Not another!

It really must be easy, the spider does say,

You've made another Voki for your website today?

Simple and fun, in English or French,

A person, an animal, in space or on a bench!

My 10 year old son just made this Voki as he is home sick today. Pretty quick and easy!

A what?

A Voki, you say, well just what is that?

It sound like something you'd say to a cat!

An avatar that talks, as cute as can be.

I made one, little spider, take a look and see.

This morning, I created a Voki to put on the library website. It was very simple to use and create. The entire process took about 30 minutes. I enjoyed creating a funny looking character and the fact that I could upload a picture of my actual library for the background. I created a character that speaks in French, though it took me quite a long time to choose which voice to use. I needed to spell some of the words phonetically as the pronunciation was not quite exact and it still isn't perfect. I tried some of the voice effects, but most of them made it very difficult to understand the character - not sure if the effects would be clearer with English.

For students, I think this is an excellent tool as it is so simple, does not require an email account or even to log in to create something.  Voki Classroom is also available where teachers can create classes that are private or public, have access to lesson plans using Voki and a home page where all Voki projects appear. The teacher must approve any Vokis before they are posted, giving an additional layer of security for the class. A Voki Classroom account is $29.95 per year, which gives one teacher up to 10 classes and 200 students. They have additional discounts for schools creating accounts for more teachers. Before purchasing Voki Classroom, I will definitely try out a free account first.

One of the nice aspects about Voki is the ability for students to create their Voki that speaks French. Being at a French immersion school where all subjects are conducted in French, this really is a necessity. The need to write some words phonetically in order hear correct pronunciation would be tricky for some students.

I like this video that shows how Voki was used to help students with a writing project. By hearing their writing read back to them by the Voki, students were able to find errors and changes that needed to be made to their writing.



Of course, Voki is also just plain fun - creating a funny looking character that talks in a funny voice is very engaging! However, there are not so many choices available that the creation part is overly time consuming.

I will be looking at how I can use Voki with a class soon!

You know you're a techy teacher when . . .

Reposted from Ask A Tech Teacher - I am well on my way!

You Know You’re a Techy Teacher When…

1. You can’t remember the last time you printed a classroom document.
2. Plurking, tweeting, and playing with your wiki in public are acceptable behaviors.
3. Your Notebook isn’t spiral bound – it plugs into the wall.
4. Forget the garden…you spend more time on the weekend weeding out your Inbox.
5. You can recite your school’s Acceptable Use Policy by heart.
6. On parent/teacher night, instead of exchanging business cards, you Bump.
7. You express yourself with emoticons.
8. You no longer consider it graffiti to write on someone’s wall.
9. Your significant other gets jealous of your PLN.
10. It’s not creepy to have lots of followers.
11. You’re in a constant battle to be Mayor of your school.
12. Your students call you the “cool” teacher.
13. The other teachers are jealous of your Prezi.
14. YouTube is blocked in your school, and you know how to get around it and still use the content.
15. The Tech Department is sick of your constant requests to unblock Twitter.
16. You’ve Googled your principal.
17. You know that TweetDeck is not a patio with a lot of birds.
18. You correct your friends’ grammar when they text you.
19. Never mind the fruit, you want a real Apple for Christmas.
20. “Casual Fridays” means logging into the EdTech UNconference in your bunny slippers.
21. You wear your “I Heart EdTech” button everywhere you go.
22. You read this blog post then tweet it, like it, and pass it on to a friend

Pinter-wrong?

How can you take someone else's work?

Surely that makes you just one big jerk!

It's true we can't take things that we don't own.

I think I hear pinners make a collective groan!

It seems that Pinterest has led to a rash of copyright issues regarding photos. As people "pin"something on their boards, they chose from any images that may be on that page - whether they are available to be shared or not.


Hmmm . . .

Flickr has now added "do not pin" code to any images that are copyrighted or protected. Flickr disables Pinterest pins on copyrighted images 

As teacher-librarians, part of our job is to teach students and teachers about copyright issues. Using photos/images to "pin" as a bookmarking icons is definitely walking on a fine line.

Privacy and social media

How do you keep your life to yourself?

Your web seems so vast, it's like you're out on a shelf.

Sometimes it is hard, I say to my friend,

But it is possible to maintain some privacy in the end.

One of my concerns with social media and Facebook in particular has been around privacy. The whole concept of "friending" people and gathering up hundreds of "friends" seems rather bizarre to me.

Apparently, some of the novelty has worn off as people are beginning to "unfriend" and keep more of their information private.

Unfriending and private profiles are the new trends in social networks

Where am I?

I am still on my web, but where are you?

The spider asks as I wander through.

You've tried so many things on your great big web,

When will you be done? the spider said.

I feel like I need to check in with my progress for this class, and see how I am doing and if I am still on track.

I have been very consumed with creating a video at the moment with students from the environment club at the school. We are putting the final touches on our entry for the BC Green Games. It is created in iMovie, which is not technically Web 2.0, so I am not sure if I should include it as part of my project here.

Anyways . . . where am I?

Facebook

I have set up my Facebook account and have added a bunch of friends. I find it is mostly just something else to check each day for news. I am not interested in most of the items my friends post, but do enjoy seeing the occasional fun photo, etc. I have posted some general questions to my friends and a few pictures of my kids. I have also commented on other's posts.

The most useful part of Facebook for me, so far, is the group that I belong to for the climbing gym where my son trains. I like that the group shows up on my home page and I can immediately see if there is anything new posted by the little number that shows up. This was very useful when there was snow and the gym was cancelled.

I can see how the "group" function would be useful as a school to have for parent communication (elementary) or even for students (secondary).

Twitter or more importantly, Tweetdeck

Part of my inquiry was finding a better way to manage Twitter. I believe I have found that with Tweetdeck.

Integral to my use of Tweetdeck is my installation of Google Chrome. At one point last year, I had actually installed Tweetdeck, but didn't like the fact that it sat on the desktop of my computer. With Chrome, the Tweetdeck plug-in allows it to sit in the web browser on the start-up page. I like this much better.

Tweetdeck has allowed me to organize the information I gather from Twitter. I have also loaded my Facebook account into Tweetdeck, so I can also see my Facebook news feed. I am not sure why the Facebook posts I see are not the same in Tweetdeck as in Facebook. I also can't see the "groups" from Facebook, which means I need to open up Facebook separately as well.

But, overall, I like Tweetdeck. I currently have the following columns:

• Facebook news feed
• Home - which is all the people I follow on Twitter
• #edtech
• #tlchat
• #pbl - for Project Based Learning, but seems to be some sort of foot fetish thing as well
• #frimm - French immersion
• @me - for tweets where I am mentioned
• inbox - for direct messages to me

I can easily skim through the columns and click on things that interest me for more information. I am not feeling as overwhelmed with Twitter now.

Social Bookmarking

I continue to use Diigo personally for keeping track and organizing links, but after exploring the education side of it and finding no filters to the outside world, I don't think I would use it with students.

I have just begun using Pinterest and find it very appealing because it is so visual. I believe this would also appeal to students, so will explore a bit further and see how I might use Pinterest with students.

Blogging

I have explored Kidblog, which I like, and Blogmeister, which I don't. I am excited to have enticed a teacher to begin blogging with her Grade 3/4 class. Next week, I will help her set up Kidblogs for her class.

Still to come:

• Voki
• Glogster
• Voicethread

Stay tuned . . .

Youth & Digital Media

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard just released a report that looks at youth and digital media.

Key Findings:

1. Search shapes the quality of information that youth experience online.

2. Youth use cues and heuristics to evaluate quality, especially visual and interactive elements.

3. Content creation and dissemination foster digital fluencies that can feed back into search and evaluation behaviours.

4. Information skills acquired through personal and social activities can benefit learning in the academic context.

This research points the direction for teacher-librarians as we work with youth and digital media. There is a link to the complete study for download as a PDF and an infographic with a summary of the findings.

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality - New Report from the Berkman Center