Skype Author Visits

I recently emailed you a link to a site that facilitates online meet-ups with authors.

Here is a blog post about a successful experience with this site. It'd be great if we could try this at RVIS.

Bug Scope

This one looks exciting for anyone studying insects. You find some bugs, send the to the US, and they set up a time for you to interact with their scientists on a high powered microscope. The project is meant to be world wide, but so far it's almost exclusively US schools...I imagine they'd be excited to share some Bahrain bugs.

http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/

Using Voicethread in the classroom

Welcome Back

Hi all...
Is anyone reading this blog? With Google reader maybe?
If yes, please comment.

Student invlolved assessment

Dean Shareski is a blogger, and a Canadian Digital Learning Consultant in Moose Jaw (is that a real place? really?).

Instead of copying his post on student involved assessment, I'll direct you to it - links to further articles are there, and it's really worth a read.

http://ideasandthoughts.org/2009/06/15/student-involved-assessment/

Creative Commons Audio

As a follow up to last week’s staff meeting, I thought it might be useful to look a bit more at creative commons – specifically with regard to music.

Podcasting, as well as many of the photo and video products we discussed, allows us to add music to “spice things up”. Technically, we should be paying to use copyrighted music.

The answer: creative commons music. Below are a few websites that provide music licensed as creative commons – which means we are free to use it with anything we produce, as long as we acknowledge use in the credits. I also like the idea of using something different in what we produce.

http://freemusicarchive.org/
http://ccmixter.org/
http://freepd.com/
http://www.freesound.org/ (sound effects, not music)

This link is a “further reading” option, with links to cc audio, picture and text sources.

Let me know (or add a comment here!) if you are interested in learning more.

Podcasting Lesson

I haven't blogged for a while. I was waiting for someone to notice and mention to me.
That worked well.

Anyway,

Simon Mills, a teacher in England, has just posted on his blog about a series of lessons he did with Podium, the podcasting software we discussed on Tuesday.

Worth a look.

Planning is not what it used to be...

Graham Wegner, one of my favourite "real teacher" bloggers (and not just because his name is suspiciously similar to this guy's), has just written a post called Planning Digitally.

It's an interesting look at how much has changed with regard to how we might plan series of lessons in the "digital age".

I'd recommend Graham's blog if you're still looking to fill your Google Reader.

Happy Earth Day

Techy Tips for not so Techy teachers

Thanks to Lynn at Rambling Reflections for a link to this slideshow. A few more ideas here along the lines of what we've been discussing.

The imbedded version caused problems, so here's a link.

Did You Know

The first video I shared at RVIS, way back in August 2008, was "Did You Know".
Here is version 3.0 of that movie, with updated stastics and a different look. I won't be sharing this in our PD sessions, as you've seen most of it before. However, it's well worth a look if you've got a spare 5 minutes.

Links R Us

Below are links to the sites discussed in todays session.

Twitter

Flickr

Flickr CC

Podcast.com

Voice Thread

Skype

Test Survey

The following is the test survey we created in our session using Google Documents.

Time to Play

As we're not able to look at delicious today, I thought it would be a nice idea to take some time to look at a few online resource that may be useful to you. Below are some links for you to explore.

These links were all found through blogs I follow, and stored in my Delicious account.



Scholastic Story Starter



Myths and Legends Story Creator



KidRex - Child-friendly Google search



Crossword Puzzle Creator



All My Faves - Links to many child-focussed sites



Museum Box



Webquest.org



Worldmapper



4Teachers.org



Curious George Games



Mouse Club



Create a Graph



Up to 10

Not quite Delicious

This week we were hoping to explore how Delicious can help to organize your web-browsing.

Unfortunately, some late-arriving technical issues mean we'll need to put that exploration back to a later date.

The following video (another from our Common Craft friends) gives a summing up as to how a site like Delicious can help. Please note the movie is a little old and Delicious have change their buttons slightly. Please feel free to try this at home (yes, it will work on a Mac).

We are working to sort out the technical problems and should have the buttons available on your desktop in the near future.

Reading Blogs

RVIS BLOGS

http://tmartoonies.edublogs.org

http://artlessonsforkids.wordpress.com/

TOOLS FOR FINDING NEW BLOGS

http://supportingblogging.com/

http://www.technorati.com/

Reading Blogs

View more presentations from rvis.mike.

Wikis in Plain English

The work wiki originally comes from the Hawaian word for "fast". (I learned this on wikipedia).

The common craft video I shared with you at the meeting is a great introduction to how a wiki works.

The link to Bridget's Curriculum Wiki is http://rviscurriculum.wikispaces.com/

Remember that wikis are essentially shared work spaces. They are extremely versatile. Once you get the hang of them (and, like most tech, it takes some "playing around time" before you're comfortable) you'll find plenty of uses both professionally and personally.

And don't forget the biggest wiki of all. http://www.wikipedia.org/

Final Site - Home Links

Please click on the links below to visit the links Geoff will be exploring in today's session.

RVIS Webpage

RVIS Webpage Admin

The slideshow Geoff is using today is available below in Slideshare format. A great way to share your Powerpoint presentations.

http://www.slideshare.net/

Welcome to the Blog

RVIS Tech is intended to welcome you into the wonderful world of blogging.
Updates about the IT program will be posted here....hopefully it will be a useful resource over the next month as we explore web 2.0.