5 Minute Videos is a website dedicated to videos that are less than 5 minutes that can help you with everyday problems. I personally checked out the Technology section and there were quite a few useful researchers that educators could use to help themselves as well as their students. Many of the tech videos are organized by subject matter, ie.; IPhone Apps, Software, Tech support, Product Reviews, etc. Surf through and see what you might find that is of use to you...I am sure there are questions that you need answered and these can help you.
Other categories include Health, Fashion, Games, Gardening, Music, Travel, etc.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas
Here at The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness I want to wish you a Merry Christmas, and for those of you who do not celebrate Christmas....Happy Holidays.
Feel free to track Santa
Feel free to track Santa
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Virsona - Create a Virtual You
On this Christmas Eve Eve if you have not found a gift for someone, why not give a gift that keeps on giving. Virsona is a website that allows you to create a Virtual You. What does that mean? Imagine your great great grandchildren being able to interview you... not read about you, but interview you. Through the website you can create an account and answer questions, or tell the website about yourself and then provide questions that relate to that information. You can keep a daily journal entry so there is a timeline of events. You can also provide your philosophical ideas, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc.
From a classroom stand point, imagine interviewing Abraham Lincoln and asking him about Slavery or the Gettysburg Address. Or interviewing any other President. The website has an educational feature that allows your school or district to pay for an account to create student accounts and then your students could use the site to create virsonas of a historical person as part of a project.
Visit the website, play around for a little bit. Or go directly and talk to President Lincoln.
Imagine the possibilities if we could get every President, leader, actor, actress, politician, etc. to use this site, then they would never really die and we would also be able to know where they stand and what they did.
Friday, December 18, 2009
The 2009 Edublog Awards
Winners, First Runner Up, and Second Runner Up have all been announced for all 19 categories. Each category and its homepage for winners and all those nominated can be found below.
I am looking forward to next year!
- Best Individual Blog
- Best Individual Tweeter
- Best Group Blog
- Best New Blog
- Best Class Blog
- Best Student Blog
- Best Resource Sharing Blog
- Most Influential Blog Post
- Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
- Best Teacher Blog
- Best Librarian/Library Blog
- Best Educational Tech Support Blog
- Best ELearning/Corporate Education Blog
- Best Educational Use of Audio
- Best educational use of video / visual
- Best educational wiki
- Best educational use of a social networking service
- Best educational use of a virtual world
- Lifetime achievement
I am looking forward to next year!
Friday Focus - Online Timeline Creation
It is hard to imagine a middle or high school student who has not done a timeline in some class throughout their education experience. As teachers we all have generally assigned one to students where they use their textbooks, find the date, and tell the importance. Well, with the implementation of websites dedicated to timeline creation, those days can be over...and your timelines created by your students will really catch your attention, as well as visitors to the website. There are five basic websites for creating timelines that I will be discussing today and in no particular order. Xtimeline, Dipity, TimeToast, TimeGlider, and Capzles.
Before I begin my examination I do want to mention that Prezi would be a great way to create timelines. I got this idea while on the Forum at Classroom 2.0 from Jeremy Cunningham. He provided a link to timlines created on Prezi....what a great idea!
Now on to Timeline websites.
- Probably the best because it has made part of its focus education. The timeline itself has a lot of neat features. The zoom feature makes it easy to move from one year/decade to another, so if you are doing an exapnsive timeline, that can come in handy. I have added am image below of the textbox you get to use to create your entry in the timeline. The only feature I don't like it time and time zones...for most assignments in high school I don't think that will matter, however it does give you the option to not use time in the preferences section. You can add links to a URL and pictures to the timeline as well. It has a pop up calendar so that you don't have to enter in the date if you would prefer to look it up. Overall, I think that TimeGlider would be a great addition to any project. It does require email and password setup, but does not require email verification to use. Something that is always a plus.
- First thought....Email Verification. So if your students need to use this site, they have to have their email verified first. When you create your timeline, you give it a category. You can also apply an image to it, which would come in handy for those visual learners. The Event box is very simple: title, date, description, link, image. Nothing new there. However, It does have add a Time Span. This is a great feature because so often events in time do not last one day...so that gives Timetoast a feature the others do not. The viewing feature is easy as well. Just hover over the event and you can get a short description and an image (if included). Click on the event and you get the full write up. Below is the Add Event Screen.
- No Email Verification required which is a great plus. Creation is great. You can give your timeline a custom URL, so students could easily use something that as a teacher you would know (Last Name, Nickname, etc.). You can add a photo, as well as place it in a list of categories. Students can also give it tags making searching for it a lot easier. A Description of the Timeline is also required. When adding an event, you can even download or upload them if you have done them earlier in class in an Excel Document. Adding an event gives you all the normal options. So far the main difference from the ones mentioned above is that you can embed HTML code, which would be great for videos. Another great feature is at the end of the Add Event page, there is a box for source. Even though the site does not require a source, as a teacher, you can...another great feature. Viewing is easy as well. It shows the event, you click on it, in the window you can go forwrds or backwards and see very entry, or exit out and see the whole timeline. You are also given the option to print the timeline as well. You can also view it in outline form, or full view. A very useful timeline website.
- Dipity is an interesting timeline site. What I like about it is that it is very detailed. What I don't like about it is that it will generate a timeline for you. So a students could search the web for Pearl Harbor and it will generate a timeline for that event based on entries from a web search, and then it would appear that a student completed it, without really doing any work. So ease of use for a student is not the best, because it took me a bit to figure out where to start a blank one. Once I did find that, you get all the usual features as the other ones. Dipity would be better served as a resource for research than for creation.
- Capzles is a neat little website. Now, it is not necessarily a timeline of historic events, but a way for you to document an event as it happens using pictures. Think of it as a Digital Story Timeline. You put the pictures in the order things happened, with a little text on top of the picture, and you have a timeline of your event. Would be great to document a field trip, but not necessarily for a histoircal timeline. Still a site worth checking out.
Have your students used any of these sites? If so, comment and post a link to your students creations. Have you used any of these sites? What were your experiences.
Before I begin my examination I do want to mention that Prezi would be a great way to create timelines. I got this idea while on the Forum at Classroom 2.0 from Jeremy Cunningham. He provided a link to timlines created on Prezi....what a great idea!
Now on to Timeline websites.
- First thought....Email Verification. So if your students need to use this site, they have to have their email verified first. When you create your timeline, you give it a category. You can also apply an image to it, which would come in handy for those visual learners. The Event box is very simple: title, date, description, link, image. Nothing new there. However, It does have add a Time Span. This is a great feature because so often events in time do not last one day...so that gives Timetoast a feature the others do not. The viewing feature is easy as well. Just hover over the event and you can get a short description and an image (if included). Click on the event and you get the full write up. Below is the Add Event Screen.
- No Email Verification required which is a great plus. Creation is great. You can give your timeline a custom URL, so students could easily use something that as a teacher you would know (Last Name, Nickname, etc.). You can add a photo, as well as place it in a list of categories. Students can also give it tags making searching for it a lot easier. A Description of the Timeline is also required. When adding an event, you can even download or upload them if you have done them earlier in class in an Excel Document. Adding an event gives you all the normal options. So far the main difference from the ones mentioned above is that you can embed HTML code, which would be great for videos. Another great feature is at the end of the Add Event page, there is a box for source. Even though the site does not require a source, as a teacher, you can...another great feature. Viewing is easy as well. It shows the event, you click on it, in the window you can go forwrds or backwards and see very entry, or exit out and see the whole timeline. You are also given the option to print the timeline as well. You can also view it in outline form, or full view. A very useful timeline website.
- Dipity is an interesting timeline site. What I like about it is that it is very detailed. What I don't like about it is that it will generate a timeline for you. So a students could search the web for Pearl Harbor and it will generate a timeline for that event based on entries from a web search, and then it would appear that a student completed it, without really doing any work. So ease of use for a student is not the best, because it took me a bit to figure out where to start a blank one. Once I did find that, you get all the usual features as the other ones. Dipity would be better served as a resource for research than for creation.
- Capzles is a neat little website. Now, it is not necessarily a timeline of historic events, but a way for you to document an event as it happens using pictures. Think of it as a Digital Story Timeline. You put the pictures in the order things happened, with a little text on top of the picture, and you have a timeline of your event. Would be great to document a field trip, but not necessarily for a histoircal timeline. Still a site worth checking out.
Have your students used any of these sites? If so, comment and post a link to your students creations. Have you used any of these sites? What were your experiences.
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