on time to begin with, I find these sites to be a double edge sword. In one respect teachers find them easy and quick to locate a source of media to supplement their curriculum. On the other hand, using these sites on a regular basis denies their students the quality video available from true educational video content providers.

With the technology obviously improving every day for broadcasting video over the Internet, and more and more highly rated web content providers and news companies making video the media of choice, there are many alternatives for teachers to find outstanding video content for most areas of study. I have found many that I will share here with you.  My favorite site which I’m not sure is free or not free these days is “Discovery Education” formerly known as “Unitedstreaming”. Still available to Carle Place at discoveryeducation.com it is one of the most comprehensive video providers for educators. Also a watered down version of the same video catalog is the definitely free educational video site at www.wliw.org/itv. 
 

Also a favorite of our elementary teachers is www.Brainpop.com  providing cartoon like videos on every topic imaginable for all grade levels K-9. Subject specific sites and reliable news sites are another source of video clips that motivate students to study topics that make learning in the classroom more authentic and meaningful. News sites such as www.cnn.com, www.cbsnews.com/  and uk.reuters.com/news/video provide lots of daily videos and news shows that a teacher or students can search daily.  PBS also offers high quality video clips and excerpts from their full length shows. The Nature Channel, Nova and The War are just a few of the many available. Full length movies from history with topics such as ancient Greece or health or nature are available. 
Look as well for Government sponsored sites offering public safety and health videos such as ones from FEMA at www.fema.gov/kids/v_lib.htm are particularly good for the upper elementary school. Earthquake Drill and Hurricane footage give students a detailed emergency guide to these weather related disasters.

Also available are teacher portals for excellent free video for teaching practice and for viewing by students. The AnnenbergMedia is one such site where multimedia resources help teachers increase their expertise in their fields and assist them in improving their teaching methods. Many programs are also intended for students in the classroom and viewers at home. All Annenberg Media videos exemplify excellent teaching.

Another favorite portal is VITAL –video in teaching and learning at vital.thirteen.org.  VITAL (Video in Teaching and Learning) is an exciting new resource pioneering the use of standards-based video content in data-driven instructional decisions. VITAL brings a rich collection of educational videos to the classroom through expert-developed activities that are aligned to New York State standards in Math and English Language Arts for grades 3-8. Videos can be downloaded and lesson plans and related resources that accompany each video can be printed or customized.

Finally I have to mention the wealth of Science related videos out there especially within the realm of science research. It seems that many scientists are seeing the benefits of documenting their research through video. dnatube.com  or labaction.comfor video clips from science teachers or others in the profession are similar to Youtube style clips. At www.jove.comyou will see higher level research video through university sites and medical research institutes. These videos come with other supported documentation such as lab protocols and references. There is an overabundance of resources available to teachers today which fosters the use of a quick and simple site such as YouTube.  Some teachers get so overwhelmed that they don’t know where to start. I would suggest that teachers need to build grade level resources for their own schools and departments just as they did a few years ago with VHS tape libraries. I encourage anyone interested to use my Wiki site or build your own to create a bank of peer reviewed videos. In this way teachers will have at their finger tips the Internet resources necessary to build interactive rich media supported lesson plans for their classrooms.

Today as I promised in my last blog, I learned to use a new online FREE tool called Jing.

Jing is an application for screencasting images or movies from your computer screen. It is created by TechSmith and is part of an affiliated website called ScreenCast.com.I have been thinking about using a tool such as this for a long time now in order to create tutorials for teachers and other educators. I just never found the time before. With this tool, anyone can make simple movies or images and share these to the Screencast.com site and either to your own local machine or to another network location such as a share drive, or even to an e-mail.  Instead of a lengthy e-mail from the tech support, wouldn’t it be great to have them send you a link to a web tutorial that you could watch to solve your problem?

I can see so many uses for this software for the classroom. Students can create video tutorials of such things as how to play video games, or more educational application of how to create a spreadsheet, or create a PowerPoint presentation or how to create a resume or write a friendly letter etc. What’s even more useful is the process of planning and scripting their tutorial.  What fantastic ELA skills are used in creating these projects!

In the JingProject which is the starting point for getting this software, there are links to several video tutorials.   Alan November shared this site with us at the Nassau TRACT Conference a few weeks ago. He also shared some of his resources that might also be helpful to begin your own screencasting classroom project. I have attached his screeencasting guide below.

Next Time – Some examples of uses of screencasting from my community of learners.

I finally decided that it is time to join the 21st Century and begin my journey of education technology leadership by creating my first personal blog. I am hoping to use this blog space in lieu of the usual newsletter I send out to my community of teachers and administrators at my school. Whether anyone reads it or not is another question. But I guess that is no different than if I waste a few hundred sheets of paper to do the same thing.  I am also looking forward to building a space that will offer a wealth of information for educators like myself who realize that we are falling

way behind the students that we teach. The digital natives in our classrooms of today are more comfortable online than anywhere else. It is critical that we at least attempt to keep up with what’s important in their lives and to teach them using the tools that they know and embrace.

So where do I begin? I always wrestle with that question because I usually have so many ideas flying around in my head. Today while surfing the net, I happened upon a blog right here on Edublogs that caught my interest.  It pointed to a new series by “PBS – Growing Up Online” that I think is a good place to start. Teachers and parents need to take a good look at the “online” lives of our children. It may be a wake up call to some and a refresher for others but it is worth the hour it takes to view the site. There are full length PBS videos, resources for parents and discussions. The discussions are most interesting especially the comments by teenagers and their view of us as the 21st century adults.

Here is one last point of interest that I wanted to post here for all. Along with this blog, I have begun a Wikispace for CPS that I hope will become a valuable resource for our community of learners. Feel free to visit it often and share your expertise or maybe a new lesson idea for using technology.

Tech EXPRESS Wiki