Using Skype in the classroom- Week 10

In this week's assignment our group has been using Skype to communicate our group project and in my opinion Skype has been a very beneficial tool in many ways. Using Skype for an educational purpose provides opportunities for interactive exchange between students living on campus or on the other sides of state. Skype can expand the walls of the traditional classroom and engage students to write, share, and communicate with an audience that was inaccessible just a few years ago. Educators interested in helping motivate students to develop both traditional as well as twenty-first century literacy skills in the classroom needs to use every tool that is out there. Today’s students are more digital savvy and already using all types of technology. We as teachers need to enhance new learn styles to draw students in and be creative on how they learn.

I have enjoyed this assignment and I really like using Skype as one of our technology tools. Our group was able to come up with a great design and I was able to upload the design into our conversion. I am posting our final design to this week posting, please let me know what you think. Dr. Ellis always make our classes so much fun, I really hate that this is my last class with her.

Using new technologies for Module 4 assignments-Week 9

What is spring break, wish I knew? I have been one busy person this week. I have been working with my group in trying to create an awesome t-shirt design for threadless.com. My group has been chatting through Skype in trying to find the perfect design that relates to Web 2.0. This has been a challenge to get everyone to meet and we still are missing one team member, but we have to go one. You really need some technology skills to be able to use the application that threadless provides for their template kit. I am fortunate to have the Adobe suite software program that the template kit required to open their templates with. I really like reviewing threadless website and seeing all of the creative design that others have on that site. It seems to strengthen the imagination of what others perceive. I have really enjoy this assignment and I believe that my team has the winning design, well will see.

P.S.
I am posting my template jpeg; let me know what you think about them. I really would appreciate your opinion and thanks.

So what is Twitter? Week 8

In the week module we are now looking at what Twitter is. What is Twitter? After doing some research, basically Twitter is a new internet-based social networking and free messaging service that sends out updates to their “followers”

So who are the followers? Twitters “followers” are people who receive “tweets”. So what are tweets? Basically Twitter allows followers to updates or “tweets” which consisted of a 140 typed characters or less. These messages can be typed online using a computer or remotely using a cell phone or PDA. And a “tweet” can be about nearly anything, from “I’m sulking,” to “I’m eating pancakes,” to “I’m running late for our lunch meeting.”

So simply stated, Twitter is designed to keep family members, friends and co-workers in the know. Some describe Twitter as a mini-blog that’s used to update “followers” who sign-up with this web-based messaging site. Twitter is at the forefront of the social networking movement, along with other social networking sites like FaceBook.

In this week assignment, our class is taking a closer look on how Twitter works. I am trying to get the hang on “tweets” and I have been trying to tweet my class, but not sure if I am doing it right. I believe that this is going to be a fun experience and I have always loved a challenge.

To Flickr or not to Flickr, that is the question?

Are you bored with your current background image? Need photos for your blog, or for a class paper? By using Flickr you can renew your whole image library in just a few minutes.

In this week assignment, we were introducing to this new application Flickr. Flickr lets you search for the popular hosting service that use different criteria such as strings, tags, username or groups. You can download them to your hard drive an automatically let them run. The only drawback to Flickr is that it doesn't let you select which photos you want to download from your search results: either you download them all or you get none. So you better refine your search parameters if you don't want to end up downloading a zillion images.

Dr. Ellis and I had another issue with Flick last week. When I was trying to join our group, it would not let me due to being a private group. We realize that we had to make the group public and not private. With ever learning experience come ups and downs. After playing with flickr, I really like this networking application and I plan to use it a lot more after this class is over.

Thanks Dr. E for introducing us to the new world.

The World Wide Web 3.0- Week 6

In researching some new and innovate technologies, I came across this information about Web 3.0. Internet experts think Web 3.0 is going to be like having a personal assistant who knows practically everything about you and can access all the information on the Internet to answer any question. Many compare Web 3.0 to a giant database. While Web 2.0 uses the Internet to make connections between people, Web 3.0 will use the Internet to make connections with information. Some experts see Web 3.0 replacing the current Web while others believe it will exist as a separate network...

Also according to some Internet experts, with Web 3.0 you'll be able to sit back and let the Internet do all the work for you. You could use a search service and narrow the parameters of your search. The browser program then gathers, analyzes and presents the data to you in a way that makes comparison a snap. It can do this because Web 3.0 will be able to understand information on the Web.

Right now, when you use a Web search engine, the engine isn't able to really understand your search. It looks for Web pages that contain the keywords found in your search terms. The search engine can't tell if the Web page is actually relevant for your search. It can only tell that the keyword appears on the Web page.

A Web 3.0 search engine could find not only the keywords in your search, but also interpret the context of your request. It would return relevant results and suggest other content related to your search terms. It would treat the entire Internet as a massive database of information available for any query.

Here is some food for thoughts on life with Web 3.0

If your Web 3.0 browser retrieves information for you based on your likes and dislikes, could other people learn things about you that you'd rather keep private by looking at your results? What if someone performs an Internet search on you? Will your activities on the Internet become public knowledge? Some people worry that by the time we have answers to these questions, it'll be too late to do anything about it. Are we really opening ourselves too much, something we really need to think about?

Tips on Posting to your Wiki- Week 5

I have listed some tips on writing on our class wiki. Hopeful they will help you get started with this assignment.

Try writing on a wiki that interests you. It need not be an all-or-nothing proposition to edit a wiki. Do a few sample edits, get your feet wet a bit, get to know some of the people in a community? You will soon know whether or not that wiki is for you.

Edits may be small or large. Wikis benefit from writing, but they also benefit from simple cleanup tasks. Fix a little thing if you don't feel ready for big things yet.

Remember that your work will be published immediately. This can be immensely gratifying to some and intimidating to others. Remember, too, that your work can always be changed, either by yourself or by somebody else. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time out.

Take it from me, if you have never worked with a wiki before, it is very easy to remove current text but it is also very easy to replace that same text when you review the log history. I learned this the hard way, by deleting someone else log entree. We all make mistakes and this is the trial and error phase of this class assignment.

The implications of using Wiki's for teaching and learning purposes?

When I first started working with my assignment this week, I was not sure if I was going to like working with Wikis or not, but I quickly changed my mind. Wikis are one of the easiest and most effective Web-based collaboration tools that I have ever used. Their inherent simplicity provides students such as myself, with direct access to the site’s content, which is crucial in group editing or collaborative on group projects. A wiki’s capability can show the development thought processes as students interact with the site and its contents. These collaborative projects help promote “pride of authorship” and ownership in the team’s activities. In addition, wikis are being used as e-portfolios that illustrate their value as a tool for collection and reflection. Collaboration using a wiki is not limited to students. Faculty can use wikis to collaborate on projects, whether editing a textbook, preparing a journal article, or assembling a syllabus or reading list.

Wikis might also prove to be an ideal vehicle for soliciting ongoing input for research or projects where community input can help inform and direct subsequent investigation. The possibilities for using wikis as this platform for collaborative projects are limited only by one’s imagination and time. Wiki enabled group projects that can provided various levels of site access and control to team members, offering a fine-tuning element that enhances the teaching and learning experience. In beginning this group project, I have had some ups and downs, but I believe that this will be some of my best works before I graduated from ECU.