Zoho Notebook Goes Public – Imagine the Educational Potential

I ran across Zoho Notebook a while ago, but it was only in private Beta… well today it went public. Here is a short video introducing some of the features!

Now just imagine what you could do with this in education! Students keeping track of not only notes but all of their online content… video’s, RSS reads, webpages (marked up), audio, embedded html (like an online calendar) that automatically updates… WOW! Beyond all that, it is accessible everywhere and backed up on Zoho’s servers!

Teachers can use all of the same features, but the beauty really come in when you realize you can share it with others (chat online with them) and even publish it online for your students. Publish just a part of a lesson, publish a lesson plan for other teachers, heck, you can even embed it in a webpage. Wow! I’ll have to explore more when I am a little more rested (see previous post).

By Jeff | Posted on: May 22, 2007 at 8:25 pm | Comments (7)

4 Things Good Teachers do to Get Students REALLY Involved in Projects

Almost all of the students in classrooms K-12, and a large percentage of students in colleges are ‘digital natives,’ or students who grew up with ubiquitous access to digital media. These are those who can’t remember a time without e-mail and the internet. Because these students are intimately familiar with computers, the web, and the latest and greatest technology we can benefit by teaching them differently than students in the past… they are a new generation of learners.

4 Things to Get ‘Digital Native’ Students REALLY Involved

1. Make the Final Product SHAREABLE!

If a student knows that their work is going to a larger audience they will naturally take more time to work on it. The easiest way to do that is use Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wiki’s, podcasts, and online video. Of course, you will need to be comfortable with those technologies yourself.

2. PROJECT’S, not Assignments!

Don’t give students a bunch of assignments, give them one larger project with a end result that students can see. Although this may take longer, students will naturally get more involved. They will want to be involved with the topic beyond the end of class.

3. Encourage students to use POPULAR TECHNOLOGIES they are familiar with!

The latest and greatest technology is more than likely taking over your student’s life’s. Encourage them to find educational uses for it. Almost every new web startup, or tech gadget can be used in an educational way. If you encourage the students to use these technologies they will come up with ideas that you could never have thought of yourself. (Oh, and they will think you’re cool because you encourage them to use their iPod in class. :) )

4. Give the Student’s OPTIONS!

Don’t limit your students to any specific medium of transfer. Some digital natives love music and would make an amazing music video, or write an amazing song. Others would do better with video like the example below.

EXAMPLE of a Great Project!

This morning I was reading the Infinite Thinking Machine, a blog I highly recommend, and I came across a video produced by some 12th grade students for an English project. The project is called MacBeth Wars and can be seen below.

From the introduction on Google Video:

This movie was done for a 12th grade english project, parodying Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” with a Star Wars style. It features the majority of the Macbeth storyline, and includes a 3-minute lightsaber duel between Macbeth and Macduff near the end.

Then the most amazing part…

We hope to release Macbeth Wars II, a project purely for our own fun, by summer 2007.

Wow! You don’t have to watch the whole production to realize that this project was probably WELL beyond what was required of them for the class. It has great digital effects, sounds effects, multiple video shots in each scene and appropriate background music. This project surely took hundreds of hours to complete AND they want to do another one in their FREE time! Now that is a good project!

What other things have you done, or seen done that really get student’s involved? What other projects have you seen that are just amazing? Do share in the comments!

By Jeff | Posted on: April 27, 2007 at 9:10 am | Comments (3)

The Internet has a Face – Video!

Digital Ethnography, the people that brought us the edublogger smash-hit “The Machine is Using Us,” has put out a new video entitled “The Internet has a Face.” From their post introducing the video:

“Before, we were reliant upon what the user has expressed through words, however, when one can read beyond words through visuals, the communication seems to become more “human and personal.” If there was a fear that the internet was making society antisocial, vlogging would seek to prove otherwise.”

UPDATE: The video used to be here, but I removed it because of a repeated expletive throughout the video. If you want to see it you can click here but it may not be work appropriate.

As I watch this video I begin to realize the impact online media has had on our culture and will continue to have. We are truly digital people who live and share our lives online.

By Jeff | Posted on: April 9, 2007 at 4:05 pm |

Twitter? Really?

Okay… I have been reading about twitter in all sorts of forums including Time Magazine the past month or so.  Just like everything I do, I signed up and tried it out… but didn’t see the point a couple of weeks ago.  Well, it just won’t go away, so I am going to try and again a little bit more. 

I have embedded a twitter badge on my sidebar that I will attempt to update throughout the day with what I am doing.  But I think the point of twitter is to make friends and follow what they are doing.  So if you use twitter, please let me know so I can add you as a friend.  Feel free to add me as a friend too.  (http://twitter.com/edutechie)  If you don’t use twitter, feel free to sign up and use me to test it out with me. 

So the real question is… how can we use this in education?  Not sure yet… I’ll let you know…

By Jeff | Posted on: April 3, 2007 at 7:48 am | Comments (3)

Research 2.0 Wiki – WOW!

I have been absolutely amazed at the way my research habits have changed since I became familiar with the web 2.0, RSS feeds, Google alerts, social bookmarking sites and so forth.  I am learning more, learning it faster, finding it easier, and in most cases, just waiting for it to come to me. 

I have long wanted to write a blog entry about how to do some of these things and I probably will still do that to some extent but tonight I came across this AMAZING Research 2.0 wiki (Thanks to Vicki Davis).  This is probably the best resource I have ever seen to show how the internet has changed research.  I particually recommend the Changing your Research Mindset section.  There are links to everything!

[On a sidenote... I am still amazed at how much blogging and instructional technology has motivated me.  Here it is 12:30 at night.  I should have been in bed a long time ago, but I couldn't go to bed without writing about this... and this... and this...  There is so much out there! Man, I love technology!  :-) ]

By Jeff | Posted on: March 23, 2007 at 11:39 pm | Comments (1)

Something That Everyone Does With Their Friends

I ran across an article today on kotte.org that made me think a bit.  The article itself is about Web 2.0 and how it became important, but one thing said really stuck out to me in regard to education and technology.

A slightly related way of thinking about how to choose web projects is to take something that everyone does with their friends and make it public and permanent.

This is a great synopsis of what motivates students to use technology today.  They have something they normally do with their friends and make it public and permanent. 

Often (for good or bad) we as educators take over and try to take this ‘something that everybody does with their friends’ that is not ‘public and permanent’ and apply it to the classroom.  Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  I will leave the examples up to the reader’s mind this time (I have to actually get some work done around here), but the article points out four good Web 2.0 examples… Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.  I know at least three of them have been applied to education… still not sure about Twitter…

By Jeff | Posted on: March 23, 2007 at 11:53 am | Comments (1)

Second Life Speaks – Imagine the POTENTIAL!

Today there was an article on TechCrunch entitled “Second Life Speaks.”  The article outlines a beta development for the world of Second Life in which residents will not only be able to talk with one another using VOIP protocol, but avatar’s voices will be adjusted “relative to you based on the distance and direction of the speaker.”  Wow!  Now that is getting more real life. 

I have been playing around in Second Life for some time and while my first experience left me intrigued, I kind of dismissed its possible educational use as a virtual classroom.  Relationships were being developed, knowledge was being transferred, but it just took too long to communicate.  With this new development we will have the two most important senses for learning, audio and visual. 

Potential

As I think about my last post about Second Life, I am starting to see the potential here.  If you recall, I was inspired to write because of an article written about Second Life becoming the new internet.  Not just a place to go, but a virtualization of the net. 

Imagine with me for a moment logging onto second life and going to your virtual history classroom (that looks just like your real one).  You sit down with the teacher, and start a lecture, but soon you all transport to a history site and walk through some virtual pictures, or even buildings of some historic event.  Class ends, but you bookmark your location so you can come back later and take a better look around. 

You transport yourself to your virtual Art classroom next.  Same story.  Class starts, you talk for a couple minute then transport to the Salle des États to look at the Mona Lisa.  You can move around the room to look at it from different perspectives, or zoom in as close as you want to see each tiny detail. 

Next you have Spanish class, but this class doesn’t meet on campus, it meets on popular virtual beach in Mexico.  Today you are interacting with all sorts of locals talking, chatting, building relationships with the Spanish skills you have been honing the past 3 years.

You really enjoyed the “break” in the middle of the day and head off to your last class of the day, business.  You quickly change the profile on your avatar to professional attire (the swimsuit from Spanish just won’t do) and transport to your business class (which just happens to me meeting around a virtual board room table).  The class has invested in some virtual property and are discussing some ways to market that property in Second Life. 
With all your classes done, you decide to do some research for your business class and take your avatar and head off to a popular executive meeting place.  You start chatting with some people, not knowing who they are, and soon realize you are talking with a marketing director from IBM who likes to hang out in Second Life in his spare time.  You try to glean as much information as you can before he has to leave.  He adds you as a friend and every once in a while you’ll meet up and talk.

Okay, perhaps all this is an idealized view of what can happen with Second Life, but a lot of this is already happening too.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I met people from all over the world, in all sorts of different backgrounds.  There are no apparent social classes and you can talk to pretty much anyone, anywhere.  The person you are talking to may be a CEO of an organization, or it may be your friend from high school. 

This little scenario is just one example.  The possibilities are endless. 

UNC’s Second Life

On a sidenote, for those reading this from UNC-CH, I went to a lecture
last week on campus about Second Life and apparently we have our own
island.  If you are familiar with Second Life you can find it at these
coordinates: 215.176.27.  It is a work in progress, but it constantly
amazes me how much we can make a virtual landscape look like the real
one.  Stop on by, take a look around, but if want to see a fully
functioning University Campus check out Ohio University (22.137.26).

By Jeff | Posted on: February 28, 2007 at 9:41 am | Comments (12)

Top Web Tools for College Students from NextPath

Just found this great webpage that has 10 tools for college students.  I post a link to it here both for my friends still in school that may read this, but also for instructors who want to know what students are using and how they are using it.  Every teacher that I know is (or should be) a life-long learner too… enjoy!!

Top 10 list includes:

  1. Book Finder
  2. MynoteIT
  3. Ottobib
  4. Google Docs
  5. Tada List
  6. Meebo
  7. Wikipedia
  8. Zoho Show
  9. Google Reader
  10. Del.icio.us

By Jeff | Posted on: February 16, 2007 at 11:31 am | Comments (2)

Web Applications for Collaboration

TechCrunch recently launched an online Web 2.0 dictionary site (go2web20.net).  It is fantastic.  I highly recommend checking it out.  For those in education you can click on the ‘Select Tag’ at the top and select collaboration below that (sorry no direct link).  It has some old time favorites, but there are a lot of new web applications I have never seen before. 

Note:  They are constantly updating the list too.  Since yesterday there are already two new applications.  Looking for something new to try out… great place to start! 

By Jeff | Posted on: February 9, 2007 at 5:00 pm |

GREAT article with Insights about Teaching Today!

I have not had much time to post as of late, but have to pass this on!  I read a GREAT article today from Will Richardson.  He mentioned 10 things we need to ‘unlearn’ if we are to progress as teachers!  This is for those out there that aren’t already subscribed to Will’s blog.

  1. We need to unlearn the idea that we are the sole content experts in
    the classroom, because we can now connect our kids to people who know
    far more than we do about the material we’re teaching.
  2. We need to unlearn the premise that we know more than our kids, because in many cases, they can now be our teachers as well.
  3. We need to unlearn the idea that learning itself is an event. In this day and age, it is a continual process.
  4. We need to unlearn the strategy that collaborative work inside the
    classroom is enough and understand that cooperating with students from
    around the globe can teach relevant and powerful negotiation and
    team-building skills.
  5. We need to unlearn the idea that every student needs to learn the
    same content when really what they need to learn is how to self-direct
    their own learning.
  6. We need to unlearn the notion that our students don’t need to see and understand how we ourselves learn.
  7. We need to unlearn our fear of putting ourselves and our students
    “out there” for we’ve proven we can do it in safe, relevant and
    effective ways.
  8. We need to unlearn the practice that teaches all students at the
    same pace. Is it any wonder why so many of our students love to play
    online games where they move forward at their own pace?
  9. We need to unlearn the idea that we can teach our students to be
    literate in this world by continually blocking and filtering access to
    the sites and experiences they need our help to navigate.
  10. We need to unlearn the premise that real change can happen just by
    rethinking what happens inside the school walls and understand that
    education is now a community undertaking on many different levels.

I feel like one of those congregation members in the deep south Baptist churches who yell out ‘AMEN’ as the preacher preaches.  Amen Will, Amen!!

By Jeff | Posted on: February 7, 2007 at 10:56 am | Comments (3)