Nik Peachey's Technology Blogs

Today I had a chance to explore Nik's blogs in more depth. These are very rich because he indicates ways to use the technology with students and/or for teacher training. Following through with each of his blog entries is like a full course in IT for teachers.

His two blogs are

Quick Shout

and the more cumbersomely named

Learning technology teacher development blog for ELT

Enjoy!

Embedded Chat Widgets

Although I have found it inconvenient for users (and me) to have interactive widgets on this blog, one of these might be useful for a wiki page as it could be more self-contained.

Suggestions from the Webhead elist include (from Robert Squires):

Yackpack - the Walkie Talkie Widget formerly available directly on PBWiki, and which has Voicegroups.

Meebo - you create your own chatroom and paste the code into the sidebar of your wiki or blog.

Gabbly - the PBWiki default, was mentioned several times as having horrible advertisements that you can't get rid of. However, any person who visits the wiki can chat with other visitors who are there at the same time while with Gtalk or Meebo, the visitors can only chat with the owner of that widget (ie.e, the creator of the wiki) but not with each other (per Negiz in a responding email).

Robert also offered an interesting blog site with a list of ten more chat widgets: ReadWriteWeb.

I followed this breadcrumb trail and found an interesting site, built by Kiernan, that strings together YouTube videos so that you get continuous play, one after another, on a particular subject (in this case rock groups). Anyone can add a video without a password, though this feature might present problems in a school setting. Nice code, though a little removed from the original subject, chat widgets: http://www.chann3lz.com/.

Websites for Teaching the Blind

These links are from Dottuta (Kuwait Univ) of the Webheads, based on work with a blind student. The voice potential of the Web (and for Deaf students, the visual/closed captioning potential) should really make a difference. I have added some annotation to the list of sites, which are mainly British and American. The most promising of these is first on the list. I'd love to hear from anyone with information about sites in other languages, or additional English language sites.

Camera Obscura has lists of links to a wide variety of text-to-audio friendly sites, including hypertext archives, museums, query-submission forms for search engines, news readers, government resources, etc. Relatively conveniently organized by type of resource.

WWW Resources and Homepages [for the Blind] - a list of useful links, unfortunately in no particular order, but with helpful descriptions.

The Braille Institute's page of links (alpha-sorted) to various non-profit organizations that assist the blind, with a brief description of the mission of each. It would take some initiative to further explore and sort through the links on each of these pages.

Action for Blind People, according to this site, "is an expert national (UK) organisation, ensuring blind and partially sighted people receive practical support in all aspects of their lives." News and information relevant to issues affecting people with this disability, all with audio recordings. (Wouldn't a podcast feature to be nice?)

Tom Lorimer's Home Page, "has been set up to assist the Visually Impaired computer user locate information and services relating to blindness." The site is mainly focused on computer, software, and Internet issues and resources, but also has links to other useful sites. Useful links, though not well organized.

VIP Games Zone offers "accessible sound games for blinds [sics] and visually impaired people," and includes some free games and an e-list to converse with other players. Appears to be home-made software, but I haven't had a chance to try it out.

And this from Nergiz, also of the Webheads:

Odiogo claims to create text-to-speech podcasts for your blogs with a "Listen Button feature deployed in next to no time for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, BlogEngine.NET and Terapad platforms."

And see the previous entry also [yeah, here's where I need a wiki instead!]

By the way, this blog also has an audio text-to-speech feature, though it usually takes a few days for the audio to be compiled and linked to my posts.

Oddcast TTS

Text-to-speech (TTS) might be a great way for students to hear what they are trying to say. SitePal now has a version of TTS that sounds pretty authentic. Try it out at
Oddcast.

Dipity

Dipity has an easy Google-type interface that allows you to create a timeline. This is an example from Michael Coughlan's Life.

Other Webheads have suggested using the interface in a jig-saw activity, where groups of students can add the info they collect as they read or research. You can add info/pix from other sites, such as Twitter and Flickr.

AuthorStream

Authorstream is an interesting way to quickly get your PowerPoint presentation online--without going through the fuss of saving it as html, and then mounting all the pages and files to a Web page.

I created a wiki for my presentation at TESOL on CALL and SLA research, copied it to PowerPoint slides, and then uploaded the resulting ppt to my Authorstream page. If there were video or audio attached, AuthorStream would convert the file to a YouTube format. Mine is just a slideshow.

UPDATE: Thanks to all who visited the slideshow. I now have the audio uploaded to both AuthorStream and Ourmedia.org.

Jottit

Jottit is a quick Web page with some nice little features that let you add designs, fonts, pictures, embedded video, etc. Would be great for a learner's first ever Web page. You can also set privacy levels to allow password-only access, a great advantage for school settings. Make and claim a page in just a few minutes.

A good little instructional screencast by Demogirl.com is most helpful in getting started:
Jottit Screencast.

Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard

I haven't had a chance to review all of these Teacher Training Videos (see the leftside menu), but Nik Peachey of EduNation has made those describing uses of Second Life, so I think they are a good bet. I may get around to reporting on them at some time when there isn't such a crunch. See Nik's reviews at his blog.

Thanks to Nik for the tip on the Webheads list.

50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story

50 Ways is a treat--lots of examples to give students ideas on storytelling through all the new Internet interactive tools.

Thanks to Bee Dieu of the Webheads for this tip.

Review of SlideShows

This blog entry by Webhead Ronaldo Lima, Jr., has a nice comparative review of three slideshow tools--Voicethread, Splashcast and Qlipboard--with short examples of each. Comments by fellow Webheads are also very useful.

WritingFix

Definitely for advanced learners, WritingFix is targeted toward U.S. high school students and teachers. However, it has a lot of good advice about writing, and is billed as "the home of interactive writing prompts." Various parts of the site will generate random prompts to start writing on a variety of topics and content subjects. It also has general advice about writing essays, e.g., developing voice, organizing, sentence fluency, conventions, etc. In Spring of 2008, the site will have an extensive section of the various parts of the writing process. A good place for EFL/ESL teachers to grab ideas.

Moving Forward

Moving Forward is a wiki whose intended audience is educational administrators, but it has lots of info of value to researchers, IT staff, and instructors. Nicely organized and categorized, and you can join the site and add your own stuff.

The wiki is administered by Dr. Scott McLeod, Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). You can contact him from the Moving Forward site if you have any questions or suggestions.

BTW, I found this site by subscribing to the Technology & Learning magazine online (free). It's got a nice e-book interface, called Nxtbook, that allows you to page quickly through an issue, and the links are live.

Using the Internet with Young Learners

Nicky Hockley has a fine presentation, Web 2.0: ICT & Young Learner Teachers, with links to resources, handouts, and video tutorials at the Consultants-E site.

Asterpix Interactive Video

Asterpix allows the user to upload video and create hotspots that follow an object or person on the video. The user can mouse-over the hotspots and click for more information: text, weblinks, etc. (Hence the "interactive" part.) The tools seem very easy to use, and the instructional videos are screencasts, as illustrated here.

This tool might work very well with an EFL/ESL practice where the students are led to research further information (a mini-Webquest), or are asked to create their own video and links for the hotspots. This is another tool with a unique twist that can add text and hypertext to the audio-video experience.

Thanks to Andreas Büsing for the tip on this item.

Using your cellphone as a scanner

This is the kind of technology I love--it's already out there (no download), everybody has it--and it's pretty much free!

You snap a print article with your cellphone camera, then send it to ScanR.com, which converts it to a .pdf file with high quality OCR software. Download to your computer and you can convert it to text. Or have ScanR convert it first.

ScanR is free for 5 uses per month, $3 US for unlimited use. Here's the address of the Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/57431

A similar product is found at Qipit.com. Very cool.

Thanks to Learning with Computers for this hot link.

Tribbit

Tibbit is a potentially very useful tool. Billed as a way to communially build a "tribute" to someone, e.g., for a birthday or anniversary, it could be used as another type of presentation tool. It allows you to mash up photos, text, podcasts, embedded video, etc., and then "play" everything together.

A nice feature is that contributors can post their photos and a short text on the main page. So this might work quite well for student group projects that can be created collaboratively and then presented as a show. There is also a "due date" feature--the time by which items have to be put into the show.

This YouTube video shows the several features.

American Writers - C-SPAN videos

American Writers is a series of 2-hours videos about the life and times of famous American writers of the 20th century. The series was produced by C-SPAN, a cable channel sponsored by local, state, and federal governments. (The channel often carries city council meetings, the state legislature debates, etc.)

The videos would make excellent supplementary materials for an EFL/ESL literature and culture class. Enjoy!

QlipBoard

QlipBoard is a nifty little application that allows you to make screencasts with the addition of your own photos and Webshots and decorate/enhance them with whiteboard-like tools. It's a free download. The downside: It's not Mac-enabled.

A couple of video presentations and how-tos are found at YouTube.

(Thanks to Carla Arena, Webhead, for this find!)

Kaltura

Kaltura is a video editor with a twist: you can invite friends to add and edit video clips in a joint project. Should make it much easier for students to work on a collaborative project. On signing in for the first time you can add the emails of two other people to get started.


The tool also has some nice additional features, such as the ability to easily split or duplicate a scene--easy mashups.

Webheads HQ @ EduNation III

Here's a nice use of VoiceThread by Graham Stanley (always one to get the most out of new tools the quickest!): Webheads @ EduNation III on October 1st.

Graham's blog at Blog-EFL has a description of the meeting in SecondLife and a transcript of the chat.

The Webheads gather at SL on Mondays at 20:00 GMT.