Summary

The 23 thing project is quite interesting, challenging, and enjoyable. Learning about the availability of Web 2.0 productivity sites and being able to apply this new technology to improve classroom projects and assignments is an invaluable asset to me as a teacher.

This class definitely provides a push for class room bound educators to keep up with the latest developments in learning technology. I consider this project to be a high quality educational project that can be replicated in the classroom.

I have certainly learned quite a bit in this class so far and I will be able to utilize this in my classes.

Thing 19

I'm not sure what is going on with the system, several items that I posted yesterday and viewed online are gone today. I enjoy using TeacherPop in professional communications with other teachers. This web ring allows for both formal and informal communications between teachers as well as a storage portal for videos and photos.

Flowgram

I finally followed the right instructions and was able to post my first educational flowgram. I find it hard to believe that Flowgrams are free. I believe I would pay a subscriber fee, but I am not complaining about the price. This two week process has been quite a memorable learning experience. Flowgrams are an excellent multimedia tool that is easy to utilize in the production of quality educational content in the classroom.

The Flowgram is the more effective teaching tool when compared to the visual PowerPoint presentation that I created last week. I certainly enjoyed the no words rule, it provided the opportunity to think outside the English language box. I carefully chose images and symbols to convey the best meaning possible; however, adding narration increased the likelihood of retention. I chose images that improved the vitality of the message by portraying the content. The Flowgram development website adds a second dimension for learning, and that is audio. Some people learn better when they see and hear the message together.

I teach a business communications class, and assigned my students the task of creating a Flowgram for a fictitious business of their choosing. I will find out next week how well I communicated the assignment.

I will be using Flowgrams in class and online in the near future. This is certainly a Web 2.0 feature of great potential to benefit educators.

Thing 23

The creative commons is a not-for-profit chartered group that allows artist and publishers protect their intellectual property that has been posted online. The originator ownes the work and creative commons provides basic copyright protection, but allows for usage in a non-profit. educational setting.

Thing 20

I visited the YouTube website and viewed videos concerning Web 2.0 applications in education. I have used YouTube and iTunes in my classes to supplement educational materials in the classroom.
The YouTube video I watched was titled Collaborative Technology and Engaging the Campus 2008 Panel Session: Learning 2.0: Making Sense of the explosion of Web 2.0 tools and their relevance and consequence in Higher Education Panelists

Thing 21

I have toured the Animoto website and started the video clip, but I am having some technical problems. I used my digital camera to create a 30 second video clip, and uploaded it to my computer. The Animoto site recommends that all video clips be resized and gives several free resize programs. I have tried to download one of them but cannot complete the task due to insufficient memory. I tried to upload directly to the website, but the video is in api format that is not compatable with Animoto. I am continuing to work on that problem.

Thing 22

Podcasts and Flowgrams are quite similar and are beneficial in education because it allows for a multimedia approach to learning. These programs allow for images to be displayed with other forms of input to be added including narration, sound clips, and music.

Thing 19

Social networking is a growing phenomana worldwide, I have friends who are active in several different social networking sites.

Thing 18

Social networking is changing American culture as well as those of other countries. The positive side of social networking is the virtual nature of the beast. People can easily meet and exchance information, create a virtual persona, and be creative. My school blocks all access to MySpace and YouTube.

The downside to social networking is the tendency of some people to attempt to use this technology to exploit others, gain illegal contact, and over represent themselves. It has led some to observe that the photos posted to these accounts are inappropriate and simetimes illegal. I read recently of a 17 year old boy who was convicted of engaging in child pornography because he posted a photo of his ex-girl friend on the web after they broke up.

I have discussed this behavior in some of my college writing classes. I observed that society is changing because what parents may deem inappropriate, such as nude photos being posted on the web, teens find socially acceptable. The social web sites allow teens to escape social censoring as occurs at the movies for self-imposed rules of society. Most of my students agree that social websites allow for activities that were disallowed a few years ago to transpire up to several millions of times per week. It can be argued that the Web is their electronic source of self-worth.

I set up a MySpace account several years ago, I also have a Twitter account as well. As a male teacher, I do not have students as friends; although, several female instructors have established MySpace accounts and use them to check in on students and to be available. I have no interst in such contact because I believe that it could lead to misunderstanding and allogations of unfair or unethical communications between males and females. My wife is very uncomfortable with this idea as well.

Thing 17

The use of tags to create a learning trail is a useful idea for Web 2.0 users. I logged on to the class portal page at Del.icio.us and explored some of the articles and features. I signed up for a learning blogsite for a student development class that I teach.

Of the sites visited for this activity. I preferred Del.icio.us over Furl and Ma.gnolia due to my experiences with del.icio.us. I like the lay-out of the site. Due to the ease of understanding site instructions, I believe that students will enjoy the use of digital online technology to locate research and educational information for use in learning.

Parents may have to learn yet another skill, but should benefit from the process and be able to relate to their child or children better.

Educators will benefit from this technology by giving their students two vital lessons in one class. This is a good learning activity in which the students can learn by a hands-on approach, and explore exciting topics that are current and relevant.

Thing 16

I went to the Zoho site for project management and signed up for one free project. I am setting this project for completing my capstone project for the instructional technology project. Major activities include producing a quicktime video, developing a mobi educational website for cell phone browsers, and developing a flash plugin for my wellness education site.

Thing 14

For the relational programs, I chose Gliffy and Bubbl.us. I perfer mindmapping over flow charts. Both programs could be useful in classroom settings. Flow charts like at Gliffy help teachers or students define a distinct set of steps and options to be considered along the conceptual pathway. I teach a business communications class, and can use gliffy to demonstrate concepts such as how business decisions are made.

The Bubble.us program helps to show relations between complex concepts. When I teach healthcare, I could create mindmaps to show relationships among forms of immunity. There are several factors that contribute to immune responses, and using Bubbl.us I was able to create a basic interaction chart.

Web based applications are fun and can be used in presentations. One of my earliest discoveries was a free graphing program, Create a graph from NCSE, I have used it in PowerPoint graphs for class projects. It is easy to use and creates graphs at no costs in a variety of styles: pie, bar-graph, X-Y. It is great fun, and can be edited as needed. Students seem to love this great program on the web.
http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx

Thing 15

Schools can use wikis for a wide variete of purposes. One example is the Princton Public Library which is a collabrative activity to inform patrons of library functions and write online book reviews. Library Review offers an index at the beginning of the wiki to allow users to navigate quickly to a specific topic

Another such website is wikipedia.org, which is quite popular as an online information site. One drawback to wikis is that there is not complete control over information submitted, but is a popular way to trade information on the Internet.

I have written over 100 articles for wikipedia. It is easy to use. I wrote both medical and historical articles, including several about famous Clarksvillians. My first exposure to wikis was to wikipedia. I was viewing the Clarksville, Tennessee section and noticed the names of several people that had no biographical information. I had started writing online for a now defunct dot com website profiling the history of Clarksville. I was taking US History from Dr. Dixon at APSU in 1999, and was interested in helping promote Clarksville.

My first submission to Wikipedia was about Gustav Henry, who once lived in the APSU Pace Alumni Center. I was immediately challenged by an online editor who stated that anyone of that significance would already be featured on Wikipedia. I persisted, and was able to provide enough proof to be allowed to finish my wiki submission. Later I wrote about other Clarksvillians like Ms. Runion, founder of the First Woman's Bank of Tennessee, in Public Square in 1919. I also wrote about Tennessee's frontiersman who rivaled Daniel Boone, his name was Kasper Mansker. The famous Tennessee educator, Joseph Killebrew who has a hall at APSU named in his memory is another person I submidded a brief biography about.

One of the longer bios that I submitted was about the major league pitcher, Hod Lisenbee from the area which is now Dover Crossing section of town as US 79 S branches off near the North Clarksville Kroger store. He attended APSU briefly in the early 1920s when it was still a teacher's college. Another athlete that attunded APSU that I wrote about was basketball star "Fly" Williams, whose championship seasons at the university led to the construction of the Dunn Center.

The first wiki that I created as a teacher for use in my classes was Medical Terminology. I did not try to cover every topic, but provided some great references that I had gathered over the years of teaching the subject matter.

Thing 13

I chose Zoho Writer to create an account, and found this to be an excellent site for producing online word processing documents. The features are comprehensive and allow for numerous presentation formats and the use of color and bolded text.

Also, the Sun Microsystems suite of free programs is very beneficial. The set of programs is called Star OpenOffice, and can be downloaded for quick usage. The OpenOffice suite of programs includes a word-processing program, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation program that have the look and feel of MS Office 2003. The files are similar to the MS 2003 office as well as capable of being saved in MS Word, Excell, and PowerPoint format.

I teach English writing and have several students that do not have MS Office on their computers at home. They are required to create one presentation to be presented via PowerPoint. I had a student that brought her laptop to school, but was concerned that OpenOffice Presenter would not work if she saved to to her thumb-drive and tried to run it from my desktop computer and into the PowerPoint projector. I reviewed her storage options and noticed the Save As command that included MS PowerPoint 2003 as an option. I told her to store the presentation in MS PowerPoint 2003, and it played perfectly.

https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=SO9-BETA-MP-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI

Thing 12

Google Tools has been a great help to me. I bought a Blackjack II phone and had little exposure to Google then, but soon started downloading specialty Google programs on my cell phone and laptop. I like the free stuff like SpyDoctor, Open Office, and maps programs.

Recently, I was driving to Douglasville, Georgia just recently to attend a funeral. The free maps program acted as a GPS system. As I was driving, I called for the address of the funeral home, and entered it directly into my phone which has a GPS chip. While driving, the Maps program located my current position and provided turn by turn navigation to the funeral home. I was impressed, I have been solicitated to purchase a GPS program and pay an additional $99.00 access fee. Now, I realize that Maps is saving me $99.00 per month.

Thing 11

The RSS reader is a great technology tool. These feeds can provide specific information about a wide variety of topics. I have subscribed to serveal blogs including the EdTech Journeys. I located this blog using EduBlog's Award Winners 2006 which was easy to use. I tried to use Feedster, but had trouble logging on. It was not as user friendly.

For the motivated teacher, having a set of RSS feeds is like having a research staff that is constantly scouring the net for information. It can be used by students and teachers in forming a collabrative project on a topic of choice, such as the use of Mayo Clinic's RSS feed for health and fitness.

RSS feeds are easy to set up and contain good content, if carefully selected. I found www.ask.com to be an easy to use RSS feed search location. A good RSS feed can serve as a focus site for content. This allows a teacher to assign an online topic and not be concerned about students surfing to unrelated sites, provided they use the authorized RSS feed locations.

Thing 10

The use of RSS feeds is an invaluable tool for tracking new information and news items of personal intrest. I started subscribing to RSS feeds two years ago, after my wife purchased a computer for me at Christmas. My older laptop was too slow, and crashed often, so it was time for a change.

I chose Google Reader for my choice of readers, and subscribed to several health and education RSS feeds. I like the fact that I can choose specific RSS feeds and receive up to date information on those topics. RSS feeds can be assigned by teachers as supplemental reading for students, and professional development.

Teachers can use this information in wikis and in blogs.

Thing 9

Using image generators stretches the imagination and challenges the intellect. Creating a message that will be well received and spark some initiative can be an education in itself. When I first retired from the Navy, I spent some time in marketing. I sold yellow-page advertisements to businesses that had never advertised in the phone book before. 

I would interview the owner, ask him or her what made them unique to the market. I would request further information, and within 20 - 30 minutes, I had a working ad for the customer. Now I am using some of the same skills to create educational comics.

This exercise takes me back to the days of glory when I had to think on my feet. Getting students into a pattern can be difficult. I teach English writing in a traditional classroom setting and online. I hear lots of stories of the paper that got away. On the first day of class, I review my technology standards using the syllabus. I try to discuss how to start a document, how to save the document and how to select the correct format, and how to transport files. 

On the day that the first paper is due, I have about a fifty percent failure rate, because instructions are not followed. Some older students have never used a computer, and the younger ones just do not pay attention. I believe that I can use comics to make the point a little better. I look forward to using this in class in the near future.

Thing 8

Yahoo is certainly attempting to rival Microsoft in its variety of services.  It has staved off two takeover bids by Microsoft this year. Flickr is a great photo web-sharing and blog site. It certainly bears the marks of a Web 2.0 entity. Flickr has several application sites that enhance the digital photography enthusiast.

I used the slideshow feature at BigHugeLabs to create a series of some of my better portraits. I selected a set of photos from my account and edited it to create the following slide show.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php?id=55506

Using the Mosaic production tool, I created a mosaic of flora. All photos were taken in either Tennessee or Kentucky by me within the past year. I took several photos at Patties 1880s Settlement in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. Another group of photos were taken at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. The two photos in the bottom left row were taken in the Austin Peay greenhouse in the Sundquist Science Center. I called the phone number posted by the entrance of the greenhouse and told the professor that I was a grad student. She allowed me to spend about one hour in the greenhouse. The single blooming lily pad is in the pond in my front yard, the group of lily pads was at a museum near Louisville, Kentucky. I captured the two bottom right photos in the early morning in my back yard after a heavy frost.

Please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29989483@N00/2895955381/

I also created a photo jigsaw using a cloud formation photographed about one-half hour before sunset in the rear parking lot at work, Draughons Junior College, Clarksville, Tennessee. The photo jigsaw puzzle can be viewed by scrolling down to the bottom of the web page.

Mashups do provide creative imagery to help focus student attention to the topic being presented. As a writing instructor, I can use Flickr photos and mosaics to stimulate student thinking and assign descriptive writing assignments. I believe that there are numerous training and educational opportunities that can be used in the new School 2.0.

Thing 7

I took the Multimedia class last fall, and was introduced to the world of digital photography. I purchased a small digital automatic 5 MP camera and commenced my latest hobby/obsession of capturing images in full color photos. I had owned several traditional cameras starting with a Brownie, box camera when I was about six years old. I even owned an old Kodak Polaroid camera in high school. But as time went on, I lost my interest in photography. I looked forward with some degree of skepticism to the digital photography segment with Photo Shop CS3. By the end of the class, I was addicted to my new skill set. 

I had established a Flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/29989483@N00/) about a year before taking the class, but had no interest in contributing any photos. I read about Flicker in an article about a school teacher in Texas that had been featured in Flicker. But, by the end of my 5616 class, I had started making contributions to my account. I continued over the Christmas break, and by the following February, I had submitted over 200 photos. One of my projects became taking photos of sunsets in the Clarksville area. I am posting one of my favorite sunset photos taken in Saint Bethlehem in January 2008. I carefully photo shopped the photo to try to restore the photo to the same colors that I recalled during that sunset. 

I made notes about the colors and the full spectrum that I observed. It is one of the most popular photos that I have posted on Flickr. I have developed some good prospective professional contacts and used a photo taken by another Flickr member in a follow on class. I was able to contact the photographer and obtain her permission to share it with the class. 

One associated website that I have used successfully and then reposted to Flickr is www.dumper.com which allows for some artistic manipulations to a photo and alter the image in creative patterns. I altered some colorful photos of flowers, silos, and koi from a friend's pond in north Clarksville. I have posted some examples of Dumpr creations as well. 

I have also incorporated two mapping programs and a photo tracking program on my profile page to give a more professional look to my profile.

Thing 6

The Web 2.o Awards Site contains many interesting options. I have previously used several other of the listed websites, so I chose www.digg.com to explore. I joined the website and followed the link in my email account back to the members section. Digg.com allows for searches in numerous topic areas. It allows for blogging, reading, and searches for podcasts. 

I like the flexibility of the website and searched for several topics including technology on the web, and a particular favorite of mine, the dot mobi web. As an instructional technology student, I plan to develop an educational website using the mobi high end user applications program for people like me who carry a web-enabled cell phone. Many websites now offer content in the mobile phone format. 

Once I purchased my phone, the Blackjack II, I quickly learned that many websites are not mobile phone friendly, and will not allow for efficient searching or displays. I started using my phone to search for topics and used mobi, as a primary search variable. I was quickly directed to several high quality websites that offer the mobi format. I saved each one that I liked in my favorites section of the phone. 

My favorite search engines for educational purposes are www.ask.com and the new site, www.cuil.com, that offers valid content over advertising promotional .com sites located by Google. Using these websites I investigated this mobi style website format. I believe that in the future that students will use their phones to view podcasts, watch PowerPoint with Flash multimedia, download assignments, perform keyboarding functions, create graphic content, do quizzes, and upload assignments to the school server all by using an educational application on their cell phones using mobi technology.

I viewed a PowerPoint type presentation that I accessed using Digg.com that illustrated and explained the technology that drives Digg. I next searched for a podcast that I may consider using with my students in public speaking class. The Digg program quickly located an interesting selection, and I was able to access the podcast. I listened to the CEO of a highly successful company describe how he overcame his personal anxieties associated with his duties as a public speaker as I scanned MSN for the latest economic news. I was able to multitask two items at once. 

Next, I used Digg to locate a current political blog from Newsweek.com, and once I completed the article, I waded into the fray with a blog of my own. I linked the blog back to my Blogger website and my personal account. The link was quick and easy and I was able to complete my thoughts in about twenty minutes. 

My discovery tour of Digg was interesting, challenging, and enjoyable. I searched, learned, and debated using my blogging skills.

 

Thing 5

The next level of interactive learning has arrived. With Web 2.0, the web is no longer a high-tech billboard, it is now capable of creating multimedia experiences in a relatable manner. WEB 1.0 was awe inspiring in its inception, but began to stale as demands for a fresher approach began. Enter the new world of interactive communications and user designed web pages. For many, it began with a guy named Tom and a social phenomena named MySpace. In a short time, web developers were designing a wide range of plug-in tools to enhance the social network. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone was demanding "mini-htlm" animations that appeared to blow kisses or characters that dance a jig.

The obvious demand for more applications and better interactive programs transformed the web from a messenger to a digital meeting place for singles to meet, friends to chat, shoppers to explore, and students to extract meaning for their latest assignment.  Today, a multitude of websites offer interactive games, artwork, digital enhancement, web publication programs, and a variety of educational offerings. 

The interactive characteristics of the new web, coupled with the ability of people to create content for the web and post or publish their content to the Internet are all part of Web 2.0.  The Atomic Learning link provides a multimedia podcast of the development of learning media from the one-room schoolhouse to the information age and a read-only web containing information Web 1.0, so called due to software publishing terminology, to a new information age featuring a variety of options from blogs, to wikis, podcasting, social networking, tagging and RSS options on a read-write web called Web 2.0. 

Web 2.0 offers a rich variety of options to educators to create and publish meaningful classroom content to reinforce more traditional classroom models of lecture and group activities. In his blog, Steve Hargadon champions this new concept in his work titled, "Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education," by presenting his top ten list of the obvious advantages of this method of learning. He highlights the wave of new information, the expansion of online publishing, and the trend towards participation. He optimistically declares that as we expand our knowledge, we should immediately improve our experience by writing about these experiences and publish it on the web.

He declares that social networking presents a vast variety of learning and discussion avenues that students may explore including this excerpt: "from consuming to producing, from authority to transparency, from expert to facilitator, and from the lecture to the hallway..." He proclaims that learning is experiencing a revolution in the new Web 2.0 environment.

The new Web 2.0 expands how teachers can teach on a level that students will naturally gravitate towards, it represents the dawning of a new age in learning.

 

Thing 4

Commenting in a blog is the skill set required to successfully ride the interactive web wave. The ability to comment in an interactive online setting is a desirable trait and a provocative learning tool. Much as the learning contract requires goals, reflection, production, and completion; so the record of student interaction must include the same set of writing skills. School 2.0 is the application of creative learning in an interactive and provocative environment, it relies on the input of teachers who can relate knowledge in a real-time environment.

Intelligent blogging requires teachers, driven to express curriculum to a tech driven clientele. Concise and provocative analysis of a proposed problem is the challenge for the teacher of today. As technology changes, so does the medium and the imagery. Effective commenting brings focus and perspective to the lesson. It provides a landmark of learning progress and authenticates learning achievements. 

The educated commenter is able to express the problem in simple terms and present evidence that demonstrates a depth of understanding of the problem, and propose an acceptable solution. Effective writing represents a complex form of communication in which a problem is carefully  presented, various options are explored and an effective solution is proposed. The writer assumes the role of a defense attorney. The effective writer is skilled  his or her  case selection, developing a reasonable defense, using the available evidence, and persuade the jury to acquit the client.  

Case dismissed.

The same skill sets are employer by the writer in proposing a solution to the problem.

Thing 3

It is important for teachers to post comments to the web. The Internet has become more useful to educators, by allowing for feedback, facts, and ideas to be presented on the web in the form of Web Logs or Blogs.

The specific benefit of writing is its relative permanence and serves as a record of our growth in learning. Writing forces the learner to focus on the subject, make evaluations of the subject matter, and to draw conclusions.

Writing is a complex neuromuscular process of receiving messages, decoding the messages in the brain, correlating and evaluating the message and reducing the process to written form. It allows teachers to collaborate, question, and present information for further discussion and evaluation. 

Blogging is an important skill for teachers to develop for education purposes, because vast amount of educational materials are being transferred to the Internet.

Thing 2

The blog site exercise was somewhat time consuming and challenging. I did enjoy the Pod cast "Seven and one-half Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners." This is the first time that I have set up a blog through Google. I do have a Twitter blog and had a MySpace about three years ago.
Creating the avatar was enjoyable, but I did not discover the instructions for exporting the avatar until I used the screen capture tool and imported the image into the blog.
The selection of screen name was fun, I used to go by JJ, so I added it as my screen name. The title I chose Max Time because this class offers maximum opportunity to learn about visual literacy.

Thing 1

Lifelong learning is a natural instinct for me. I Spent 20 years in the Navy, and have been involved in training for 35 years, and counting. I tend to be a self-directed learner, and love to explore new topics. My strongest areas are learning about history and geography, and my weakest area is math.

My favorite topics in history are US history and Russian history. I spent 20 years in the Navy studying Russian ships and submarines, and took a course in Russian history in my undergrad work at APSU. My travels took me around the world, and I would study the charts and maps for each section of the globe that I traveled through.

My current interests are in becomming savvy in web based technology, website design, and instructional technology.