#22 and #23 - eBooks and Audio Books

How cool are ebooks and audio books. I can certainly see a spot for them in my life right now! I recently purchased a Kindle and have downloaded about 2 dozen Amazon books for me to select to read on the flight to Singapore at the end of the year. My choices have included Fiction (thrillers, forensic, mysteries) and few Non Fiction books (how to use Kindle, photography, Web2 tools, ict in the classroom). I started out with some ‘free’ $0 books that were moderately helpful as a starting guide but soon found some ‘free’ texts were tasters to draw you in to purchasing the real deal.

This week I am playing with the notion of converting and uploading my own pics /docs into Kindle friendly formats from my desktop using the Kindle emailing system and also the Stanza desktop to convert files for Kindle. Still baby steps on that one – a holiday treat I think!

My Kindle gives me an alternative dimension for reading but it won’t replace my love of library books. Buying a microwave certainly did not make my cooking obsolete! I just love the way eBooks are ordered on line and almost instantly delivered electronically to my device. I did a bit of a search around and found that some Kindle latest released titles were a few dollars less than purchasing hardcopies from a book store. This may not always be the case of course. My husband loves that fact he can enlarge the text and use a digital bookmark too. I find this out when I locate my Kindle!

Some of my friends and colleagues are bit suspicious and see audio books and ebooks as a way to replace novels – but I have to explain to that a Kindle is not a book; it is a library of books that can hold up to 1500 digital books. But you do have to step to the ‘other side’ to see what suspicions evolve out of current thinking. So I went searching for some negative feedback regarding Kindle and stumbled into this clip. Someone from Atom.com had a very warped sense of humour when they created this movie called “Kindle 9XXXD”. Well - I thought it was funny!

TV & Movie Spoofs
Tags: Atom.com,Atom Originals,Atom Blog,Upload Videos

Will Kindle (or any other eBook reader) play an integral role in shaping the future of education? Surely the buying and upgrading of secondary and tertiary text books would stir up interest in any education setting. We already live in a world where information is just floating out there in the ether and can be easily accessed on demand. So with cloud computing in education and a class full of Kindles with Internet access should not really need a textbook in fact it would tilt the economics of education in favour of the student for a change. The weight saved in students back packs would be well worth investigating too!

Audio books have played an important role in our lives. Our youngest son, born with serious arm deformities, loved his audio books throughout his childhood and numerous hospital trips. He would find it hard to prop up the book and turn the pages for his own book experiences and so pushing the 'play' button gave him that independence. Similarly, my late parents found a new way of enjoying 'reading' when I introduced them to the audio section of their local library. They told me once that they would drive up to the headland with a coffee and sit back to enjoy the view with the car's tape deck drawing them into an old favorite novel.

Thanks for the links provided to ‘World Fair’ and ‘Gutenberg’ these were a fabulous experience – I had not taken the time to have a look until now. Just found the Fried Beef Teach’s list of free books! I must have been living under a cloud. Actually with these lists that is where I will be for the school holidays – under a delicious digital reading cloud!!

#21 You Tube

A few years back our school system banned the viewing of You Tube in the classroom because of probable offensive realted videos on the screne at the same time. I found that by using idesktoptv I could download the particular video that I wanted and use it in isolation. When I presented at a conference, I would download the you tube video as a backup in case the internet became overload (which often happens in a whole school ICT conference!)

I do love the medieval helpdesk video but I have used this video to show teachers that they must do a bit of problem solving themselves!

But as we progress into the 21century, engaging students (and their teachers) becomes more of a challenge. Certainly captured video from You Tube brings subjects into the classroom and into the student’s line of sight. History and geography come to life as teachers overcome lack of resources and turn student’s attention to images and ideas to stimulate classroom discussions.

Similarly, teachers needed stimulation to see how a different approach can achieve outstanding and exiting results as in this you tube video showing how people were encouraged to use the stairs and experience the difference. Add a bit of fun and see what happens!

In time our school system administrators saw the benefit and allowed you tube content to be brought into the classroom under strict guidelines. Teachers had to view the content and show how they would integrate it into their lessons. They also enjoy you tube in our staff meetings to help them 'think outside the square'

#20 Podcasts

I love using Audacity to make podcasts. Last year I captured a language specialist reading Gumbaynggirr language for our little primary school. Teachers now use the exported WAV files to support their teaching of the children’s own indigenous language, one of the few programs throughout our diocese.

Also, I worked with the upper primary students to mentor them in good questioning and editing skills to create a podcast about our school. We used free ware music for the Garaam kids podcast (garaam means net’ in Gumbaynggirr)It was quite a hit amongst other overseas schools we were communicating with in our epal program.

Giinagay everyone - hello from the Garaam kids

from St Mary's Bowraville

(You may have to download it as we got carried away!!)

I really find the EdPod resources very helpful and also the Virtual Staffroom by Chris Betcher as it gives that talk back feeling - so good for long trips. Stuck in an airport for three extra hours and this was my life saver!!

#19 Rollyo

Search engines provide an important service for me as I browse the internet for the varied reasons from the weather to web2 tools in education. I like Google and its different options (like the Wonder Wheel) and have tried Delicious and Diigio for my collection of favourite sites but have never tried Rollyo before. My problem is that I end up with way too many sites and then get way too overwhelmed!

Rollyo is not really a search engine but a free utility tool that allows you, by just registering, to ‘roll your own’ so it seems to be a terrific way to regularly search your favourites all at once.

I found it to be a very simple process, in fact too simple as I just kept reading the screen to see what information I missed. Even though I was encouraged to ’choose up to 25 websites’, I was too impatient and just went with three to see the final effect. (So glad I opted for privacy until I get my act together) With my mere three websites, I can see that my main search dragnet would be my chosen quality sites and will exclude everything else. But what if I miss something?!? There I go again.

So creating a customized search roll that contains my trusted websites looks to be very useful. By allowing me to perform my searches within a limited set of precise web sites I can achieve a more targeted set of searches.

Bit like rolling out an RSS feed! AND you can add a search widget to your own blog!

Select Search Engine...Web2 in educationSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

#18 Wikis

Many wikis share common characteristics of adding new content, editing errors and inserting information. But the collaborative aspect is probably its strength and I suppose its weakness too

Over the past few years I have wiki-ed myself up for class room or professional needs. What I find interesting about wikis is that they are open source. Being able to edit people’s contributions is such a fabulous way to collaborate. The history of changes made is a great way to see what kind of changes have been made by the reader.

Wikis are a great place to store resource links and assignments for students. They are easily accessible for both parents and students for homework and newsletters too. It is easy to manage and edit inappropriate comments and you can see which students are not using the tool properly. Although some of the writing is poor, students really want to improve their presentation by seeking advice for their real audiences

Recently, I saw a great wiki used in a class for special needs students to access different activities tailored for their needs and interests. It certainly is a great way to motivate students who by the way seem to prefer the keyboard to the old pen and paper! They just love logging on and adding knowledge, comments and responses to class wikis.

#17: Delicious

Even though I have signed up to Diigo and Google Shared I mostly stick with Delicious

But for many teachers I work with, Delicious is an ideal starting point for them in the world of social software because it’s simple but powerful. I try to show my tentative and suspicious collegues that building a collegial network of users is far better than emails full of links with subject lines of “Have you seen this?” Sadly eyes still seem to glaze over when phrases like “tags” and “adding fans to your network” or even “bundling tags.” I am amazed at just how few teachers and even techies are using or even heard of social bookmarking. Some teachers know this technology exists, but don’t take advantage of it, or at least use it to it’s full potential.

I tread carefully and enthusiastically when trying to explain that it becomes more useful the more frequently it is used. Building up a big repository of valuable searchable links, adding other users into a network that provides a stream of personally recommended links and searching like-minded bookmarkers is where the real power lies.

Its all in the ‘teachable moment’ and ‘finding that entry point’ when mentoring other teachers. Making tools approachable for teachers is more important than giving more functionality than they need.

But it still feels weird that a service like Delicious, which has been around since 2003, is already

viewed by many high end users as an old tool when the majority of teachers are only just

becoming aware of the power of this simple but highly effective tool.

#16:Stay informed - Subsribe to some Blogs.

The link to 'How to make your RSS Feeds Pop' was interesting - although I do not have over 700 feeds cluttering up my cyberspace! This is a much needed point to give strategies to engage readers more effectively through RSS feeds so I added this link to my Google reader!

I found this PDF and added it to my Issuu account to share in my blogs with other teachers. The concept of RSS is simple but can be confronting to some digital immigrants so these ideas are really useful:

Open publication - Free publishing - More rss

I already pull in feeds such as from a Diigo group of teachers sharing resources at a local primary school, Hall Jackson's Blog Spot, K-3 Resources website, the Eduation.au Blog and 'HeyJude' blog. As well as keeping up to date with these reading sites, I subscribe to audio downloads such as EdPod .

But my new RSS feed experience is the Inky Awards. looking forward to some great updates.