Insights Into Educational Technology
Miscellaneous
Presenting Pictures with PicLens
Jun 3rd
PicLens is a great eye candy tool for web browsers, and can turn any collection of videos and pictures on a site into an engaging, dynamic presentation. It comes in two flavors: the non-browser plugin version and the browser plugin version. It also lets you search for videos and pictures on YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, and more. Weber School District’s own WeberTube has PicLens support built-in (click on “Slideshow”).
If you do not download the browser plugin for either Internet Explorer or Firefox, you will be treated to a slideshow format of your media. It’s pretty, to say the least. But download the plugin and you get an immersive 3d viewing experience.
Use PicLens on your interactive whiteboard when you want to show a video or photo to your students, and watch their eyes and ears perk right up.
[flv]http://www.webertube.com/media/video/188.flv[/flv]
Utah State University Joins OpenCourseWare Project
May 17th
More and more universities are joining up to offer a variety of course materials through the OpenCourseWare project, and Utah State University is now one of the partner institutions involved in this laudable venture. This site is made possible by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and visitors will be delighted to learn that they can make their way through course materials from over a dozen departments, such as anthropology, economics, electrical and computer engineering, and wildland resources. Within each department, visitors will also note that there are tabs that allow them to email a friend about the course and also link up to an RSS feed. There are some great course materials here, including those from “Introduction to Writing” and the “History of Utah”.
From The Scout Report
Monitoring Current Events with Twitter
May 16th
Technical Level: Beginner
Type: Practical Applications
Yesterday Business Week ran an article about how Twitter has impacted how people communicate. Twitter is a “microblogger.” Microblogs are short text updates; similar to blogs, but shorter and without the “frills.” There are other microblogging services such as Jaiku and Pownce, but Twitter is by far the most popular.
The power of Twitter is that you can effectively construct your own, unique social network of people whose Twitter messages (called “tweets”) you follow. Another strength is that messages can be posted from anywhere, including mobile devices using SMS. When someone in your network posts a message, your RSS reader, or instant messenger, or cell phone, or whatever you may be using to receive tweets is updated. You could use this to receive helpful real-time tips from other teachers, hear what’s currently happening at the latest teachers’ conference, receive instant alerts to your cell phone, and so on. One student even used it to get himself out of jail.
There are some pretty cool applications for Twitter. TwitterVision and TwitterMap use Google Maps to display tweets while TwittEarth displays tweets on a 3d globe. TwitterTroll and TweetScan are search engines that let you find other Twitterers who share your interests, or search through all the latest tweets. TwitterMail and MessageDance integrate Twitter with your email account, so you can receive and send messages directly from your email box. There are many, many other applications as well.
In all honesty, Twitter really isn’t an application for everyone. Not everyone needs the real-time feel of knowing what’s happening in everyone else’s lives, and there are other ways to connect with other people online. Nevertheless, it can be a useful tool in the classroom. There is even a school-based Twitter-like network designed for students, called Youth Twitter. How do you think you could use Twitter in a lesson or homework assignment?
Robert Scoble, PodTech.net‘s Vice President of Media Development, was watching his Twitter account when the May 12, 2008 earthquake began in the Sichuan Province of China. Some in the area were Twittering about the earthquake while it was happening. Over the next few hours, Twitter was flooded with reports, pictures, and videos from people at the ground level.
TwitterLocal is a useful tool that monitors messages coming from a geographic region. If we want to learn what people are currently saying in Sichuan, we visit the site, type in “Sichuan,” and come up with a list of the latest tweets. Most of them are in Chinese, but a visit to Google Translate fixes that.
After selecting “Chinese to English” and entering the TwitterLocal URL after we found the Sichuan tweets, we have this:
This is a powerful tool for students to feel the riveting effects of international incidents, to find out how they are affecting real people, in their own words, through their own photos and videos, and to be even closer to the scene than watching what the news shows.