Further to my previous post on a Web 2.0 collage, I came across this, The Conversation Prism: The art of listening, learning and sharing.
Sorting and categorising different web tools, this visual goes a few steps beyond my humble effort! Click on the image to view, download or embed larger versions.
More social media visuals can be found here.
The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas
#visualisation #Web20
I needed something like this for a presentation and couldn’t find what I needed online so ended up making one. This one I found and have used previously doesn’t quite have the right mix of sites. Someone else may find it useful too.
Click the image for Flickr link.
#collaboration #Web20 #websites #participation #sites
Time to look at mPortfolios options through the ePortfolio solution first. Listed below are some popular ePortfolio options, certainly not exhaustive, but cover a broad spectrum. I’m interested in how each platform can be accessed, edited, added too etc from a mobile device, once again specifically the iPhone or Touch, but will also add in info on other mobile platforms if available.
In no particular order:
WordPress (Edublogs): As mentioned in my previous post, any WordPress (version 2.7 or higher) powered blog/eportfolio is can be easily added to through the use of the WordPress iPhone app which works seamlessly when adding new pages or posts with images. Viewing and adding comments/feedback to the eportfolio requires the use of Safari on the iPhone. However some sites have been optimised for use on the iPhone, often through installing an iPhone friendly theme such as WPTouch allowing the browsing commenting and administering of the site a simple pleasure! (this site has WPTouch installed so check it out on your iPhone/Touch). With a little work from the WordPress web host to set up the something like WPTouch (wordpress.com has, edublogs hasn’t, self hosted is up to the owner) mPortfolios are well catered for on the WordPress platform.
Andriod WordPress app info here, Blackberry info here. WPTouch supports both.
Google Sites: As part of your education addition or a personal account, Google sites offers another great eportfolio option. Google have an iPhone app which easily sets you are to connect to your google suite of apps, but not sites. Using Safari you can easily access your sites the traditionally way to edit and add new pages and posts. You can also insert images through pasting in thecURL but a lot of the features like inserting a Picasa image, document or calendar does not function well mainly due to the lack of Flash (?) support on the device. No really an enjoyable experience without having an iPhone/mobile optimised site like much of the other Google apps.
Blogger: If your eportfolio is a Blogger/Blogspot (also supports WordPress, Joonla, Drupal, MoveableType and more) blog then look no further than the app mentioned in the previous post, BlogPress. Easily the best option for creating new content and has the added feature of allowing YouTube video embeds. It is a shame it cost the extra money to get all of these extra features but the free version does the basics well. Commenting not catered for and Blogger is not really mobile friendly. I am still playing around with themes and layouts to find the best combination for a mobile friendly site. The best way is perhaps to view the site’s RSS feed rather than the web page, this utilises the iPhone/Touch’s built in RSS reader (go to reader.mac.com in mobile Safari if you are not familiar with this feature). Bookmark the feed to revisit the portfolio on the device.
Elgg: Like most eportfolio tools and certainly a lot of those listed below, Elgg can be accessed through the iPhone/Touch’s Safari app. Editing and adding content is not without problems (in v 1.6). Creating a new blog post is easy enough and adding the title OK but I was unable to enter any text in the body. However, searching through the Elgg community discussion forums there is some development in making iPhone specific themes and even a iPhone app to make accessing an Elgg site better. The user community for Elgg is nowhere near as big as that of blogger or WordPress but it is exciting to see that there is interest from the user base to get this type of initiative underway. That’s great use as I am a big fan of Elgg.
Blackboard: (Untested) I have no working knowledge of using Blackbaord as a portfolio platform but after reading an eportfolio report recently it was one of the most popular options. I have not tested it but have included here after reading that they have an iPhone app that they will custom build to fit your requirements: “Our open platform also lets you build and add your own applications so you can tailor Blackboard Mobile in the way you see fit.” Available for the iPhone/Touch and Blackberry. Potential here? I do know enough to say one way or the other.
PebblePad: (Untested) From the website: All installations of PebblePad include a version of Pebble Mobile. To access your mobile version of PebblePad simply point your mobile browser at your normal PebblePad URL and add ‘/mobile’ at the end e.g.: http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/eportfolio/mobile. Plans are seemingly afoot for an iPhone app: We are currently developing a PebblePad iPhone app which will allow users to work with PebblePad on the move. Features currently include viewing your assets, uploading a file, creating a thought and posting this to a blog. This is still an ongoing project due for release in the very near future (PebblePad Newsletter, 10/2009). Sounds great!
Have also not tested the following options: KnowledgeNet, My Portfolio/Mahara, UltraNet. (I do not have access to try some our the the time to try the others but will attempt to try). As with the other options, I would image that Safari on the iPhone allows surfing of these sites and editing facilities as per a standard web browser with perhaps some limitations… please confirm if that is not the case!
To wrap this post up though it is pretty clear that the eportfolio tools that have a specific app such as Blogger or WordPress have a big advantage over those that don’t. However this experience is not complete until the eportfolio host has taken some measure to also make the eportfolio system mobile friendly to aid viewing and commenting while on the go. While this and a dedicated app is not absolutely required, it makes the process of uploading and sharing learning and receiving feedback on that learning very easy and helps contribute to a collaborative eportfolio from a mobile phone.
#mLearning #eportfoliosolution #GoogleApps #iPhone #mportfolios #ePortfolios #ipodtouch
Thanks to Frank who blogged about this funky little tool for creating photo galleries on your own website.
TiltViewer is a free, customizable 3D Flash image viewing application. A simple upload to your website and a quick configuration of your Flickr username and tags and you are all set to go.
Feel free to have a play on my gallery right here.
Best of all is a right click to select fullscreen mode. Cool.
I feel a TiltViewer gallery coming to our school site very soon.
#Flickr #gallery #photos
Since switching over our domain to Google Apps Education Edition in March of this year, the transition has been very smooth. Gmail and Chat provide seamless day to day communication and while the only PD has focused on Gmail, Docs is taking off on its own accord as staff see the benefits and ease at which they can share documents for a more collaborative approach to school admin and planning. For example, the notion of one staff member being solely in charge of the duty roster is gone as the ownership of this is shared and staff can edit and negotiate independently. Can’t wait to see how the next step of rolling out school wide use of Calendars is received.
However another bonus of the App package is having our very own Google Video site. At this stage the Education Edition allows for us to have 10GB of storage for videos. While that does not sound like heaps, the average size of our students’ podcasts or short movies is between 2-3MB once exported, so that’s about 3300 videos we can store, for free. Not only free, but in a completely secure, safe and add free environment.
For our portfolios we have been using Teacher Tube to host and store our video content which has been proving reasonably successful. I have blogged about this before here. But TeacherTube has just completely revamped their site and now includes storage for photos, audio and documents. While this is a good improvement, the site revamp changed all the embed codes for the video content in my students’ portfolios. Grrrrrrrr. Should I just accept this as the changing nature of Web 2.0 environments? Grrrrrr. Regardless, after this happened, TeacherTube ceased to be my preferred option. The good news is that Google rolled out their Video hosting service to their Apps Education Edition.
So what are the other features, pretty much the usual video storage stuff…
So does it work well? Sure does. Here’s an example thanks to my new entrant students from 9 years ago!
#GoogleDocs #GoogleApps #google #TeacherTube #video #gmail
With the first term of teaching all wrapped up it is time to reflect on how the eportfolios have performed to date. After making the decision to move from our self-hosted install of
WordPress MU to Edublogs, the technical side of the move has been reasonably seamless. There has been some new learning for both the students and teachers but these will become more automated and natural the more the actions are performed. Some how to tutorial links are provided below as well.
Flickr has been extensively used to host any images that are embedded in the eportfolios. The great thing about this is that you can embed images that you have set as viewable only by you in Flickr. This allows you to keep images private if necessary. Uploading to Flickr is incredibly easy especially if you have iLife ’09 which comes complete with iPhoto Flickr integration where you can upload and set permissions all with the click of the mouse. Also we can bulk upload scanned artwork, draft learning, planning etc. direct from our photocopier to Flickr making it easy to get learning online.
If you are interested a worksheet/tutorial is here for you to see the process.
We have used TeacherTube for a couple of years now to embed video content into our school blog and now we are using it for eportfolios as well. This is generally going well but is not the best solution to use. Firstly, making videos private in TeacherTube makes them unable to be embedded so video content is public. Any video not suitable for public viewing is naturally not shared in this way. TeacherTube has so far proven to be safe with no undesireable content seen, unlike YouTube which has caused us a few problems in the past. TeacherTube is also a bit if a pain for a Mac user as most of the video content produced and shared through iLife is either in a .m4v or .m4a format which is not accepted. This can create an extra step in getting content online by having to convert it to a .mov, .mp4, .avi etc. There are other sites out there that will accpet the default Mac formats but these may compromise the relative safety of the TeacherTube environment. Hopefully the soon to be released new revamped TeacherTube site will change this…
Worksheet/tutorial is here.
SlideShare is proving to be easy for the students to use to get their iWork Keynotes online. While we could produce these using Google Docs or SlideRocket and embed them, Keynote is such a great program that the students are so familiar with that it just makes sense to maintain using it. Sure you loose any fancy animations when uploading to SlideShare but as I keep asking my students, do whizzing words and spinning pictures actually add to your learning and sharing of information? Apart from the same privacy issues as mentioned above for TeacherTube, SlideShare is working perfectly for embedding content.
Worksheet/tutorial is here.
Finally, students have also been sharing their draft and reworked versions of their writing through their eportfolios by pasting in their Google Docs documents. While pasting in their writing in this way is not perfect, it is working well enough and there were just not enough hours in the day to take the students through the process of cross posting their docs to their blog. Maybe next term.
So that is the technical side of the progress to date. The next post will discuss parent engagement in the commenting/feedback/feedforward process.
#GoogleDocs #Edublogs #TeacherTube #SlideShare #ePortfolios #Flickr
So the question posed has been why? Why did we need to change our system over to Google? This goes well beyond email (Gmail), which is the only App we have currently implemented across the school, and I would like to think the move sets us up to participate more collaboratively and more effectively together.
I guess the big picture view for me is of the changing nature of knowledge. Traditionally we often held on tightly to any knowledge we had, keeping it to ourselves and maybe sharing it with others on occasion. When we did share, others filed the photocopy away, or watched the movie but gave no feedback.
The notion that knowledge belongs to someone is all a bit bizarre really and thankfully evidence and trends show that knowledge assumes a greater force when it is shared, discussed and built on. Wikipedia of course is the classic modern example. I am certainly not alone in thinking this and perhaps the best known explanation I know of can be found in this clip by Charles Leadbetter.
Other background thinking and recognition of other trends comes in the way of the Horizon Reports, released each year in a variety of formats. The reports are:
an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. practical models as well as access to more detailed information.
The recently released 2009 Horizon Report K-12 describes Collaborative Environments:
Collaborative environments are virtual workplaces where students and teachers can communicate, share information, and work together. A growing emphasis on collaboration in education — and an increasing recognition that collaboration is the norm in many modern workplaces — has led more teachers to seek tools to facilitate group interaction and teamwork in their classes. Online spaces designed to support groups of students working together take many forms…
The report suggests collaborative environments have a time-to-adoption horizon of one year or less. If we also look at the 2008 and 2009 Horizon Reports including the 2008 Australia and NZ Edition Horizons Report, they also describe cloud computing, collaboration webs, collective intelligence which all describes the ability to create, share and collaborate online.
So really the answers as to why we have changed is really me standing back and looking at the big picture of what not only the school administrative systems might look like in the next couple of years, but more importantly one of the ways the students will be actively learning.
While I can see quite clearly how this will look and develop, I have the advantage of having used this environment for the past few years, Gmail since its conception in 2004. I must always keep this in the back of my mind when planning and strategically implementing the Apps with the staff. Already staff are seeing the potential benefits and I can’t wait for the momentum to keep building.
#GoogleDocs #GoogleApps #google #gmail #HorizonsReport
We are about four weeks into our school wide move to Google apps and the move is still seemingly smooth.
One minor complaint has been the lack of an alert sound when new mail arrives, as one would get when using a mail client such as Mail. A quick web search solved this problem and by installing Google Notifier, not only do you get a new email alert sound, but a small window opens to inform you who it is from and a gives you a preview of the message. It is actually very good if you are sitting and working at your computer, but if you are like me and most of your day is spent in the classroom with students it serves little purpose… However, it also allows you to set your default email client as Gmail which is a neat feature so that clicking on an email link opens a new web-based Gmail.
The other issue I am trying to solve is around the scan to email function on our Konica Minolta copier. This was an oversight by me and it wasn’t until after our switch and people wanted to scan items that the problem arose. So I spent an hour trying to problem solve this today, religiously following the manual step by step with no luck. I will try the help desk tomorrow. A little frustrating as I though I had thought of every angle. While it is possible to scan to our server via FTP, scanning to email is the preferred option. Any ideas on how to get this working successfully would be great!
Finally, last week we had one of our iTips PD sessions on Gmail. iTips are our main form of elearning professional development and are optional short burst of learning after school for about 45 minutes. About half the staff attended, some coming with an open mind, willing to be sold the Gmail concept. Most left happy, especially after we had imported their existing Address Book (using A to G) and when they understood the whole Google Gears offline access, filtering and labelling of emails and the chat/video chat functions. Some of the Labs projects also opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
However, some still ask, “So why is Gmail better?” or, “Why did we need to change?”
I will try and cover this more comprehensively in my next post.
#Chat #iTips #Labs #GoogleApps #Gears #google #gmail
The past couple of weeks has brought about some major changes to way we are administering our email and calendering systems within our school. We have taken the step to switch our email over from being administered on our own server to the convenience and power of the mighty Google.
The switch happened seamlessly, only requiring a phone call to Inspire to change our MX records to point to Google not to our school’s server. Everything else was completed online, and once Inspire flicked the switch over our Gmail was up and running within a couple of hours once the domain name change had propagated around the globe. After Google had authenticated us as an educational institute, which took about 10 days, we were upgraded to the Education Edition and now have add free services, more comprehensive admin features and the ability to create and manage 100’s of users, all for zero cost. It is very easy to administer the services and like any Google product, there are discussion forums on any conceivable problem you may encounter.
The change has meant some new learning for staff as they have shifted from using Apple’s Mail, to the web based Gmail. Email addresses have remained the same. Those already using Gmail welcomed the transition but others, as with anything new, questioned the need to do it. Managing this change is always the key to making it work.
So why did we change? Here are some of the key reasons.
The one disappointment I have with the Google Apps package is that Google Reader is not part of the service. To access this, you needs to have a separate Google account. Having Reader as part of this service would really make it the hub for all your professional learning network needs. I would also love to see Google’s Custom Search function put in the package.
The biggest challenge I can see is the dependence of staff on using Word or Pages to create documents and then emailing them as attachments to the recipients. While there will always be a need to do this, a huge amount of this documentation can more simple be shared with users. This is a huge change in thinking and approaching how information is shared and worked on among multiple users. Something to keep modeling throughout the school.
#GoogleDocs #Chat #GoogleApps #docs #google #gmail #sites #Contacts #Calendar
Presentation to support workshop and the Ashurst, North Street and Roslyn EHSAS cluster conference.
Web 2.0: Facilitating Reflection and Feedback
View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: participation web2.0)
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