Fraser Cain in Courtenay, British Columbia, is SHARING THE UNIVERSE!
He is using Google Hangout to share this image on his telescope with other astronomers from all over the world.
English: Auroras on Saturn. Français : Des aurores polaires sur Saturne. Русский: Полярное сияние на Сатурне. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I know that the technology is here and I have connected with people all over the world, but this video brought me to tears. I don't know why, but the idea of connecting people from all over the world to through Google Hangout to see Saturn through a personal telescope in British Columbia, Canada, was incredibly moving for me, the teacher.
Sure, we have seen telescopic images on our televisions or even our computers, but this experience is not being directed by "The Establishment." It isn't something on PBS that someone in New York decided would be good for us to see. It is about a Canadian amateur astronomer connecting through Google Hangouts with individuals in Pakistan, Australia, U.S., Mexico, South America, South Africa and ??. It is an example of people sharing/learning/teaching with one another in a way that wasn't possible even 5 years ago.
This is what 21st Century Learning is all about. It is about connecting and collaborating and exploring on a global basis. It is about using our daily resources to constantly expand our opportunities with others.
What are you doing in your classrooms to encourage such collaboration?
Twitter search for #Drzreflects (As time progresses, these tweets may disappear.)
Collaborative Google notes that were created by one of the attendees. These were open for everyone to contribute during the presentation but have been locked to keep the content valid.
21st Century Learning - Example of including video lecture, documents and videos in a VoiceThread.
WikiBook on TPACK - WikiBook created by UNI Masters students in Spring, 2012.
QR Codes video - Useful introductory video by Common Craft.
Share Your Screen
Join.Me - Share your screen with up to 250 people simultaneously.
Google Hangout - Watch a short introductory video about using Hangout with fellow students.
Audio Annotation
AudioBoo - Create an audio response to your students' work. Just send them the URL to the audio file. Includes a mobile app. These files are not private.
Chirbit - Another tool for creating an audio response to your students' work. Just send them the URL
to the audio file. Includes a mobile app. These files CAN be made private.
Screen Casting
Jing - Free brother-version of Camtasia by TechSmith. I have used this as my default screencaster for years. Limit of 5 minutes. You download the program to your computer.
Screencast-o-Matic - Just discovered this option this summer. This system will allow you to record up to 15 minutes. You can save your files in .mp4, .avi, and .wmv formats. It is all online.
Video Annotating and Editing
VideoANT - Provide written notations for a video as it progresses. The viewer progresses through a collection of notes as the video plays.
Today, from approximately 9:20 - 10:45 CDT, Dr. Z will be giving a keynote presentation, Dr. Z's Creative Cookbook for Collaborative Communication, at the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association conference in Baraboo, WI.
We will experimenting with some audience involvement tools during this presentation:
Chat: We will also use CoverItLive (an open chat system) to allow those watching the presentation to participate in a backchannel discussion about what they are seeing. These participants will be both at the conference and at distant locations.
Twitter: Comments about the presentation can also be made using Twitter. Include the hashtag, #wemta , in your message and it will be automatically added to the CoverItLive conversation.
Video: We plan to broadcast the presentation through the internet using Ustream. This will allow viewers from around the world to enjoy the presentation. Below are links to the CoverItLive and Ustream and connections. Just click on them and you should be able to get started in the experience. Share the word with your friends and let's see if we can get people from all over the world involved.
Join us in our 12:00 (Wed) session at NECC 2009 as we explore a variety of new technologies that can be used to create and support a collaborative learning environment in your class.
We will be using:
Skype (Video Conferencing)
Cover-It-Live (Back Channel Chatting)
Google Apps (Cloud Computing Environment)
Google Sites (Publishing)
Google Forms (Resource Sharing)
Custom Search Engines (Resource Sharing)
Delicious (Resource Sharing)
Zoho Notebook (Resource Sharing)
Cover-It-Live Chat Room (Click the arrow to review the archive)
Slideshow Presentation for the Workshop
Delicious Delicious Tags used to identify resources relevant to our presentation: necc09 cle
Inspiration HAS DONE IT!!! The folks at Inspiration have developed an on-line version of their prize-winning software gem and named it Webspiration. Thinkers, large and small, have huddled around computers for almost two decades using Inspiration to help them organize and develop their ideas. They have worked alone and in groups but the limitation has always been that they could only diagram their ideas on a single computer at a time.
Webspiration elevates Inspiration to the level of online collaborative work tool. Students create an account and then can create diagrams/outlines that are saved on the Inspiration server. Having these maps online makes them accessible from any computer. This is handy for students who want to work on their diagrams at school, home and ??
Collaborative? Yes, the creator of a diagram can share it with collaborators by sending invites to friends who have Webspiration accounts. Collaborators can sign onto Webspiration and work on common diagrams whenever they are interested. Multiple collaborators can also be online simultaneously and work together on the diagram. The only limitation is that the they can't work on the file at the same time. As the video shows, one person works as the editor and the other collaborators are spectators until the active editor passes control over to the next person in line. This makes it less collaborative than Google Docs that allows multiple collaborators to work in a document simultaneously. Is this a problem? It can be. I found that some of my students were OK with waiting in line but others became quite frustrated when they had to "holster" their creativity until it was their time to emote.
Watch this short Jing video that I created to demonstrate Webspiration in my ISTE Webinar.
What's it cost? Right now Webspiration is free! The folks at Inspiration have identified the present version of Webspiration as a Beta Version and they want you to get online and give it a try. They even provided a place where users can provide feedback (although I couldn't find it just now when I checked the most recent version.:-)
R U My Friend (or colleague or associate or have heard of me or read this blog or semi-interested complete stranger)?
If so, Click the Join button in the upper left corner of the map and place yourself on this Frappr map. You will notice that I already have a ClustrMap (love how everybody drops the E in ER in Web 2.0 titles) in the upper right corner of this blog. It shows who has visited the blog. Looks like they are from all over the world. But this is an involuntary recording of people's visits.
Frappr allows you to create an active community of members who are there by choice. It is a way to create a global (or State-al) community of members. Sure it would be interesting to do this with a number of people who are from the same state (much like my Classroom Computer Applications students) but imagine if you were running a collaborative learning experience between 3 classes in different states (or countries).
Think of the community that it would build if every student identified where they lived and posted their photos and other interesting information about them. Imagine further (don't know if this is possible yet) if this could be linked with Google Map or Google Earth so we can actually see the cities, neighborhoods and maybe schools or homes where our collaborative students live. The connections between them will be stronger and more immediate than with a mere handwritten penpal.
How do you see this as a useful tool in your learning situations? What else can you do? Can you find any suggestions on the web or in Google Scholar or any original ideas that you can suggest? If you found your ideas on the web, provide a link to your reference.
I was just in Second Life trying to help a friend of mine, Ferdi Serim, in a presentation that he was giving at a conference. We were going to meet in the ISTE Innovation Center so that I could share my ideas on emerging technologies.
I waited and waited until someone IM-ed me and told me that they were waiting in our house across the way. I ran over there and bumped into a handful of folks who were waiting for Ferdi (Hodjazz). Turned out that he was having computer problems. Computer kept crashing so he wasn't able to join us.
We talked and talked about ET (Emerging Technology). It was fun to share. Two of the folks were from the US Post Office and they were looking into providing training through SL. Another couple of the individuals provide online teaching in the medical field. And there I was, a mere professor amongst all of these people in the "Real World."
I was interested in their experiences with collaborative learning in RL or SL. Unfortunately, I started asking questions and overwhelmed them until someone told me to slow down. Well . . . that's what happens when you are excited. It was good interchange.
The greatest part of this was that we decided that we wanted to get together again to continue the discussion. We decided to meet at the ISTE Social Gathering on Thursday night at 6:00 PST.
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