03.22.09
Posted in Main tagged Delicious, Diigo, web2.0 at 4:13 pm by sartz
Social Bookmarking – Do I really need it?
Now I would be the first to admit that I am a little bit of a geek and as such can be slightly biased when presented with a question such as the one above. But Social Bookmarking is in all probability the coolest of the web2.0 tools that I use.
In essence Social Bookmarking is simply a place on the Internet where I can store the Gazillion (Is that a real number?) links to websites which I usually store as favorites or bookmarks depending on the browser, on my computer.
Ok, I know what your thinking this doesn’t sound all that great, but how many of you have upgraded your computer only to find that the Techy that upgraded didn’t back up your favorites and all of those websites you have been hoarding for the past 3 years have disappeared into the ether… Does that sound familiar to anyone, I know it does to me, well with Social Bookmarking this won’t ever happen again. It doesn’t matter what computer your on or where you are, your bookmarks will be safely sitting online, patiently waiting for you to log on and use them. Take a look at this video which describes how it all works far better than I ever could
Social Bookmarking has quite a few other features as well for instance, I can elect to allow others to look at all or some of my bookmarks or I can start bookmark groups where as many people as I like can add links to that group. Very handy for that Year 11 Biology class who are completing a research project on the Human Genome project or for that Professional Learning Team who want to compile a list of websites that look at the relative advantages and disadvantages of the 4 period day.
Another feature that I use a lot is the subscription lists. Has anyone out there spent their entire Sunday afternoon trolling through 100’s of websites looking for that perfect IWB activity, I know I have. With Social Bookmarking I can join a subscription list which is based on IWB. Each week dozens or people from all around the world add links to this list and then at the end of the week some nice person (The moderator) compiles a list of the 20 best sites and emails it out to me. How cool is that someone is doing my work for me. Of course this doesn’t only apply to IWB’s, you can join lists on anything from Fishing to Computer Games to Literature.
There are two main players in the Social Bookmarking worldand they are www.diigo.com and www. delicious.com . Many people believe that Delicious is a bit easier for the new user to use, but Diigo has a few features that Delicious doesn’t and I reckon jump right in and give Diigo a go. If you want to take a look at a couple of Diigo sites take a look at the following links.
Well thats Social Bookmarking in a nutshell. Now its up to you, point your browser to one of the sites above and take a look around. Then take a second or two to sign up and start your very own Social Bookmarking adventure. Don’t forget to add “Sartzman” to your list of Diigo or Delicious friends so that we can share links as well.
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Posted in Uncategorized tagged web2.0 at 12:47 am by sartz
Welcome to ICT at SHC
Thanks for dropping by and taking the time to read our Blog. Over the next few weeks we will be adding posts on many different ICT tools, with a particular emphasis on Web2.0. Our aim is to create a post every two weeks and we would love to hear any comments or feedback which you might have for us.
So don’t be a stranger take a sec to drop us a line and participate in this wonderful wired world!
Sartz
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08.28.08
Posted in Main tagged pbwiki, wiki at 3:37 pm by sartz
There have been many changes to the wide world of wiki since my earlier post on the relative merits of Wikispaces, Wetpaint and PBWiki. But PBWiki (Which stands for Peanut Butter Wiki) have just perhaps been the most prolific in their changes. I now find myself being lured back to PBWiki and might just have to change my earlier judgment on which wiki is best.
Since 
writing my earlier post on PBWiki they have made one major change which has prompted me to go back for a second look. PBWiki now allows you to add a whole class full of users to a wiki without the need for email addresses. This means that I can set up my class of users very quickly and walk into class armed with my list of usernames and passwords all ready for the students to get stuck into some good old collaboration, or poetry, or personal writing, or……..
This rather useful change to the wiki has prompted me to take another look at the options in PBWiki and the further I delve into the innards of the wiki the more great features I am finding. Little things like being able to create folders in which you can place pages which make navigating PBWiki a real breeze. Instead of having 50 pages listed down the side of the wiki, I can make a folder for Poetry and a folder for Science and I can give students a page in each of these folders, this is a useful little feature for keeping everything seperate and nicely organised. Even better you can set who can edit/read each page if you want so you can have pages which students can change nestled amongst pages which only you can change.
PBWiki also allows the user to add Plugins to their page. These plugins are largely standard fare with YouTube, SlideShare, etc all making an appearance. But the one I love is the Google Gadgets. These useful little things are the same gadgets which you can add to your iGoogle page. ( Whats that you don’t have an iGoogle page… Click here to get one.) These gadgets allow you to add news feeds, horoscopes, weather, and so on and so on. You can even make it display your favourite “World of Warcraft” charactor if you are that way inclined.
So what does all this mean? Sorry WetPaint but PBWiki is the new king of the wiki’s. It’s easy to use, has lots of functionality and is set up in a way that a classroom can access it and get stuck into the good stuff quickly and easily…
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06.12.08
Posted in Main at 12:53 pm by sartz
Isn’t it funny how how sometimes the most meaningful bits of a lesson happen outside of the lesson. This happened to me last night where after a session on Blogs with teachers at a local Primary School we started talking about, of all things ClipArt. As quick as a wink I said “Have you seen this?” and fired up Taggalaxy. Taggalaxy is one on many tools that are now on the web which is a search engine for Flickr. The way it works is that you type in your key word and Taggalaxy finds all of the photos on Flickr which has that key word in its Tags and then presents in using Flash in a globe which you can manipulate with the mouse.
I have seen Taggalaxy used in a few classes but has been particularly useful for senior classes. The classes I have watched have typed in a keyword, “conflict” in this case and then spun the globe to pick a random photo. The students then use that photo as a starting point for their writing. This is great practice for their English exam later in the year. At the very least though Taggalaxy is a great resource for photo’s.
The great thing about this discussion though was that it started an avalanche of other Flickr based sites for the others in the room. Flickrcc is another Flickr search site. The nice thing about Flickrcc is that is is a lot quicker to load than Taggalaxy, but then it doesnt look quite as pretty. 
Enough of these Search engines what about something a little different.
PhotoSoup by Yahoo is an useful example of some of the tools which are now being made for the web. PhotoSoup lets you search according to a keywork or Flickr username and then presents it as a wordfind which you can do online or you can download the puzzle for printing or for use on your Intranet. Just be warned though some of the wordfinds are very hard.
Want something a little easier to come to grips with how about Bubblr, which allows you to search for key words and then create acomic strip from them, complete with Speech and thought bubbles. A whole lot of fun.
A more serious web site is 10by10 which uses photos taken from News Services and presents them on a timeline. So you can find photos which were in the news which were taken on July 29, 2005. Hmmm that could be useful in a senior History class 
.
The great thing is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, a quick google search for Flickr returns lots of Flickr based web sites. A good place to start is Big Huge Labs which allows you to make jigsaws and much much more.
If you know of any other Flickr sites which are useful, please leave me a comment with a link to the site…
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05.13.08
Posted in Main at 9:04 am by sartz
Further to the last post, I thought you might like to know which of the wiki’s I eventually settled on to use. Wetpaint removed the ad’s off my wiki site after about 36 hours of my requesting an educational wiki site. Once this was done I was hooked. I must be more than a little superficial as it was the eye candy that eventually sold me on wetpaint, that and the fact that all the widgets and things I wanted to use worked like a charm. Mind you I still have a wikispaces site just in case. Drop by and check out sartz.wetpaint.com, I am busily trying to add some tutorials on web2.0 tools.
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05.08.08
Posted in Main at 12:55 pm by sartz
A question which I get asked a lot is what’s the difference between a Wiki and a Blog. The answer as is often the case with these Web 2.0 tools not particularly clear cut. However the definition which I always fall back to is that a Blog is one person publishing to many. A blog is the Web 2.0 equiavalent of a journal, except that people can access it easily and involve themselves in a dialogue with the author. A blog then is a “one to many” document and is a great way to encourage students (and adults) to write. A wiki is a very similar sort of beast. However a wiki allows a group of people to work on a task collaboratively. When you use a wiki you can still add similar content as you would in your blog, but you have the added advantage of allowing others to contribute to the wiki as well.
So does this mean that a wiki is a better tool to use in the classroom than a blog? No I don’t think so, although some might disagree, both tools have their uses. For me at least I have discovered a new found freedom in being able to post to my blog. I think of this blog is mine it’s quite personal and as such creates ownership for the blogger. A wiki on the other hand is a collaborative tool and belongs to the group. The wiki however has its place in the classroom and can be used a variety of ways to encourage collaboration. Not only that but there is quite an array of free wiki’s out there which we can use.
Now that I am comfortable in my blog, I have started to probe the surrounding cyberspace to find a wiki to call my own. After a quick Google search, I narrowed my list of hopefuls down to three wiki’s wikispaces, wetpaint and pbwiki. All of these wiki sites provide a decent wiki and have varied features.
|
Storage
|
Ad Free
|
Themes
|
Security
|
| wikispaces |
2Gb
|
Yes (Education)
|
Limited
(4 Styles) |
Good
(Site and Discussion) |
| pbwiki |
10Mb
|
Yes
|
Limited
(1 Style) |
Excellent
(Many Levels) |
| wetpaint |
80 Mb
(40 files) |
Yes (Education)
|
Excellent
(24 Styles) |
Good
(Site and Discussion) |
Wikispaces provides a solid platform for wiki’s it has plenty of storage space for files (2Gb) and is very easy to use. When you first join wikispaces you will notice that ad’s appear on your page, you will have to click on the upgrade link to notify wikispaces that you are an educator and they will remove all of the ad’s and enable a couple of other features for your wiki. The page editing tools are pretty standard but there is a huge array of widgets that you can add to your page that range from calendars to movies or flash interactives. My one gripe about wikispaces is that you are very limited in the way the page looks with only a limited range of features being available to change the look and feel of the page.
It is only fair to mention that pbwiki is still in beta which means that they are still adding features to it. But I have to say I was a little disappointed with the lack of ways in which I could change the look and feel of the page, with only one style and 10 color combinations I felt a little limited in how I could personalise the page. Having said that I really liked the design of the page, it was easy to navigate and looked good. pbwiki also places the discussion threads on the bottom of the wiki page (much like a blog), a feature that I didn’t like but may suit others better. pbwiki is ad free without upgradeing which was nice and had 10 Mb of file space which was a little on the small side, but I guess people could use Google Docs or Xdrive to store the files and then just link across to them from pbwiki. pbwiki did have a great security system though and enabled a myriad of security settings.
I only set up my wetpaint account last night but have been impressed by the features which it has. Each page in Wetpaint has several built in tabs including a Photo Gallery, To Do List, Discussion Forum, etc. The actual pages look great with enough eye candy to keep anyone happy. The security features on the site are pretty standard but has enough flexabilty to set it up the way you want. My biggest gripe about wetpaint is that you can only send a maximum of 40 files to the wiki. This doesn’t include images but is still somewhat limiting. Wetpaint also has a lot of ad’s on the pages, but these can be removed if you are an educator and apply to wetpaint for the ad’s to be removed.
So which one should you use? It depends on what you want to do. If you don’t have a lot of dccuments to send up, I think Wetpaint might just fit the bill nicely. If you are looking at placing lots of files on your wiki but don’t need the eye candy then wikispaces is for you. It might also be worth visiting pbwiki over the next few months, I suspect that they will be making a lot of changes and may well be a player in the future.
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04.16.08
Posted in Main tagged Blog 7D scott EdTech Betcher Geek at 4:50 pm by sartz
I have just finished listening to the Ed Tech Crew’s latest podcast where they interviewed Chris Betcher. The Interview was on Interactive Whiteboards, but thats not what I wanted to write about. For me Chris always interviews well and has a common sense approach to ICT for “real” teachers that I find refreshing. The interview got me thinking about how we use ICT as educators, and then I surprised myself by having an irresistible urge to write about it on my Blog. Now being a bit of a Newb to Blogs this came as a bit of a revelation. How does a Science teacher who has always hated English make the transition from “I don’t wanna write” to “Hmm think I might publish this on my blog”.
Now normally I would just remind myself that I am a Geek and thats what Geeks do. BUT, during the last few weeks, I
have been working with Year 7 students and now whenever I see them they tell me something new about their blogs, they are accessing each others blogs from home, their parents are leaving comments, the principal is leaving comments for the kids and 7D is a buzz in “Blogdom” as they put it. So I might be a Geek and terribly uncool but surely this group of Year 7 students can’t all be Geeks surely some of them are cool. Maybe Blogs are the “Killer App”, the Holy Grail, the tool which teachers, students and parents can all use, common ground for all.
Is it really common ground for all though? The answer at least IMHO is yes, Yes, YES. We can all participate in blogs at least once we have conquered our initial fear of “what if someone reads this?” Having the confidence to actually post on a Blog is a big thing. In fact this is probably my first real Blog entry where I have just, well rambled on really. But now that I am in the groove theres no stopping me. I have moved on from the “Jeez I hope no-one reads this” to “WooHoo 3 people read my post”, who knows maybe this post could even get 4 readers. Make sure you leave a comment so I know you visited.
We often talk about Web 2.0 engaging students, but I think that there is at least as much engagement on the part of the teacher. Admittedly I have only really worked closely with one teacher so far (will be expanding my empire soon though) and admittedly she was pretty engaged to start with but the journey which she has taken over the past 2 months has been incredible. She started as a self confessed ICT “noob”and in a very short period of time has progressed to running 3 Blogs and moderating 25 student blogs. From someone who didn’t know the difference between a widget and an RSS feed, to someone who just talks about Twitter as if its the communication tool of choice for everyone (It is isn’t it!)
Blogs Rock, no discussion needed, I just “luv’s em to pieces”.
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04.13.08
Posted in Main at 4:51 pm by sartz
Before I could even blink the holidays are over and week 1 has finished in Term 2. My holidays were great, although a little chilly as we were camping at Bright and Echuca, but we were lucky to get lovely
sunny days on the whole. Needless to say we spent the week fishing for trout and touring the lovely green countryside.
This week I was lucky enough to be invited to take a Year 7 class in Swan Hill to get them started on their very own blogs. The kids were great and really embraced being able to publish their work to an authentic online audience. By the end of 3 lessons we had established the students blogs and had some very serious discussions about cyberbullying and what it might mean to them. By 8.00 that night the students were still publishing to their blogs and several parents were contributing as well. I am really looking forward to seeing what these students will produce over the next few months. Well done guys a really enjoyable day.
The next day was a quick trip down to Bendigo to meet with the other coaches and pick up a brand spankin’ new laptop. During the trip to and from Bendigo I caught up with the news that Al Uptons (A well known educational blogger in South Australia) blog had been shut down by the South Australian Ed Dept. It would appear that in someones opinion he was publishing to much personal information about his students. This is more than a little worrying as this guy has been blogging with considerable success for 5 years with his kids. The news has made it onto the international radio arena. It is well worth taking a look at his website as it is a good example of some of the problems which educators will face when using blogs.
I also journeyed out to Sea Lake for a day of reporting with MarkBook this week and had a great day working with the staff out there. I also discovered Twitter and Flock this week, Twitter is an addictive little “chat” program which can be implanted into blogs and wikispaces and Flock is a brand new browser from Mozilla which is geared up to make blogging, twitter, facebook, etc much easier. As the start up screen says in a social networking browser and well worth a look if you are a bit addicted to Web 2.0 stuff.
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03.20.08
Posted in Main tagged blog, POLT, SARMT, Sartz, wiki at 11:25 am by sartz
The end of the term is upon us and as always it has absolutely flown by. I have decided to make this Blog a record of some of the things which I encounter during my time in schools. Hopefully this will serve to jog my memory in the future and may well be of use to someone out there who is interested in the way ICT is used throughout the Swan Hill area. In the future I will be adding to this Blog every week, but for now the rest of this post is my thoughts on what I have encountered during this semester.
So far I have visited 11 of the 23 schools which are in the Swan Hill area. It always amazes me how willing the teachers are to welcome you into their school. As with most things the schools I have visited have been at a range of levels with their skills and access to ICT hardware, but the one common thread which I find in all schools is their willingness to listen and to give new things a go. Although some teachers are wary of taking big steps with ICT, all teachers are willing to try things in bite (or maybe its byte) sized pieces and before they know it they are creating lesson using Interactive Whiteboards, wikis and all manner of other things. “Scotty” in Swan Hill is a prime example, she has gone from being a Blog “Newbie” to running multiple blogs with students from several year levels. I am certain that her blogs (DeScotty & Scotty7D) will be well worth revisiting as the year progresses and she is already making plans of better ways for her year 7 and 12 classes to access this wonderful tool, including a “Heroes” blog in the lead up to the Olympic games.
Many schools have requested assistance with the creation of Intranet and Internet sites and working with these teachers 
has also been great and I am looking forward to working with these teachers in the future to enhance their classrooms through the use of many other ICT tools including Interactive Whiteboards. IWB’s seem to be the hot topic in schools at the moment with many schools seeking advice and what sort of IWB they should buy and how they might best use them. I have to say that I have really enjoyed using the TeamBoard and was very very impressed with the new Mimio unit which was just great to use. One thing which teachers seem to be struggling with is ideas of how to best use IWB’s, next term I think that this will need to be something which I will focus on and have made a few tentative contacts to start up an IWB group across a few schools.
Most schools that I have visited have now done the ePotential survey and we have designed a walk through for teachers to assist them in making specific ICT goals which they might use in their P&D plans. Most schools have done very well in this survey especially when compared against the rest of the state. It would appear that ICT leadership is one weakness which needs to be addressed (Statewide) and as the year progresses I would hope to find ways to start to address this deficit as well. It has been great to see so many schools who are well equipped with regard to ICT around the area, and the Principals which I have worked with have been wonderful with regard to planning for the ICT needs in the future. Data has also played a big part in this, and I have worked with On Demand Testing, Early Years Numeracy Interviews, AIM, Online POLT, etc in several schools. Getting this stuff into an easy to use format for schools has, at times, been a real challenge and has caused more than a few headaches, but with the help of these schools leadership teams I feel that we have kicked more than a couple of goals on the data front.
I have also had a pretty steep learning curve during this term. It would seem that my time as VCE Manager at Swan Hill College had made me a little “soft” with regard to new technologies. After 7 weeks though I am pleased to say that I am a web 2.0 addict. I obviously have a Blog (Yep your reading it), a wiki (Which have plenty of resources on it including a new and improved Student At Risk Mapping Tool) and have recently arrived in the wide world of podcasts, which has been really blowing me away.
Well thats about it for Term 1 2008. Have a great Easter guys, next term is going to be a big one.
Catch Ya Later
Sartz
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02.26.08
Posted in Main at 11:36 am by sartz
Welcome to Sartz’s first foray into Blogging
For the past few years I have fluffed around the edges of Blogs and having changed jobs in 2008 thought I should take the plunge and firmly implant myself in Blogsville.
Luckily I won’t be taking the plunge by myself my daughter, Sophie will also be taking her first few tentative steps into blogging. Over the next few months I also hope to bring a few classrooms in as well.
My expedition into the world of Blogs started with a visit to 
Gail Caseys Classroom which helped to focus my thoughts on just what could be achieved in the classroom through the use of Blogs. Over the next few weeks I am hoping to get a few ideas about using these things in the classroom and then hopefully put them to good use in schools.
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