My students – preservice teachers – learned how to create their own PLNs this semester. The students read education blogs and they wrote their own. They use a reader to make following blogs easier. They followed educators on Twitter… and they learn to tweet, to retweet, and to favorite. They shared as well as benefitted from what they read. Their favorite curation tools were Delicious and Pinterest. They created plans to curate and share what they learned as well as use it in their own soon-to-be classrooms. They also planned to publish their own experiences and ideas. They are excited about the opportunities that collaborating with others in our PLNs offers to today’s teachers.
One of the challenges when developing your PLN is to find blogs to follow. There are many excellent education blogs today, but each beginning teacher comes from a different place with individual experiences and needs. Choosing the first blogs to follow can sometimes be challenging. I, of course, make suggestions for a variety of disciplines. I also provides lists of award-winning and award-nominated blogs.
Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) has published an article about this year’s Edublog Award finalists and accompanied it with some of her usual wisdom and experience. In a message that I send to my students this week (exam week already!) I will recommend that they read her article and check out the blogs on the finalists list. You can read it at The Edublog Awards and the Legacy of Beth Holmes. I know that I plan to add to my PLN through the Edublog Award finalists list!
Showing posts with label Delicious. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delicious. Show all posts
December 9, 2013
October 20, 2013
Curating in the Cloud... Revisited
In the previous post I shared some of the research and analysis I
have done as I consider changes to my curation style. My research has
continued this past week... and I am changing one of my choices.
The more I use Evernote the more I am convinced it will be a good replacement for (some of) my use of desktop folders to organize materials. However, my experiments this past week with FlipBoard as a tool to share content with my students had some snags.
I love the appearance of a FlipBoard magazine. It looks professional and modern and works well on desktop and mobile platforms. The links are clickable. The embedded videos show the visual of the video (that's good) and then take you to YouTube (I'd rather stay in the magazine) to view the video when you click on the visual. I can "add a caption" but that caption is a single paragraph with little formatting. In order to post an article that I have created I must link to its website (a wiki, in most cases). If I must link to another site--and if I like that site--then why am I using FlipBoard? So... I see good reasons to use FlipBoard, but I do not see it as the best way to share my content (web articles and my own content) with my students.
I tried Bag The Web. I'm not wild about the name of the site, but I know that's a minor complaint. If I send my students to the BTW site they can use clickable links. The embedded videos work and keep you in the bag. I can post my own article without linking it to a website. And my own articles can be formatted. My bag looks good when embedded in my blog. But I do not like the look if I embed it in my wiki.
The more I use Evernote the more I am convinced it will be a good replacement for (some of) my use of desktop folders to organize materials. However, my experiments this past week with FlipBoard as a tool to share content with my students had some snags.
I love the appearance of a FlipBoard magazine. It looks professional and modern and works well on desktop and mobile platforms. The links are clickable. The embedded videos show the visual of the video (that's good) and then take you to YouTube (I'd rather stay in the magazine) to view the video when you click on the visual. I can "add a caption" but that caption is a single paragraph with little formatting. In order to post an article that I have created I must link to its website (a wiki, in most cases). If I must link to another site--and if I like that site--then why am I using FlipBoard? So... I see good reasons to use FlipBoard, but I do not see it as the best way to share my content (web articles and my own content) with my students.
 | ||||||||||
| FlipBoard: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
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| BagTheWeb: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
 |
| BagTheWeb: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
 |
| BagTheWeb: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer embedded in Blogger |
 |
| BagTheWeb: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer embedded in Google Sites |
Today I tried Evernote for sharing content with the students. I captured my website with a web clipping. Links are clickable. Videos are not embedded. And because I'm simply clipping my website why am I using Evernote for this process?
 |
| Evernote: Mobile Learning notebook by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
I also tried LiveBinders this past week. LiveBinders allows clickable links, embedded videos, and formatting your own content. I think LiveBinders looks cluttered when there are lots of tabs. But, it will be a while before I'm at that point.
 |
| LiveBinders: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
Here's how my lesson looks in Google Sites (my wiki)... clickable links, embedded videos, and formatted content.
 |
| Google Sites: Mobile Learning by (and used with permission of) Jo Schiffbauer |
Conclusion? My favorite is Google Sites. I'm sure that part of the reason is because I have used it for so long that I'm comfortable with its features. But, I do like its features, including many that I have not listed in this post.
However, I am looking for an alternate method for sharing content that is separate from the organization structure I use for my classes. I could have my class wiki link to a content wiki... or I could use LiveBinders for the content. I think I will try LiveBinders to help me decide if I really do want the content separate from the organization structure.
So... my curation tools will now be Evernote (so I can curate in the cloud rather than just on my desktop computer at home), Delicious (to keep track of and to share websites), and LiveBinders (to share content).
I'll see how this works... or if there will be a need for a re-revisit. : )
October 16, 2013
Curating in the Cloud
CURATION IS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF LIFELONG LEARNING
Many of us use social media to help us live as lifelong learners. We create, communicate, and curate with blogs, Twitter, and our PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). The lessons I create for my students are far different from those I developed before social media was as available as it is today. In my early days as an educator I stated more than once that I was going to write my own textbook. And my mathematics students seconded that idea. Now I do that. Every time I create a unit or a lesson. I love the freedom to develop lessons that meet my students’ needs while I meet current standards in my discipline. Technology--hardware, software, the web--allow me to do that so much more easily than I could have done the first time I thought about writing a textbook.
I’ve been thinking a lot about curation this month as my students (pre-service teachers) are using blogs and Twitter as they begin to develop their own PLNs. For many years my curation process consisted of (1) bookmarking sites and (2) organizing documents in folders on my desktop computer at home. I began using social bookmarking as soon as I discovered it. I love the fact that I can access my bookmarks from any browser on any computer! The application I used for that began to have difficulties so I moved to Delicious. I have investigated Diigo from time to time, but for my purposes Delicious serves my needs. When I was the technology director for my school district I encouraged the teachers to access my bookmarks to help them find relevant sites for their teaching. Now my students have access to my bookmarks if they wish.
I did not need that anywhere/anytime flexibility for my documents and other files. I am at my most creative working at my computer at home. At school I am more likely to be involved with colleagues and students than with creating units on the computer. Until I began using a smartphone. Mobile technology is beginning to change my habits. I find myself at school or elsewhere wishing I could access documents or files that I have organized in my folders on my home computer. I store some content in the cloud. But not all. It’s time to think about curating in the cloud.
CURATION PLAYS MANY ROLES
I began to investigate the concept of curation. We have a curator of the museum for our local historical society. What does a museum curator do? Kim Kenney (http://www.bellaonline.com/about/Museums) in What is a Curator (http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art31080.asp) lists some of the duties of a museum curator: acquisitions, collections management, exhibitions, research and writing, and community connections.
That sure sounds like what I do as an educator. I acquire content and ideas for teaching it. I manage my acquisitions in my social bookmarking site and in the folders on my desktop computer. I create exhibitions (curriculum, lessons) that are organized collections structured in a way that I and others can learn from them. I research and write so that I can develop new content that is useful for myself and others. And I share with the various communities of which I am a part: colleagues, students, PLN.
CURATION IS WIDELY USED TODAY
Curation has taken on a new role in today’s Web 2.0 world. (See Beth Kanter’s (http://www.bethkanter.org/about-beth/) comments about content curation at her blog (http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/). So much information is created nowadays that we can no longer stay up-to-date by reading or writing about all the news stories. Some folks have developed full-time jobs using tools to help them watch what’s happening all over the world, spotting trends, and sharing that information. I found this 2011 interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMn-cJHzF8A) of Robert Scoble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble) by Howard Rheingold (http://rheingold.com/about/) about online curation to be very interesting.
GOOD CURATION TOOLS MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER
So what are the best tools for educators to use for curation? Many tools were suggested in articles* I researched about curation. I read about bags, binders, and online newspapers along with other ways to create, collect, consume, communicate, and curate data and information. Here are the tools that interest me the most at this point for my curation needs.
Evernote (http://evernote.com/)... collect your sites and documents... access from anywhere
Delicious (https://delicious.com/)... my old friend for social bookmarking... supports tags and comments... do I need Delicious AND Evernote?
FlipBoard (https://flipboard.com/)... create magazine... your sites... uses social media feeds... magazine looks almost real and definitely interesting
FYI
Would you like to review some of the *articles I read about curation and appropriate tools for curating? Here is a partial list of those that flavored my thinking and my decisions but that I did not quote or explicitly mention in this post.
4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web
by Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation
2011
If You Use the Web, You are a "Curator"
2013
Content Curation Tools
2013
Top 10 Content Curation Tools
by Terry Heick
2013
http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Curation+Tools
Curation Tools
2013
http://www.labnol.org/internet/best-content-curation-tools/
The Best Tools for Content Curation
by Amit Agarwal
2011
Here’s the list of websites that I investigated as I searched for appropriate tools. Many of these websites are very useful for a variety of purposes. The tools I chose in this blog post are specifically for the purpose of curation.
aggregage
attrakt
bagtheweb
blogbridge
---
bundlr
contentgems
curata
curated.by
delicious
---
diigo
evernote
flipboard
google news
huffington post
---
inspiretothrive
list.ly
listorious.com (now called muckrack)
livebinders
paper.li
---
pearltrees
pinterest
scoop.it
storify
symbaloo
---
techmeme
the awl
tweetdeck
twitter
yahoo news
 |
| Lifelong Learner / NazarethCollege / CC BY 2.0 |
Many of us use social media to help us live as lifelong learners. We create, communicate, and curate with blogs, Twitter, and our PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). The lessons I create for my students are far different from those I developed before social media was as available as it is today. In my early days as an educator I stated more than once that I was going to write my own textbook. And my mathematics students seconded that idea. Now I do that. Every time I create a unit or a lesson. I love the freedom to develop lessons that meet my students’ needs while I meet current standards in my discipline. Technology--hardware, software, the web--allow me to do that so much more easily than I could have done the first time I thought about writing a textbook.
I’ve been thinking a lot about curation this month as my students (pre-service teachers) are using blogs and Twitter as they begin to develop their own PLNs. For many years my curation process consisted of (1) bookmarking sites and (2) organizing documents in folders on my desktop computer at home. I began using social bookmarking as soon as I discovered it. I love the fact that I can access my bookmarks from any browser on any computer! The application I used for that began to have difficulties so I moved to Delicious. I have investigated Diigo from time to time, but for my purposes Delicious serves my needs. When I was the technology director for my school district I encouraged the teachers to access my bookmarks to help them find relevant sites for their teaching. Now my students have access to my bookmarks if they wish.
I did not need that anywhere/anytime flexibility for my documents and other files. I am at my most creative working at my computer at home. At school I am more likely to be involved with colleagues and students than with creating units on the computer. Until I began using a smartphone. Mobile technology is beginning to change my habits. I find myself at school or elsewhere wishing I could access documents or files that I have organized in my folders on my home computer. I store some content in the cloud. But not all. It’s time to think about curating in the cloud.
CURATION PLAYS MANY ROLES
 |
| Larry Bird, curator, Political History / Karon Flage / CC BY 2.0 |
That sure sounds like what I do as an educator. I acquire content and ideas for teaching it. I manage my acquisitions in my social bookmarking site and in the folders on my desktop computer. I create exhibitions (curriculum, lessons) that are organized collections structured in a way that I and others can learn from them. I research and write so that I can develop new content that is useful for myself and others. And I share with the various communities of which I am a part: colleagues, students, PLN.
CURATION IS WIDELY USED TODAY
Curation has taken on a new role in today’s Web 2.0 world. (See Beth Kanter’s (http://www.bethkanter.org/about-beth/) comments about content curation at her blog (http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/). So much information is created nowadays that we can no longer stay up-to-date by reading or writing about all the news stories. Some folks have developed full-time jobs using tools to help them watch what’s happening all over the world, spotting trends, and sharing that information. I found this 2011 interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMn-cJHzF8A) of Robert Scoble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble) by Howard Rheingold (http://rheingold.com/about/) about online curation to be very interesting.
GOOD CURATION TOOLS MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER
So what are the best tools for educators to use for curation? Many tools were suggested in articles* I researched about curation. I read about bags, binders, and online newspapers along with other ways to create, collect, consume, communicate, and curate data and information. Here are the tools that interest me the most at this point for my curation needs.
Evernote (http://evernote.com/)... collect your sites and documents... access from anywhere
 |
| Evernote Taiwan User Meetup / othree / CC BY 2.0 |
- I have played with Evernote but was never sold that it was an appropriate tool for me. After my research for this blog post and for the new unit that I added to my course I am convinced that Evernote will help my acquisition and management processes be more efficient. It will also provide that anytime/anywhere access that I need for my documents and other files. I think that Whitson Gordon’s (http://whitsongordon.kinja.com/) article I’ve Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here’s Why It’s Actually Amazing (http://lifehacker.com/5989980/ive-been-using-evernote-all-wrong-heres-why-its-actually-amazing) was written for me!
 |
| Logo of Delicious / Bernard Goldbach / CC BY 2.0 |
Delicious (https://delicious.com/)... my old friend for social bookmarking... supports tags and comments... do I need Delicious AND Evernote?
- Apparently it’s a bit of a challenge to import Delicious bookmarks into Evernote. (I came to that conclusion after searching for a method to do so.) I do have a lot of Delicious bookmarks with tags. I don’t have time to play with that at the moment, so for now I will use Delicious along with Evernote. Delicious has been and continues to be a useful acquisition and management tool for me.
FlipBoard (https://flipboard.com/)... create magazine... your sites... uses social media feeds... magazine looks almost real and definitely interesting
 | |||
| Flipboard / Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta / CC BY-SA 2.0 |
- I have investigated FlipBoard previously and have seen other educators use it. It did not appeal to me as a tool to use with my students. When I create a class or workshop I usually use a wiki as the foundation. Wikis are convenient to use as I’m working with my students. I keep the wikis published and available for the students for several years so they can access them later as they need to do so. I try to make them attractive and inviting. And it’s easy to modify them as technology and my own knowledge change. But... rather than create wikis containing all the content I use in a particular class or workshop, perhaps I should use wikis as the organizational structure with FlipBoard magazines as the unit of structure for individual topics. FlipBoard looks like a good tool for communication and curation.
FYI
Would you like to review some of the *articles I read about curation and appropriate tools for curating? Here is a partial list of those that flavored my thinking and my decisions but that I did not quote or explicitly mention in this post.
4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web
by Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation
2011
If You Use the Web, You are a "Curator"
2013
Content Curation Tools
2013
Top 10 Content Curation Tools
by Terry Heick
2013
http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Curation+Tools
Curation Tools
2013
http://www.labnol.org/internet/best-content-curation-tools/
The Best Tools for Content Curation
by Amit Agarwal
2011
Here’s the list of websites that I investigated as I searched for appropriate tools. Many of these websites are very useful for a variety of purposes. The tools I chose in this blog post are specifically for the purpose of curation.
aggregage
attrakt
bagtheweb
blogbridge
---
bundlr
contentgems
curata
curated.by
delicious
---
diigo
evernote
google news
huffington post
---
inspiretothrive
list.ly
listorious.com (now called muckrack)
livebinders
paper.li
---
pearltrees
scoop.it
storify
symbaloo
---
techmeme
the awl
tweetdeck
yahoo news
October 27, 2012
Creating Online Slideshows and Videos
I'm experimenting with web-based slideshows and videos. I have tried a number of applications. Some permit you to use your own photos and/or video clips... others are self-contained. Some are like cartoons. Playing with these applications has been fun rather than work, though.
I eliminated applications that provide demos which include words I would not use in front of my students. The availability of a free account was also a necessity. That doesn't mean that a whole classroom can use the application with no cost. Each application must be evaluated as to usefulness and cost for a particular teacher or classroom or school.
Many applications allow the video that you create to be shared with a link or with embedded code. I have posted some of each (links and embedded code) on this blog post as examples.
The applications I tried came from a combination of suggestions from Richard Byrne's blog (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/) and my bookmarks on Delicious.
I still like videoediting with stand-alone applications (e.g., iMovie and MovieMaker), but I think there is definitely a role that these web-based applications can play in the classroom for both the teacher and the students.
What do you think? What has been your experience?
Photo Peach - Link
http://photopeach.com/album/p0t0wg
Photo Peach - Embedded Story
Spring 2013 in Lake Township on PhotoPeach
Photo Peach - Embedded Spiral
Spring 2013 in Lake Township on PhotoPeach
Animoto - Embed Code
Make your own slide show at Animoto.
ScreenCastle - Link (Note: You can also use Screenr (http://screenr.com) for something like this.)
http://screencastle.com/watch/4a655e86fd58d2a62c1b95c677b20775
Go!Animate - Link
http://goanimate.com/go/movie/0AgKlLFIcPmg?utm_source=emailshare&uid=
Links in this post...
I eliminated applications that provide demos which include words I would not use in front of my students. The availability of a free account was also a necessity. That doesn't mean that a whole classroom can use the application with no cost. Each application must be evaluated as to usefulness and cost for a particular teacher or classroom or school.
Many applications allow the video that you create to be shared with a link or with embedded code. I have posted some of each (links and embedded code) on this blog post as examples.
The applications I tried came from a combination of suggestions from Richard Byrne's blog (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/) and my bookmarks on Delicious.
I still like videoediting with stand-alone applications (e.g., iMovie and MovieMaker), but I think there is definitely a role that these web-based applications can play in the classroom for both the teacher and the students.
What do you think? What has been your experience?
Photo Peach - Link
http://photopeach.com/album/p0t0wg
Photo Peach - Embedded Story
Spring 2013 in Lake Township on PhotoPeach
Photo Peach - Embedded Spiral
Spring 2013 in Lake Township on PhotoPeach
Animoto - Embed Code
Make your own slide show at Animoto.
ScreenCastle - Link (Note: You can also use Screenr (http://screenr.com) for something like this.)
http://screencastle.com/watch/4a655e86fd58d2a62c1b95c677b20775
Go!Animate - Link
http://goanimate.com/go/movie/0AgKlLFIcPmg?utm_source=emailshare&uid=
Links in this post...
- Richard Byrne's blog (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/)
- Delicious (http://delicious.com)
- iMovie (http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/)
- MovieMaker (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/movie-maker-get-started)
- Photo Peach (http://photopeach.com/)
- Animoto (http://animoto.com)
- ScreenCastle (http://screencastle.com/)
- Screenr (http://screenr.com)
- Go!Animate (http://goanimate.com/)
August 27, 2012
New School Years... New Blogs...
For as long as I've been teaching (a long time!) I never fail to find preparing for the first day to be exciting. During the last week I have been tweaking a syllabus, the lessons for my first unit, a wiki, and a gradebook. And I've paid more attention to Twitter than I usually do because I plan to use it with my students during the fall semester.
I usually run a pretty much paperless classroom, but at the beginning I print the photos, majors, and names of my students to help me learn the names of the ones I haven't had in class yet.
I bookmarked (using Delicious) some sites that showed up on Twitter. Here's what the labels look like in Wordle. [The image is no longer available as of 7/7/2013.]
I can easily see what my current interests are: technology tools, web 2.0, IFTTT, flipped classrooms, blogging, Evernote, iPad, QR codes, ... I know! I know! Too many interests and too little time! But I do see some directions I want to go in my next few blog posts.
So, first I meet and begin the teaching and learning process with my new students. And then at the end of the week I'll write the next post for the blog. Sounds like a good week to me! :)
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