Pockets of Change

I’m a big fan of the KISS principle. Thus, my excitement to see that GoogleSites — already a simple way to create a website — now has templates. Could website creation GET any easier?? The vid below explains how to use them.

The first time ’round, I wasn’t convinced. I tried Diigo more than whole-heartedly, for an entire month. I felt very much like it was good, but not really good enough — poor interface (not intuitive), clunky on the Flash / Javascript it relied on, a toolbar that got in my way, etc. I just generally felt that it wasn’t as slick and simple as other tools. I really wanted to like it, as I saw tremendous potential in its application — particularly being able to annotate and “mark up” the web. Its collaborative tools — groups, discussions, and more — also caught my eye. But it just felt too clunky; learning how to use it took time, and some things just didn’t work for me. Eventually, I grew to use Delicious much more and stopped using Diigo pretty much completely in June of this year.

However, now that Diigo’s been re-vamped — version 4.0, y’all — I may have to reconsider.

Start with Diigo’s very clear Tour. Here’s part 1, Research:

Diigo V4: Research ~ annotate, archive, organize from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

What do you think? Is Diigo changing the landscape of tools for collaboration, research, and archiving? How will its shiny-new version impact your teaching and learning? I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Note: There are two other parts of the tour available respectively: Share and Collaborate (which sound similar to me, but I didn’t come up with the labels!).

It’s not really new, per se, but it certainly fits into the theme of things here at Pockets of Change: an ultra-lite blogging platform. What could be simpler than click-and-post? Yep, I am definitely talking about a small amount of change that can make a big difference.

I’m referring to a new blogging sharing platform called Posterous. Yes, I realize I called it “blogging” in the title of the post, but on 2nd thought, I’m not sure that it’s “true” blogging. It’s really just a place to post and share things, without all the bells and whistles. If you are an educator who has been thinking about blogging but not sure where to start, or maybe you’re intimidated by all the “techie” stuff associated with blogging, Posterous is for you. Heck, even if you’re not an educator and you just want a quick-and-dirty way to share stuff with friends or family, it’s worth checking out.

If I were new to all this Web2.0 tech stuff for learning (which I’m clearly not, but play along, now), I think that Posterous would be the hands-down simplest place to start. I mean, seriously — you don’t even need an ACCOUNT. All you need to do is send stuff to them from your email address and suddenly you’ve created a page.  I don’t think it gets any easier than this! They say on their site it’s dead simple, and they’re not kidding.

Here’s what I did to try it out:

1. Went to their website.
2. Clicked the link where it says Step 2: email anything to post@posterous.com.
3. My GMail account opened, from which I sent a very simple message to post@posterous.com.
4. Within seconds, I received an email telling me that my post had been created.
5. Clicking on the links brought me to my new post in my new and ultra-sleek blog.

The lovely and simple email message from Posterous:

And here is the actual new post:

Now if that ain’t a pocket o’change, I dunno what is. Seriously — try it. You have nothing to lose but 30 seconds. It really couldn’t be easier.

I have a friend (a live in-the-flesh kind of friend) who recently signed up for a Twitter account. What was his first Tweet?

And then another one of my Twitter friends asked a very pertinent question:

To keep with a recent trend here at PoC, here’s my quick list to answer the question: Why Twitter?

• Twitter allows me to search and find people who share my same interests: the MYP, the Los Angeles Clippers, or ramen. I can then follow these people and see if there is more that we have in common. I can also use Twitter Search to follow current events as they happen.
• Twitter is an open mic to my PLN. People have actively chosen to follow my updates so they think I have something of value to say. While it is a public proclamation, only those who are really interested are listening.
• Twitter is a pro-active resource. People I follow are sending out things that interest them which in turn interests me. Some think Twitter is the new RSS feed reader.

And another quick list on how to get the most out of Twitter:

• Use a third party app like Twhirl, TweetDeck, or TwitterFox instead of the web interface. It’s easier to keep track of all your tweets that way.
• Use Twitter Search to find people who are discussing things you are interested in.
• Use Mr. Tweet to help you find people to follow.
• Once you find somebody who you want to follow, check out who that person is following. Is there anybody in that list you’d like to follow as well?
• When somebody starts following you, check out their recent tweets to get an idea if they are somebody you’d like to follow in return.

When I first started using Twitter (I’m @chamada), I was more than a bit skeptical. But now I don’t think I could live without it. It takes a while for your Twitter network to reach that critical mass and, like everything else, you get out only what you put in. You can lurk and observe the conversation, or you can particpate and become part of the conversation.

As for my answer to why use Facebook and Twitter? To me, Facebook is for friends and family. Twitter is my Personal Learning Network; it’s a tool that I use to connect with people all around the world who share common interests. Both are becoming increasingly indispensable in how I communicate, but for completely separate reasons.

And then the magic happens by Mark McLaughlin
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

I’ve always been an experimenter in the classroom. And luckily, I’ve always had pretty easy-going and willing-to-be-experimented-on students. So when I recently asked my Grade 8 students to try out different ways of creating a sociogram, they said, “Sure!”*

Here was the task: a sociogram of sorts to show the relationships between characters in Twelfth Night, part of our unit titled “For the Fun of It: Merry-making in Society.”  As you can see if you visit the post, I gave my students several choices with which to try out their graphic-organizer creation skills. Here were the general results:

• Inspiration was by far the most popular initial choice. You’ll note that I’ve emphasized the word “initial.”
• Gliffy was the second most popular initial choice (the risk-takers). 
• Few students tried any of the other options listed. I’ll come back to this issue later.
• Those students who tried Inspiration first were each met with a problem as soon as they finished their lovely diagram: the difficulty of exporting into a useable file for posting on their blog.

Now, I must assume that most students chose Inspiration first because it is so widely used in our school — I believe even our younger ES students use Kidspiration. So, by the time they get to me in Grade 8, they are pretty comfortable with the ins and outs of the program. But I am guessing they have never had to do much with their fancy graphics before, other than perhaps print them out.

However, those who used Gliffy found this step an absolute cinch. They finished the task in about one-third the time of those who used Inspiration and were then figuring out ways to export their images. While the “Gliffy group” spent a wee bit more time at the start learning how to use the tool — and, btw, they did teach themselves, as I confessed right off the bat that I had not used it before — once they finished, their images were uploaded lickety-split onto their blogs. In fact, the tool’s effectiveness even, I daresay, inspired a few members of the Inspiration Group to go back and start over again, using Gliffy instead. 

*Well, okay. They didn’t actually say that. But they didn’t complain either. They jumped-in without whining too much. I teach great students!

**Special thanks to both Sue Waters and Bill Genereux for counselling me through the logistics!

I’m sure others have done this too, but I could not resist:

Can you think of the many ways to use the Wordle tool for speeches in your classroom?

Image at http://www.wordle.net.

Edit: Just to be balanced, here is the same text done with a Tag Crowd.

After a response about RSS on Beyond-School, it was respectfully pointed out to me (thanks, dear colleagues!) that perhaps others might like to know about the different ways the “average” teacher or student might use RSS to be more productive. First, an edited version of my original comment:

[RSS is] one possibility of many for gathering information. And it just happens to be a rather efficient one in terms of the amount of time it takes to set up, use, and then check. . . . Of all the tools I’ve shown to my colleagues, RSS has got to be the one they appreciate the most — “wow, you mean the information comes to ME?” I’ve not gotten into Diigo yet, but I use Twitter now, and two aggregators daily to “get” my info. (And iGoogle is always, always my starting place, though other people I know do not . . . find it worked for them.)

In response to your question: “What’s our purpose for teaching aggregators?” I find aggregators especially useful for following all sorts of things that have nothing to do with blogs. Some examples:

1 – Calendars of various types have RSS feeds. In my present school, this means I know when a laptop cart is available, or when I can book the drama room. I suspect (though am not certain) that other Calendar apps like Google Calendar or iCal have simlilar settings.

2 – Documents — I can add GoogleDocs to my iGoogle page and be notified any time there is a change to documents I share with others. Not related to Google, within our current school portal, I have RSS feeds set up for different storage areas so that I know when documents have been changed or added.

3 – Photos — RSS can be used to track photos on Flickr, Picasa, and any other number of photo sites, which is incredibly useful for various purposes.

First, The Basics:

To begin, I would like to recommend viewing Jeff Utecht’s screencast about RSS — that’s if you can view it. It will take a while to load (eons, perhaps, if you live in a developing country with <1MB bandwidth), and 15 minutes to view. If you can’t get to Jeff’s screencast, then you might like to watch this RSS in Plain English clip, which will take much less time: (Thanks to Sue for this!)

And now, the elaboration (and then some!):

Here’s the thing: Although RSS began a few years ago as a way to get information from blogs and news sites, it has evolved into so much more. I’m not suggesting that educators use RSS because they should read more blogs. That’s up to you to decide — maybe you want to, maybe you don’t. But RSS can be used for basic productivity tasks that will really make your life easier (I promise!).

Once you’ve got your reader set up (Google Reader, Bloglines, or even the one in Outlook), you can add ANYTHING that has an RSS feed. What kinds of things, you ask?

Back to my points above…

1- Calendars and basic scheduling

Calendars and basic scheduling v.1 — as I said in the original comment, we can use RSS feeds for the calendar on our Sharepoint portal at our school.

• What this means: Any time a teacher posts an assignment deadline, cancels their laptop cart booking, or adds their birthday, I find out about it without even having to ask.

Calendars and basic scheduling v.2 — Public calendars, or even just those shared between a few people such as in Google’s calendar, now have an RSS feed. Hurrah!

• What this means: When I’m not sure about American Idol’s showtimes, I can add them to my Google calendar and subscribe to my RSS feed so I know if it changes.

2- Documents and Files

Again, on a Sharepoint portal, every storage area has an RSS feed. For example, here is what one looks like on our English A Grade 7 area:

And, outside our school area, I can get an RSS feed from each Google Document I’m working on:

• What this means: Any time someone adds, removes, or changes a document or file I am working on or using*, I find out about it. My reader tells me, so I don’t have to be a control freak!

3- Photos and Videos

If you’re not yet using a cool photo website like Flickr or Picasa, well — what are you waiting for? Here are two examples of how I can use RSS to find out when someone has added images to my favorite places.

In Flickr, I have several Favorites marked. If you like my favorites, and want to know when I add another one, you can find the feed here:

And if I’ve created a photoset of a special event, and you want to know when more photos have been added, you might find it here:

In Picasa albums, you’ll find the feed at the bottom of the page on the right:

• What this means: When my crazy uncle Phil posts yet another photo of his souped-up ski-doo, I’ll immediately know! (Ok, so my uncle Phil doesn’t have a souped-up ski-doo — but if he did, I know he’d want me to see the latest photos.)

What about YouTube?

Want to know what the most viewed videos are of the day? RSS it:

You can also set up an RSS feed for your favorite user by following the instructions on this page. (A bit more complicated, but still useful if you want to track a particular user’s content.)

• What this means: I will (finally!) be able to watch every last Muppets video ever uploaded to YouTube, and will spend hours regaling my students of the virtues of learning-by-puppet.

And then some…

A few other nifty places I have found RSS feeds to be useful (both for school, and not):

• Movie listings
• Discussion Boards
• New Deals @ Amazon

I’m sure once you start using RSS, you’ll find more great ways to use it!

(more…)

Thanks again to Clay for this cool tool. Here is what Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth looks like, using TagCrowd:

Thoughts and questions:

• Perhaps a tool like this could be used to help students organize ideas, by finding out what is most or least important?
• Can a text-based cloud like this have any use in a Mathematics classroom? (Mr. H, c’mon I know you’ve got something to add.)
• How could students use this tool for their own blogging? (This is actually Clay’s question, but it certainly deserves some thought so I post it here, too.)

Note: I did create a Stoplist (titled Shakespeare Playscript) to create the above TagCrowd, which eliminated all the characters’ abbreviated names, as well as all the entrances and exits in stage directions.

Has anybody out there found an actual purpose-built gradebook built for the rigors, the criteria, and the non-percentage nature of the MYP? I use an Excel behemoth that I’ve built up over the 5+ years I’ve been teaching the MYP (and I’ll be happy to share if anybody is interested) but it’s just not sexy enough to satisfy my tech jones.

I want something I can sort by criteria or by date. I want something that will allow me to determine the “highest level of sustained achievement” easily. I think I know what I would like it to look like, I just have no idea how to create something so complicated in Access (or any other database program).

If you teach literature or language at any grade level, you probably already know about the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), an American-based organization under the International Reading Association umbrella.   Perhaps you already know about the ReadWriteThink partnership between these two organizations.  Or perhaps you don’t, in which case you might want to read further.

ReadWriteThink aims to “provide educators and students with access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction through free, Internet-based content.”  They have several resources for teachers which are outstanding, but the one I feel most relevant to our use of technology in the classroom are the Student Materials.

• Need your students to map out or plan their story before they start writing?  Try the interactive plot diagram as a graphic organizer.

• Analyzing characters?  Perhaps they might like to make Character Trading cards — particularly fun for Elementary or Middle School students. 
• For High School students, the Webbing Tool might be a useful way to hyper-link ideas and make connections for any kind of project. 

There are oodles of others.  Lucky for you, the good people at ReadWriteThink have made many of them adjustable for different grade levels.  Clicking on any of the links above or in the general Student Materials page will bring you first to a place that lists all the lessons available to use with the tool, and of course the tool itself.   I personally prefer to browse through the list of tools to find an appropriate tool for what I’m using in my classroom, but you might prefer ReadWriteThink’s lesson structure.