Entries Tagged 'Web 2.0' ↓

Web Writing Projects

Fake iPhone Text

http://www.fakeiphonetext.com/

Click Create and fakeiphonetext.com will generate a picture that resembles actual text on an iphone.

My Fake Wall

create a fake facebook page about a historical or literary character. You can include people your character would have been friends with, geographical information, educational background,  groups they would have joined, family members.

http://www.myfakewall.com/

Here is a Word Template if you prefer

Fake Tweet Builder

You may have heard of twitter which is a social networking site.  You can post short blocks of text called tweets.  You are limited to 140  characters per tweet.

Result without customization:

A few more fun things:
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en type or paste in a block of text,  click choose male or female voice, click create mp3

You know those URLs that are two miles long and by the time the student has typed it in, found their spelling error and gotten to the correct site, the class period is nearly up and both of you are frustrated and tired? No more!!
Go to either of these sites and type or paste in your long URL one time.? ?A cute,? ?short,? ?tiny little address will be created that you can give your students and they will be rocking along on that website in no time?!
http://bit.ly/
http://tiny.cc/

I hope you have fun with this - I did!

 Cross Posted at Thoughts Have Wings

So far this has been disappointing.  I even verbalized the question (that is actually the TITLE of the session) and no one is going there.  My question was, if it takes us a certain amount of time in education to move from the point of learning the mechanics of something new in technology primarily because we are being required to, to the point of it being second nature and totally infused in teaching - and if we are in transition with this Web 2.0 stuff; by the time it has actually become a total buy in, the technology will have moved on.  It’s fluid.  What will the technology look like at that point?  I was hoping the panel had some idea of where is was going.

So far it has mainly been explaining what it IS repeatedly, in more than one way, but still - a definition.

Some people have done the expected griping because they have so much blocked in their district.  One panel member is Bradley Kessler - Whyville.  He is knowledeable but also he is selling the concept of whyville (not in terms of money because it is free - though maybe he is angling for it to be officially adopted by school systems) which is not objectionable in itself.  It just isn’t what the title of the session makes you think it will be.

Patricia Schnee, Lead Trainer and Curriculum Coordinator, University of Texas Professional Development Center is also very knowledgeable and seems to be very forward thinking but is mainly concerned with how all this relates to business and employment.

How do we teach kids to be prepared for a world that doesn’t yet exist is my question.

Here are my notes - sorry for the editorial.

Web20panelwheredowegofromhere
patricai schnee
research - looking at web 2.0 in terms of what it means in the corporate world
bradleykessler
whyville put it in the classroom?
kids want a place - they want to create the structure
avatar based virtual world
using a pick your nose faciltiy in whyville make your own face
a week after launch they had a message from a kid that said their face parts were dumb
now there is a place where kids make the face parts and sell them
they run companies where they have employees who do marketing, graphic design - all around creating faceparts

Bill Jule? Jason Project
marco polo

patricia stats
confucious center
367 million are under the age of 18 - larger than pop of us
200 million student s between the age of 14 and 25
our tech and engineering superiority is in jeopardy
define web 2.0?
definition kessler
web 1 was largely a push operation = taking media and putting it on the web and pushing it to the users
web 2.0 is pull - rather that standing up in front of a classroom and pushing info - actually understanding classroom management and engaging students in such a way that they are pulling the info to them - teacheres now also managers, directors
learning styles change on evolution scale not generation scale
we finally have a tech device that will let us better match our learning process that we run as humans, because we can handle 2 prob - scalabiltiy - small group can influence large group
engagement
social piece - they can socialize, interact, create their own structures and media

audience - trying to get Spore integrated into curriculum - what is panel opinion of this progression

What about web 3.0 - by the time school adopt new technology the technolgy has usually moved on - where do you see us moving on to?

merck had some chemical probs and put it online 7% of the solutions came from people who didn’t have degrees - some from out of the country
now merck is disguising the problems so that they will be intriguing but not know what the whole problem is (gave too much info to competitors)

to teach science you need to be a process expert, not content expert

web 1.0 content - web 2.0 process
companies (media and textbook) have a problem with this because they are content pushers

printing press and university structure last major changes
that’s all that has been available

 Cross posted at Thoughts Have Wings

I actually didn’t stay for all of this because there was a conflict with another presentation I wanted to see.  I was hoping for a reason to like SecondLife but I still have difficulty with seeing how it is useful.  It gets boring to me very quickly and there is also the problem of people all over the world being in the virtual world and no way to filter the content.

You basically sign up for a free account, choose a basic character and one improvement that I saw was that you can designate an interest from the start.  You can then tweak your avatar (or character) by changing the body shape, face, hair, clothes and make it more personalized.

Jamey Osborne
LaPorte isd
Jamey Sismondi in sl
jamey.sismondi@gmail.com
osbornej@lpisd.org

go online and be in a virtual world
not mission based like video games usually are
like first life - do whatever you want
presentation is to shorten the learning curve
wear a thick skin in second life
things can happen that will offend you, crazy weird things walk away
virtual world that has people from all over the world in it.
can be an intensely absorbing experience
you login and say you will on for ten minutes and three hours later…

secondlife.com
owning land costs money

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abitibi/228/113/39
(slurl is a link to a location in secondlife)
secondlife about the size of boston (they say)
there are live concerts
each square represents a server somewhere  sim or region
parcels are sims broken down
you can buy those premium account 77 dollars a year
the more land you buy you have to acquire land tiers
you find or acquire things and they are stored in your inventory
landmark is a bookmark of a place in secondlife
world menu - create landmark here
create things and set permissions to no transfer so others cannot just take them
you friend someone
search panel - how to find someone = click people tab and type name
groups (e.g. sailing community)
can create own group
search for places e.g iste - click teleport and go there
search land sales
showcase
events - like live music
classifieds for things like scripts
you can customize body shape, skin, clothing, and hair and shoes
right click on yourself and click appearance
create and save a shape
you can put all the outfit together and click make outfit button
green amount in upper right shows the money you have
there is an entire economy in second life

can learn scripting

I read about ChaCha this morning and set my default location to well, here.  I texted for local weather report and got a message back seconds later.  You can get answers on most anything so if you have talented texters in your class - look out at test time!

You can get stock reports, answers to all kinds of questions and if you like you can even become a guide and answer other peoples’ questions.

On the road and need travel information? Here is an example:

I wonder if it has suggestions for snacks? Happy texting!

Example of a Google Docs spreadsheet PDA

• Create a new spreadsheet
• Create headers across the top - you can format the text and background color if you like.
• I used Subject, Date, Notes, Details
• At the bottom of the screen you will see a tab for the sheet you are working on.. If you click it you have several editing choices, including delete, duplicate, rename, and move right or left. For now you might want to rename it work.
• Now click again and duplicate it (I did this twice) You now have three sheets with the same headers and you can now click on and rename the other two sheets. I have named my sheets Work, Home, Ideas.
• Now here is where it gets fun
• You could just enter information directly into the spreadsheet but with Google Docs you can create a form that will make it easier to quickly enter data and have it automatically update in the spreadsheet.
• We will create a separate form for each sheet and show you how you can use those links to populate your spreadsheet PDA
• Click on the tab for one of the sheets so you will have that sheet open.
• You should see a row of light blue tabs across the top of the document - click the tab for Form
• Click create a form
• A new page will open with your form already created according to the column headers you used in your spreadsheet.
• As you move your mouse cursor over each field in your form you will see that you can edit that individual field, you can move it, you can even add or delete questions. Just remember that what you do on the form will be reflected on the spreadsheet. If you delete a field it will no longer exist on the spreadsheet either. A good rule of thumb is that the form is “the boss” of the spreadsheet.
• Now choose “next choose recipients” You can put in your own email address and if you look on the right you will see a note saying that if you have trouble viewing or submitting this form, you can fill it out online and there will be a link. This is the link you want to save as a shortcut on your desktop. You can change the name of the link to make it easier to find. On a PC you will right click on the shortcut and choose rename. If you use something like @Home the @ sign will cause it to be near the top if you arrange you icons in alphabetical order. On a Mac you will control-click the shortcut and choose info. There will be a field where you can change the name.

This would work for a student organizer - just change the column headings to something like assignment, due date, teacher/professor, class period, notes/resources.

A couple of modifications and you can share and collaborate so now you have an online project management system.

You can also click publish - this gives you an embeddable link and an RSS feed so you can subscribe to your own list.
Choose more publishing options and click in the drop down box and choose HTML to embed in a webpage. You can also choose which sheets and even which cells to show. The will generate some HTML that you can paste into your blog. Pay attention to the sizes shown in the HTML. If you paste it and find it is bigger than the space provided in the webpage you can usually adjust those numbers to make it fit.

I hope this is useful to you!

Let’s make a quick guide for someone planning to visit Paris soon. there is more that could be included but this will be enough to get you started! The instructions came from the Google Docs Blog which is a wonderful resource!

First, determine the sites you will use and open a Google docs spreadsheet

In the first column put the addresses

In the second column put the names and a short description (you can include a link)

Click and drag to highlight both columns

Click Insert on the toolbar and choose gadget

Select Google Maps

You can add a title but you now have a list of sites with their addresses and links and a map to boot! Cool and simple.

Save it, click publish and check the box - republish changes and you can continue to add to it and you can email a link to it to your friends and family!

Here is a link to mine:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pgVdUefx1CH0V_U5tumJrHw

Here is a screenshot:

To add a column of numbers in Google docs spreadsheets relax and just follow a few easy steps.

type a column of numbers

when you are finished place your cursor in the cell you want the sum to appear in

At the top right side of the spreadsheet window is a row of functions - click sum, then place your cursor in the cell with the first number and hold and drag to cover the column of numbers. The range will appear in your formula cell

If you have this the way you want it click enter (until you click enter nothing will happen)

the same process works for average and the other functions listed there.

If you click “more” you will see a list of available functions

If you are done click save and give your spreadsheet a title

Yay you! You have created your first Google doc spreadsheet!

I have been spending a lot of time playing with Google Docs and I am very impressed. There are a lot of resources for help but no single tutorials. I can understand why since the applications are constantly being changed and improved but this makes it a bit hard on someone who is trying it out for the first time.

I’m going to start sharing some of the information I find on this blog.

Today we are going to learn about Google Spreadsheets and Forms.

You can create a spreadsheet from scratch in Google Docs or you can upload one from your computer. There is a list of functions available for Google Spreadsheets. I will spend more time on that later. Today I want to tell you how to create a form than can be shared. When folks fill out the form and click the submit button, the data automatically populates the spreadsheet you create before you send it out. Here are the basic steps (courtesy of Google)

Features: Creating forms

You can create a form from any spreadsheet. Just follow these instructions:

1. Open a new spreadsheet.
2. Save the spreadsheet.
3. Click the Share tab.

1. Under ‘Invite people:’ choose the radio button to fill out a form.

1. Click Start editing your form…

In the form template that opens, you can add any questions and options you’d like.

1. Click the Next, choose recipients tab. Here, you can add email addresses, a custom confirmation message, and choose whether you want people to see the responses.
2. When you’re finished, click Send.

There is so much more you can do but this is good way to try things out.

Some uses for this feature?

1. Planning an event - check schedules or compile a list of who can bring what

2. Create a poll

3. Give a quiz

4. Send out field trip parent forms

5. Collect addresses and phone numbers for a club

I know there are more - can you think of some??

My very environmentally conscious friend Frances submitted a bag design in the Kroger(R) Design a Reusable Shopping Bag contest.

PLEASE!!! Vote for her Kroger reusable bag design at kroger.com!!! You can
vote once a day - thanks!!

View design and vote

http://www.designagreenbag.com/vote-for-designs/bag.aspx?BagId=9662

Hurray! I haven’t checked the new features in Google Docs in awhile, but tonight I was uploading some documents and decided to peak at the presentation piece.  When I last tried to use it I got frustrated because you couldn’t download the presentations into PowerPoint.  They have fixed that and now your presentations can swing either way!  I was sure it was just a matter of time and now it’s here!

You still can’t have all the functionality as far as animations and themes but you can create your basic slides and get all your text set up.  You can also share with a team and track changes.

If you have a student who doesn’t have Microsoft Office on their home computer this is a way for them to get a bit ahead as long as they have access to the internet.