BP23_2009114_Flickr

Flickr is a tool that has grown exponentially as a place to share photos with friends, family and the world. In addition to sharing photos, Flickr is a social network where people have conversations and post comments to photos. Its openness is reminiscent of Wikipedia before editorial review and embodies the spirit of democracy. But should students be set loose in this vast democratic world of Flickr? While the site has great promise for education, it can be a problem for teachers to allow students full access to the photos since the bad can be easily discovered along with the good. While students should be taught how to survive in a world increasingly connected socially via the web, schools need to proceed cautiously for their student’s safety. Most educators are leery of putting up photos with faces of students and may compromise by uploading images that don’t have children’s faces as a way of sharing images with parents.

There is also the legality of uploading images of students to consider. In our school district, each parent has to sign a media usage waiver and indicate what level of media access he or she approves. The list of students with various levels of approval is long making the uploading of images more complicated. That said, I know of many parents who enjoy seeing photos that the teacher has taken in the classroom. How much openness is okay? That is a question that is still being answered by school districts in regards to Flickr, YouTube and many other social networking sites.

I am not a teacher, but as a photographer and dedicated parent, I developed a unique photography unit 3 years ago as part of a 4th grade cultural partnership with the Guggenheim Museum. I introduce photography to the students and then they get a chance to explore photography as an art form. The unit is extremely popular with all the students, and especially with those who often despise art and those who have attention or disciplinary issues because taking photos is so much fun and engaging.

Since the students often take photos of other students, I can’t use Flickr to add a social element to this project. However, I found one idea that I could use for this project and I could also see it being used in a writing class as well. The group is called “Stories You Can Tell in School” (http://www.flickr.com/groups/storiesyoucantellinschool/). The idea is to have a small set of photographs (4 – 6) tell a story. In the discussion, there are several wonderful stories that have been uploaded.

Here are two I liked a lot. The Birdfeeder shows a man on a motorcycle going into a plaza, the birds there the congregate around him and he starts feeding them. This story has an extensive description of each photo attached so that the story is both visual and verbal. My personal favorite is called Practical Hero, which is about a toy GI Joe going into the washing machine to retrieve a lost sock and then gets a hero’s kiss from the mother. Now words are needed – the photos are composed very well and clearly tell the story.

I might use this idea next year when I teach my photography unit. What is great about this use of Flickr is that students can stay out of the picture (avoiding the legal issues). To be honest, I’m not sure I would be able to upload to Flickr given that the students are only in 4th grade, but this is an idea that is an excellent way to use Flickr in education.

Standon, Amy. (2009) My friend Flickr: A great photo opportunity. Retrieved November 22, 2009 from http://www.edutopia.org/my-friend-flickr

BP22_2009113_Web2.0tool_IntelTools

Intel has dedicated significant resources to supporting education in a variety of ways but for this review, the focus is on their Online Thinking Tools, which are one feature to free resources created specifically for K-12 education. This review describes briefly the three tools individually but the overall focus is on the three tools as a whole for use in the classroom. The 3 tools include Visual Ranking, Seeing Reason and Showing Evidence. Visual Ranking helps students evaluate and analyze information visually by applying criteria to assigning ranking to an ordered list. Seeing Reason asks students to create visual maps that look at the relationships of complex systems. Showing Evidence visually helps students develop arguments supported by evidence. Overall, these tools provide students multiple ways to develop meaning from information. In particular, each of the tools is highly visual, require using logic, and encourage collaboration. Finally, each of the tools has strong support from Intel to assist teachers.

Once the user clicks on any one of these tools, there are structures and features to each of the tools. Each of these tools has these common features:
1. Every tool has common tabs labeled as; Overview & Benefits, Try the Tool Project Examples Instructional Strategies and Workspace.
2. Every tool has a sidebar link with educational research to back up the use of the tool with references.
3. Every tool has a visual image of what the tool looks like when filled out from the Overview & Benefits page.
4. Every tool has animated demos, tutorials and help guides. Also, there are hot buttons at the bottom of every tab that assist teachers in contacting Intel’s Education department for more help.
5. Every tool provides examples of units that can be used immediately and are developed for a variety of grade levels.
6. Every tool includes strategies to help the teacher integrate the tool into their curriculum including the stages to use the tool and recommendations of how to assess student’s progress.

Positive Aspects:
Collaborative, engaging, backed up by educational research, free

Negative Aspects:
None

BP21_2009113_VideoCommercial_Diigo

BP20_2009113_Comments on CMYKRGBblog

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009
BP11_2009112_Web2.0Tools_kuler

Review Web 2.0 Tools: kuler
http://kuler.adobe.com/

Kuler is a dynamic color-theme generator. It uses structured methods of color relationships and/or intuitive methods of visually choosing colors from an image or spectrum color wheel. The visual color information is easy for anyone to access, and very intuitive to use without knowing any code or specifications. The technical color information is useful cross-media data for print designers and web developers, and works well as a conversion tool between formats.

Main sections of the kuler website include Themes, Create: From a Color and Create: From an Image.

The community features let you browse the color themes posted by others for creative inspiration or share your own color themes with a team. Tags posted by the color theme creators make them keyword searchable. Comments and star ratings are enabled, and the number of downloads is tracked so that the themes can be ranked by popularity. There is even a Community Pulse area that visually shows the popularity of all colors by how many times they have been included in a theme.

There are many benefits of this free color-palette-generating service in that it is cross-platform (Mac or PC), cross-media (print or web), and it offers both visual and technical information for design and production. Kuler functions are also built into the InDesign CS4 and Illustrator CS4 applications of the Adobe Creative Suite software. A drawback of kuler is the need for a separate Adobe I.D. registration to use online, as well as a Flikr account to upload images because the Color Extraction feature can only access images uploaded to Flikr. Color Extraction has difficulty with CMYK-mode images, and this feature does not support color management, so associated color profiles of uploaded images will be ignored.

kuler could be used in a classroom lesson for design inspiration, print or web color gamut specification, or understanding relational color theory.

Help and more information about Kuler is available at http://kuler.adobe.com/links/kuler_help.html
POSTED BY CMYKRGB AT 11:00 PM
2 COMMENTS:

David Noller said...
Good day, Cathy!

As a Technology Curriculum Coordinator, I am charged with working with all of my teachers to help aid their instruction. This tool will be one that I will share especially with my publications instructors (who use InDesign 4) and with my art instructors, especially our Computer Art staff.

The concept is fascinating: sharing color palettes within a community of designers as a way to inspire and collaborate. Student designers have the opportunity to see what other designers around the world are using within their own work. This is such a great, simple idea. I just wish I knew what "relational color theory" is--I guess I'll leave that one to the designers. :)

NOVEMBER 11, 2009 6:43 PM
lesliegperry said...
As a designer, I am always trying to think of new color combinations that would work with my project. I loved having this resource of interesting combinations that I can use. I already have an Adobe ID and use InDesign often so I expect to integrate this tool immediately into my practice. I went in a posted on one of my favorites! Thanks for the review.

NOVEMBER 15, 2009 6:53 PM

BP19_2009113_Comments on Classrooms Are Not for Squares

BP11_11112009_Broadcasting with UStream.tv

What if you could broadcast your class to the world, or at least to that sick kid at home, and include the discussion and questions raised during your presentation? What if you could host a podcast with the opportunity for your live audience to make comments, ask questions, and participate in real time? Wouldn't that be awesome? The answer you are looking for is "Yes."

Ustream offers educators that opportunity--free of cost and with minimal hardware requirements. All you need is a computer with high-speed internet access and a webcam/microphone combination.

The first time I saw this tool demonstrated was in a room with over 300 fellow educators. Leslie Fisher, AKA My Tech Goddess, delivered a presentation on educational Web 2.0 tools at the 2008 MACUL Conference in Detroit, Michigan. By simply providing the link to her presentation, audience members who had internet access through either laptops or other mobile devices were able to join the text conversation that appeared to the right of her broadcast.

Fisher's image appeared on the large projection screen as she faced her webcam, and audience members posted responses to her poll questions, offered ideas, and asked questions about the material. The entire broadcast was recorded, allowing for the opportunity for those not in attendance to view not only her presentation, but the audience's participation as well.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The great benefit for educators who take advantage of this tool is that an entire lecture, demonstration, discussion, or other presentation can be recorded for those students who miss our classes for all the myriad reasons we hear about every day: home sick, gone for a sports event, attending a music festival, or staying home for the newest release of their favorite video game franchise. I had that last one today.

Ustream is collaborative, shareable, and free. What more could you ask for?


References

[Untitled Screenshot] Captured Nov. 11, 2009 from http://www.ustream.tv/channel/WEB-2-0-Literacy-Tools-Transforming-K-12-Education
Posted by David Noller at 6:23 PM
1 comments:

lesliegperry said...
This Web 2.0 tool has enormous potential. Putting on my PTA President hat, I would love to use this to allow working parents the opportunity to view and participate in meetings we have. Just recently, our new Superintendent visited our school. It was a great discussion and he presented his ideas for improving education for our students. Several parents told me they couldn't come because of work commitments. This could also be used for in-school presentations that parents might like to be a part of without actually being there. Great find!
November 15, 2009 6:31 PM

BP18_2009113_Comment on Blog_Pink's Blog

http://yacapaca.com/
Wow! How excited I am to have come across this Web 2.0 tool. By the Chalkface Project, Yaca Paca is a free online assessment platform for both teachers and students. Their mission statement reads: "To make the best teaching ideas available to every teacher in the most practical way" (yacapaca.com). I could not believe how comprehensive and thorough the site and its materials were as I clicked around on it. I am an English teacher, so I naturally looked over the information under English. There are printable and reproducible worksheets and teaching packets on punctuation, parts of speech, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and many other topics that most English teachers use. I went to the technology link and found lessons and worksheets on "Using the Internet as a Tool for Learning." There is a blog section with lots of interesting articles and blogs dealing with all kinds of subjects. I checked out a YouTube video entitled "Do you teach or do you educate?" Under the archives section, there appeared to be articles, materials, and the like going back to 2004. I am very impressed with my newly-discovered Web 2.0 tool.

I clicked on the "I'm a Student" button to see what would happen. It appears that the teacher must have an account and log-in password which she/he gives to the students. I will most definitely be bookmarking this site's URL and re-visiting it in the coming days. If it is as good as I think it is, I hope to be giving my own students a password so that they can begin exploring the site, also. I need to learn more about the student aspect of the site. I will have to let everyone know what I discover as I experiment more with yacapaca.com
Posted by shellypinkowski@me.com at 5:46 PM
Labels: web2.0 education yaca paca

lesliegperry said...
This looks like a great resource for teachers and students. The fact that it requires a teacher to set up student accounts adds a level of security missing from some of the other Web 2.0 tools that can be used for education.

If you are interested in exploring another Web 2.0 site that provides curriculum materials for English among other subjects, check out www.curriki.org which I reviewed for this week's blogging assignment.

BP17_2009113_Web2.0Tool_Curriki

I discovered Curriki while I was reading Time Magazine (the paper version). There was an ad for the WISE Conference in Doha, Qatar that caught my attention because WISE means World Innovation Summit for Education. Hey, that was something I wanted to know more about. This is the first conference of WISE, which identifies its initiative as a “global event whose ambition is to create a new international multi-disciplinary platform to shape education models of the 21st century. (WISE, 2009)”

I checked out the individuals who won the awards in Pluralism, Sustainability and Innovation. There were various interesting educators from around the world –I encourage you to check them all out. This is how I discovered Curriki because Peter Levy from Curriki was awarded the prize in Innovation. What is Curriki?

Curriki, started in 2006, is a web-based platform dedicated to eliminating the educational divide throughout the world. Educators are able to find new curricular materials and upload their own lessons to add to the growing database. As stated in the flash video on the homepage, Curriki is the synthesis of “curricula or courses of study” with “wiki” a collaborative website where content is edited by members.” In Curriki, the community shares and collaborates openly on learning materials.

What makes this site remarkable is how well it is organized, the rating system to guide educators on their search for curricula, and the interactivity included in every lesson plan provided. In essence, it is an open platform for sharing your best teaching ideas globally that can be rated on quality of content and commented on by those who actually use a chosen lesson.

For this blog, I looked at two different lessons to get an understanding of the diversity and usefulness for education.


One of the “Recently Top-Rated” lessons was “One Hen: Microfinance for Kids.” This lesson is relatively simple because most of the curricula has already been done at the website www.onehen.org and the PDF provided is also on the website. However, this is a wonderful site that many teachers may not know about. I found it by looking for something in Social Studies but it was also listed under the area of Mathematics. That tagging of appropriateness for grade-level and subject area in addition to the rating system (it received a “3” meaning “exemplary”) helped me find and explore this lesson. Comments from teachers who have used this site add validity that might otherwise stop a teacher from integrating this idea into their lesson plans. It is risky to try new ideas when they are untested – the rating system and comments help teachers have confidence integrating these new ideas.



Science education is something being reviewed this year in our school district so I was interested in looking at what was available in this core subject. There is an entire curriculum uploaded on “Earth Systems” designed for middle and high school level students. This full course received a “3” from Curriki in its review and received an award on August 25th, 2009 for content. The course was submitted by Kim Handle who works in Professional Career Development in Education at the New York Hall of Science in the borough of Queens in New York City. In addition to this collection, she also created one on “Social Media for the Classroom” which I plan to check out in-depth later on. This is an extensive lesson plan with 5 major units (Our Physical Earth, Weather and Water, Earth’s Atmosphere, Life on Earth: Past and Present, and Forecasting the Future) and detailed lessons within each of the major units. I took a look at one random lesson to review it in-depth. Unit 3, Lesson 6 is on the “Carbon Cycle.” There is an introduction to the lesson, time frame, learning objectives, guiding questions, materials needed for the two activities, detailed instructions for the two activities and a conclusion and wrap-up. In addition, it is noted that this content exceeds NY standards, which is important in this age of testing. In addition to the lesson plans, a variety of links to external websites and videos are provided. There is one link for the carbon cycle from The Encyclopedia of Earth and a video from NASA called “Exploring Ozone.” This comprehensive course could be followed in its entirety or specific lessons and activities used that suited a teacher’s need. And then a teacher can comment on its usefulness for other teachers or the content creator to edit. I was impressed by the level of detail prepared with this single unit because it asked students to get actively involved with discovering the subject and makes good use of web resources.

This is a remarkable website that brings Web 2.0 to the classroom in a comprehensive way. Think about how we can share globally with educators around the world. In winning the award for Curriki, WISE stated that “Curriki is boldly challenging the traditional publishing paradigm and changing the way educators teach and the way students learn around the world. (WISE, 2009)” Curriki currently has almost 90,000 registered members from over 180 countries. Curriki hopes to become self-sufficient by 2014 and have over one million educators in its network. For those teachers out there, I encourage you to check it out and let me know what you discover.

Curriki. (2009). Retrieved November 15, 2009 from: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/

World Innovation Summit for Education (2009). Retrieved November 15, 2009 from: http://www.wise-qatar.org/