some useful tools

Those who know me IRL will find this post repetitive from my other site, but for the others I hope you find this post helpful!

Recently I attended a conference for the Texas Distance Learning Association – which, as the name implies, is an associate for Texas schools (k-12 and higher ed) that utilize distance learning techniques for their students. Like any conference/convention, there was much to see and do! There was a vendor showcase, main keynote presentations, as well as several breakout sessions. Now, I’ve been to many conferences before, and I was worried that like many that I’ve attended, there wouldn’t be much content for me to really appreciate. I mean, I’m not an educator, a buyer, a seller, nor am I involved really in curriculum decisions – so what possibly could I get out of this? Well, I was definitely surprised!

I chose several breakout sessions that were about different technologies themselves, not the curriculum side of things. I learned a lot, not necessarily about “new” technologies, but more about how you can unlock their potential. These aren’t really ideas that are tied down only to education, but more just about using more than just one or two programs/websites to achieve your goals.

Conversely, I also learned just how over-saturated the market is out there. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are a million programs that can perform the same functions…but I was surprised just how diverse each school’s approach can be. I mean, I attended one session where we were handed a list of about 20 resources that you can use in the classroom, and another session where the presenter had built a lesson in Powerpoint, with links embedded to take the student to either another slide, or to a website. His argument was that students know Powerpoint, but asking them to learn several new programs before learning the classroom materials was just too much.

So where does that leave me besides more confused than I was to begin with? Well, I came away with a better understanding of the following:

School is nowhere near the same as when I left it: Students are carrying cell phones as early at 6-9 years old, and some forward-thinking schools are harnessing them as learning tools, because they know that they will lose the battle if they just try to ban them from the classroom. One session I attended even suggested a web 3.0 classroom, using the fact that though some homes still do not have computers, nearly everyone has a cell phone or access to a cell phone. In this scenario students could access ebooks, the internet, produce video, and even compose papers using only their cell phones.

And here I sit remembering that book laden, feels-like-it-weighs-100-pounds backpack I used to carry to school.

Children learn through teaching: Did you know that half of the content on YouTube is produced by children (I believe it was under the age of 15??). And that half is about 250,000,000 hours worth? Since the creation of Television, we have produced less than 22 million hours of programming. Now, granted a LOT of that 250 million on YouTube is crap, but the point is that many classrooms are harnessing this creative power of the newer generations and using it to have students produce videos of how-tos and the like. One of the best lessons I took away is that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

Twitter is insane: Seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on Twitter for nearly 2 years (of course only really started using it about a year ago), I have 958 Tweets, and I get to follow some awesome people – like my childhood favorite from Star Trek, @BrentSpiner, or the musical composer from Battlestar Galactica (and now Caprica!), @BearMcCreary, or even something actually useful, like news updates from @CBS11News.

(It also allows me to create some insanely long run-on sentences, apparently!)

BUT – what I did not realize until attending one particular session was the extent that Twitter plays in the media. The example given was the Iranian elections back last May/June. Now, I was on Twitter then, tweeting away, and I noticed some people, like @GrantImahara (from the @Mythbusters!) changing their avatars to green, in support of the elections. But I, as I sometimes do, did not feel like following the news at the time, because it can tend to be depressing sometimes and I just did not feel like getting depressed at the time. So, I had no idea what was going on with the elections in Iran. Well, if you don’t know anything about it either, and want to know more about the role that Twitter played, I found a really nice timeline over at Newsweek which explains it much better than I ever could.

I learned so much more that I wish I could put into some eloquent words here, but I am just overflowing with so much of it that I just wanted to get some of those larger points down. I do want to share all the resources I was exposed to though, so I will try to link those here with some meager explanations.

Presentations: There were many presentations about…presentations! Ways to either enhance or bypass the “same old” PowerPoint.

Prezi – I’ve actually used this before and really like it! There are some limitations to it, such as the color pallette and font choices, but it’s got some great segway animations between “slides.” Here is one that I did for TSTC a couple of months ago.

Sliderocket – From what I understand, this is another flash-based presentation editor, but it does many more things than Prezi, like charts and graphs, and more bells and whistles, I’m not sure if you can get all those things for free though.

SlideShare – this site lets you upload and share your PowerPoint or Keynote presentations with others.

SlideBoom – this site will take your presentation and convert it for you to embed on your site, blog, etc.

AuthorStream – another sharing site. This one will convert your slides into a video to download and put on YouTube, etc.

xTimeLine – I really liked this! This web-based program allows you to create and edit a timeline. Did you ever have to do those in school? I did, and they were always a pain because I would always forget something, some point that would that make or break the thing, and I would have to start all over, because it was done on posterboard with markers. I really thought this was a great tool that I would have otherwise not thought of!

TimeGlider – this is a lot like xTimeLine, and at first glance it appears to have more features available.

PowerPoint Auto Tweet: Now this I think was my favorite tool that I saw. I was in a session, listening to the presenter (the presentation on the Iran Election and Twitter), and as he’s giving his presentation, I’m also seeing tweets pop up from this guy’s user account with links to what he’s talking about. I thought he was using some sort of dark magic until he gave me this link after the presentation.

Collaborative Voice and Video Applications: The TxDLA folks were all about these types of applications – one ISD was particularly impressive in their use of Skype between classrooms across their district. Another used an example of a pen-pal class, where classrooms would ask each other questions and based on the answers, try to find them on a map of the US.

Skype – as mentioned above, from all the examples I saw of distance video conferencing, including the fancy schmancy kinds you paid for, Skype seemed the most reliable and user-friendly.

UStream.tv – Free streaming video. I had seen this site a couple of years ago and forgot all about it. Some schools are using it to stream the morning announcements (which students as announcers). It’s a fun way to get students involved, and parents and grandparents can watch their kids from home/work during the announcements.

Justin.tv – Ustream, repeated.

Ellumiate v-room – This is more like Skype, and more widely used in the education arena. There is a free 3-person room version (I can’t remember if it’s video and audio, or audio only), but of course you can purchase the software to have a whole classroom of people in there.

OoVoo – Same concept as Elluminate, with a free 2-person voice room, and a pay option for more bells and whistles (and peoples)

VoiceThread – now this was pretty cool! I almost wanted to put it under the “fun” category. Here you can upload photos, etc, and for each “slide” you can tell a story. You can even have 2 or more people say a blurb about each slide. The example we saw had photos of a trip to grandmas, and each child told a little bit about how much fun it was, then the presentation was emailed to the grandparents. I know it doesn’t make much sense here, but if you go to the site and see some examples, it will make more sense!

Screen Capture sites: These come in handy when you’re trying to teach an application. Now, I’ve always just used the PrntScrn button on my computer for a still shot screen capture, but some of these allow you to capture a little video of your actions on the screen.

CamStudio – Nice free software to capture your screen

Jing Project – this one appears to do stills and videos

ScreenToaster – Another free site to capture your screen. This one looks to be web based.

Fun Stuff: Here are just some sites that I learned about that were just fun!

ScapBlog – I’ve never really gotten into the whole scrapbooking thing…with good reason! I know that once I start that I would be hopelessly hooked and spend a billion dollars on it. That being said, this could be equally as time consuming and potentially less expensive, but I’m still scared to navigate past the landing page…for now!

GoAnimate – from what I remember, this site lets you record your own voice, then use these pre-designed animated cartoons to act out a scene for you, I think kids would really enjoy it…ok and adults too.

XtraNormal – this looks a lot like GoAnimate, but with more backgrounds and it appears that the characters are done in a 3D design. I believe that you don’t record your voice either, you just type in some text and the program uses text-to-speech for the little movies.

PhotoPeach – upload your photos, and then create a video with motion and music. Sigh…to think that I used to make good money doing that for people…technology showing me up again!

SketchCast – capture your screen as you sketch something while recording audio. Voila! Instructional video.

Another Tweet on the Wall – If you are following any particular hashtags, and just want something visually appealing, this will display the results and entertain you!

Ok…my eyes are now blurry! If you made it this far…you seriously need to get out! Get some fresh air and keep your brain from dripping out of your ears!

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