Useful links

• English Learning Websites A site that collects the most important sources of English learning websites. It also provides the visitors with useful articles about good ways to learn vocabulary.

• Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite With Free And Cheap Software | Lifehacker Australia “Adobe’s Creative Suite is one of the best software packs out there for professionals, but the suite is prohibitively expensive for most people. If you can’t drop the cash, you can still get a similar experience with free or cheap software. Here’s how to build your own Creative Suite. Adobe Creative Suite is more than just Photoshop: it contains other software that helps you build websites, design logos, edit video, layout books and more.”

• Research and Evaluation | Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership “AITSL is committed to improving Australia’s educational outcomes by leading and influencing improvement in teaching and school leadership. Our work is driven by research and aims to foster evidence-based practice. We draw upon educational specialists and our own expertise to create high-quality research publications. This research then guide the practical resources we develop to support teachers and schools leaders”

• The Leading Free Stock Photography Site – freeimages A collection of items useful for inspiration. They offer royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash® files from $1.

• Damien Kee – Home – How do you store your LEGO? ” A collection of different ideas that were gathered together from teachers from all over the world via the LEGO engineering mailing list. This mailing list has over 200 participants, exchanging ideas about how robotics is taught in schools. “

• The New Librarian: Leaders in the Digital Age | Digital Promise “Part of a series of case studies produced by Digital Promise examining the work of members in our League of Innovative Schools. ” “Teacher librarians must recognize the need to remake their jobs, programs, and spaces for the 21st century.”

• Stop Teaching – Start Learning |  IPAD 4 SCHOOLS The basic ideas work across all classrooms although written on the Ipad 4schools blog. “By ‘teach’ I mean talk to the whole class to share instruction or discuss content. The three common reasons for talking to a whole class are: Task instruction; Delivery of content/concept/facts; Class discussion. I believe that only the first of these 3 can be said to succeed in it’s aims and even then fails often. All forms of learning should offer equal opportunity to all, not only to be involved but succeed in the learning intentions. Every learner deserves to maximise their time available to ensure they definitely learn and grow. People are different and so any one-size-fits-all mechanism is guaranteed to fail to be fair to all…”

• The Daring Librarian: Saddle Up & Rope ‘Em In! From the #TLChat Virtual Cafe webinar series: Shelly Terrell & Jake Duncan. Diverse conversation about education and schools from experienced and inspirational educators. You can view, listen/watch the webinar via the link to the recorded Blackboard session.

• Reading Writing Responding: Things Are Not Always As They Seem Post about audiobooks. The author listens whilst they are walking, driving, working, gardening – basically, whenever allows. A few favourites listed with some videos from youtube accompany the descriptions.

• So You’re Already A Connected Educator… Now What? | Getting Smart “Social media has revolutionized what it means to be an educator and, unfortunately, it often carries a negative connotation such as unprofessional and immature adults who use social media as a means to berate or belittle their students or colleagues. That’s not what it means to be a connected educator. However, once folks sign up for class Twitter pages or create Google+ profiles and begin finding others with whom they can share ideas, the question looms: now what? Maybe more importantly, so what? Here are 5 things to focus on once you’ve taken the plunge and decided to become a Connected Educator:”

• 10 Brilliant Examples Of Sketch Notes: Notetaking For The 21st Century “Sketch notes-or graphic notes, or whatever other term you like-are one of the single most important developments in note-taking history. Exactly why they matter has something to do with the way our brains work, and the explosion of technology, and a little bit of viral success. The point of notes is to capture important ideas for future reference. Notes that combine images with words and phrases, sketch notes are actually an evolution of this idea. Then Ken Robinson’s Changing Educational Paradigms exploded across the internet, and the sound of the little marker squeaking across the whiteboard became synonymous with digital storytelling. Iconic even. Why? Because sketch notes like these don’t just capture ideas, they tell a story. “

• 37 Insanely Smart School Teacher Hacks Esoecially for proimary schools. A lot of simple ideas that could be used in library situations – with students or adapted for displays.

• Connected Librarian Day 2014

• Teaching Writing With Technology? Blogging, Blogging, Blogging Helping students to cultivate the skills needed for writing is often about cultivating a love of writing. Every student needs to be able to express themselves clearly, concisely and intelligently, whatever they are going to end up doing in later life. “The best way to help them develop those skills is to make writing personal and give them a vested interest in communication. Blogs have become one of the most popular website formats in recent years. Blogging websites have become the essential ways for many people to broadcast their personal stories, challenges and insights. This has created both a new generation of budding writers as well as a generation with a keen interest in the stories of others. Blogging offers an immersive experience. Students are simply encouraged to begin a blog chronicling their life story or a subject that ignites their interest. That’s when the skills are picked up and developed as a matter of course. The initial blogging assignment should be simple, but at the same time offer a bit of a challenge.” Post offers some useful advice about student blogging.

• Our technology messages are important | Dangerously Irrelevant “What technology messages is your school system sending when we ban student technology for bad behaviour, limit teachers using technologies with classes etc.?”

• Art Inspired / FrontPage “A wiki that offers many visual art ideas and resources to inspire and motivate your lessons, artwork and art curriculum.”

• Creativity 2.0 / Some Assessment Activities Some creative assessment activities. Post about authentic assessment. links to technologies mentioned. Includes a table from the Art Inspired wiki. Table with ideas about how to use artwork or photos to generate ideas, critical and creative thinking and writing.

• ReadPlus “ReadPlus offers a collection of over 10,000 selected books and films arranged under themes for librarians, teachers and parents about books for young people aged 5 to 18. Lists of books and films under subject headings can be generated. The books range from picture books to adult fiction and are organised into different age categories. You can search for books using theme, author, title, genre and age-range. There are reviews and links to teacher resources, reading group guides and author sites. Bookmarks of Read Similar Authors can be printed out. There are also lists of Read Similar Books for popular books. Pat Pledger and Fran Knight are editors”

• Inside A Dog | “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx “All about books – by young people, for young people. Inside a Dog is a place for teen readers and the home of Inky, the reading wonder-dog. Here you can: Find great reads, Share your reviews of books you love – or hate  Discuss book news and hot topics on our news blog and in our forums Win stuff!, Gain insight into an authors’ thoughts about writing and reading with our Writer in Residence for September, Join or create a book club to talk about your reading”

• The Reading Hedgehog “This is a place for bookworms to come and talk about books. Reviews, new releases, movies based off of books – anything bookish. Because my passion is books, I wanted to express and share that love with like-minded people on a literary blog. The Reading Hedgehog’s main focus is Young Adult and Middle Grade literature. On the rare occasion, an Adult book will make its way on, but kid/teen literature is my favorite, and always will be. Friendly comments and questions are always welcome, and The Reading Hedgehog doesn’t mind people who disagree, so long as they don’t get nasty. Part of discussing literature is to talk about difference in opinion as well, right? Mainly, this is a place for fun and warm discussions among friends – new and old – about our shared passion: books.

• ThirstForFiction – A YA Book Review Blog “ThirstForFiction is the result of Author’s unsatiable passion for reading young adult fiction. Founded in 2010, when Rhys was a tiddly fourteen years old, ThirstForFiction aims to provide well-written, informed and discerning reviews of currently published fiction, peppered with the occasional giveaway, guest post and author interview.”

• GUYS READ “Guys Read is a web-based literacy program for boys founded by author and First National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka. The mission is to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers.”

• Persnickety Snark Blog of Adele Walsh – SLV’s Reader Development team- Program Coordinator for the CYL.

• inkcrush “Blog of a slightly Less Young fans of Young Adult literature. Blame it on the all-round awesome authors who are writing in the genre. Books I love: Among my fave YA authors are Jaclyn Moriarty, Melina Marchetta, Elizabeth Scott, Kirsty Eagar, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood, Kirsten Murphy, Gabrielle Williams, Steven Herrick, John Marsden, Sonya Hartnett, Markus Zusak, Sherryl Jordan, Sarah Ockler and C.K. Kelly Martin.”

• The Unfinished Bookshelf “The Unfinished Bookshelf. Author can never resist the urge to browse in bookshops and will usually leave with at least one book tucked under her arm. Her reading tastes are rather eclectic, but she has a soft spot for contemporary YA, particularly if it’s Australian.”

• 5 easy ways to introduce new users to your digital library | OverDrive Blogs From Overdrive blog – some ideas for introducing library clientele to your digital collection.

• Using Social Media for Personal Learning Networks From Phemie Write. “Social Media Tool Guide for PLNs”. Based on and Adapted from the Moodle for Educators guide by the legendary Joyce Seitzinger. Slide presentation and a good infographic.

• The networked academic: New identities & roles Created by Bonnie Stewart to support presentation at ACEC 2014. “Networked identities differ from institutional roles, and networked practices therefore change not only what scholars do, but who they think they are. The presentation outlines findings from a 2013/14 ethnographic study on the different ways and purposes scholars engage in networked scholarship, especially on Twitter.”

• 21st Century Learning Design – Making Learning Relevant – ACEC 2014 “Created to support a 21st Century Learning Design Workshop at the ACEC 2014 Conference in Adelaide, Australia on October 1, 2014.”

• Chrome extensions | transformative LEARNING Chrome is a powerful and useful browser and the choice of many.  It is powerful, well organised and reasonably quick. One of the better aspects is that there are some very useful extensions available. Listed (and linked) in this post are a few useful ones.

• Book Marketing The Old Way Versus The Way That Works Today — Part 1: Book Reviews | Digital Book World Article about how to get information about your book/s out to the most people. The new ways – use digital services. Useful for us to get students to review books – make it for a wider audience than just their teacher.

• Transparency: Bullying Redefined and Identified | Edutopia “Educators have taken many approaches to solving the problem of bullying, whether making it “uncool” to bully, meting out scary punishments, or teaching tolerance. Tolerance is certainly part of the issue, but even that starts with highlighting differences between people and suggesting that one “tolerate” the other. There is no solving the issues, but there can be improved transparency, and a new tone for how we respond — educating in kid-friendly and authentic language, using real-world examples with updated definitions, all in pursuit of total transparency for a growing problem.”

• SAMR – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything “SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning. Developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the  model supports and enables teachers to design, develop, and infuse digital learning experiences that utilize technology. The goal is  to transform learning experiences so they result in higher levels of achievement for students. Kathy Schrock feels teachers need to both create tasks that target the higher-order cognitive skills (Bloom’s) as well as design tasks that have a significant impact on student outcomes (SAMR). My thoughts about the the model are further down this page.”

• Bloomin’ Apps – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything “This page gathers all of the Bloomin’ Apps projects in one place. Each image has clickable hotspots and includes suggestions for iPad, Google, Android, and Web 2.0 applications to support each of the levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Kathy Schrock created a page to allow you to share your favorite Web 2.0, iOS, or Android app with others.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Useful sites (weekly)

• Best things about the Barnes and Noble Nook eBook Reader « Moving at the Speed of Creativity A post about the Barnes and Noble eBook reader – giving the current lowdown on the Nook.

• Your Free Online Video Editor | JayCut Jaycut is a very good online video editing interface. Import photos, audio, video, and make a movie on a multi-track timeline plus transitions and effects.

• Stroome.com | mix it up. mash it out. Collaborative video editing community. Upload videos, share clips, then mix it up and mash it out. This tool uses the open source Kaltura video editor and is easy to use.

• Wallwisher: Free ESL Materials.com | Websites | Lesson Plans  Resources for using Wallwisher in the ESL Classroom

• 31 Free Adobe Photoshop Alternatives Tools For Image Manipulation You can just use Photoshop Alternatives to edit for simple piece of work. These Alternatives allows users to resize photos, some can does cropping and adjust colors, brightness, contrast by using various usable functions. Try hand on web based online photo editing sites that have no need of any expert knowledge just follow few simple steps and put final touch to any project.

• YourNextRead: Book Recommendations (USA) Similar to BookSeer. This is a book recommendation system showing aggregated book reviews, updated by real peoples opinions, in a simple visual map, helping you to decide ‘What Should I Read Next?’.

• ReadWriteThink: Students Materials: Character Trading Cards A creative (and interactive) english lesson plan that encourages character analysis. Students create a character card and come up with a story for a book character,. This is fun for students and it makes tham using their knowledge and writing skills to come up the final product. You can print the cards also for the students to keep.

• Become Social Networking Guru With 45 Handy Twitter Tools A lot of tools has been developed over time and some of them can really relief your Twitter experience and automate some time consuming actions.

• UD.com – The Ultimate Domain Name Checker for your Website, Twitter, Facebook This tool can not only find out if your desired website name is free on several different top level domains but also on a variety of different social networking sites.

• Make Your Own Free Multipurpose Web Page With Google Sites A post that offers information about how to make your own free multipurpose web pages using Google sites.

• William Shakespeare This site offers all things about William Shakespeare. It is a site that is rich in infomation about Shakespeare, his theatre, and his times. It is targeted towards educating students about life in London, the bubonic plague, and Elizabethan England.

• Author Magazine – You are the author of your own life. A free online magazine that is dedicated to writing and publishing and the creative processes in general.

• 250+ Free Stock Photography Sites | Media Militia A post highlighting sources of (and linking to) free stock images. You mshould read the rules and regulations for the stock at hand, being they are free. You may have to dig through some of the sites to find the free stock photos.  

• TABLEIZER! — Spreadsheets to HTML Tables Tool An easy-to-use and quick tool for creating HTML tables out of spreadsheet data.

• Unboxed – Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social – NYTimes.com Article about how multitasking is affecting concentration, and other things. Nicholas Carr, who has a new book, “The Shallows,” argues that the compulsive skimming, linking and multitasking of our screen reading is undermining the deep, immersive focus that has defined book culture for centuries.

• Check Out Class Blogs! | The Edublogger A post that offers information for you to check out different types of class blogs to get ideas for your own class blog. You could also use this list to make connections with classes in other countries.

• Publius Project Essay by Matt Levinson and Deb Socia about digital citizenship.

• Book Trailer Resources Naomi Bates’ site for book trailer resources. It offers information about creating good book trailers as well as where you can find resources for creating your own.

• the uncommon nonsense “We ad moderately to INSANELY obsessed with reading interesting and entertaining young adult novels and we thought we’d share our musings with the world instead of only with the people around us who don’t seem to care that much… – we’ll try to let you know about new releases and forthcoming novels, as well as older books you may have missed… “

• between the lines Between the Lines is Penguin Australia’s dedicated space for young adult readers, writers and books.

• Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists! This site contains great book lists for YA readers (especially boys) Although primarily a review site it also has some interactivity enabling users to respond to reviews and submit their own. Includes links to other teen sites.

• Cassandra Clare Cassandra Clare’s site. The author of the Mortal Instruments series includes biography and other pages where you can find information on the art, interviews, FAQs and writing informationas well as information on the upcoming works she has in progress.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Imagecodr – Attributing your CC Flickr images

My colleague Tania Sheko sent me a useful link this week. It was for a tool called ImageCodr. At the moment it only works with Flickr images but it is a great start.

I have been in Year 7 classes over the past few weeks. I have been showing them some of the ways they can better use some of the different search engines available to them. We have also been discussing plagiarism and when and how to quote. They have also been working on creating bibliographies that list all their information sources accurately. This has led onto questions about using images. The students, as well as staff, find it difficult to find and correctly use and attribute images (and music/sound). Many have never heard of Creative Commons although most know about copyright. They are all very interested in the CC sites and most like the idea of doing things that make them better digital citizens. One of the problems that many students have after they have located their images on the internet is understanding how to attribute correctly the images that they use.

Finding an image that has the licence best suited to their needs, getting the correct code for the image size required, giving the correct attributions with links back to the flickr page and the author’s profile can be difficult enough for teachers let alone students. This is where the ImageCodr tool comes in very handy. When I used it in my wiki the image was embedded with a clear CC logo, with the exact licensing terms for this specific image, as well as the name of the photographer and a link to their Flickr page. The image itself is linked to the image page, and correct alt text is used. You can you can see this when you hover over the image.  The CC logo links to the Creative Commons.org website and the license explanation page are also there.

I showed the students how they can find flickr images.There is FlickrCC and FlickrStorm, Compfight and well as the Flickr searching option. (I have posted about how to use all of these previously). We also used Google to find images with CC licences. 

Note: You have the option of using the ImageCodr to search for images also. 

Once you have found an image in flickr you only need to copy the URL of the image and then insert this into the Get Code page at ImageCodr.

After pasting in the flickr code you hit the Submit Query button and in no time ImageCodr brings up a screen that gives you everything you need to embed the image. You have:

• Information about the Creative Commons Licence attached to the image.
• Options to select the image size you would like to embed and when you have done this.
•  A HTML code, that includes all of the attribution details attached to the image, will then be generated.
• Lastly you can see what the image and the attribution will look like. 

The code can be copied and inserted into the webspace.It did not work for this blog, wordpress.com does not like the code but it worked beautifully when I wanted to added images to the Shakespeare wiki I have been working on. I am sure that there will be an answer to this but I haven’t investigated it yet.

Even if you can’t paste the HTML code into something easily the information is very useful. The CC licences are very simply and clearly stated to  help you understand them. You can then use that information to decide how best you can use it, even if you have to add the image in a more arduous way.

Navify – Searching Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube

My colleague Tania found this tool via the Free technology for teachers blog. I had seen Nibipedia, but Navify was a new tool for me to look at. It is a mash-up of Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube.

We all know that many of our students use Wikipedia,which may be developing into the world’s most extensive encyclopedias, as people continue to build on the information it contains. It does sometimes lack visual content, ie. pictures and more often videos, to assist with the written explanations. This can, at times, place a limit on its informative value. 

Navify seeks to redress this problem. Like Nibipedia, it attempts to match videos and images to Wikipedia articles.

Navify

To use Navify:

Go to the Navify site and do a standard Wikipedia search (no log in required) by simply entering your search term, just as you would in any search. The results will be returned in a tabbed form displaying:

• Wikipedia article
• related images and
• related videos.

The images tab offers photos added by Wikipedia (or Navify users) and those automatically discovered on Flickr. It is very new at the moment but, as more users come on board, I can see this becoming a great source for relevant and useful images.

Video tab

The videos tab works exactly the same way except that it finds related videos from YouTube.

Commenting on articles is also allowed. Navify is also supporting these comments using Disqus, so you will be able to read what people are saying about the Navify article pages.

The service is also planning on offering a music player so that users can listen to full related songs and audio content. So far I have found with my searching that Navify enhances the Wikipediaoption. It is still developing but has potential to become much greater. There seems to be no end to what tools people are thinking up to try and create better searching options. They won’t all survive and it will be the users who decide, in many cases.  It is a very interesting time for those of us interested in information searching.

Back to school – Some fun with images

School is back and after a curriculum day yesterday we are right back into the classroom work today.

I have been looking at some new image tools. I have found a few simple little tools that allow you (or your students) to find or have a bit of fun with.

1. Stretch your face is a site that allows you to make some comic pictures by simply distorting them with a stretch effect. 

It is very simple and straightforward to use. All you need to do is upload a photograph (the maximum size is 2 MB) and then distort the picture on-line by using your mouse.

When you are satisfied you can download the file and share it with friends, via your social networks, or embed it on your blog.

This is great for those who are not artists/good at drawing but want to create some simple comic images.

 

 

 

The second is another Google image tool, Similar images.

This is a new Google feature that is still experimental. The Similar Images feature in Google Labs offers a new way to refine image searches by narrowing down your results based on images that are very similar to what you are searching for. 

It works like the Google Image Search, with the exception of a new Similar Images link that appears below each result (as long as similar images exist  – but of course the chances of finding similar images is good because  Google is so huge and searches hundreds of millions of  images). When you click it, you will find results that resemble the original. This may mean that you will be provided with the same object but from different angles. Some searches may bring up the same image might be found, if it exists on different sites.

There is of course a “how-to” video available on YouTube to explain Google’s similar Image search.

I am still playing around with this but I like finding different perspectives of an object and will be showing it to the Visual Art teachers.

Finding digital images

This week I have been talking to classes about the crime genre. I have also worked on creating some on-line resources for the staff and students for this and helping another staff member illustrate a digital book on some English poetry/ballads. I have been looking for pictures/images to add to the resource and so have used usual suspects to find them; Flickr Storm, FlickrCC and Compfight. I also found a new site for free, high-quality, digital images named Photl.com. Still in beta form, it offers images that you can use as a whole or as fragments. There is a daily downloading limit of 45MB and you can also search a for a colour after you have typed in a keyword.

When you find a picture, click on it and you are given the link. Go to this link, choose the size of the image (small, med or large) to download and then save it. An example of a “water” image downloaded is below.

 I have also been looking for artworks that contain religious symbol and came across the vitual tours of the Louvre. Many years ago I visited Paris and took a real tour but this is a fairly good substitute, especially for students who are studying art, art history or even history as the artworks show a lot of historical information.

 

 

I went to the eye-openers tab and had a look at the 3D options.

A New-Style Museum Visit-in 3D.  A new multimedia feature on Louvre.fr presents artworks in an imagined or reconstructed 3D space. Visit these virtual “galleries” for a whole new look at works of art.

There are a lot of nice options on the site. Actually I spent time on the site because I simply just enjoyed it!

A visual dictionary called Shahi

Shahi is another amazing tool that uses Flickr images (although you also have the option of choosing from Google or Yahoo). I found out about it from a shared bookmark, by shared by Carla Arena, in one of the Diigo groups I belong to.

What a great idea it is to combine the definition/s of a word with images pulled from Flickr. Shahi is so simple to use and the multiple images that accompany the definitions are really interesting and often very emotive.

You can go beyond simply using it to help students understand the definitions of a word, I can see Shahi being used to help with ideas for creative creative writing purposes. Typing in the words “love” and “sorrow” bring up the following images.

Love

sorrow

The images for the concepts of love and sorrow are interesting and could be discussed by students who could then try to find their own images to represent a feeling.

When you click on an image you like, an enlarged version pops-up. You can then follow it back, to the person responsible for that photo, to see what else they may have to offer. However also be aware that the images are not censored and the whole Flickr library is available.

Geometry of Death II

Note: The Google option gives you images from google pages and you can find documents, with the tag you used, linked to the image.