Yugma - a FREE solution for Webinars and Courses

Looking for a free way to broadcast those webinars or provide course connections where you can share your computer screen while you discuss ideas with your students? Then Yugma might be your answer.

This online solution will provides an interface that is relatively easy to sign onto and very easy to use.

In all fairness, only the introductory package of Yugma is free. It is limited to 10 attendees, desktop sharing, free teleconferencing, whiteboard, public/private chat, and MS Outlook/Skype compatibility. THAT'S ALL. But that's ALOT!

My colleague, Robin Galloway, did a great review of Yugma after we played around with it last week. You should check it out.

I searched YouTube for some video support and found 3 videos about Yugma (also found a cute young boy named Yugma whose parents like video record and post them on YouTube as well.) This video shows how Yugma can be integrated with Skype.




If you want to enjoy other YouTube videos about Yugma you can go here.

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Google Sites ROCKS!!!

Just found out about Google Sites. It appears to be the next step in the Google Tools quest to create a world of online application tools.

"Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information -- from videos to presentations -- and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world." sites.google.com

I must admit that I haven't been able to do much more than create an account but it is an interesting process:

Google asked for my email address. Since it was Google, I thought that I would insert my gmail account (leigh.zeitz@gmail.com). Interestingly enough, when I hit the Return key, Google responsed with "Sorry, we are not servicing this domain yet." 0-;

So I entered my regular email account at the University of Northern Iowa and it took it. Google Sites told me that it would send me an email to validate the email account.

WOULD YOU BELIEVE that the email the sent me said that they had validated the domain, uni.edu, and it had the UNI Panther connected to it? How connected it that? Actually, I looked at the list of the 20 UNI folks who had discovered this before me and it was good to see that some of them were students in our Educational Technology minor.

This looks like a wonderful addition to the Google tools and it will revolutionize the meaning of collaborative writing/invention/innovation.

First thing I did to keep from having to read anything was to jump to YouTube.com and here is a video that was create by the Google folks. It is narrated by Scott Johnston who was the VP of Product Development at JotSpot.com As you may know, JotSpot was purchased by Google a while ago and this is the first JotSpot product released under Google's name.

Great Resource for Techies

Just found a great resource for videos on how to use technology. It is called Ask the Techies. I was amazed by depth and breadth of the videos that are there. It's over 60 videos.

Quick Online Video Captures R FREE!!!

Ever want to make a quick tutorial or make quickly share some ideas or problems that involve showing what is on your computer screen? Sure, you can do this with Camtasia or SnapzPro, but I am talking about Free and Online!!! I recently found a few free online programs that will allow you to do this:

Jing is a system that will allow you to take a screen capture or create a screen video with narration and instantly upload it to share with others. This involves a small program that will download onto your Mac or Windows computer. It is quite easy to do and you can watch a Jing video about this at Jing Video.




Freescreencast is another online video capture program that makes creating and sharing short screen videos easy for you to do. Like Jing, it allows you to upload your files to the freescreencast.com website or save the file for your own personal use. It even gives you the option of embedding the video into your blog.

I am told that there are other online programs like this out there like this. Please leave a comment if you know of any of them.

Keeping Score on Who's Using Your Blog

Ever wonder who is actually looking at your blog? Does it seem like you are writing a lot but no one is responding? There ARE services that you can use to track your blog activity. Many of them are free. They are making their money with Google ads and the like or, as with ClustrMaps, when your site becomes so popular that you are willing to spend some money to get a more sophisiticated reading on your visitors.


is a service that you can use for tracking Blogger. You just need to add it as one of the services for your Google/gmail Account or go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ to sign up. Google Analytics will ask you to identify the blog you want to follow. It will also provide you with some specific code that you need to add to your blog or web page that you want to track. This is so that it can ensure that you are someone who is authorized to enable such a tracking and so that it knows where to store the information in its own database when it reviews your website.

is a visual world map that keeps track of "Where in the World" are your viewers. Look in the upper right corner of this blog and you will see such a map. It's kind of neat when you consider that I have viewers on five continents (need a new friend from Africa.) You can add this to your blog or website by just going to http://clustrmaps.com. They will also provide you with a handful of code that you need to add to your site, but it's worth it. It will also tell you how any hits they have recorded since you began using clustrmaps.

There are a bunch of other trackers that you probably use. Leave some suggestions as comments for this posting.

Image: www.crann.tcd

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Who is the MySpace Generation? Why Do We Care?

Who is the MySpace Generation? What is different about them? Why should we care?

ISTE will be holding a Webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2008 at 3:00 CST entitled Learner 2.0: The MySpace Generation by Chris O'Neal. These are some resources that might be useful for you to review before (or after) webinar.

BusinessWeek headed an issue with their article by Jessie Hempel entitled The MySpace Generation: How Companies are Reaching Them. This article investigates the Social Networking phenomenon. It talks about how youth are using MySpace, Facebook, and a variety of social networking systems to make contact with others. Their group is not geographically limited. It is primarily defined by like interests. BusinessWeek provides a podcast about its cover stories (CoverCast). This is an interview with the author about the content included in the cover story. Jessie Hempel provides an insightful perspective on this topic in the podcast. This podcast does an effective job of describing what is happening and how it displays youth's priorities.

Dinah Boyd has spent a great deal of time investigating the social networking world and I found an informative 71 minute lecture by her on YouTube Dinah Boyd: A Discussion with Danah Boyd.(2005) She is talking with a group of university students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Boy does she know what she is talking about. She cuts through the baloney and "tells it like it is."

A more recent lecture by Dinah Boyd (2007) is her presentation at the Australian Library and Information Association - Generation MySpace - Social networking and Its Impact on Students and Education.

PODCAST: A Discussion of the Issues Surrounding Social Networking Between Faculty and Students This is an interesting 25-minute discussion between a couple of K-12 teachers. They discuss how Facebook fits into their interactions with students and what new challenges it provides. Quite informative.

How Would YOU Create Your Future?

The best way to predict the future ...
is to create it. - Alan Kay

Yes, it is exciting, bewildering and even scary to try to decide you would like to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING in the future.

I recently asked the students in one of my undergraduate classes, "What would you want to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING? Imagine that it's possible. Think about what you would like to be able to do personally, professionally, and educationally." This yielded a number of interesting responses. Here is what they replied:

"I want a computer that will read my mind. I can think of thinks and it will write documents, answer questions and take pictures of my memories.,"
"Technology shoujld be more accessible - cost wise."
"I want to see the next generation of electronic portfolios where we can actually see students teaching."
"We need a better way to show our skills in portfolios. Not just paper and text."
" I would like to see a computer/webpage that changes automatically based upon the grade level of the user. Modifies the audio, text, and even the vocabulary."
"I would like to see how webcams can help sick students attend school."

There are more to come . . .