(starting back in 1995, the first version of this page was made.  I figured it was time for a Web 2.0 Update)

Introduction

Something’s going on with the Web these days. Have you noticed?
Note: This was designed as a professional development activity for adults

The Question

The main question you will be asked to find an answer for is:
What’s up with these new technologies and are they any good for learning?

Blogs

Blogs allow people to easily share ideas and resources.  They also encourage readers to comment and contribute to a community.

Explore some of these examples:

• Dangerously Irrelevant
• Derek Wenmoth’s Blog
• Infinite Thinking Machine
• Mr. Barlow’s Blog
• Speed of Creativity
• The Fischbowl
• Boing Boing - A Directory of Wonderful Things

What about Wikipedia?

You mean anyone can add in bits?

Explore and see what you think - describe how you might use something like these.

• The Main English Wikipedia & the Simple English Wikipedia 
• The Hive - Atlantic Article on Wikipedia
• Internet encyclopaedias go head to head …& Britannica’s Corporate Response
• Jimmy Wales on the Birth of Wikipedia - TED presentation

RSS Feeds

RSS is generally agreed to stand for “Really Simple Syndication.” As if that means anything! This simple technology is at the heart of some of today’s most buzzed about new things on the Web. Your job is to:
1) Explore some RSS feeds
2) Suggest how teachers could use RSS in the classroom.

• Here’s an RSS Feed from Pageflakes of the Ed Blogs above   (and more!)
• New York Times RSS Feed Subscription Page  
• ABC RSS Feed Page  
• The Guardian - UK  
• TED Talks Feed  

Podcasts

Fifty million iPods have made it into circulation, but as soon as Apple’s iTunes Music store began listing podcasts, it all went crazy. Just what is a podcast? Your job is to:
1) Explore some online podcasts and maybe the iTunes Music Store
2) Suggest how teachers or students could use podcasts for learning.

• Coverville Podcast  
• Radio WillowWeb  
• Mabry Online - Podcast Central  

Mash-Ups

You might be familiar with Google Maps. Like many Web 2 companies, Google makes part of its code available so others can “mash-up” new content with theirs.
1) Explore some mash-ups
2) Suggest how teachers or students could use these applications for learning.

• Imagine - George Bush on the Wild Side
• Dipity Timeliner  
• Google Maps & Wikipedia  
• Tag Galaxy  
• Google’s InQuotes

Free Online Software

1) Explore some free applications
2) Suggest how teachers or students could use these for learning.

• 280 Slides - better than Powerpoint?
• Wordpress - Easiest way to make a great Web site
• VoiceThread - multimedia the community way

Virality

Computer viruses are bad. But if something “goes viral,” that’s good. Some very ordinary people have claimed their 15 minutes of fame and others are competing for theirs every second. Your job is to:
1) Explore some examples of sites that have gone viral.
2) Recommend whether virality has anything to offer teaching and learning.

• Mentos & Coke extreme experiment  
• The End of the World  
• The Numa Numa Dance Collection  
• Dylan Verdi - The world’s youngest Vlogger  
• FunTwo & Canon Rock

1) After logging in to your Dashboard / Administration panel, click on “Write” and “Page.”

2) Enter a title for your page. If you’re really keen, you can get directly into writing the body of the page.

3) One thing to notice is that your new page will automatically be given a Web address / URL based on the title you’ve typed. You might want to edit that address to make it shorter, clearer or more friendly if you’ll ever send the address with others. Click on the “Edit” link and change the file name.

Note: make sure the address is “Web-friendly” with no spaces or funny characters.

4) There you go. After entering your text you’re basically finished. However, there are some niceties you might want to consider. You may not use them often, but the following tips could be just what you’re looking for. If you’re writing a lot, you might find the text area size a little cramped. Simply click on the blue “Fullscreen Mode” icon to get the big picture. To go back to the regular interface, click the icon again.

You might also find that you want a few more options for formatting text. Click the icon that shows one band of colors with a second one beneath it. This opens “The Kitchen Sink” so you can change the color of text, add bigger headings, insert scientific characters, etc.

That’s it for most Pages

Other than adding media like images, movies, documents, etc. above is what you’ll end up doing most of the time to create a page. Click “Publish” to put the page on the Web and a link from the sidebar from every post. Other tutorials will give you help adding these. The remainder of this tutorial points out a few bits you might occasionally find useful for your pages.

Allowing for “Comments”

Some themes allow for visitors to your site to add comments just as they would to a Blog Post. The default is that the “Allow Comments” and “Allow Pings” boxes are selected. Most themes don’t tend to show comments for Pages, however, so unless you’re using a hosted version of Wordpress (e.g., you’re using the free wordpress.com), you can’t change this.

Ordering your Pages

Once you get a few pages created, you might want to change the order in which they appear in the sidebar or navigation buttons (if your theme has them). Pages are usually ordered alphabetically, but it’s simple to have the pages listed in a different order. Essentially, you’ll number your pages, “1″ being the first page to be listed. You can leave gaps between a series of numbers so there’s room to add more pages in order later. For example, your pages could be listed as “1, 3, 6, 8, 10″ allowing room to insert other pages later. Look for this interface to get better as Matt and the team say, “We know this is a little janky, it’ll be better in future releases.”

Password Protecting Pages

Occasionally you might want to password protect a page so that only people who know the password can get access to the content of the page. You might choose to do this if you link to a gallery of student photos or a page that is part of a private collaboration with another global classroom, etc. Simply click on the “Password Protect This Page” and enter the password you’ll share with those you want to have access to the page.

Nesting Pages under a Parent Page

It’s easy to arrange your pages in hierarchies so that some pages get nested under a main page. For example you could have a “Tutorials” page that has “Add a Page” and “Add an Image” pages under it. As the note says, “There are no limits to how deeply nested you can make pages,” however, not all themes show nested pages very nicely (or even at all), so try nesting one, then save the page and see how it’s represented on the Blog.

Introduction

One of the best ways for students of every age to develop greater cognitive sophistication is to join in a shared looking activity with at least one facilitating adult. As infants, children sat in our laps as we read picture books together. Today we can foster critical thinking by engaging students in regular experiences of “Learning to Look.” All it takes is:

1. a computer,
2. a data projector,
3. at least one interesting Web resource and
4. an open-ended question or “Thinking Routine”

Let’s assume you can organise the computer and data projector so what follows is help with the Web resources and the questions.

Web Resources

The Web is great for enhancing and extending learning in schools. Tom March thinks this promotes “aNew3Rs,” Real, Rich and Relevant learning. Here is a selection of compelling Web resources.

Specific Resources

• Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait, by Chris Jordan, photographic artist - An amazing collection of photographs that capture rampant consumerism and waste.
• The Miniature Earth, presented by Lucco Designs - This flash animation / video presents some facts about the world as if it were a village of 100 people.
• An Inconvenient Truth - UK Website (watch the movie trailer)
• Hiroshima Day BBs - Ben (of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream) demonstrates the size of the US nuclear arsenal.
• Is Wal-Mart Good for America? - watch the full Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program by sections
• The Merchants of Cool - another PBS special, this one focused on how youth are targeted by the advertising industry.
• Living Old - another PBS special focused on the impact of our aging population.

Sites for Repeated Visits

• Tag Galaxy - see what the world thinks in pictures
• Video on Demand - watch ABC news shows like 4 Corners, Chasers War, Rage and Lateline as well as clips from the past 24 hours.
• EdPod - great audio podcasts from most of the programs on the ABC in Australia.
• Pictures of the Week - from Time Magazine - Use this feature regularly to keep up with current events as well as challenge each other to interpret the message and perspective of the photos.
• Sydney Morning Herald Daily Snapshot - Similar to the Time feature above, but on a daily basis and less about the news and more about culture and the unusual. Question: What would a space traveller decide life was like on earth from today’s photos?
• Scratch Media! - Australian Political Cartoons from David Pope (better known by his signature Heinrich Hinze).
• 10×10 - Every hour, 10×10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time.

Questions

Often it is enough to simply ask students the two questions suggested by Professor Perkins: ‘What’s going on here?’ and ‘What do you see that makes you say so?’ Students’ might comment based on learning compelling new information, sensing injustice, seeing humour or any number of reactions. The facilitating teacher’s main role is to help students look carefully and closely at the resource. If it’s a movie, you might go through it again, stopping at key places students’ identify. Sometimes, you can “zoom-in” as specific aspects of an image. One strategy that usually works is to begin simply with “Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?” This challenges viewers to look beyond the surface and venture a hypothesis. For more detailed approaches, use the links below.

Resources to facilitate Looking Critically

• The Intelligent Eye - outstanding questions from David Perkins, in his book by the same name.
• Socratic Questioning Stems - from ChangingMinds.org
• “Seeing Questions” - a fine series of questions intended for the visual arts, but which could also apply to photography.

Thinking Routines

The main idea behind Thinking Routines is that it’s not enough for students to learn “critical thinking strategies,” but research from the Visible Thinking group at Harvard’s Project Zero has found that students also need to develop the disposition to engage in such a process. One approach is to promote a culture of questioning and thinking in the daily life of the classroom. To quote from a recent paper:

The effective schools research has shown that teachers establish housekeeping, management, and discourse routines earlier in the school and that this establishment is important in the long-term smooth running of classrooms. Teachers that fail to establish routines may struggle to keep their classes focused and orderly. Just as it is important for teachers to focus students’ behavior so that classrooms can run smoothly and students can learn, teachers also need tools for structuring and scaffolding students’ mental behavior. In brief, Thinking Routines:n

1. are explicit;
2. have few steps (typically 2 – 3);
3. are instrumental (designed solely to scaffold thinking);
4. are used repeatedly;
5. work across a variety of disciplines; and
6. promote both group and individual practice

from Thinking Routines: Establishing Patterns of Thinking in the Classroom,” a paper prepared for the AERA Conference, April 2006 by Ritchhart, Palmer, Church, & Tishman

Below are four Thinking Routines that could be used frequently.
SEE-THINK-WONDER

1. What do you see?
2. What do you think about that?
3. What does it make you wonder?

CLAIM-SUPPORT-QUESTION

1. Make a claim about the topic
2. Identify support for your claim
3. Ask a question related to your claim

HEADLINES

1. If you were to write a headline for this topic or issue right now that captures the most important aspect to keep in mind, what would that headline be?

WHAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT?

1. What’s going on here?
2. What do you see that makes you say that?

Why Wordpress.com?

Wordpress is the best free blogging software and it just keeps getting better.  There are three main ways to get a Wordpress blog:

1. from Wordpress.com
2. through a Web Host with a Wordpress.org installation
3. with a free educational version of Wordpress MU (multi-user)

After many years helping educators get started with a ClassPortal / Blog / Web page, I’ve found that beginning with Wordpress.com is the best way.  The main reason is that you can get started easily, have access to the very latest version of the software, and can easily export your information if you ever want to host the blog in any other way.

Let’s Get Started

1) Go to Wordpress.com

2) Click on the “Sign Up Now” button.

3) Completely fill in the fields. Use the hints from Wordpress and those in the graphic below to have the greatest success.

4) Chances are that the name you chose might already be taken.  Consider adding numbers or varying your username to increase its uniqueness.

5) Once you have a unique username, you can see how it becomes the main part of your Web address.  You can change the Blog Title to anything you want.  It usually appears quite large at the top of the Web site.

6) To make sure that the person creating the blog is you, Wordpress sends a confirmation email to your account.  Click on the link to activate the blog.

7) When you click on the link in your email, you are greeted by the friendly message below.  Keep your username and password handy and private.  Beneath this information, you’ll see two links to your blog: basically the “behind the scenes” Dashboard where only you create content and the “public” face of the site that everyone sees.

A handy way to work on the blog is to use the right-mouse click to open each of the links in a new Tab (or window if you don’t have Tabbed Browsing).  This way you can flip between the “inside” and outside” of your site as you build it to see if it looks the way you want.

9) Clicking on “View your site” reveals it in all its “default” glory.  You’ll soon learn how to change the “look-and-feel” to something the you like better.

10) Entering your username and password logs you into the Dashboard.

Note: a new Dashboard looks like this:

Whereas one that you may see in older versions looks like this.  Everything works the same, the functions are just slotted into slightly different place. 

Either way, take a look around and explore.

Fill in the required information:

Click on the Menu button to open the control pane.

Click on whatever “Flakes” (RSS feeds) look interesting to you. You can get rid of them if you don’t like them.

Now it’s time to look for RSS feeds from other sources. Begin by opening another Browser Tab or Window.

Now search / surf to sites you like for information and see if they have an RSS feed link. For example, you might go to the ABC website and search the page for “RSS”. Then click on the link.

Look through the RSS feeds available. Really good sites, divide their content into sections so you can get the latest on your main interests (like “science,” “world news,” “movies,” etc.). When you find a section you want to get the updates on, copy the link.

Then go back to you Pageflakes page and look in the lower left of the Menu / control panel for a link that says “Add RSS Feed”.

Paste the RSS feed address you copied into the field and then click the “Get Feed” button. You’ll see the new feed added to the top panel of feeds on the page. If it doesn’t work, then you didn’t get the RSS feed address quite right. Just try again.

Here are some sources for great RSS feeds:

• The ABC
• The New York Times
• The Guardian, UK
• TED Talks

Part 2

Now let’s make it so you (and students) can get to these great feeds as a Web page. Start by giving the Page a name:

Cool. Now we need to give the page a solid Web address. From the Menu / control panel, click on “Make a PageCast.”

Click on the “Public” radio button and fill in all the information.

Save the Changes and then look in the upper corner for the Web address of the page. Copy the address and then paste it into the browser’s URL line to go right to the page with a set address. now you can add this address as a link to you blog.

Great stuff! Now you and students can easily find out the latest on just about any subject.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can browse all the PageFlakes and find some pretty cool things. Just be careful, some bite!

Fill in the required information:

Get the Browser buttons so you can quickly add great sites to your social bookmarks.

Follow the instructions to see if the buttons were added to your browser. Everyone in your class / school / faculty should add the buttons and set them up for your group account.

Once the browser buttons have been added, you can Log-in to your group Del.icio.us account and everyone who uses it, adds sites to your group account. Great for departments, classes, clubs, enrichment programs, etc.

You can add sites quickly, by dragging across text on a page you like, then just clicking on the “Add Tag” button and filling in the information. If you use some agreed upon tags, everyone will be able to find things better.

Now that you have this ability for a group of learners to contribute to a shared set of bookmarks, how might you use it?

If you’re stuck, get help from Del.icio.us tutorials

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is…”

Aw, chrissakes, why don’t I just tell you myself!

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what’s wrong with me. My family, people at school, hell, even the goddamn cleaning lady probably has an opinion if anybody’d ask her. So you might as well join the crowd. You might as well add your comment on what you think is wrong with good ol’ Holden Caulfield, esq.

Any if you’re really keen as a whip, I’ll even invite you to be my friend. Yeah, friends, what a lot of good those can be…

(note: this uses a special Plug-in for podcasting that is available when you host a site yourself. Keep looking for an equivalent at WordPress.com)

In our last session, it was decided that between then and our next meeting on May 7th, we would all have a go at podcasting. Exactly what this means is unique to each individual: some participants with more advanced skills will likely be full-blown podcasters by May. Those who are newer to technology are encouraged to make an audio recording to bring along in May. It’s really important that everyone realise their is no judgment connected to these outcomes. Just as we want our students to start wherever they are, the same holds for us. It’s the individualised learning that’s important, not any comparisons or standardised expectations. Grapes, wine and sultanas are all lovely!

Overview

Here are some main pointers on creating Podcasts as well as a comprehensive tutorial for our specific purposes. Also remember the Podcast Resources page on this blog as well as many other great online guides.

Definition

Let’s start with a basic description of podcasting.

“Podcast - A Podcast is like a broadcast of media, usually audio, that nearly anyone can create. Podcasts are downloaded, usually onto Portable media device, like an iPod so they can be played back at a later date. These are great for traveling when you might not have the ability to listen to live broadcasts, like in an airplane. They are also fairly easy to create and share, so even the average user can tell a story to capture your attention and share it with the world.” from A through Z computing

We’ll start with the notion that a podcast is an audio file. This was how they began even though now many of the best podcasts are “enhanced” with images or actual video podcasts (sometimes called “vodcasts”). If you like to work with video best, begin with that, otherwise, let’s record some audio.

PC / Windows

Most beginning podcasters on Windows machines use free software called Audacity. It works fine for the purpose of recording your voice.

Jason Van Orden presents great support from his site “How to Podcast”. I’ve linked to what I found to be the most important guides.

Overview: Podcast Tutorial: Four Basic Steps

• How to Download and Install Audacity (get the latest stable version)
• Good flash tutorials on recording and editing with Audacity
• A note about ID3 Tags

Here are other good tutorials for people using Audacity.

• Creating a Podcast with Audacity on a Windows PC - from PennState (video)
• Audacity Tutorial - from Guides-and-Tutorials

Macintosh

You could use the same software and tutorials above for Audacity as it is cross platform, but the software on a Mac is far easier and powerful, so let’s use that. Here are a few online guides:

• Podcasting with QuickTime Pro (pdf)
• Podcasting with QuickTime Pro from Apple
• Recording your Podcast with Garageband from Apple
• Podcasting with Garageband 3 - from Lynda.com - great movie tutorials
• Creating a Podcast with Garageband - from PennState (both video & complete pdf)

Uploading your audio file

Download this tutorial, to add a link to an audio file within a blog post like this: Bright Ideas for Education Intro. You could also get a podcast icon from this page (or another) so that you have an image to signal a linked podcast file to your visitors.

Thinking About Content

Again, Jason Van Orden does a great job helping us think about what we should actually podcast about and how to organise it. Look through these link and consider making this a class activity where students participate in the overall design of a program.

• Choosing a Topic for Your Podcast
• Choosing a Format for Your Podcast

Just to get the creative juices flowing, here are some possible topics:

• “A Day I grew Up”
• Our Real World Heroes
• Famous speeches that changed the world
• “Books on Tape” for the visually impaired or younger learners
• Radio Program (like the ABC’s Encounter, Background Briefing, etc.)
• Public Service Campaigns like World Vision’s Stir Your World or Connect
• Music Video
• Mashup like these Imagines (audio / video)
• Museum Tour
• ??

Use the Comments on this post to ask questions, share resources or announce your podcast.