I recently did a short presentation at Drouin Secondary Collage around using Web2.0 tool in the classroom, with the teachers from their one2one netbook/laptop program .

I have the presentation in Prezi, but because of all the screen casts, it is a little big… so here are just the sites names..
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http://www.mywebspiration.com

http://docs.google.com/

http://prezi.com/

http://drop.io/

http://etherpad.com/ (UPDATE – Etherpad has now be purchased by Google, to use as part of Wave)

http://tinychat.com/

http://www.timetoast.com/

ENJOY!

Here is a presentation that I am running in a few days. These are some of the really cool web2.0 websites that I use in my classroom and day to day life…
Enjoy

Isn’t it funny how,  you have nothing much to talk about and then…. a whole lot of stuff jumps into your life. Over the next little while I will be trying to find time to sit down at least once a week to share some links or information about what is going on in my world of Educational ICT.

Today I ran into this link and have quickly added to my box of Web2.0 tools. Pixlr (http://www.pixlr.com/) is a free online photo editor that looks and feels very much like PhotoShop. It has lots of the features of Photoshop and has way more features than most students or teachers would ever need. Best of all it is free and is now testing in beta, so there is no need to have super fast computers to run it and large software bills to pay at your school. Try it out on the students in you classroom and let me know what you/they think. 

If you have been a user of Inspiration or Kidspiration in your classroom in the past, then you should check out http://mywebspiration.com/. This is online beta of the Inspiration software looks to be the full package in a web interface, all for free. 

But the free part is no the best part of this online application.. Webspiration allow you to collaborate, chat and work in real time with others on the same project. From what I can see this be the most powerful Inspiration yet… check it out and have a play in your classroom.

I sometimes sit and wonder about what areas of technology we as a school should be investing in, to maximise student learning and engagement. Do you go with a whole school on IWBs or instead for a class set of netbooks or even some iPod touches.

If you take it from a strategic planning point of view and work on a 2-3 year plan, then in resources that you plan for at the time will not be the resources that you had in mind when you create your plan. Even the learning outcomes will be different, because of what you can do with technology now that you could not when writing plans.

Take for example the technology that can be used for video editing and students creating their own movies, documentaries or short films. Three years ago this technology would have set you back approximately $1500 for a desktop PC and a video camera. Where as now it will set you back around $800 for the PC and a FlipVideo camera. So now instead of being able to purchase two work stations, you can have three… and then where do you find the extra space to place the third workstation.

THOUGHS IN PROGRESS (TO BE CONTINUED)

If you know that this is a photo of please let me know… Is it something that is going to be in the released by apple on the 9th of Sept….?

I found it on the link below and I dont know what it is … is it a product that I missed or have forgotten 

http://www.apple.com/au/education/shop/

Playing with my flip video over the past few weeks, I have collected a large amount of video that I don’t really need to keep on my computer, but I would still like to have access to it and share it with others as examples of the types of educational uses you can put a flip video to. But where to put it..?

So my quest is to find a service like to upload video, much like youtube or teachertube where I can create video feeds or channels that people can subscribe to (if invited) and but have somewhat closed community. So that video cannot be located unless a link is sent to someone. I don’t really want to scare parents off (thinking that videos of there children are being uploaded to youtube 24/7). Searchable tagging of the videos might also be nice.

If I was running live streams (one on my next ventures) I think I would use Ustream and create a channel, but for now I just want to upload video clips from around my school.

If you have any thoughts… please comment and help me on my search…

In one of my last posts, I spoke about how the Flip Ultras were motivating teachers that I know to use the simple point and shoot cameras with their students and have-a-go at using technology in their classroom that was not just PowerPoint. Only weeks after making those statements, Google releases Street View. My thinking is that Street View could be the springboard that brings web2.0 to the teaching masses. 

Only the day after being released, Google’s street view was the talk of my staffroom… that is right teachers talking about technology in the staffroom. It might have just been about the fact that the saw it on the news or they looked up their own house or maybe their thoughts on the privacy issue, but they were talking about it. I see this as a way of teachers to work technology into their classroom, be it discussing the privacy issue in a Year 12 classroom, to kids in Grades Prep/One exploring their neighbourhood. 

It has amazed me to see how many educational ideas have come out of the deployment of Google’s Street View from teachers, who do not naturally bring technology into their classroom and will be interesting to see if these ideas are taken any further and actually used in classrooms. 

Some of my ideas for Google Street View in classrooms (please comment to add your own)

• Explore your neighbourhood. Locate services. Police, Fire, Hospital. 
• Spoto and getting kids to create their own spoto lists. 
• Digital Portfolios – eg this is Hospital where I was born, my first house…
• Orienteering in combination with Google Earth. NW 4km take a screen dump.
• Around the world in 80 clicks… using first and last letters (Blue Rock Dam…Moe…Erica…)
• *** My personal favourite *** Find the “Big Things of Australia” LOL

Google today announced that Australia was the third country to have its cities, streets and landmarks placed into Google’s Street View. Google Street View is an online tool that lets users take a virtual tour of landscapes from their computer by perusing an interactive database of millions of 360-degree snapshots.

The snapshots are taken by a fleet of cars fitted with special cameras that drive across the country, capturing images on every street corner and along every highway. This leads me to my story…

Last Summer (in Australia) my infant daughter Ruby and I were off playing in the local school playground near our house. While we were playing on the slide in the park, a Holden Astra marked GOOGLE MAPS slowed down on the main road to speak with three local guys walking over to the football club, to have a few drink.  Being a geek, I could not resist having a look at what was going on a what a GOOGLE MAPS car looked like inside.

Ruby and I walked over to the car to see that it was a normal Astra with small mast with an orange flashing light on top.  On the passenger side of the car were some LCD mounting brackets, Dell screens and some GPS stuff. The funny thing was the reason the car had stopped was to ask were he could get fuel as he only had 15Km of fuel left.

As he left and did a u-turn to head towards the next fuel stop 18km away… he would have made it. He snapped a photo of us (you cannot see our face but I can tell from the shoes and pants, it is me) Also my sister-in-laws orange car is in the background.

What a great way to start Google Street View in Australia, with a picture of Ruby and I…