16 Things, thing # 16 using PhotoPeach and the final Evaluation.

PhotoPeach is a cool sharing tool for your photos.  It basically creates a slide show out of photos that you upload.  It is free; however, the paid version allows you unlimited downloads so you can save copies of your slideshow.  Thinking about equity in access to technology, I have used the free version. Your can make you show public and copy two different embed codes.  These are HTML strings that create movie windows like the ones below.  The first design is called spiral for obvious reasons. The second is called Story and includes royalty free music from a variety of sources.  Story also pauses at the end to allow views to send in comments.  PhotoPeach is web 2.0 and therefore has social likes to Google+, face book, twitter and others.

Spiral


Story

This is an easy to setup and use tool that should be very popular with your students.  When you think TPACK consider PhotoPeaches ability to be used as a reflection piece. For Visual Art classes, students could upload images of their work and create a portfolio with background music.  With PhotoPeach free, your are allowed 29 images per story but could create more than one.  The teacher could embed the story or spiral code into a school portal class page or blog. 

Please give specific answers for each question.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I was really impressed with how well Flickr has matured in the last year since I had used it last.  It is a huge source of pride to share photos I have taken with my family on any computer in front of us at the time.  The interface is visual and integrated.  I was able to upload photos easily into this project.

I also was very surprised with Blogger.  I am a big fan of Weebly, but blogger's interface was easy to master in just a few hours. I wanted to show some of the technology I use at school in the banner and a list of skills to use in teaching critical thinking in the background.

2. How has this type of program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

It gave me a greater appreciation of the wide talents and skills needed to teach with technology.  I wrote from the point of view of a teacher mentoring other teachers.  I hope to place this blog in my tool box.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I really learned how valuable two tools are for me.  Evernote and Zite.  Evernote handles the bulk of my note taking and collaborative work load.  It is integrated with all of the browsers on the various computers that I use regularly as well as on the Internet and available on classroom computers.  I learned to love it more through the use of web 2.0 tools that could do some but not all of Evernote's workload.

Zite is the RSS reader I use. Its artificial intelligence algorithm is so helpful that it really out shines the other offerings.  It's only liability is that is only runs on iOS these days.  I can't wait for the Windows 8 version to arrive.  I keep and iPad running just for Zite.  Zite pulls feed from research fountains that few can tap and none can beat.

4. What could I do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I could only suggest that you include a collaborative project in which a three teachers needed to work together to create a past that included artifacts that they had worked on together.  Something beyond Skype.

Maybe it is just me, but it seemed as if still photos were reused in several things.  For example Flickr, More with flickr and then Peachphoto.  Maybe a good exercise would be to use a mind map like text2mindmap and regroup these "things" into an intuitive sequence or a skills building sequence.

I am not sure how this skill could be worked in, but using e readers like Kindle.  Note taking, book marking, social network sharing of key phrases or paragraphs.  Putting research PDF files in to a folder accesses by an E reader.  I use iTunes and ibooks, I place a research document from the HBU library in the iTunes folder and then I have it ready for quick searches, cut and past quotes and general reading.  I can also use iBooks to access and organize notes in the marginalia of the E book.

Thing # 15 Things like Skype

Do you remember George Jetson? His video phone that let him talk to his family and see them at the same time.  Well Skype does this with two computers.  In a similar way that a Podcast sends sound and YouTube sends video, Skype sends them together from both your computer and that of the computer on the other end. This simulates a telephone call.  The picture at the right is of my family in Cuenca, Ecuador during an earlier visit.  We Skype from Houston to Cuenca to keep in touch.  It is so cool to see them crowd around the computer to fit everyone in the web camera's field of view.  While many of the adults haven't changed from year to year, the little ones grow up so fast that Skype offers a great way to watch them grow between visits.

 

Skype is a great educational tool as well.  When you think of equity of access to technology, think of Skype.  For a small amount of donated hardware and an Internet connection two cultures can come together.

 

Cultures, I focus on "culture" because a face to face is more reveling than email, library books, film strips or text books.  When two students get together they find a way to share and communicate ideas about where they live and what the have in common and what is different.  This can mean lessons in ecology, language, social studies, science, history, politics, art, and so much more.  The only caveat is time zones.  When calling long distance north and south are no problem. Cuenca is in the same time zone as Houston, but Paris is about 7 hours earlier. So a morning call here could be an after school or evening call somewhere else. 

 

Setting up a Skype kiosk in another schools is a great community service project.  Students can raise the money to buy a set of computers and send one to the other school and begin sharing.

 

Skype isn't the only tool or the best one, but it is the most common and most prevalent. Blue Jeans, WebX, Go-to-meeting, meetinganywhere, and anymeeting  are all tools that I have either tried or investigated.  They all offer the two way communication over the Internet but each adds different features like desktop control, a white board work area, chatting on the side while conferencing, multiple parties, as in not just to callers but many more and in various locations.

 

Recently, I called tech support at Adobe and they jumped into a conference tool like PC anywhere and shared my computer's desktop, mouse and keyboard and verbally explained what I needed to do next time.  That was really helpful.

These are awesome teaching tools and can make a big difference in a child's life.  I started using them for tech support calls and then to family calls to gain confidence before trying to use it in the classroom.  My advice is practice at home before trying to use Skype in the classroom as nothing is worse than a room full of students waiting for technology to start working. It can turn minutes into hours.

Thing # 14 Podcasting and Bookmarking

Yeah! Let's cheer for Podcasting and Bookmarking. Podcasting has been around for a while.  It is like old Radio and TV.  Podcasts are audio and/or video files that are streamed via RSS feeds to your iPod, smart phone, tablet or computer.  There are numerous podcasts to listen to and learn all sorts of things.  Rick Perry helped create educational podcasts with the Texas Education Agency.  They are easily found through iTunes. Just look for the iTunes U button and search for TEA.  At first all I could find were old 2012 podcasts, but with a little probing I found more recent ones from this summer.
There was one in particular called Metaphor and Contrast that provided clear examples in just 4 minutes.  It used clips from President Kennedy and other world leaders.  Another one I liked, "I have a question: What is 21st century learning?" This was an audio visual podcast that was exceptionally clear and through wonderful graphics demonstrated how the 21st century learning revolves around creative thinking and the power of an inquisitive mind.

Podcasts are easy to make and easy to upload to free access locations like iTunes U.  It takes a bit of skill to define metaphor and contrast in just 4 minutes with examples.  This is a good tool to help develop the ability to articulate ideas eloquently and with economy of speech.

 Don't get fenced in or limited in research because you can't remember how to locate all those perfect URLs from the sites visited over summer vacation. Next time, bookmark them!

No, not the browsers bookmark, that limits you to one computer and one browser.  Many people use an iPad at home, a computer at our desk, and one in the classroom.  That could mean Mac OS, iOS and Windows 8, or it could mean Safari, Chrome, Explorer and, my favorite, Opera. So check out Delicious  .  Delicious lets you save a site from the browser plug-in or cut and paste the URL.  Then add a description and some clarifying Tags, and it's saved.  Next time you can search by tag or title or topic and Delicious will collect all of the sites that are similar or that you want together.  This really saves time.

Tags?  A tag is like a fast find.  Take the site http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Bloom's_Taxonomy for example.  I could find it by Blooms Taxonomy or UGA.EDU and get thousands of suggestions. Or I could go to Delicious and search for the tags I gave the site: Critical thinking, Blooms, HLT, and PinE. I would find six sites that I have seen before, and liked, and that are about the same idea.  But wait there's more! Delicious is social as in web 2.0.  You can search you friends' site and get even more suggestions.  Plus you can share them with your students, sending them only the sites you select.
So next time you get boxed in, use a social book mark like Delicious.  Tags are great, but work best when develop a system.