Pretend this was posted last week....

I've been reading the eLearning blog that Dr. Nic suggested and it's really interesting. First of all, I was surprised by how informal most of the posts are. I guess I thought that because these people are presenting at the conference, they would be very professional and well, kind of dry. But they are far from it! I think I even saw a smiley face " :) " in one of them. Ha ha. I enjoyed Patti Shank's post about Past Promises and Present Challenges of eLearning, found here. And also, the comments in response to her post by Curts Bonks. I even enjoyed reading Thomas Reynold's post about j-walking and open container laws in Las Vegas. The interview with keynote speaker, Dr. Ellen Wagner is great, too. She even shows us some of the produce she grows in her garden! It's hard to imagine her getting busted for j-walking in Vegas. If you haven't checked it out yet, do so, there's a lot of great information.

Repurposing Tools

Somehow or other, the wonderful and convoluted maze of hyperlinking led to me elearnity, which is a UK-based consulting service for corporate learning innovations. Like most corporate entities with an online presence, elearnity maintains a blog. I confess that I find most corporate blogs to be boring regurgitations of corporate speak, designed to market to a target audience. The Rapid E-Learning Blog, for instance is so biased in how it filters in comments, and while I enjoyed my first 6 months of reading it, eventually I realized that it's author was basically just writing variation after variation of leveraging Powerpoint and how great that is for a tool like Articulate. I realize the author is employed by Articulate, so some marketing copy is bound to be on the blog, but if you already know how to do some great things with clipart and the pixel real estate of Powerpoint, and you can appreciate a good job aid over a full course, the Rapid E-Learning blog gets old pretty quickly.

Sometimes however, a corporate blog throws you a curve ball and comes up with something really interesting.

In this case, the elearnity blog suggested tapping into the power of viral marketing and using it as a learning tool. Specifically, the author noticed SplashCast, which creates "embeddable entertainment." The full text of the blog post can be found here.

What interested me about the post wasn't so much SplashCast as it was the idea of repurposing tools that have already proved their success. We're often on a race to find the newest, most cutting edge web 2.0 tool, and there's certainly a lot to be said for bringing these tools and their innovations to learners, but what about using something else, that's already proved effective or even addictive, and using it for eLearning rather than its intended purpose? Kind of like repurposing a game for elearning, but in this case, taking the ideas behind viral marketing, and repurposing the marketing tool for socially transmitted education.

Fotki: A New Kind of Photo Repsitory

As an avid scrapbooker, I am consistently looking for the best deal for photos and different ways to share them with family and friends. I was searching for more competitors to compare rates against and came up with Fotki. I usually use photo respositories like Shutterfly, Snapfish, PhotoBucket, and Flickr. However, this photo sharing and printing resource has many abilities. Not only can you house your photos and share them with other memebers of Fotki (like many other photo respositories), but you can use RSS feeds to link your photos to your blog and get updates with the new photos you upload. How awesome is that-- it is a lot less work if you keep family members up to date on current pictures of your children or you!

To my knowledge the only other service that provides this kind of same RSS feed with photo editing, sharing, and printing is Flickr. However, most services are starting to include these MANY ways to share your photos. Either way, they are both great resources. Check them out!

iQity

I was recently contacted by Teresa Berry, contributor of iQity eLearning blog found on this website. She said she learned about our class blog through readers referring to our posts (Keep up the good work everybody!) and she wanted me to check out her blog. iQity was developed by Altair Learning Management, a company that kicked off online learning in our neighboring state, Ohio. I checked out their website and was immediately blown away by the beauty of it. My Bachelor degree in Art Studio has me conditioned to first see the aesthetics of a website, the contents second, but I was equally impressed with what they're doing. The company created a Learning Suite for schools that offers tools such as a virtual classroom, homeroom, lecture halls, gradebook and online assessments. The user interface is customizable allowing both teachers and individual students to create a look for their classroom that reflects their interests and school pride. I love the idea of this. We, as eLearning students, know what it is like to stare at a "dull" interface and understand the importance of the design
aspect as it relates to online learning. I also came across an interesting blog post about "The Great Worldwide Star Count," funded by the National Science Foundation. The idea is to get as many volunteers worldwide to check out a constellation in the evening sky and report how many stars they see. The reports are then used to map global light pollution (fellow amateur astronomy buffs know what a pain light pollution can be!) Teachers: There is still time to get involved in the count. Check out the activity guide. It looks like a really neat exercise that children would really enjoy. It teaches them a nice mixture of astronomy, global positioning using a Geocoder and reporting their findings with online technologies.
Be sure to check out the iQity website & blog and watch the iQity Learning Suite video to learn more about this amazing company.

Working with SME's

Since most of us will someday have to work in collaboration with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) I found this blog to be very useful. I wanted to share it with the class. The Rapid eLearning Blog, one of our class blog links, is fantastic. I subscribe to it and I'm never disappointed when I read the new posts. They're always brilliant and incredibly useful. Enjoy!

Blog devoted to K-12

http://www.edutagger.com/

Edutagger is a bookmarking site that provides a wealth of links to educational tools for teachers, parents and students. Contributors post links relative to education and others can search, comment and access these websites. Edutagger then separates the links by popularity and recent postings. People who are registered on the site then have an opportunity to vote on the relevancy and usefulness of the site. Based on these votes, a site can be added to the popularity tab. The beauty of this site and most blogging sites is that no amount of individual Internet searching (google etc.) can result in the collective resources contributed by others with similar interests.

Here are a just a few of the links I found using edutagger:

Math

http://www.mathguide.com

http://www.nctm.org/resources/default.aspx?id=230

http://www.funbrain.com/

http://whdb.com/2008/learn-programming-online-for-free-75-open-courseware-collections-from-the-ivy-league-and-beyond/- Learning programming from home

As I mentioned earlier, there are a wealth of sites here. If you 're looking for some interesting resources, don't reinvent the wheel check edutagger and see if someone has already posted a link to what you're looking for.

Google Blog Search

Google as adapted it's news search technology for blog posts. With its revamped Blog Search, Google can now better track the thousands of new blog posts made per day.

The search features greatly resemble your standard Google Search features including Search, Advanced Search, and Preferences. On the left side of the site, popular subtopics (Top Stories, Politics, US, World, Business, Technology, Video Games, Science, Entertainment, Movies, Television, Sports) are included for easier searching.

Kudos for Google making a simple, straightforward, blog search.

Links: Google launches 'Google News for blogs'

Blogging News

I was looking for information related to blogging. When I visit some sites they are old and have not been accessed for a few months to even years. I wanted to see what others feel about these obsolete, unvisited blogs and found this website that discusses new software that may replace the simple blog. Shyftr is one http://www.shyftr.com/

Article retrieved from The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2905/blogs-may-be-rendered-obsolete-by-new-technology

Great Site - Classroom 2.0!

I found a great website for those people who are interested in breaking out of the boundaries of a classroom and collaborating with other teachers, students, administration, and integration technologists in transforming education. It is a supportative, social community with suggestions, experiences, and stories on how they use or want to use technology in their classrooms. There are wikis, blogs, online meetings, many different groups (ArtTeach, MAC Classroom 2.0, Distance Collaborations, High School Math Teachers, Implementing Instructional Technologies Innovations, Second Life, etc) that you can join, and a ton of other extremely interesting videos, photos, and chats to join and see. Check it out…you won’t be disappointed! http://www.classroom20.com/

Great Unofficial Apple BLOG

I was very impressed with the quality of information that I found on this site. This was one of the first Computer blogs I encountered that has well rounded content section. It covers beginner through Apple IT Professional. Perfect example of WEB 2.0. Hope you enjoy.


http://www.tuaw.com/

Justifying blogging

As a technology integration coach, I'm often asked to assess (in fact, often defend) the educational value of particular technology tools. The tools that most often seem to be on the hot seat are Web 2.o tools. (Cell phones and iPods, too, but more on that in an upcoming blog entry!) Blogging has gotten some particular attention lately and I wanted to share this link with you to a different blog called "2 cents worth: Justifying Blogging". Check it out - many educators have given examples of how they use blogs in the classroom and what benefits they are seeing from doing so.

Great Tool for Teachers and Students! Schoolwires

Recently, I attended a meeting at our School District about changing the way we maintain, update, and change our website. We met with a rep from http://www.schoolwires.com/, a company from State College, PA that offers a variety of web tools for teachers, students, parents, administration, and the community to utilize. Schoolwires will create your website to your specifications, host the website, and enable teachers to create their own websites without having to know a line of code. Word, xhtml, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver are just a few of the tools teachers can use to create their website. In addition, teachers can upload their homework every night and include important dates on a district calendar. Blogs and wikis will be available to the students, which will open up a whole new way of learning and communicating with each other and their teachers. The entire implementation will take up to 6 months so as we progress through the design and integration, I will report on our progress and any new and exiting features that I learn about!

Water 4 Gas

Honestly, I only use forums, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools when I need something. Rather than casual blogging as a hobby, I use these tools as a support system for my other hobbies. One that I found recently is a blog about increasing gas mileage for your vehicle. This is a great tool for you DIY people and for anyone looking to combat the ridiculous gas prices.

http://waterhybrids.blogspot.com/

This site offers threads and video tutorials teaching you how to convert your gasoline-powered vehicle into a gas-water hybrid. Regardless of your opinions on this subject, this blog offers great suggestions for saving money, which is crucial in today's not-so-booming economy. The results of this project can yield a double in your vehicle's MPG! In my research, it was not uncommon to find consumers who have transformed their 30 MPG vehicle into a 60+ MPG traveling money-saver. Since oil companies try their best to hide this and other related facts, the Web is an excellent resource on this topic. Please add any additional sites/resources that you know of on this subject.