“Sport, like all life, is about taking risk.”
–Sir Roger Bannister, first person to run a sub-four-minute mile
This week was a risky one for me in Web 2.0 Land, as I have been bravely designing and creating my first ever wiki about the graphic novel Maus as a project for another course. I wanted to add my Wiki to this blog, even though I know we won’t be exploring Wikis for a few weeks, because embedded in it are two great little YouTube video clips which perfectly complemented my subject, plus a video book review by Blue Rectangle. Yes, videos definitely have their uses.
I must admit that I have chastised students who monopolized the school library computers and just watched YouTube videos when they should have been using their study block more productively. Occasionally a student would defend this 2.0 technology by stating “there’s some good stuff on there”. When I ordered my new MacBook Pro I got a great deal which offered a free iPod touch. In the last two months I have tried out the YouTube feature on my iPod and I must admit that it is a fascinating repository of videos – some silly and entertaining and some absolutely bizarre but also there are also some amazing educational and creative videos available for viewing and sharing. In time I have discovered how to use tags to stop wandering about and zero in on my subject and am now quite enjoying this new way to retrieve information. I can now truly appreciate the attraction students have for this videosharing site. I wonder what your favourite videos are?
This week’s Trailfire started at the Wikipedia site for YouTube where the statistics on viewership was staggering to the imagination. The article brought home two points which connected to my summer’s Intellectual Freedom coursework: how Viacom has sued YouTube for data on viewer information and the concern for privacy disclosure and also how YouTube holds their customers responsible for upholding the content criteria instead of previewing and censoring videos before posting. It would seem that YouTube supports intellectual freedom.
The "100 Awesome YouTube Videos for Librarians' really got the ideas flowing for possibilities in my own high school library. What fun to make a introductory video and embed it in the school website. One video which spoke to me was “A Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto”: “I will become an active participant in moving my Library forward” and “I will take an experiment approach to change and be willing to make a mistake.” I absolutely loved this one because the graphics, the music and the text combined to share a powerful message that immediately inspired and reached me. A firsthand experience validating the magic of this media! I tried to embed this video into my blog so I could share it but couldn't figure out how. I'll keep working on it but if anyone has a suggestion...
In the classroom video has the ability to engage students, it appeals to their methods of communication, it addresses different learning styles and modalities, and, as one article I read mentioned, in some cases helps to close the digital divide for students who do not have this level of technology in their homes. Video clips are wonderful tools to embed into Wikis and blogs or insert into a lesson - the possibilities are limitless. I looked through the TeacherTube site and tried a few key words (Riel, Shakespeare and dissection) and found videos that could even be sorted by grade level or inspired my own creative ideas. Wow! Imagine tech-savvy teachers tapping into the wealth of resources (both video and print) that the TeacherTube site offers and knowing that the materials are teacher-tested and the video clips are safe with none of the “surprises” of other public videosharing sites. I don’t know of any teachers in our school who are using this resource but I would love to hear from anyone who has enjoyed success using TeacherTube or other videosharing resources.
Back to the Trailfire, one aspect of videosharing that was introduced in An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube was the social connection and how it is “linking people and not just information”. Seeing videosharing as a participatory culture and how this has grown from the need for individuals to connect to a sense of community, was new angle. I had been focusing on the access aspect of videosharing and didn’t realize until Michael Wesch mentioned it that 88% of uploads are original creations by the mostly 18–24 year old users seeing this medium as a way of connecting, socializing and reconnecting to humanity.
However, as I watched Wesch share video clip examples during in his entertaining presentation, it also make me think about what happens when someone uploads to a site like YouTube. When you do this you grant YouTube full license to do anything they wish with the video – sell it, edit, remix and even distribute. You can delete but YouTube can still retain their copy. Being a participant in the videosharing culture calls for some discretion. Perhaps one day I will be have a motivation to use my webcam feature and actually post a video. Meanwhile this romp through videosharing has shown me that there are a wealth of terms I have yet to understand: filesizes, metadata, monetize, mashups, flash wrapper…
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
"Remember, slow and steady comes in 29,000th." - David Letterman
This quote taken from the "Top Ten Thoughts of New York Marathoners" simply pokes fun at the way I'm plodding along, steadily mastering the Web 2.0 tools. However, unlike a marathon that has a set route to follow, I've discovered that the journey toward information literacy is not lineal at all. To begin my investigation of photo sharing this week, I started with our course Trailfire. The In Plain English video about online photo sharing is a tremendous tool to use with beginning students because it so beautifully creates a scaffold on which to attach new knowledge acquisition. Will Richardson's textbook account of "Creating, Publishing and Using Images Online" further enhanced my understanding but once I began following the What Can We Do with Flickr? presentation he recommended, all sense of order degenerated. The process of investigation seemed to morphed out exponentially to encompass a plethora of other interesting online websites and blogs, leading me deeper and deeper into the world on photo sharing. I’m sure that there is a term to describe this phenomenon in the online world but I haven’t come across it yet. If you have, please let me know because I’ve been there this week.
At times I became so confused with this "all over the map" approach to information gathering that I resorted to jotting down notes on paper to help me to remember the trail I took, record new ideas, and help me focus my thinking. I admittedly became hopelessly lost a few times but the back button usually helped me to pick up the original threads. I have also noticed a shift in my thinking this week after experiencing this multi-directional bombardment of information. I have felt much more comfortable about exploring freely, taking chances, attempting new activities and testing the possibilities without worrying so much about “making mistakes”. I have been frantically writing lists of topics I need to investigate further such as including hyperlinks into text (I may be on my way with this one), embedding documents into websites and creating slideshows. I have been making more use of the Help button features in the sites and trying to find my own answers to questions.
Back to Flickr… Tips for Flickr Beginners was worth reading for basic tips. The Jeff Utecht Photo Sharing Using Flickr tutorial was more practical, and although I had difficulty getting it to play through smoothly, I highly recommend it. Jeff demonstrated how to use the direct blog feature, how to plot images on a world map and explained tags and their uses. Jeff also suggested uploading Flickr to speed the interface process and showed how to capture and transfer multiple images. These tips helped as I found that my first attempts at uploading my photos took considerable time.
After joining Flickr I also explored the site capabilities of my blog provider as I tried to implement various Flickr features into my blog. I tried the PicNick editing software that works with Flickr to easily resize several pictures. I admittedly didn’t have much opportunity to explore other photosharing sites. My son led me through ImageShack, the image organizer he uses but we found it has limited features compared to Flickr.
As for classroom applications, there are so many ways online images may be used. Photosharing could be used to highlight field trip pictures, capture class moments in a yearly album, add visuals to online learning logs or keep in touch with a class member who was convalescing. I recalled a class pen pal activity I tried the “olden days” of regular post and could see the possibilities of a class today studying the Arctic using online technology to communicate and exchange photos with a class in the North. I recently received a friend’s slideshow of her Ironman experience and this opened up a realm of possibilities for classroom applications. Imagine exploring topics such as the nature of texture in an art lesson or geometry in the world around and allowing students to capture or retrieve digital images to create a slideshow devoted to their topic of study. WebTool4U2Use includes a additional list of classroom applications and information also worth investigating.
Flickr has indeed has “sharing at its heart” and offers an incredible collection of photographs available for public use. Richardson said that tags can be used to locate photos on almost every subject and all my attempts proved this to be true. One caution to teachers, when I checked out the “Interestingness” feature I did notice a number of photos that included partial nudity. I also wondered about the ethics of publishing photos of students and making these available for public use. I repeatedly tried creating a slide show with my own photos (I ended up using file pictures) but, of course, was unable to add the slideshow to my blog without making the photos public. It would be important to refer to district policies and guidelines about student privacy before beginning activities involving photo sharing and spend time educating students about what they can and can’t use as images as well as issues of privacy.
I feel like I have only scratched the surface of Flickr. Although I successfully started my photo files, and established a connection between Flickr and my blog, I am frustrated with my inability to create slideshows from selected groups of photos and will need to fiddle some more with this aspect. However, I found it very easy to locate photos from the Flickr library and incorporate these into slideshows. Overall I was very impressed with Flickr's capabilities and can understand why blog comments from users overwhelmingly support purchasing a $24.95 yearly subscription.
At times I became so confused with this "all over the map" approach to information gathering that I resorted to jotting down notes on paper to help me to remember the trail I took, record new ideas, and help me focus my thinking. I admittedly became hopelessly lost a few times but the back button usually helped me to pick up the original threads. I have also noticed a shift in my thinking this week after experiencing this multi-directional bombardment of information. I have felt much more comfortable about exploring freely, taking chances, attempting new activities and testing the possibilities without worrying so much about “making mistakes”. I have been frantically writing lists of topics I need to investigate further such as including hyperlinks into text (I may be on my way with this one), embedding documents into websites and creating slideshows. I have been making more use of the Help button features in the sites and trying to find my own answers to questions.
Back to Flickr… Tips for Flickr Beginners was worth reading for basic tips. The Jeff Utecht Photo Sharing Using Flickr tutorial was more practical, and although I had difficulty getting it to play through smoothly, I highly recommend it. Jeff demonstrated how to use the direct blog feature, how to plot images on a world map and explained tags and their uses. Jeff also suggested uploading Flickr to speed the interface process and showed how to capture and transfer multiple images. These tips helped as I found that my first attempts at uploading my photos took considerable time.
After joining Flickr I also explored the site capabilities of my blog provider as I tried to implement various Flickr features into my blog. I tried the PicNick editing software that works with Flickr to easily resize several pictures. I admittedly didn’t have much opportunity to explore other photosharing sites. My son led me through ImageShack, the image organizer he uses but we found it has limited features compared to Flickr.
As for classroom applications, there are so many ways online images may be used. Photosharing could be used to highlight field trip pictures, capture class moments in a yearly album, add visuals to online learning logs or keep in touch with a class member who was convalescing. I recalled a class pen pal activity I tried the “olden days” of regular post and could see the possibilities of a class today studying the Arctic using online technology to communicate and exchange photos with a class in the North. I recently received a friend’s slideshow of her Ironman experience and this opened up a realm of possibilities for classroom applications. Imagine exploring topics such as the nature of texture in an art lesson or geometry in the world around and allowing students to capture or retrieve digital images to create a slideshow devoted to their topic of study. WebTool4U2Use includes a additional list of classroom applications and information also worth investigating.
Flickr has indeed has “sharing at its heart” and offers an incredible collection of photographs available for public use. Richardson said that tags can be used to locate photos on almost every subject and all my attempts proved this to be true. One caution to teachers, when I checked out the “Interestingness” feature I did notice a number of photos that included partial nudity. I also wondered about the ethics of publishing photos of students and making these available for public use. I repeatedly tried creating a slide show with my own photos (I ended up using file pictures) but, of course, was unable to add the slideshow to my blog without making the photos public. It would be important to refer to district policies and guidelines about student privacy before beginning activities involving photo sharing and spend time educating students about what they can and can’t use as images as well as issues of privacy.
I feel like I have only scratched the surface of Flickr. Although I successfully started my photo files, and established a connection between Flickr and my blog, I am frustrated with my inability to create slideshows from selected groups of photos and will need to fiddle some more with this aspect. However, I found it very easy to locate photos from the Flickr library and incorporate these into slideshows. Overall I was very impressed with Flickr's capabilities and can understand why blog comments from users overwhelmingly support purchasing a $24.95 yearly subscription.
Joanie & Sandi New York 2006
Recovering from torn hamstring
11 miles longest run in training
Did 10 and 1s
Had a perfect day
Couldn't catch Lance Armstrong!
11 miles longest run in training
Did 10 and 1s
Had a perfect day
Couldn't catch Lance Armstrong!
Friday, September 12, 2008
"Just do it!" - Nike Commercial
I am a person who enjoys challenges. I’m very used to setting personal goals, creating an action plan, checking off each step in the process and delighting in seeing tangible progress towards achieving my goal. In order to develop my first ever blog, I decided to apply the same approach. Talk about the best-laid plans…
I read Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, which helped me understand the basics of a good blog and consider some classroom applications. I then spent hours looking at examples of online blogs, trying to create a list of features that I might wish to include in my own first effort and to figure out which blogs to subscribe to. I watched “Blogs in Plain English” on YouTube and I read about tips on how to set up a blog. I noted the URLs of the blog layouts I found the most appealing – perhaps a slightly unorthodox approach - but this was my strategy to finally decide on using the Blogspot blog creation tool.
Before getting down to work, I checked out all the blogs posted by my EDES 501 classmates so I had a vision of the final product. This is when I fell apart! Everyone’s blogs looked so gorgeous and inviting, and included many interesting add-ons and thoughtful comments, and all my anxieties about this project surfaced. I was stalled, I couldn’t start - my brain cells simply shut down. I think you’d call this a meltdown. I’d done hours of work and yet had nothing tangible to show for my efforts. It took a reassuring phone conversation from Joanne to finally realize that it was the journey – the process – upon which I needed to focus and not the final product. Joanne assured me that as I learned more, the blog could be edited and changed and that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling so nervous about starting. This response of being totally overwhelmed was not unlike the experience of total immersion as one learns a new language. It reminded me of former German classes in college and how intensely one had to concentrate on learning new vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical rules, until finally overload hit and you ceased to function as a rational being.
Obviously, after another day of contemplation and procrastination, I finally did manage to sit down and get started. But I’ve got to say I was just like those students in your class who become suddenly very busy and have to sharpen their pencils, visit the washroom, or throw something in the garbage can – anything to avoid getting started on the task. I can really appreciate these avoidance strategies having found them equally comforting. But once I decided to tackle creating a blog, amazingly the process was easier than I thought. One of the hardest things was creating a title for the blog and finding a URL name.
I still haven’t quite figured out the “big picture” idea behind blogs. I am not used to sharing my private written thoughts and can’t quite understand the reason why individuals would simply publish their innermost reflections and thoughts publicly on the web. In my searching I stumbled across blogs that contained quite personal details. I think as one blogs you really have to think about purpose and your audience, which could be anyone from your school superintendent to a young student. I can certainly appreciate Richardson’s advice about safety and the need to inform parents if you decide to use a blog in your classroom. Give me a few more weeks to get comfortable with this medium and probably the possibilities and ramifications of blogging will begin to emerge more clearly.
I read Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, which helped me understand the basics of a good blog and consider some classroom applications. I then spent hours looking at examples of online blogs, trying to create a list of features that I might wish to include in my own first effort and to figure out which blogs to subscribe to. I watched “Blogs in Plain English” on YouTube and I read about tips on how to set up a blog. I noted the URLs of the blog layouts I found the most appealing – perhaps a slightly unorthodox approach - but this was my strategy to finally decide on using the Blogspot blog creation tool.
Before getting down to work, I checked out all the blogs posted by my EDES 501 classmates so I had a vision of the final product. This is when I fell apart! Everyone’s blogs looked so gorgeous and inviting, and included many interesting add-ons and thoughtful comments, and all my anxieties about this project surfaced. I was stalled, I couldn’t start - my brain cells simply shut down. I think you’d call this a meltdown. I’d done hours of work and yet had nothing tangible to show for my efforts. It took a reassuring phone conversation from Joanne to finally realize that it was the journey – the process – upon which I needed to focus and not the final product. Joanne assured me that as I learned more, the blog could be edited and changed and that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling so nervous about starting. This response of being totally overwhelmed was not unlike the experience of total immersion as one learns a new language. It reminded me of former German classes in college and how intensely one had to concentrate on learning new vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical rules, until finally overload hit and you ceased to function as a rational being.
Obviously, after another day of contemplation and procrastination, I finally did manage to sit down and get started. But I’ve got to say I was just like those students in your class who become suddenly very busy and have to sharpen their pencils, visit the washroom, or throw something in the garbage can – anything to avoid getting started on the task. I can really appreciate these avoidance strategies having found them equally comforting. But once I decided to tackle creating a blog, amazingly the process was easier than I thought. One of the hardest things was creating a title for the blog and finding a URL name.
I still haven’t quite figured out the “big picture” idea behind blogs. I am not used to sharing my private written thoughts and can’t quite understand the reason why individuals would simply publish their innermost reflections and thoughts publicly on the web. In my searching I stumbled across blogs that contained quite personal details. I think as one blogs you really have to think about purpose and your audience, which could be anyone from your school superintendent to a young student. I can certainly appreciate Richardson’s advice about safety and the need to inform parents if you decide to use a blog in your classroom. Give me a few more weeks to get comfortable with this medium and probably the possibilities and ramifications of blogging will begin to emerge more clearly.
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