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The all powerful Google! One Homepage to Rule Them All.
Posted by Tyler Wall in Calendar/Scheduling, Collaboration, Communication, File Management/Storage, Presentation, multipurpose on June 25th, 2009
I know everyone probably has some sort of Google account and if you don’t you have probably have heard about it. But I wanted to make sure that I wrote something about it because it is one of those fundamental online tools that you must tap into and I didn’t want to take it for granted, that and there are so many tools that people haven’t tapped into that add so much to the experience.
Google pretty much owns my life and there is a good reason for that. It’s easy, free, integrated and unified. On top of it I can gather all the Google tools that I use onto one page, my Google Homepage . This is where I have my Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and many other tools that aren’t even Google tools like the weather, or alternative search engines.
So how do you get a google Homepage? If you have a Gmail account then you already have access to the Google Homepage and ALL of the tools I have listed here and MORE you simply need to login with your Gmail account to access it and it is all FREE!
Let me elaborate on some of the tools that Google offers:
- Google Docs: Word Processing, Spreadsheet creation, online forms/surveys, presentation/slideshow creation. All of which can be fully private or fully collaborative with several people working on the same document at the same time from the same room or thousands of miles away.
- Gmail: Email that offers over 5 GB of storage space (It’s space is ever growing as well depending how long you have had it for, I’m up to nearly 8GB), to-do lists, contact lists, Instant messaging, video chat, and many plugins that increase it’s functionality like GTD inbox, Boxbe, and Google Calendar. And because it is all integrated you send some emails right to your calendar like Entourage and Outlook.
- Google Calendar: Create multiple calendars that you can share with family, friends collegues, co-workers or the entire world if you want. Tap into co-workers (if they are sharing) calendars to help you schedule meetings or events. Break it down into months days or hours. Reminders help you keep track of your life as well.
- Picasa: An online photo storage site like Flickr. Easily organize, find, and share your photos. (Stay tuned for a more in depth look at Picasa and Flickr coming very soon)
- Google Reader: A RSS feed reader that allows for sharing and works really good.
- Blogger: A easy to use blog that integrates into all your other tools, grab photos from Picasa, documents from Docs and populate your blog so others can keep up to date with what you are doing.
- Google Sites: A no code required web builder that utilizes drag and drop modular design. Easily have a website up and running in minutes.
- Youtube: yup your Google account automatically gives you a youtube account.
- Google Maps: A map of everywhere. Get directions and save them to your account so you always have them for accessibility. And check out street view which lets you go down to street level in most major cities in the world and look around as if you are in a car.
- Google Translate: Translate from language to language. Very Handy. 43 languages supported and counting.
- iGoogle: Your personalized Homepage of widgets/nuggets/gadgets. Can house most of the Google tools along with thousands of other tools that enhance productivity or just supply fun.
- and many more like Finance, Scholar, Books, News etc. And they are constantly adding more.
The best part of it all is that it all exists online (but you can have it run off your desktop too if you want) and is accessible from any computer in the world that have computer access.
How can I use this for education?
- Increase productivity.
- Almost everything you do can be online and is sharable.
- Reduce desktop clutter with fewer applications.
- Give students a free alternative to pricey desktop applications.
- Most of your tools can be accessible on one web page. It’s your desktop online.
- It lives online so you have access everywhere and are not tethered to one computer.
- Collaborate synchronously or a-synchronously online whenever or wherever with students, course co-writers, colleagues or whoever.
- Set students up to collaborate online, this works especially good with distance courses.
- View Microsoft Office documents without Microsoft Office.
- and there is so much more but so little space
So what do /would you use the Google products for?
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280 slides to a better course
Posted by Tyler Wall in Presentation on May 20th, 2009
I have run across many online Powerpoint replacements but the one I like the most is 280 slides. Now just so I am not too biased I will list some alternatives at the bottom of the page and will likely write a review of them in the future.
As I mentioned earlier 280 Slides is an online replacement/supplement for Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote and it is by far the sleekest and sexiest of all the online presentation tools. It is very full featured and allows you to add videos, pictures, text, shapes and even upload powerpoint files.
280 slides also plays nice with online/rich media making it ideal for engaging presentations. It looks good, is easy to use, and you can even try it out without having an account. 280 slides even allows you to download your presentation to a Powerpoint file so you can use it offline in those instances that the internet connection is a bit sketchy.
How to use this app in education?
- Instead of posting your Powerpoint to an LMS just give a link to your online version.
- Students don’t need to own Powerpoint and you will be the one that is saving them money.
- Have your students create their presentations here and perhaps have them critique each others work.
- You can have access to your presentation from anywhere and any computer, no more needing to have Powerpoint on all your computers saving you money.
- You can use it less as a focal point for presentations and more as a supplement to presentations.
These are just a few examples of how to replace Powerpoint with 280 Slides. In the future I will compile a list of how to effectively use any presentation application in your classroom without causing the yawn factor.
Twitter It!Can you Diigo it?
Posted by Tyler Wall in Annotation/Research, Bookmark, Collaboration, Communication, Presentation, multipurpose on March 9th, 2009
Diigo – Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Social Bookmarking and Annotation, Social Information Network! via kwout
I wrote an article extolling the social bookmarking tool Diigo. In my zeal I left out some really important ways that Diigo can and is used so I thought it was worth a revisit.
Diigo’s tools in a nutshell:
- Research tools
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- tagging
- list creation
- persistent highlighting (if you highlight text on a web page it will show up there every time you return and if you make it public anyone else will see it, or only allow people in a group view it instead of the whole world) Try it out yourself by clicking the link no signup required. http://www.diigo.com/04tra
- persistent commenting (same as the highlights )
- archiving bookmarks
- Annotation tools
- persistent highlighting (http://www.diigo.com/04tra)
- persistant commenting
- Presentation tool
- Webslides via lists (add bookmarks to a list as well as your own slides. It all plays back to whomever you send the link to with full web interactivity and they don’t even need a Diigo account, check this one out http://slides.diigo.com/list/tylerwall/web20_applications and you can even print it out)
- Social bookmarking tools
- tagging
- public and private access to individual bookmarks
- search engine
- unread bookmarking functions
- create bookmark lists
- share bookmarks to entire groups
- see bookmarks that your groups post but you retain the right to not bookmark them.
- discover people who have similar bookmarks, tags, groups
- show the sites you bookmark most
- messaging
- cloud lists
- Posting to blogs (I posted this article to my blog from Diigo)
There is more but I only have so much space.
So what can an educator use this application for?
Here are some ideas I came up with,
- Use the annotation tools to keep notes for yourself on important websites, I know sometimes its nice going to a website i haven’t seen in a long while and have a few notes or the important text highlighted.
- Make your annotations public and have your students become Diigo members which will allow your
- Create a list of links that are important to a course, this creates a webslide presentation that you can share with whomever you want. This will then bypass deep linking copyright (as far as I understand the copyright laws). The links in the presentation are still navigable and provide students an overview of resources.
- Broaden your knowledge horizon by joining a group. I have found dozens of E-Learning and Education groups which harness the power of the masses by bringing you all the best resources on the web regarding whatever topic you choose.
- Why not create a web research quiz? Set it up like a scavanger hunt by finding a bunch of websites that your students need to do research on and post questions on those sites using the “post it” annotation tool in Diigo. This displays your questions to them on the page that they needed to research which teaches them research skills and they won’t know the question until they do the research.
- Create a group for your whole class and make the research process a group activity spreading the knowledge around.
These are just some ideas that I came up with but the possibilities are there for the taking.
I want to hear about what you use Diigo for or ideas that you may have on how to use it for education.
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Social bookmarking at its finest
Posted by Tyler Wall in Annotation/Research, Bookmark, Collaboration, Communication, Presentation, multipurpose on March 3rd, 2009
Have you ever been at someone’s house, office, or even using a second computer and you want to bring up a website that you have bookmarked on your main machine and can’t remember the URL? Social bookmarking has set out to eliminate this problem and there are several tools to help you in a situation like this but 2 in particular stand out, Diigo and Del.icio.us.
The big dog on the block is Del.iciou.us which allows you to put all your bookmarks up on the web and accessible wherever you are in the world all you need is an internet connection. It has great functionality and is a great tool for collecting your bookmarks, it even has plugins for Firefox, IE, and Safari that allow for easy bookmarking and access to bookmarks.
My pick for best social bookmarking tool is the young upstart is Diigo (even though I use both). Diigo is a Research tool, a knowledge sharing community, a social annotation tool; you can highlight text (with comments) on a website, add sticky-notes to any page all visible to everyone (if you choose) who has Diigo installed in their browser. It can even create lists of bookmarks that can then be presented as a slideshow that can be accessible to anyone in the world if you so choose. These interactive browsing slideshows take you through a list of urls at predetermined intervals all the while still allowing the user to look through the webpage and be in control of the experience clicking links and using the webpage. Use it to bundle important websites together for students or co-workers. Try out the slideshow for yourself no download required (http://slides.diigo.com/list/tylerwall/web2tools) and here is an example of how to use it (http://wslides.blogspot.com/2007/09/emmbed.html)
Like Facebook you can check out how your friends are bookmarking, send messages to them, share bookmarks with them and create groups (like “web 2.0″ or “good recipes”) to facilitate the whole process.
Both Diigo and Del.icio.us are very well integrated into your browser and use a tagging organizational structure so you can easily find 1 bookmark within thousands very fast and very easily. So long story short Del.icio.us focus is more on strictly the bookmarking functionality whereas Diigo has that functionality and adds to it many different social aspects and annotation tools. If you already have a Del.icio.us account Diigo even makes the transition easier by allowing an easy import and bookmarking to both services through Diigo.
delicoious bookmarks
Ustream, I stream we all stream for educational purposes
Posted by Tyler Wall in Presentation, Video on March 2nd, 2009
USTREAM.TV: LIVE VIDEO Streaming, Free Video Chat Rooms. Watch Shows & Broadcast Live TV, stream videos, web podcasts. Live streaming videos and webcam chat via kwout
Ustream is an online service that lets you stream live or recorded video to a worldwide audience. The service is all hosted on their site, you just record/broadcast it and it is available to all. All you need is a web cam, microphone and an internet connection. As an added bonus whoever is watching can chat with the broadcaster or with each other live. This opens up plenty more opportunities.
So how could someone in education utilize this tool?
- Well I think the obvious way is to stream lectures live to Distance Learning Students to make them feel more a part of a class. Even if they cant make it at the specified time they can watch the recording. Questions could be asked and wouldn’t interrupt the lecture.
- Set up a weekly channel broadcast where you deliver added value content for your course, nothing required but something that they can watch for a bit more information.
- We’ve all seen or heard of live feeds of a rare bird nesting or a beluga webcam at the Vancouver Aquarium (http://www.vanaqua.org/belugacam/) why not set something like that up for a science experiment or a research project.
- Broadcast big events that you are covering and give your synopsis of what is happening.
- Set up a roundtable discussion with some colleagues, discuss some important issues that involve your course and even involve the viewers to ask questions.
- Broadcast campus sporting events.
Again these are just some of my ideas and I would love to hear your comments or additions to this topic.
Twitter It!
VoiceThread: The Little Voice Inside Your Computer.
Posted by Tyler Wall in Collaboration, Presentation on March 10th, 2009
VoiceThread – About – Identities via kwout
VoiceThread is an interactive environment that facilitates collaboration on creating dynamic slideshows by allowing users to post comments, which are publicly viewable if needed, in a variety of formats including text, audio and video all delivered from either a computer or phone. In addition to this it allows viewers to comment by drawing pictures directly on the slides.
Although that is a fairly good shot at describing VoiceThread they do a much better job of it by showing what it can do which you can see here.( http://voicethread.com/#q.b409.i848804 and here http://voicethread.com/about/).
My description of VoiceThread is drastically condensed but it is a good base. When you watch a VoiceThread you are faced with a slide and pictures all along the sides, these pictures are the comments that people have left in either text, audio or video, a timeline plays along the bottom and is segmented for each person who left a comment. If you want you can skip all the comments and go to the next slide by clicking the large arrow on the bottom right.
So how could you use VoiceThread in Education? Well this is one of those tools that could be used for so many different purposes that I won’t touch on even a fraction of what can be done but I will try so here we go:
Use it for creative writing exercises, post a series of pictures and have students commutatively create the story by having each person add to what the last person wrote.
If you are interested in more I suggest you go to VoiceThread and browse ( http://voicethread.com/#q ) some of the ones that have already been created. Many of them are very creatively using the tool to fill gaps and really engage students in an open and non-threatening dialog.
One downside to VoiceThread is that for a student to use it they do need to have an account and although it is free it is another step they will need to go through to be able to use it.
Twitter It!Collaborative, comment, multipurpose, slideshow
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