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Showing posts from February, 2005

vBlog Central - Videoblogging Made Easy!

vBlog Central - Videoblogging Made Easy! : "vBlog Central is a service that makes it easy to post video (and audio and pictures) to your existing blog. We host your video content and display it in whatever format your users want. It's transparent and easy. Videos, even low quality ones, make a blog much more interesting. When you put video in your blog you get a videoblog, or vblog, for short. They are also known as vidblogs, vlogs, or vogs. "

hipteacher on blogging with students

hipteacher loves blogging with students: "In my experience, writing, revising and peer editing within the blog structure has particularly helped their writing skills...I've also had success with journaling in blogs...Teenagers are so self-conscious, I find the lack of face-to-face contact adds dramatically to the strength and effectiveness of peer editing and review." She also speaks about the privacy issue: "While I'd like all students blogs to be open to the public, there are some legal and protection issues involved...in Livejournal, I allow students to use their real names and post so that only their 'friends' can see. Everyone in the class is on everyone else's 'friend' list. " She has also invented a way of getting around the Blogger privacy issue: "...I ask each student to come up with a pen name and sign a contract stating that they are never to mention real names, location, school name, etc."

duber dot com: jd media blog

Jim Duber's media blog is an excellent example of integrating text, audio, and video into a blog.

mugshots project

Sergei Gridushko from Belarus has started a project called mugshots which looks like a great way to get students writing creatively. The idea is for the students to post a photo of their favourite mug or cup, etc, and describe it, say why it's important to them. Bee has also joined the project and has posted her photos and comments in her live journal . This one could take off I think...

Bloglet

Bloglet : "offers an email subscription service for your blog..." that boasts an easy set-up, stats, and more.

Wink - free tutorial software

Thanks to Edugadget ( plain-talking technology reviews for teachers ) for this: Wink is a free piece of software that is used to create tutorials. Their website says: "Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots of your software, use images that you already have, type-in explanations for each step, create a navigation sequence complete with buttons, delays, titles etc and create a highly effective tutorial for your users." The way it seems to work is with screenshots.You can add notes, etc and the software creates an animated presentation. there is a demo on the Wink website .

Why use audio in a blog?

The debate in the weblogging Yahoo Group about use of audio in blogs: Lesley Graham , who decided to offer   an audio quiz on her blog states that: "What we are doing in the ESL class (usually in the language lab or in the multimedia lab) is preparing people for real life situations in which they might not have any textual/visual input. Think of all of the times in a day when you listen without looking: when chatting on the telephone, consulting your voice mail, listening to talk radio, having a conversation as you walk beside someone without seeing their lips move or their facial expressions, listening to an oral presentation in a darkened room..... I believe that my job is to train learners for all of these situations in realisitic, or even heightened, conditions. The next question, of course, is why would you want to do all of this in a blog rather than on a plain vanilla web page?" Aaron Campbell : "I like Nathan's response and agree with much of what he sa

Videoblogging

From Marco's blog come a link to Momentshowing: Adventures in video blogging which has lots of interesting posts and links for anyone interested in video blogging or vlogging . After listening to Michael Coghlan's presentation last Friday, I'd really like to try this out as I think it has a lot of potential. Here's a few ideas that ran through my mind during Michael's session, which I'd like to develop on at a later date: * Set up an audio / video / photo blog diary : something for students to look at for extra listening practice,etc and to help bridge gap between teacher and students. Encourage students to do the same? I think the best idea would be to make it a rolling blog, and instead of archiving posts, simply change them. The idea of doing this would be to save on space and to encourage students to logon frequently to catch posts before they are taken off. The question is, would students actually bother going to the site? One way of introducing them to t

My Image Students' Blogs

I am using blogs again with my students of Image. This is a group of Polytechnic students studying English as a subsidiary subject (once a week for a 2 hour class). I started using weblogs with the group last year and it was successful. This year I asked the 2nd years if they wanted to continue and they all said yes. It was a lot easier introducing the 1st years to the idea of blogging too as they were able to ask their classmates (the 2nd years) if they had any doubts. So far we have managed to set up the blogs and start posting on subjects related to cinema and photography. I need to sort out a few problems with links / invitations from individual Student blogs to the Tutor blog, but otherwise it's going well. I have to give this group assignments and use what they produce in their blogs as part of their evaluation. The Tutor blog can be found here: http://image-sound.blogspot.com/

Pete's slingshot at blogging discussions and a response

Pete at Slings and Arrows has been doing a lot of reflecting about blogs, and in particular, the interactivity and possibility for dialogue and discussion. Here's an excerpt from what he's written: "More problematic in my view the the arrangement of comments in chronological sequence, and the lack of any threading. Interaction is extremely limited - basically commenting, rather than dialogue is taking place. It is all very linear and fragmentary. A comments, then B comments followed by C. Even if A comments again, it is not immediately clear to see how the comments relate to each other. For interaction to take place I think we need to be able to comment on comments. It is not that this is impossible, it is just that the way blogs are designed / set up discourages this. When I look at the comments on a blog, I don't feel much like commenting because it seems so one-dimensional, when compared with other tools. " It's interesting for me to read Pete&#

EV2005 Bloggers on blogging and RSS - some excerpts

Bettina seems to be enjoying herself: "I must say last weeks' learning has been much more productive and promising than I ever imagined... enrolling in this course has shown me how much is still there.... to be discovered about new technologies and its possible uses for teaching and learning." And it looks like it was the discovery of RSs and aggregators that has been the most important revelation: "Creating your own web? This question came as an affirmation for the first time in my cyberlife... 'aggregators help you make your own internet' WOW!!! "

Adelaide, Education and Life

I love Michael's blog ( Adelaide, Education and Life ) and can't wait to find the time to start experimenting with some of the audio and video features he has managed to integrate here. Fascinating stuff, and lots of potential for students and language learning.

apophenia: a culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture

Thanks to Sergei for this : apophenia: a culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture : "i quit using RSS/syndication readers... i was intrigued by the ongoing hype of RSS - how everything is going to be syndicated and how everyone is going to access data that way...i'm wondering if that's really true beyond the info-nerds." An interesting read and a different point of view. It's particularly interesting to me as I'm one week away from a trip to Lisbon and a course with a group of ICT coordinators / teachers. As we all have to give a short presentation, I've decided to present bloglines and RSS feeds,etc as something that I have come across recently that I think is very useful / interesting. But I'm not convinced how well it will go down with the group. The article continues: "Syndication is based on an email model, relatively close to a mailing list model...Like email, updates come in the form of a new item. If you leave your syndic

RSS webevent with Will Richardson

I have finally found time to listen to the recording of RSS: The New Killer App for Educators" with Will Richardson at Learning Times and am going to blog notes of the session here. Will, a self-confessed "blogvangelist" maintains Weblogg-ed , a weblog "dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, and other Internet-related technologies in the K-12 classroom" , and is also a founding contributor of ed-tech insider at eSchool news . RSS: Rich Site Summary / Real Simple Syndication 1. RSS brings content to the reader RSS could be the solution to email spam. With RSS you have full control over the things you subscribe to, with email you don't 2. Two parts to RSS a) The feed b) the aggregator RSS is useful for web content that changes regularly 3. Feed = URL xml file 4. Use of RSS/Aggregator Most weblogs have built in RSS feeds. Many traditional media have RSS feeds Will uses the web-ba

Russell Beattie Notebook - Home

I haven't got time to take a look at this now, but I like the way the Russell Beattie Notebook - Home is set up - very clear and lots of interesting sections. Note to self: take a longer look at this one.

BESIG: Where are the Business English blogs (part 2)

Since my last post on BESIG and the discussion that has recently started on blogging, there has been a lot more activity. In fact, I haven't had time to blog because I've been writing replies to the emails on the list, and the BESIG discussion group list itself seems to have ignited, with more activity recently than I can remember in a long while. Cleve has been blogging about this too , and we've agreed to produce some sort of joint summary on the wiki relating to what has been said so far. Meanwhile, here's another taster: In one of my emails, I'd finished with this: Finally one last question: Where are the BE and BESIG wikis? :) which received the following reply from David Hogg: Okay, everyone, simmer down: I'll ask it. Graham: I haven't got the blindest idea what you're tawkin' about. What's a "wiki"? If you tell us *what* they are, Graham, we just might tell you *where* to find them. An explanatio