W10 Content presentation and curation

For Class Discussion:

Lecture without much interaction, good structure/sequence, and/or interactive media can be boring, and we all have bad experiences from (long and tedious) PowerPoint presentation. If any tool from this week is selected and used well, it will make presenting contents much more interesting. There are many tools and media hypes about podcasting, screen capturing, online video, and virtual conferencing, but it's all about presenting and sharing more rich contents -  easier, faster, and involving the audience. Tools selected for this week exactly address that - some focus more on audio, others are more on video or visuals:

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
2. Challenging the Presentation Paradigm (in 6 minutes, 40 seconds): Pecha Kucha by Jason B. Jones
3. Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Tips in particular, the three sections, ‘Organization & Preparation Tips’, ‘Delivery Tips’ and ‘Slide Tips’.
4. Seth’s Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. iTune
2. Audacity (For PC and Mac (Garage Band is also popular on Mac)
3. Skype
4. Wordle
5. Slideshare
6. Zoho Presentation (part of collaboration/project mgmt suite)
7. Prezi (3 lessons)
8. Jing
9. Ustream
10. Elluminate (virtual conferencing, now called BB Collaborate, free version supports up to 3 people)

Further Resources or Tools worth checking:

1. PechaKucha 20×20 (can find great examples of PechaKucha presentations)
   
2. Screencast-0-Matic (another easy to use and free screen casting tools for PC and Mac)
3. CamStudio (free alternative to Camtasia, from Techsmith, now PC & Mac)
4. Talkshoe (community call voice chat)
5. Flickr Slideshow (Search Google for Flickr Slideshow. Changes were made and multiple options exist)
6. Spresent (Window flash animation)
7. Glogster (graphic blog community) (what it is)
8. Livestream
9. TodaysMeet (free live stream space)
10. Poll Everywhere (well, we all know popular texting poll)
11. Podcasting with Windows Media Player by Jake Ludington
12. Create a Podcast with Blogger (YouTube Video, 2:26 min, worth checking. Can publish to iTune)
13. JuiceReceiver - a media aggregator which automatically downloads podcasts and media files to your computer or portable device
14. Educating the Net Generation: Chapter 7, Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology (for more comprehensive info on tech/web/mobile use, see the Pew research link on the left)

Supplementary Sources, if interested in extending YouTube:

1. YouTube Annotations (how to tutorial)
2. YouTube Launches Auto-Captioning for Videos by Ben Parr (short video about captioning for hearing impaired is worth checking)
3. If #2 above looks good, please check a counter perspective on YouTube’s auto-captioning feature: Sorry, Google, YouTube Captions Aren’t for the Deaf. They’re for Your Robots by Xander Becket
4. Viddler (commenting and tagging video contents to improve search and share)

Last but not least, as Web contents have become huge, content curation has become a Very Important trend and direction:

1. Combine instead of creating one (15 top notch tools and another great list and 10 free tools for education)  
2. Four promising tools  (Storify 2 min video)(another example)
3. Content curation (how to mix/curate stories, blogs, news, social media, etc).
4. Video curation (what it is and tips) - Tools: Yokto, Magnify, Shortform, and expect more to come.

Post your comment, please try to answer all questions concisely and to the point:

• Which tool(s) did you focus for the purpose of better and more effective content presentation? What is your thought about content curation and which tool looked most useful and promising? For effective use, what do you need to do in terms of instructional design, management, and use of media/tools? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?

W9 Storytelling and Mapping

For Class Discussion:
Many say that storytelling is the best and natural way people learn. Using digital storytelling, drawing, or mapping tools, people can create artifacts, learn visually, practice with safety, simulate the model, and most importantly, have fun and learn actively. These tools may look different in terms of purposes and usage, but they have one essential commonality: creativity.

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling
2. Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine
• Open Discussion on Web 2.0 Storytelling by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levin
• 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wiki by Alan Levine
3. Google for Educators – Maps
4. Digital Storytelling Part V – Google Maps by Silvia Tolisano (a great example for how students can create a virtual tour or field trip diary and share with others)
5. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Google Earth 

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. Voicethread - The Voicethread 4 education wiki is a great pedagogical resource.
2. Toondoo - Create your own comics! Book Maker. Make a character or ToonBook!
3. Animoto. Using Animoto to Promote Speaking in the Foreign Language details how José Picardo used it with his Spanish language students
4. Gliffy - Online diagram software, can create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floorplans, user interface designs, etc.
5. Concept/story mapping: Mindomo and Spicynodes 
6. Flick'r - The most popular online photo management and sharing tool
7. Picasa - Fast and easy photo sharing from Google
1. Free Picasa Flash and HTML template

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...

• Mapping Our Worlds: Creating Interdisciplinary Lessons Using Online Mapping Tools by Barbara Lindsey

Post your comment. Try to answer each and every question clearly and concisely using contents/insights gained from this week:

• Which tool did you focus for the purpose of digital storytelling? What are benefits and challenges of utilizing digital storytelling for learning or training? For effective use, what do you need to do in terms of instructional design, management, and use of media/tools? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?

W8 Social Web: Twitter and Social Bookmarking

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):
Two tool categories for this week: 1 Microblogging (Twitter) and 2 Social Bookmarking tools (Delicious and Diigo). Twitter is more for what are you doing now or sharing resources very briefly and quickly, while social bookmarking: Delicious focuses on sharing and managing resources using tags, and Diigo does similar things with more features for annotating and highlighting (and also sharing them).

• Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
• Educause: Calibrated Peer Review: A Writing and Critical Thinking Instructional Tool

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

• Twitter (How to use Twitter video - 4 min, Twitter basics from Twitter)
• Delicious - About Delicious (5 min)
• Delicious Video Tutorial (9 min)   As of Mar 01, couldn't find any tutorial on YouTube that matches the current version of Delicious, but from these two, should get ideas about main features and how to utilize them without much difficulty.
• Diggo (What Diggo is and does, and the company site has many useful tutorials)
• Of course, social bookmarking has many promises, thus more tools/services came up such as Evernote, Pocket, and Pinboard. Comparison summary can be found here.

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...
For Twitter

• Search within Twitter
• Instacurate - Turn your Twitter timeline into a personalised news site, in an instant.
• Tweetdeck - A tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and publishing Tweet messages. 
• Hootsuite - A social media dashboard. 
• Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
• Collaboration examples using Twitter 
• Twitter in Academia  
• Why I Still Love Twitter by Isabelle Jones  
• How I use Twitter, search, Diigo Delicious, DEVONthink, Scrivener to find, refine, organize information –>knowledge by Howard Rheingold
• Edmodo - something like Twitter, more for education

For Social Bookmarking

• Using del.icio.us to create an easy, always updated online portfolio by Michele Martin

• Learning in the Social Workplace (by Jane Hart) - (blog about how and why social tools help employees learn better)

You can comment on any of the following (in your answer, specify which one you are answering between #1 and #2:

• Both RSS and Social Bookmarking tools are to improve "collective" information management and sharing. What similarities or differences, or strengths or challenges did you find between social bookmarking  vs. RSS?

• Which of these tools: twitter, delicious, and diigo, or any other will you adopt and use actively? For those who resist, what's your strategy? What should you consider for organizational/class wide adoption/use?