The Power of the Social Network

This is a somewhat personal post, but we wanted to share and it is relevant!  Have a wonderful winter break everyone!

We were recently able to experience the power of the social network Facebook (thanks to Patrick)! Over the past few years Facebook has revolutionized the way that people interact with each other. Now you can not only post your profile, but also chat, post pictures, share interests, find old friends, and plan events!

A recent private Facebook event invited almost two thousand people to join in an event for a Christmas celebration. Three hundred people replied and showed up at a local high school in Howard County in order to practice and participate. What was the event you ask? Well, a flash mob! If you haven't heard of a flash mob before, check out one of the most popular ones from a train station in Belgium! Basically, people meet in a public location while pretending to shop, chat, and hang out. Then, a group forms seemingly out of nowhere to sing and/or dance. When it's over, the people leave as if nothing ever happened.

Facebook brought together three hundred of us from Howard County to perform Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree at Columbia Mall last night. Within an hour videos were already on YouTube (another web 2.0 tool), and within twelve hours the news had a hold the story! Just think of the possibilities with your students with a tool like Facebook (appropriately used in the classroom, of course)!

Check out the video below or this link to see the flash mob and the product of ONE Facebook page! See if you can spot Patrick, Steve, or me! Enjoy your time off from school.

 

Check back later for ideas with social networks in a more educational post! 

Social Bookmarking for the Classroom

I have recently discussed two ways to use social bookmarking with posts on Del.icio.us and Digg. Del.icio.us is a web 2.0 tool where the user can save any number of sites, tag them with labels, and organize them so you can share them with others or simply categorize them. Digg is a web 2.0 tool that allows the user to "digg" various news sites that he/she likes and rate them. If you sign up for an account with Digg, you do not even have to create a "new" account; you can use your existing Facebook or Twitter account if you have one!

While both sites have similar functions, one is for any site that you put into your links list, and the other is more for news stories, but it appears that the stories must be "diggable" (most news sites offers this option now, and not only for Digg but also for many other social bookmarking applications). Digg does have an option where you can go to their website after you've found a link that you want to "digg" and put the URL into their site. That seems like a great deal more work, however (there is an add-on toolbar for Firefox to make this easier)! The Digg FAQ was very helpful in answering many of the questions that I had. I did not find the Del.icio.us help page very useful, but it did answer some of the basic questions about this tool.

This tool could prove extremely useful in the world of academia! Teachers and students now have numerous ways to not only bookmark their favorite sites (not the primary function of these applications though) but also share, tag, and rate sites for their own personal purposes or for others. Some uses for teachers, students, and in telecollaboration are:

• gathering sources to share with students or classmates that are all organized, categorized and/or rated
• guiding classes in a computer lab by directing them only to specific sites instead of taking time to search for various sites(would be great for younger classes so they only have one link to type!)
• guiding students in the rating process of sites; the teacher could provide a rating rubric similar to what we have done in class, but also use Digg to rate them for others
• creating lists of links to share (perfect for telecollaboration when classes cannot physically be together)
• doing research in class/at home and bookmarking the sites for later use

While I have not tried any of these with my students, I do actually prefer to use Weebly sites with them instead. A Weebly is a drag and drop, create your own website! It allows me to prepare the students for work in the computer lab by posting rubrics, links, search engines in Spanish, online dictionaries, and even graphic organizers. I like the all-in-one combination of Weebly! Here's an example that I used this year during the Spanish 4 arts unit. Coupled with Weebly I could use something like Del.icio.us in order to collect the sites that I like, and then, post the link to the categorized sites for the students.

All in all, I would consider social bookmarking with my students, especially with my telecollaboration project, but I do not really have a need to use it personally. I see its benefits, but I am not all that impressed by it to feel the need to use it regularly. If you are interested check out Digg or Del.icio.us or even BlinkList, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.

Digg

Digg is a very interesting site that I am not sure I completely understand yet! Digg is like social bookmarking, but for news! After doing some more research, some critics consider Digg a social bookmarking Web 2.0 tool while other do not. If you are interested in social bookmarking in general, here is a great list of some of the more popular applications with some pros and cons.

Digg peaked my interest because I have seen it on the bottom of news articles on popular news sites such as CNN, BBC, and Fox News. I always wondered to myself, what is Digg, and what can I Digg? Do I need a shovel?

Apparently Digg began purely as an experiment but has grown as a way to share news, worthy of peoples' viewing or not! There are now numerous categories for "Digg"ing news including technology, science, business, videos and entertainment, and more. You can "Digg" a story by submitting a news link or voting on a news link. I find that the name in and of itself provides some interesting social commentary of its own; it's as if you are "digging up" a news story, or a term coined from the 70's, "can you dig it?" meaning "do you understand?/do you get it?". Both are quite rateable to news!

Digg also has the ability to connect with Facebook as of the spring of 2009. Users of both can connect their accounts so that news can be shared through both Digg and Facebook simultaneously. Apparently there is a great deal of controversy with the site because of it's former CEO and some of the issues that users have had with the program, especially the most recent update this fall. To read more on Digg and some other social bookmarking sites, this article was very helpful in explaining some of the differences (although a few years old, it is still interesting!). 

Digg would be a great way for teachers and students to tag past and recent news in order to use the information for reports, presentations, and current events projects. It would be a great way for teachers to see students' comments regarding specific news articles as well. Once someone has signed up for Digg, you can save, bury, and comment on news stories.

Check back soon for more ways to use Digg and Del.icio.us in the classroom!

Presentation Power!

After looking into Google Docs presentations, I have decided that it's not particularly my favorite! It's above Google Docs drawing for sure, but way under the word processor and spread sheets! For me, the only real added bonus to Google Docs presentations over PowerPoint, was the ability to embed the file into a website.

This is not to say that there are not uses for Google Docs presentations! Educational uses are probably innumerable, and I truly believe that if students in grades 6-12 knew more about the capabilities of Google Docs in general that it would catch on even more. Educators can easily collaborate together on a presentation for classroom use, professional development, staff meetings, and even community events. Students in specific classes can utilize Google Docs presentations as well as telecollaborative classrooms around the world. Some presentation options include:

• creating a presentation based on data collected (could even incorporate Google spreadsheets and drawing)
• creating a presentation to share comparing and contrasting data, ideas, or multimedia
• uploading existing presentations to share, edit, and collaborate with others
• creating an online story/book with events and pictures
• introducing each other to the class, could even be a template created for each class member to use (YAY ET620!)
• designing a culminating class project for an oral presentation
• introducing a project/telecollaborative project to the class
• presenting a guest speaker/tele-field trip

Although I am still not a huge fan of Google Docs presentations, I would definitely be willing to show my classes more about it. In group work, students frequently complain that they had to wait for the other person to finish their part of the project and then, wait for an email from him/her. Google Docs would eliminate some of this; also, if the teacher was added into the process, he/she could see who had done which portion of the project, making it easier to grade. In general, I think that students would not be as hesitant to try any of the Google Docs file types if they had some more instruction...a possible internship? We'll see! Enjoy your week off from class!

Drawing, Take 2

I have to take back part (not all!) of what I wrote about Google Docs drawing before. Although it is still not my favorite, after doing a bit of research I have discovered that it does have some more uses. One of the more effective uses is the templates feature. There are thousands to choose from, some created by Google, and others that people have created and made public. Why create something from scratch that already exists? There are lots of templates for charts, graphic organizers, and other business options. I also discovered the numerous file saving options for your drawing. Although I took some time to play with Google drawing, I did not understand all of the features that it offered until I did some extra research.

That being said, I probably will not use Google drawing with other teachers or my students. That's not to say that there are not potential uses for education or telecollaboration, however. Both with your students in the general classroom and for telecollaboration students could

• compare and contrast information using the numerous online templates and graphic organizers
• organize information with text, shapes, word art and more
• create a visual aid or simple talking points for a presentation
• design slides for Google Docs presentations or even PowerPoint
• create their own template or even a newsletter
• allow others to comment on drawings or other visuals to receive feedback
• design logos, plans, or sketch-ups to promote a product or idea
• fill in a pre-designed template or graphic organizer (for younger students)

 I still love the element of online collaboration, as with other types of Google files, but I am not sure that that outweighs the limited options of the program. In my search for more information, I did find a few sites where users had commented on what they wish Google Docs drawing offered, and a Google employee responded! They would love feedback and suggestions on all of their Google file types on their product ideas page. I am still not a fan, but I am more satisfied with the file type than when I started!

Google Docs: Drawing

The final document type that Google Docs offers is drawing. I will be very honest, I do not like this! Before I explain the pitfalls with this file, here's how to set it up...

Open your Google Docs, create new, and choose drawing. Your blank template opens with a grid that is like a blank canvass. It is similar to the Paint program for the Windows OS, but it has less features and options. You can change the background and colors as well as add shapes, text, arrows, and word art. To be completely honest, the Paint program does the same thing with better features! I created a graphic organizer to describe the elements of Google drawing.

This took me about 8-10 minutes because I am not familiar with this part of Google. I feel that programs like Inspiration and Paint are much more user-friendly. The application offers myriads of shape types, but the options for editing are very limited. You can also insert images from your computer, which is nice for reports. Another nice feature is inserting one of these drawings into a Google word processing document or presentation. In general, I find the entire application limiting in comparison with other programs.

I think that Google Docs drawing might be best used in elementary and middle schools, but I need to ponder some possible uses for high school students still. The ability to collaborate online is always a positive, but this seems like a personal application, and not necessarily a collaborative application. Applications like Google SketchUp might be more useful and fun! For some extra help getting started, see the Google self-help!

Once I think of some more positive uses for Google drawing, I'll be back!

Google Docs: Presentations

Google Docs has yet another user-friendly tool with which to collaborate online. The presentation tool is similar to PowerPoint, but much more basic. While I do enjoy PowerPoint more, I like the online collaboration, sharing, and embedding options that the Google Docs presentations offer.

In order to begin, simply open your Google Docs, choose new, and start designing and organizing your presentation. Whether using PowerPoint or Google Docs, it is always a good idea to have a plan in mind first. Creating slides, editing content, and adding clipart, wordart, videos and tables are all extremely similar to PowerPoint.

Since I already have many vocabulary and grammar PowerPoints for numerous levels of Spanish, I do not see a need to convert any of these files to the Google presentation. I tried to upload a current PowerPoint into a Google presentation, and it worked! This example is converted to a presentation and had minimal issues. The only real problem that I encountered was with clipart/word art from PowerPoint. Some of the converted clipart and word art was moved, upside down, or even missing pieces! I could only conceive converting some of my current files to Google presentation if I wanted to share with other teachers in order to edit, but I could just as easily send them in an email as an attachment.

You can also edit the background, themes, and color options. However, there are not as many options as PowerPoint. There is always help available if you need it! Google has its own help even for presentations. Check it out! A great site that I found was how to embed your presentation into a website. See below for the presentation that I created above embedded here:

As always, do not forget to name your file and save it! You can also edit your publishing settings beyond private so that you can share with others (with editing privileges or not)! Also, stay tuned for all kinds of uses in the classroom.