eLearning journal

First, a quick check on wikipedia for delicious and social bookmarking.

What is Delicious?

"Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy). A combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL "http://delicious.com/tag/wiki" displays all of the most recent links tagged "wiki". Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users." (Wikipedia, June 2009)

What is social bookmarking?

"Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".^[1] (Wikipedia June 2009)

Here's a YouTube video showing how to use delicious in the classroom.

So what is a google calendar?

Wikipedia has this to say about Google Calendars:

"Google Calendar is a free time-management web application offered by Google. It became available on April 13, 2006 and is currently in beta stages. While users are not required to have a Gmail account, they are required to have a free Google Account in order to use the software.

Google Calendar allows multiple calendars to be created and shown in the same view. They can also be easily shared, either read-only or with full control, and either with specified people only or with everyone. For example, make one shared calendar for each sports team or club, and a separate calendar for private events. Events from both show up side-by-side on the same calendar, in different colors."

That sounds handy! Here are the steps to set up your own Google calendar.

1. Log into Google.
2. Click the blue link on your google page to Calendar (up at the top).
3. Enter a few events to your calendar.
4. In the left navigation area under My Calendars, click the drop-down menu that is next to your name and then change the colour.
5. Click the same drop-down menu and select Calendar Settings. Change the name, NZ timezone etc. Don't copy the embed code yet. Instead click the link that says Customise colour, size and other options.
6. Adjust settings to a width of 400 pixels (not 800 so that it fits in your blog) and other settings to your liking.
7. Copy the embed code and paste as a new post in your blog.

If you are new to blogging or even not so new, Sue Waters (The Edublogger) provides some helpful technical pointers in her Top 5 mistakes made by new bloggers, with information about:

1. Copying and pasting text written in word into a blog post
2. Using copyright images in blog posts
3. Uploading images from digital cameras without resizing
4. Forgetting to link
5. Copying and pasting other bloggers posts

It's well worth a look, read through the comments as well for other bloggers feedback and extra hints.

A word about The Edublogger. It is "dedicated to helping educational bloggers with emerging technologies in education, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. It’s purpose is to share tips, tricks, ideas and provide help to the educational blogging community".

There's lots of useful information on this blog, see the Posts by Topic section down the right. If this sounds like it might be useful to you, then why not subscribe to it.

(Image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2627669442_ce269e9fb4.jpg, by jenny downing)

I am very disappointed to hear that the National Government has decided to cut funding for the highly successful Enviroschools programme. This programme supports schools to “integrate environmental education into the whole of school life” with the aim of creating “innovative and motivated young people, who instinctively think and act sustainably”. My family has been involved with Enviroschools for several years in Southland and Otago and have seen the positive benefits it has on children, parents and the wider community.

Today we are dealing with huge environmental problems created by our lack of understanding and sheer ignorance in the past, so it seems incredibly short-sighted of the Government to step away and undermine a successful programme that helps to instil environmental awareness and sustainable values in our children, with benefits that extend into the future as they become the adults of tomorrow. So, you have to wonder what the Governments motives are for taking this action to cut funding.

Amongst those who are worried about the Government’s decision are Nick Holmes and Guy Ryan (my nephew), who put together this great video ... “Enviroschools isn't just a kit, it's a part of lives and communities, and to show the importance of education for sustainability”. Nice work!

Chris from Tuesday evenings social media class asked about setting up a twitter feed to her blog. Had wondered how to do that myself so followed the steps that Leigh suggested and there it is over on the right.

To get your own twitter feed:

1. click on the "Get Widget" button (seen at the bottom of my twitter feed)
2. fill in your twitter username in the right-side column and it will display your tweets in the central box
3. select the background colour
4. the Auto Scroll is disabled as a default setting so click on the tick if you want your tweets to scroll through automatically on your blog
5. click on the "Get Widget" button
6. copy the embed code in the pop-up box
7. go back to your blog and click "Customize" in the top right
8. click "Add a Gadget" in the layout boxes and select the HTML/Javascript gadget
9. paste your twitter widget code in the Content box and Save

Wondering what a widget is?
I looked up wikipedia and it can mean a number of things in computing. A simple definition from Widgetbox (where the twitter widget comes from) is

Web widgets are mini, portable-applications that can be added to any web page

There seems to be some overlap in the terms widget and gadget if you look up gadget on wikipedia. Is there any difference between these terms or are they referring to the same thing, at least for the general masses?

So here's the follow-on video of How to make a video using Camstudio, it shows how to add the title and credits to a video recording using Windows movie maker. I'm thinking that screen recordings could be useful for showing staff how to use Moodle or other applications. In addition screen recordings could be used for showing off-campus students how to access their online courses and other features of their course.

1. Open Windows movie maker.
2. From left options 1, import video.
3. From left options 2, add titles.
4. Option 3, save to my computer.
5. Name movie and set location to save.
6. Click show more choices and select other settings, then select 'High quality video large'. Then click next. The movie will open when finished compressing.

Here's the video showing how to use Windows movie maker:



Both Camstudio and Windows movie maker seem relatively easy to use. The biggest difficulty I found was trying to record in a shared office with people coming and going, telephones ringing etc. Most staff here at Otago Polytechnic have shared offices and several have mentioned this as a problem when using Audacity. I wonder whether we should have a room provided on campus that could be booked for recording purposes, or do we already have this?

With heavy snow overnight, Dunedin turned into a winter wonderland. With schools closed and hill roads treacherous, we had the day at home. Thought I'd turn my photos from today into a Flickr slideshow to share.



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

This is how I embedded the Flickr slideshow on my blog using flickrSLiDR to create the embed code:

Create a Flickr account if you don't already have one and upload some photos. Organise your photos into a Set.
Open your Set and copy the URL.
Open flickrSliDR and paste your Set URL into the URL space.
Add the width and height. I used 500 x 400. Click on the Create slideshow! button. This creates the embed Code.
Copy and paste the code into your blog.

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google and Yahoo!. As of June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.<sup>[2]
Wikipedia June 2009

To use Technorati, open it and 'search the blogosphere ...' with your search terms.</sup>

Information about wikispaces and how wikis work can be found at:

Wikispaces

Wikipedia

YouTube:




Here is my wikispace

Once you have a wiki account and have created a new wiki, follow these guidelines from wikispaces to get started:

Getting Started

• Click on the edit button above to put your own content on this page.
• To invite new members, click on Manage Wiki and Invite People.
• To change your wiki's colors or theme, click on Manage Wiki and Look and Feel.
• To set who can view and edit your wiki, click on Manage Wiki and Permissions

Need Help?

• Click on the help link above to learn more about how to use your wiki.

Here is a link to the workshop wiki

1. Download and install Camstudio.
2. Open Camstudio, open region and select fixed region, set to 640 x 480.
3. Open Options and set to record from microphone and autopan.
4. In options, click audio options and click the volume button, then advance microphone button and tick the 1MIC boost option (windows only).
5. Click the record button. Position the mouse over recording area and click again to record.
6. The recording region will track your mouse (move your mouse slowly and deliberately).
7. Click stop. Name the file and save (wait while it will be compressing in the background). When finished the movie will open.

1. Open Windows movie maker.
2. From left options 1, import video.
3. From left options 2, add titles.
4. Option 3, save to my computer.
5. Name movie and set location to save.
6. Click show more choices and select other settings, then select 'High quality video large'. Then click next. The movie will open when finished compressing.

This video is now ready for publishing online ie YouTube.

The video below shows how to set up Camstudio for recording. In my excitement I forgot to mention that once you have all the settings, hit the red record button and place the recording frame where you want to begin recording from (it's not recording yet), then left click and it will start recording.



I've now added the follow on video showing how to use Windows movie maker in this posting.

1. Sign in to YouTube.
2. Find a video you like, then click the link beneath the video that says Playlist.
3. Select an existing playlist, or Add New Playlist and complete the details. Save Playlist info.
4. Find similar videos and add to playlist to create a collection of videos.
5. View your Channel by clicking your Username at the top right of the YouTube website.
6. Find the box in the lower left that has the option to Embed this Channel. Copy the html code that is there and paste it into your blog.
7. The easiest way to embed a playlist is to create a custom player. Go to your YouTube account by clicking the link in the top right that says Account.
8. Click "Custom Video Players", then "Create Custom Player". Select a color and format for your player, and then choose what is going to play in it—you can choose a playlist, your own uploaded content, or your favorites—and then click the "Generate Code" button.
9. Copy and paste the code into your blog entry or web page

1. Sign in to google maps.
2. Open the link to My Maps.
3. Click on Create New Map.
4. Add in title for your map and description. Click Save.
5. Search for a map by adding a street name into the search box and then zoom in to find the exact location to add the placemark.
6. Pick up the blue placemark and drop it on the location. A title and description box appears.
7. Click on Link in the right hand corner and the embed html will appear, but don't use this.
8. Click on the tab to 'Customize and preview embedded map' and zoom in to show the best view of your map. Check that the map size is under 450 (medium view) for the best view.
   
9. Copy the embed text and paste into blog.
   

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