Web 2.0 In The Classroom

It is your time to share!

2007-06-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

Now that you have learned a little bit about Web 2.0 and explored a few sites, it is your turn to share with the rest of us! Post a comment on this page within the next week and let everyone know one way that you plan of using Web 2.0 in your class. Please do not forget to complete your online survey today. The link is- http://www.quia.com/sv/119803.html.

Confessions Of A Youtuber

2007-06-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

I have to confess that I’m addicted to Youtube. I first took a look at Youtube this past school year after talking with one of my students. I had shown my students a video about racism and in it an Asian American student talked about how he felt when some kids made fun of him by pretending to speak Chinese. My student told me she had just watched Rosie O’Donnell do the same thing in a video clip on Youtube (video link here). Later that evening I went to the site and watched the clip and afterwards I watched a video response to the O’Donnell clip (video link here). I was impressed with how quickly a response was posted to O’Donnell and how eloquent the rebuttal was. It demonstrated to me how powerful this new social media could be.

Since then I have looked through the site and found many video clips I could use at school. I use a program called Tubesock to download the clips so I can use them in class. I also signed up for a Youtube account and posted a few class videos myself (video link here). One of my videos has had over 800 views!

I understand why my school blocks the site and I happen to agree with that policy. Youtube hogs bandwidth and for every educational video on the site there are probably 100 that are inappropriate for students.

Here are three of my favorite Youtube videos:

The Machine is Us/ing Us: This video was created by an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. It shows how the Internet has evolved from web 1.o to web 2.0.
freedom 101: This video by rx2008 is a great example of a mash-up. It combines historical video footage and modern music to create a statement about freedom and voting. If you like this video, check out his video about President Bush called Imagine.
Pick My Campaign Song: Round2: This hilarious video from Hillary Clinton's campaign team illustrates how these types of sites can be used to win support in political elections. It shows that she has a sense of humor and a little bit of tech savvy. I anticipate that we will be seeing many more videos like these as the 2008 election year draws closer.

My Mother Always Taught Me To Share Slides (A slidespace for PowerPoints!)

2007-06-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

Every semester I give a presentation with two other teachers on team teaching to student teachers at a local college, Heidelberg University. Part of the presentation consists of a PowerPoint that we created several years ago for a presentation at the Ohio Middle School Association conference. The room we present in has a desktop computer with Internet access that is connected to a projector and an interactive whiteboard. The computer does not, however, have a floppy drive or USB ports. This always causes problems because I have to come up with a way to transfer the PowerPoint from the computer in my school to the computer at the college (I can't use a floppy or my thumbdrive!). In the past I have always uploaded the file to a website that I maintain for school and then downloaded it at Heidelberg.

I recently came across a web 2.0 site that makes it much easier to share PowerPoints. Slideshare.net allows members to create a slideplace where they can host and share presentations for free. Users of the site can view the presentation within their browser so there is no need to have PowerPoint installed on their computer. If they have PowerPoint, they can also download the file. Setting up a slidespace was very easy and it didn’t take long to upload my PowerPoint. To view the team teaching PowerPoint, click here.

Here are three file storage/sharing sites that look promising (I haven't used them yet):

yousendit.com: Allows members to upload files (up to 100 mb for free) and then sends an email with the download URL to your recipient.
4shared.com: Gives members up to 1gb of free space to upload files.
mediamax.com: Provides 25 gb of free space. Uploads are limited to 10 mb at a time.

If you have a storage/sharing site that you like, please comment and share with the rest of us!

Choosy Teachers Choose Gliffy (My apologies to a certain peanut butter company!)

2007-06-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

While working on a web 2.0 presentation for a graduate class I am taking, I stumbled on a web 2.0 site called gliffy. Gliffy allows users to draw and share diagrams on the web. Users can save their work to gliffy's server or download it to their computer. There is a wide variety of diagrams that can be created at this site such as flow charts, floor plans, and technical drawings. I used gliffy to create a flow chart for my upcoming presentation.

I like to think of gliffy as a scaled-down (and free) version of Inspiration. In my opinion, however, gliffy has two major advantages over Inspiration: cost and convenience. A 20-pack license for Inspiration would cost my school approximately $700 and would be limited to the 20 laptops on our mobile cart. Students would have to buy the program if they wanted to work on their projects at home. Gliffy, on the other hand, is free and can be used on any computer connected to the web. It's not hard to see which option most cash-strapped schools would take.

Gliffy is a great example of a web application. I think that these type of applications will cause many traditional software companies to take a look at how they do business. Why purchase Microsoft Office when you can use Google Apps. for free?

Here are some other web 2.0 applications that you might want to look at:

ZOHO Show: Allows users to create and share presentations online. Watch out PowerPoint! You might also want to take a look at the other ZOHO products.
Writeboard: This is an online word processor that allows users to write solo or collaborate with others. Watch out Microsoft Word!
Create A Graph: This is a kid friendly site (which means I can use it!) that allows users to create a wide variety of graphs. It even offers an easy tutorial to help you create your graph.

I have shared a few of my favorite web 2.0 sites with you and now it is your turn. What are some of your favorite sites? Please leave a comment and let me know.

iPodcast Therefore I Am (How A Newbie Created His First Podcast In Seven Steps)

2007-06-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is all about being a producer and there is nothing more exciting than creating and posting your very own podcast. Wikipedia defines a podcast as a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players (i.e. iPod).

I recently created a podcast for my classroom. As of April 2007, Apple had sold over 100 million iPods worldwide and it seems like most of those where purchased by my students! With that in mind, I thought this would be an excellent web 2.0 tool to use in my class.

For today's posting I thought I would discuss the seven steps I took to creating my podcast.

7 Steps To A Podcast

determine the message- I think that this is the most important step in the whole process. A potential podcaster needs to figure out who his audience is and what he wants to say. For my podcast I decided to have students create short audio clips of my classroom “lectures”. I have been posting text outlines on my website for years so I felt that this was a natural progression.
record the audio file- For my first podcast I used my son to record the lecture using my ipod. He used a very cheap mic that plugs directly into my ipod. It took him three tries before he got it right and the quality of the audio file was not the greatest. As my finances permit, I’ll upgrade to a better mic.
convert the file- I took the audio file off my ipod and imported it into Garageband and ran into a problem. The file it created sounded like an auctioneer on helium! After playing around for about an hour I finally figured it out. Garageband doesn’t handle .wav files very well so I converted my recording from a .wav to an .mp3 (using iTunes). Everything then worked fine and I finally had my podcast.
upload the podcast- I used my favorite .ftp program (Transmit) and uploaded my podcast to my website without a problem.
create the RSS feed- In order to submit my podcast to a podcast aggregator (i.e. iTunes) I knew that I would have to create a syndication feed using .xml. I did a quick search on google and found an application (FeedForAll) that walks you through the steps. I downloaded the trial version and used it to create my .xml file. I also used an online image editor to create the picture iTunes would use to represent my podcast (myimager.com).
submit the podcast- After uploading the .xml file I went to iTunes and clicked on the submit button. I filled out the forms and received an email telling me that I would get an another email notifying me whether or not they accepted my podcast. Approximately ten hours later, I received the email telling me that my podcast had been included in the iTunes store. Yea!
tweak the .xml file- I immediately went to iTunes to check out my listing and noticed that I must have made some mistakes in my .xml file because there were a few errors in the listing. I opened the file, tweaked it and uploaded it again. I checked the site the next day and everything looked fine. Double Yea!

To see my iTunes listing type Mr. Fuhrer in the iTunes store search window or click on this link to subscribe to the podcast: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=257088001

This week I thought that I would share three of my favorite podcasts. The links below will take you to blogs where you can subscribe to the podcasts. Happy Listening!

SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast: If you have a SmartBoard in your classroom, you need to check out this podcast. Two Canadian educators offer useful tips on SmartBoard use and they always have a few great web 2.0 sites to share with their listeners.
MacBreak Weekly: If you have a mac, you need to check out this podcast. Leo Laporte and his buddies discuss the latest mac news and views in a roundtable format. If you like this podcast, you should also listen to This Week in Tech.
The Tech Teachers Podcast: Two young teachers talk about how they use technology in their classes and in their lives. I've been listening to these two for so long that I feel as though I am a part of their families.

In my next posting I will be taking a look at a web 2.0 application called Gliffy.

To Blog Or Not To Blog, That Is The Question!

2007-06-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Why I created this blog.

I have to give a presentation in a graduate class in a few weeks about web 2.0 and one of the things I want to talk about is blogging. I created this blog to use in that presentation and to showcase what I think are some interesting web 2.0 sites. It is my goal to update this blog once a week with a list of at least three "cool" web 2.0 links. Here is the list of links for this week:

google labs: Google calls this their "technology playground." I hadn't been to this site in a while and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the ideas they are working on. This is where I came across the free blogging tool that I am using right now!
go2web20: This site claims that it is "the complete web 2.0 directory." I don't know if this is true but I do know that I could spend days exploring the sites in this directory!
sign generator: The last site I am showcasing is something just for fun. This is an example of a site that allows users to edit images. I used this site to create the image above that I plan on using in my upcoming presentation.

I hope you find these sites useful and that you will come back. In my next post, I will be discussing the trials and tribulations of creating my first podcast.

Who I Am.

My name is Brad Fuhrer and I teach 7th grade world history in Tiffin, Oh. U.S.A. I am working on my masters in classroom technology at Bowling Green State University.