Persistent Pondering

Visual Brower? SearchMe

I am a multi-modal learner. I love Google, but with Ryan Bretag’s post about SearchMe, the visual learner in me had to give this beta version search engine a try.

Those of you who are fellow Mac learners will recognize the look of the search. It’s simple to use. You can search for your topic in various categories. That’s helpful. Type it in, and up pops beautiful images of articles related to your search. Lovely! When you go to the bottom of the doc image, the citation of the article comes up a la Mac dock style. Nice!

One thing, it does take some time to load up these nifty images, but they are worth the wait.

So go for it. Try it. The visual in you might like it!

Everything you ever wanted to know about YouTube!!!

Hats off to Michael Wesch and his entourage of digital ethnographers. This crew out of Kansas State University is putting their money & time where most of the world’s mouths are and are treating digital technologies as the cultural phenomena they are! Take, for example, the driving force in online video publication, YouTube.

I was impressed by the extensive work they have done on studying YouTube.

Want to know the beginnings of YouTube? Want to know how many people post there? Want to know about cultural biases… online communities… or even just how to use it? Check out their YouTube Project Wiki.

This is fascinating stuff, and I, for one, am happy that someone is taking the time to investigate how sites like YouTube impact and reflect our society. Check it out!

Calling all Crafty Folk! It’s Scrapblogging Time!

One of the skills competitive employees should have is knowing how to present a message with multimedia. That means so much, but let’s limit it right now to pictures and text. Now, let’s think about what millions of people do by hand, not necessarily digitally, to capture the essence of a special moment: Scrapbooking. Well, welcome to Scrapblogging! A special addition is that you can soundtrack your pages as well, so take that traditional scrapbookers!
I’ve been playing around with this a lot for months now. It’s easy to use. The available page templates are quite attractive and include all the embellishments you could add in old school scrapbooking. You can also create your own pages, crop photos, add text, etc. The layout is also much easier than PhotoShop as well. The result of your efforts is a jazzed up slide show with tons of bells and whistles.

Please indulge me as I include one from my Honeymoon:

Imagine the possibilities in your classroom! Students can create Odysseus’ scrapbook. Consider this for postcards one character may write to another. So many possibilities!

So go have fun! Put on your crafty shoes, and make a Scrapblog! All the cool people are doing it!

A Whole Different Kind of Race

Remember what an important role television played in the Nixon vs. Kennedy race?

Well, today’s connected world just made things a bit more interesting. Consider this:

It’s still early in the game. The candidates have ALOT of persuading to do, but digital media will play a role. Who will reach the voters with well designed, powerfully expressed, and meaningful multimedia productions?

Better yet, who will teach others to consider these thoughtfully for what they are and their purpose?

I’ll Tumble for You

Pardon the 80s throwback, but I couldn’t resist.

I’ve been playing with tumblr.com. This is GREAT! Thanks so much for the suggestion, Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Susan Ettenheim, and Thomas Locke from Teachers Teaching Teachers.

So what is a Tumblelog? The Tumblr site says, “To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks. You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.” It took 21-year-Old David Carp to develop something so simple to use. One of my favorite features is the bookmarklet that makes posting interesting web finds as easy as the press of a button! It doesn’t hurt that this is also mobile. You can make posts from your phone… gotta learn that.

Way to go! This is so easy to use. It’s so appealing. I’m excited to continue checking out how this fits in my world.

Are you Ready for Some TechEd Fun?

Just thought I’d pass this on. UTA’s National Writing Project site, Texas Bluebonnet Writing Project, is co-presenting a Mid-Winter Literacy Conference with UTA’s Center for Distance Education. The focus is Digital Literacies in the K-12 Classroom. The keynote speaker is Barbara Ganley, one of my favorite all-time bloggers. Her speech is entitled, Blogging as Literacy Practice: The Power of Reflection, Connection, and Creativity for Ourselves and Our Students. Scott Floyd will also be presenting on using VoiceThread and the power of digital storytelling . I invite you to join us!

Oh, and yes, it’s free… in fact, if you’re one of the first 50 to register, you’ll get a free lunch! Please email me with any questions janelle@persistentpondering.com.

Books on the Go and Looking Cool while Doing it!

In this hustle and bustle life, it’s no wonder some people don’t have time to read. I also wonder why most kids don’t read. Then, I looked around my high school to see what I could see. What do most kids have or want to have as they walk down the halls? Granted, in most schools, they are not supposed to have these out in the open, but they’re there.

You guessed it. It’s the signature white ear buds indicating a hidden iPod. Others have earphones to a Nintendo DS or PSP. Well, if that’s what the cool kids are doing, why not teach them how to get books and use those cool life accessories? Even in my Title I school, these technologies can be seen owned by a kid in every classroom.

I was perusing my much underused Google Reader…. I’ve been a lazy person so far in 2008, and I stumbled upon a post by Ben Rimes, from the Tech Savvy Educator. In his post entitled, “Forum Friday–Read Fine Literature on you DS”, Rimes gives resources that provide literature uploads for the DS. Rimes mentions the Moon Books Project, which offers literature, film and other content downloads…. wait for it… FOR FREE! You gotta love it. Check out the Tech Savvy Educator post more more specs on what is needed.

Then, I looked for free book download sites for iPods, MP3 players, and phones. I found AudiobooksForFree.com. The have tons of classics, but the free downloads are for the lower audio quality. To get better audio quality, you have to pay. Then, I came across ManyBooks.net. This site lets you download written texts not audio for use on cell phones, eBook readers, MP3 players, etc. for a donation. They had some GREAT titles, and it offered reviews of the books as well. Free Classic Audio Books offers narrated texts. There aren’t very many, but it’s free, and downloads can be made in MP3 format or m4b for the iPod.

So why fight technology? Instead, wouldn’t you be the coolest teacher when you say, “Your homework assignment is to listen to your iPod for 30 minutes” or “Your homework is to work with your Nintendo DS for 30 minutes.” These gadgets are here to stay. You, yourself, probably have one as well. Why not use them for their educational potential?

Blog It Like You Mean It

I’m off on a road trip today. It will be along one. We’re driving from Texas to Alabama. Despite the lengthy journey, I look forward to it. It’s nice to get away from home. It’s nice to see what’s out there.

When I take trips, I always think about my students. Don’t get me wrong. They also travel, but it’s usually back and forth across the border with Mexico or to another nearby city to visit relatives. Few of them have been out of the state so I see myself as an ambassador whose duty it is to document my adventures.

That brought me to Extreme Blogging. You gotta love this. Yes, I know it isn’t new, BUT I still have to marvel at the ease of which we can share our experiences, and I know my students love seeing these types of posts and presentations… they always say, “Okay, Miss, post pictures on your Myspace.” (Social Networking site like Myspace and Facebook are here to stay so we might as well play nice with them.)

Speaking of space, isn’t the notion of being able to “chat” and read thoughts from astronauts while there traveling past the Milky Way really… well, there’s not other way to really say it… it’s just really cool!

Then, I found this very cool expedition that’s being recorded online for our curiosity, education, and enjoyment. Reid Stowe began his 1000 Days at Sea on April 21, 2007. The objective of this voyage is to remain at sea for 1000 days with contact only with supporting ports. There are similarities between this type of voyage and that of traveling between planets. So on this site, there are blog updates, pictures, daily logs, and my personal favorite, a Google Map of where the schooner is currently located. This is reality blogging at its best!

So I will try. I will try to report interesting happening-upons and meaningful meanderings, but I cannot promise it will be as exciting as 1000 Days at Sea.

Sketchcasting… Draw it like You Mean It

So many apps, so little time. I must thank Ryan Bretag, the Four-Eyed Technologist, for this one.

Sketchcast is similar to Voicethread (one of my favorite places!), but you can draw out, use text, and narrate. No pix are needed for this. It’s easy to use and once you create the Sketchcast movie, it can be embedded. Here’s a video that can tell you all about it.

I’m thinking about this in terms of my ELLs. This would be wonderful for learning and reinforcing new vocabulary. How would y’all use it?

Who Doesn’t Like a Picnik?

Have you ever envied enhanced digital photos? Have you ever wondered how people did that? Have you ever found out that most people use software called Photoshop by Adobe, but this can be on the expensive side for the amateur or even for the average educator who may not use it all the time. Photoshop is a wonderful application that can really do so much, but not everyone has the means or time to figure out the program.

So what to do to doctor up our own digital photos? Well, Picnik is a free online photo editor that allows you to edit, change sizes, and yes, add all sorts of bells and whistles to a photo.

Here’s a photo I took on a Picnik.

It’s also pretty easy to use. Just play around with it because the navigation is pretty intuitive. Here’s a video that shows you some of the things Picnik can do.