Another WOW!

If you use TeacherTube (discussed here) to store pupil videos, you can easily link to them on your blog (or website). For WordPress and Edublogs blogs just follow this advice -

Q: How can I embed a video for my Edublogs/WordPress blog?

A: Here are some steps:

1. Copy link provided under “Edublogs/WordPress Embeddable:” within the selected video viewing page.
2. Go to your Edublogs/WordPress “edit” page.
3. Select “Code”.
4. Select “Media”.
5. Paste the url that you copied from TeacherTube and press OK.

It seems to work well.

Download: Posted by kcollazo at TeacherTube.com.

Google Docs is a simple online word processor (and spreadsheet) with basic functions. With a decent online connection it responds quickly and can be used as a place to store documents. One of its strengths for a teacher is the ability for documents to be edited collaboratively. As an alternative to a wiki, it provides a familiar interface and ease of sharing. For many children it will be easier to use than a wiki. It is easy to look at different revisions and compare ‘before and after’ texts.

There are lots of features in Google Docs - some work better than others - but for simple collaborative working, it provides an easy way for a group to work on a piece of text together.

While there is a lot that could be used in the classroom on YouTube, it is difficult to avoid some of the more unsavoury items. TeacherTube is a site where teachers can view and upload videos safely. However, it doesn’t seem to be a place to upload kids’ videos so I’d be interested if anyone has come across a site where pupils can upload their vides and see the work of other kids. The site would need to be child-safe and teacher-friendly.

Rockyou lets you create interesting slideshows to include in blogs. It seems to be safe enough but avoid saving your pictures (especially if they are of children) on sites which then take ownership of your pictures. It works with edublogs and other Wordpress driven blogs.
[rockyou 56959734]

I came across this on Will Richardson’s blog. Picnik is an online photo editing program which does many of the basic tasksquickly and easily. For everyday jobs like cropping and resizing it’s a great tool and, when I tried it, took no more time than it would have taken to load up a graphics program. Well worth trying.

A free service at Feedo.com creates HTML to display your blog posts on a web site. It’s simple to use but if you want any extras they have to be paid for. I’ve used it on the fromt page of www.abernet.org.uk.

Two of our teachers put together an excellent website of materials and web links categorised in terms of the 3-14 curriculum. the site contains downloadable resources and links to sites which the teachers considered useful.

Then on of the teachers came across del.icio.us and realised that it was much easier to use than maintaining a website and could be kept up to date quickly and easily. The result is http://del.icio.us/loirston which currently contains over 300 links which have been tried and tested by teachers and organised in terms of 5-14.

This is a great example of a teacher seeing the potential of a new way of working and using it in a very practical way.

Keeping track of your favourite websites is easy. When you visit a website, you just add it to your Favourites (or Bookmarks on some browsers). If you’re really organised, you put your Favourites in folders so you can find what you want easily.

So why do you need anything else?

Here are a couple of problems. You might have found that wonderful website when you were browsing at home but you want to use it in school. It’s not much help when the favourite is stored on a computer that’s somewhere else. Even when you’ve got the computer with the favourites, a problem that many of us have is that, however hard we try, it is very difficult to categorise a particular site. I may have found a great site that would be really useful for teaching Shakespeare to an S5 class but equaly good at introducing poetry to primary children. Which folder does it go into - English, Language, Shakespeare, Poetry , etc? You see the problem.

But there is a simple solution that cures all the problems and adds some functions that make your Favourites even more valuable.

http://del.icio.us/

The del.icio.us site lets you keey your favourites online so that they are available from any computer. It also lets you use tags, not folders so that you don’t need to worry about finding one category for your favourite web site. In the example above, the site could be tagged with the words ‘Shakespeare’, ‘English’, ‘poetry’, ‘S5′, ‘primary’ - in fact with as many tags as you want. So when you search using any of the tag words, the site will be listed. Simple but effective. Saving a favourite to delicious is as simple as clicking a button when you’re on a site that you want to bookmark.

If that was all that del.icio.us can do, it would be a godsend but there’s more. Read more »

Flickr is a free system that lets you save your photos online so that they can be seen by others. You can keep your photos private so they can only be seen by those you allow or can make them public. You can also look at other people’s photos. You can find Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/

There are a number of educational uses for Flickr.

Because you can add comments to photos, you can post a photo (or series of photos) and then ask pupils to comment on it.

You (or the pupils) can attach notes to a picture. See here for an excellent example of this in use.

Here is an example of a photo which has notes attached but, more interestingly, is geotagged. Underneath the comment you can click on a link which will display a map showing where the photo was taken. If you have Google Earth on your computer, there is a link which will connect to Google earth and take you to the location. For anyone who’s interested, find out more about geotagging Flickr photos here.

Flickr is useful for storing and sharing personal photos but also has some interesting educational applications.