Pict.to

Pict.to allows you to enhance photos, make caricatures, animate pictures, create albums and share them various ways. I had been playing around with it a while ago, and decided I better do some more with it so I could at least write something about it. I just stumbled across the animation part and I'm cracking up watching my pictures "come to life" or so to speak...it is quite funny.

I can see kids having a blast with this, as well as creating some funny faces to add to my movies that I create.

This is one Web 2.0 tool that will come in handy for the end of the year fun projects.

Back to reality

We're on the home stretch - the last quarter of school. The seniors have checked out (well, not all of them, but they are getting antsy).

I have a student who has asked to follow me on Twitter and he has also started his own Ning account and asked me about it. Another student overheard us and asked him about Ning. I stepped back and listened; it was interesting hearing him explain this tool.

I'll be doing last minute touches to my project tonight to be ready for class.

Twitter

Twitter is said to be ranked third in social networking next to FaceBook and MySpace.

The following article 'Tweeting' Between Students, Faculty Gains Popularity at Princeton discusses how "microblogging" has become very popular and how it might bring faculty and students closer through the sharing of personal details of their lives. Even though this may be through an informal setting - how much sharing is too much? So much is pulled out of context in social networking comments, that one might think twice about sharing much with students.

Apple Remote?

There was a lot of discussion at our staff meeting about laptops coming to the high school. What were are concerns, hopes, and fears. One topic was the policing of what the students were doing during a lesson. How is this monitored? If the desks are not set up strategically so teachers can view the screens easy enough, how do we know if the students are taking notes, etc? These were all valid concerns. Apple Remote was mentioned, but not explained, so the high school staff is not sure how this works.

On the other hand, if parameters are set and the lesson is engaging enough to keep the students interest, then do we need to worry about "policing" what they are doing during class? I constantly walked around my classroom and I constantly am telling kids to get off YouTube, do your work, close out of that site. It's frustrating and time consuming. Sure, you can tell the student to log out (then they cannot complete their assignment), you can give them detention (I hate giving detention for this), or you can continue to "police" and hope they are completing their assignments as they sneak behind your back visiting other sites.

Ning

On Voice Thread for Educators Ning site, someone posted their concern about students who had posted comments on Voice Thread using an anonymous name (things that were not appropriate). Conversation and replies to this discussed using Ning as a class site and setting it up so that all comments were fed (RSS) to the teacher. Student would be "suspended" from using Ning, just like being suspended from school if comments were not appropriate.

I've still been wondering how to keep my Voice Thread site for kids secure and maintaining positive comments and usage. This is something I still need more research on.

I've been neglecting my tool journal for days. I'm wrapped up in creating a DVD for the Maine Association of Student Council's State Convention and the preview is Friday in Bangor at our meeting (and I have lots left to do, but I'll get it done. I work well under pressure, usually!) This has been taking up much of my time, as well as checking out a message board that I am "sucked" into reading every day.

I hope my VoiceThread presentation went well enough that others got something from it and that they might try Voice Thread in their classes or on a personal note. I'm anxious to see the other presentations in class from our classmates.

How will our chat night go? I'm looking forward to it - I think we can all contribute a lot, through our conversation and posting links to other sites to check out. We shall see.

Presentation

Working on my class presentation is interesting and fun, but my mind is racing and thinking of other classes I can use Voice Thread in. I think I'm overloaded!

My plan is to introduce this tool, show a tutorial, and then have classmates add comments to my presentation, before creating one of their own. This should take about 30 minutes (I hope).

Classroom 2.0 ning that I visit has some really neat blogs and information.

Is online education really an improvement over face to face ? Follow this link and read through the comments about online vs. f2f education.

http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/is-online-education-really-an

Blending technology tools into your classroom can be overwhelming. I think the key is to choose tools that will work together and have time to practice with the tools before presenting to your students to use. There are some good examples in this blog, as well as viewing this YouTube video called Goomoodleikiog.

Tony, Chris and I are working on our Google survey for Penquis. We're trying to figure out how to get this to all students....can the link be posted on our Blog, should we email it to all students, how about posting the link to our school website?

It's a Whole New World

As I delve into ning sites, I am amazed. There is SO much. I found a secondary ed ning, Voice Thread ning, Classroom 2.0 ning, and I'm not done. I'm looking for a technology and business ning to join too.

I'm working on my proposal for Voice Thread and how I can use this with my Computer Apps class. It will be a great tool for my MultiMedia class next year, but I think the freshmen will like using this too.

Classroom 2.0

I had planned to watch the live view of Classroom 2.0 Saturday, but little grandson certainly can change plans quick. I wouldn't miss a minute of playing with Preston, so didn't watch the presentation.

Today I've been reading my blog subscriptions and have bookmarked some podcast sites (thinking about next year for my MultiMedia class).

And of course I have the Fort Lauderdale inlet cam on, watching the Carnival Freedom, knowing that we'll be sailing in April on this cruise ship.

NASCAR is on TV and I'm getting ready to do progress reports.

Class Assignment

Ok - I just completed my assignment - commenting on the three readings for class tomorrow night. I also commented on a couple other posts - the fact that it is easy to get lost in the socializing and other areas of the Web. Well, that happened to me tonight. My post should have been done hours ago, but chatting with my son in Ragmuff, looking at the cruise boards, chatting with a friend in Texas and checking out my personal FaceBook steered me in every which way but homework!

Not today, maybe this evening

I tend to wait until the last minute to do my homework - I read over things, surf online, mull it over in my head days before, but then do my assignments a day or two before they are due. So, with a snow day today I thought WOW, I can get my blog entries written and enjoy my evening. That didn't work out. My son called to see if I could watch Preston, so he wouldn't have to ride on the roads in this storm and of course I said YES. We are playing, doing puzzles, watching Tom and Jerry and playing Operation. He's quite good at operating on that guy!

Later for homework.

Voice Thread

I've been playing around with Voice Thread and see that there is a small fee associated with it. I found voicethread.ning and joined that social u group to grasp a better understanding of this tool. I used it last spring for another class, but do not remember much. I've tried to log in using my username from last year, but it must have been deleted because of inactivity because I cannot find the Voice Threads that I recorded for that class.

More later........

My Tools

I think keeping track of my participation and web 2.0 tool learning will be better if kept in my Blogger, because I use pc's at home and at school.

So I'll be pasting my journal entries from Noteshare into this blog area.