Shadow Drive - Social Cloud Drive

ShadowDrive is a web application that plans to make sharing content more social through various social networks.  It is still in development and plans are in place to have desktop, tablet, and mobile services available in October of 2013.  You can currently join for free by logging in through Facebook (Twitter in the future).  You can still use the service, but the space allotment is currently small, just 1GB.  What makes it worthwhile is that students probably won't be using a large amount of space in the first place.

With integration into Facebook, ShadowDrive would make it easy for students or teachers to have important files or documents easily made available to students and have it appear on their Facebook Timeline.  We are well aware that students are on Facebook.  Now, if you have a teacher page or classroom page you can have files made available to students.  Students that are working together on a project could also use the service to share pieces of a project, artifacts, pictures, videos, etc. 

Another benefit is that if your Facebook friends are using the App, then they would have access to the same files through the ShadowDrive site.  There are several security features in place to not only protect privacy, but also to protect the legality issues that might surface.  Like other applications on Facebook, you do have to provide permission to this App. 

Here is a video that introduces the product and provides more information.  If you are an active user of social media (Facebook and Twitter) in your classrooms with your students, this might be an app worth investigating. 



To learn more here are some other reviews of interest:

http://www.estartups.org/promoted/shadowdrive-the-social-cloud-storage-drive/

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/shadowdrive-a-web-service-to-easily-upload-files-share-with-online-friends/

Edublog Awards - Voting is NOW OPEN!

I recently posted my nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards and after tons of nominations, the voting is now open.  Voting for these can be a long process, especially if you don't know about the blogs, sites, and people being nominated.  However, the Edublog Awards themselves provide a wonderful opportunity to discover and connect with some great educators who are sharing some valuable resources. 

These people who have been nominated use their valuable time to provide and share with you.  The least we can do as peers is learn about them and then make an educated vote based on what we have gathered.  The best way to see all that were nominated and be able to click on each is to view the Google Doc they have set up that provides links and results from the nomination process.  If you only want to be able to visit the finalists, you can do that on the Edublog Awards main page under the 2012 Categories Links.

Voting is open till the end of the day on Sunday, December 9th, so you have about just over 6 days to vote from the time of this posting. 

Tuesday Teaching Strategy - Empty Outline

Empty Outline

An Empty Outline is best used when a great deal of structured content must be presented, such as in a lecture.  Varying levels of ability in students allows an empty outline to meet the different needs.  An empty outline can help students develop skills of listening, note taking, and organization.  All of these skills do require clear and supportive feedback at the same time.

Beginning with a detailed outline lecture or discussion, decide whether students should pay more attention to its topics, subtopics, or supporting details (this might alternate with certain subject matter).  Then, prepare a partial outline, omitting the topics, subtopics, or supporting details from it. 

After the lecture, ask students to fill in the blanks in the partial outline.  Completing the outline demonstrates students’ mastery of the material and shows students how topics, subtopics, or supporting details relate to one other.  An empty outline is also a valuable resource in teaching students how to organize notes when outlines are not provided.

It is important to be cautious when choosing what to omit.  It is recommended that an empty outline be limited to at most, half of the lecture or discussion.  The same outline technique could also be incorporated into a “Book Look” activity when assigning students reading from a text.

Mural.ly

Mural.ly is a website dedicated to allowing users to easily, creatively, and with flexibility organize pictures, video, sound, and other content on a project.  Mural.ly can also be used on tablets and can b used in a collaborative setting.  Signing up and using Mural.ly is free and is currently in Beta. 

With Mural.ly users can map the content and then present it in a zoomable interface to allow users to see the details of a project.  A great feature is the ability to drag and drop content on to a project with ease. 

For more information, see the short video below.

Prezzip - Prezi Templates

Prezzip is a website that allows users to download both free and priced templates for the use on the presentation site Prezi.  The templates are downloaded in a SWF (Shockwave Flash) file and can then be uploaded to a users presentation on Prezi.  You can currently search Prezzip for Prezis, Templates, Animations, and Pictures; so it is not limited to just templates.  The prices for the purchasable templates and other features range from $1.99 to about $15.00.  There is a Bundles option that allows users to save money by bundling various purchases together.  If you are a big Prezi users, this website might come in handy.  There are some very useful templates in the free section as well. 

For more information, here is a very short video introducing Prezzip.