BP10_2009103_MediaAsset2

Media Asset 2 - Audiotool

This video would be geared toward music teachers.

BP9.4.2_2009103_Response2

Kim Davis's post

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2009

BP14_20091003_Web2.0Tool_PlanetEye

(PlanetEye, 2008)

Planet Eye

Planet Eye is a web tool that allows users to access guides to several destinations around the world that include maps, photos, and reviews of those destinations. The site also features travel packs on certain destinations that offer a view into a certain theme or excursion highlighting geographically, culturally, and historically significant information. With a PlanetEye account, users can plan their own trips based on other user’s reviews and can even write their own reviews and upload photos from their recent travel experiences. There is also a blogging tool within the site and tools for personalization of information that users receive in relation to their travel interests (PlanetEye, 2008).

I think that PlanetEye has the potential to add a sense of exploration and discovery to the classroom by taking what might be a boring research project and bringing it to life. In the French courses that I took when I was a student, each year was the typical project where students would create a brochure about a French speaking country or destination. These projects where never really exciting and they did not produce much learning for me because I never remembered anything about any of the regions that I researched for my final projects. Instead, it meant hours of stressful library research into encyclopedias or boring travel books. PlanetEye takes the idea of a travel brochure project and brings it into the current technological culture and reaches more students through many of the different intelligences.

For use within the classroom, instructors can allow students to conduct research on various destinations while they access comments from real people who have actually visited these sites. The perspectives of the real-life travelers bring a more realistic understanding to these destinations. A project that I might use to integrate PlanetEye into my French courses would include having students use the information that they gather from PlanetEye to create online travel blogs of different locations in French speaking regions of the world. Also, since many of my students are very well traveled, they could write their own reviews of destinations that have visited in the past through PlanetEye.

References

PlanetEye. (2008). Help. Retrieved fromhttp://main.planeteye.com/?page_id=41

BP9.4_2009103_Response

"BP12_2009103_Research_And_Blogging_About_WEB2.0_Quizlet"

1 Comment - Hide Original Post

Quizlet.com defines WEB2.0 technology. As of last month it has over half a million users and 33 million flash cards. Quizlet is essentially a flash program with WEB2.0 features. It allows users to easily share cards and each set of flash cards is tagged which makes searching for cards very easy. The account is free and it is extremely easy to use. Quizlet was started by a 15 year old high school kid, Andrew Sutherland, who now is in his second year at MIT. It is now connected to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and even has an iPhone app(Sutherland, N.D.)

Quizlet has several different ways to present the cards. It has quizzes which you can format and several games. My student love doing the Space Race game where the students have to type in the definitions of words as they race across the screen. One feature added last year was audio recognition which works pretty well for a free program.

The latest new feature is a connection between Flckr and Quizlet. Quizlet now allows the users to link flash cards to images on Flckr. This is just another example of how Quizlet defines WEB2.0. Instead of going through the trouble of creating an image uploading component, Quizlet combine what is already out there to improve itself.

[Photo]

References

Screen Capture From Quizlet.com]. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2009, from http://quizlet.com/1290171/stage-19-vocabulary-flash-cards/


Sutherland, A. (n.d.). The Quizlet Story. Retrieved October 17, 2009, from http://quizlet.com/about/

Liz said...

Wow, and I thought ProProfs.com was cool. I too liked Space Race, particularly because it makes the player focus on answers they missed by retyping the word; they can't just ignore what they don't know. The voice recognition things are really cool too, especially for those students who have significant trouble spelling, but still know the answers. I love the built in motivation to try again as well. Great find, Gerald!

BP9.3_2009103_Web2.0#3

Despite social bookmarking, sometimes it’s just hard to remember why you bookmarked a particular website. Who hasn’t spent time reading and re-reading the same webpage, trying to remember what was so important, or where on the page you found your information? MyStickies could be a possible solution for you.

MyStickies is a way to place a virtual sticky note on a website. It’s easy – while on a webpage, you just press ALT (option), then click and drag to create a sticky. That’s it. You can also include text from the webpage on the sticky by highlighting the text, then completing the process. The sticky stays put each time you visit the webpage. You can access all of your stickies at the MyStickies website. Furthermore, you can tag your stickies for better organization.

This can be useful for students and teachers. Teachers can use stickies to point out pertinent information when guiding students to a particular website. Since the stickies stay put, it eliminates the dialogue of, “halfway down the page, on the left, underneath the fourth picture of George Washington.” From the student perspective, it is great for sharing ideas in a group or sharing critical thinking ideas about a topic. Instead of blogging, students could post a sticky with their thoughts right on the page. Supposedly, one can also choose a color of a sticky so that you can determine between thoughts or users (I was not able to access that function).

Right now, MyStickies is in full effect for FireFox only. The creators have stated that they are making extensions for Internet Explorer and Safari as well (Wright, 2009). MyStickies is rated #20 of Fabry’s (2007) “100 Quick Firefox Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks to Transform Your Research”.

References:

Fabry, L. (2007, August). 100 quick firefox tips, tricks, and tweaks to transform your research. Retrieved October 17, 2009 from http://www.onlineuniversitylowdown.com/2007/08/100-quick-firefox-tips-tricks-and-tweaks-to-transform-your-research.html

Wright, J. (2009, April 21). MyStickies: Still alive and kicking. Retrieved October 17, 2009 from http://jacwright.com/blog/204/mystickies-

BP9.2_2009103_Web2.0#2

www.gliffy.com is a “web-based flowchart and diagramming tool” (Kohlhardt & Dickson, 2008). You might ask yourself, “Why is she giving us another one of these? We already know about LucidChart and Dabbleboard?” That’s exactly what I thought when I came across the link, until I actually tried Gliffy.

Although I appreciated how easy it was to use Dabbleboard, there were some things I didn’t like about the interface. Ironically, it didn’t seem to flow. I found LucidChart to be to constricting in the way it chooses things for you. In my opinion, Gliffy has them both trumped.

For starters, Gliffy has numerous pictures already loaded, including shapes, network pictures (like a firewall), flowchart-specific images, “entity-relationship” arrows, and even pictures for creating a floorplan. Furthermore, I like the idea of being able to search the Internet for pictures within Gliffy. There is an image search function that is tied to Yahoo! Search. You can upload pictures and store them to your account, too.

There are several other reasons that Gliffy is a superior flowchart maker. For example, it is easy to change colors, unlike Dabbleboard and LucidChart. Gliffy offers a grid so that you can truly line things up. Layering makes it easy to include several objects in one space, and if you’re creative enough, maybe even make it look 3D. Items can be grouped so that the user doesn’t have to move each individual piece. Shapes can be rotated and connections are made easy with the connector tool.

So where is the educational piece of Gliffy? All over, actually: character maps, brainstorming, collaboration between students, comparing and contrasting, visualizing processes, concept maps, exploring relationships between topics, etc. Furthermore, as with other Web 2.0 sites, the diagrams are collaborative. There is the option to keep the diagram private or shared. It is easy to see who is really working on the project as well with the revision history. Diagrams can be exported as jpegs or pngs for later use like on a class website or for a presentation.

Overall, I think the versatility and ease-of-use make Gliffy perfect for students. The only downside is that after the 30-day free trial, users will need to pay (25 user acct is $30.00/mo., but you can register from 1 user to 1000 depending on your needs).

References:

Kohlhardt, C., & Dickson, C. (2008). Gliffy. Retrieved October 17, 2009 from http://www.gliffy.com/

BP9.1_2009103_Web2.0#1

“Stravinsky is just one of countless examples of the experimental composer, of course. Monteverdi experimented… Bach experimented, and in doing so wrote in a harmonic style that was often 150 years ahead if (sic) its time. The conclusion that I come to is that all composers – all sincere composers – experiment because it is their very nature. It comes down to the innate search within each of us to find our own voice as a composer, combined with a sincere desire to expand the possibilities of the art, along with the ears of our audience. Some find it early on in their careers, some go to their graves having never discovered it, but in the search is the great experiment: What can I, as a composer who is uniquely me, contribute to the art that no one else has done, or, at the very least, will be instantly recognizable as something I did? A musician who is not experimenting is either probably engaged in a rote academic exercise (a 3-part invention for their counterpoint class perhaps) or auditioning for American Idol… [It] all come[s] from the spirit of ‘let’s push this button and see what happens.’ And we allow these creations to interact and watch the results.

If the experiments have all been done, then there must be no music left to write.” (McGarvey, 2003).

This one is for the music teachers out there. I have found many Web 2.0 sites that are chock full of samples for arranging. While this can be a valuable project for students, I believe that there is no substitute for true composition and experimentation in learning about music. The Audiotool application at www.hobnox.com is a great step in the right direction.

Audiotool is an interface with virtual mixers, instruments, and effects. You can make your own beats using two different beat boxes, learn about polyrhythms and patterns with the Bassline bass sequencer, and learn about matrices and sequencing with the ToneMatrix (a virtual take on the Tenori-On; if you don’t know what that is, YouTube it, it’s neat).

Users can compose simple beats and melodies using the various virtual instruments, then record and share their compositions. The creators stated, “The Hobnox community is about collaboration and connection - For example, the recording feature allows you to directly upload your track to your profile page in the community” (Layman’s Reviews, 2009). The community is international, as hobnox is based in Germany. There is an active blog, where users share music and general information. In a quick scan of the blogs, there were users from Germany, China, the U.K., Finland, and the U.S., so this is really a place where students can bounce their ideas off of a world audience.

I have found Audiotool to be great in stimulating student interest. In an interview, the creators of Audiotool stated, “It is about exploring music and having fun experimenting” (Layman’s Reviews, 2009). The interface is intriguing and gives enough direction for users to experiment. I have also found Audiotool to be useful in teaching about music production and basic recording technique. My school cannot afford a music lab, and being that I only see students for a quarter, this is an easy, efficient way to explore the aforementioned ideas.

Admittedly, I have two gripes with the site. Gripe #1 with the site is the inability to save as you go. Even with a profile, users cannot save a work in progress; in order to save, one must record their composition (which they CANNOT access at a later time). One work-around for this is to simply document on paper what you have done to create your sound. Although tedious, this may be a valuable lesson to students in the amount of effort it takes to make a composition. Gripe #2 is that you cannot currently download your completed song. Again, there is a work-around, where you can import your song into another one of Hobnox’s interfaces, the Livetool, which is geared more toward video production (but at least you can download!).

My simple 2min 23sec example:

References:

Layman’s Reviews (2009). Behind the scenes: Hobnox's audiotool. Retrieved October 16, 2009 from http://www.laymansreviews.com/article_item.php?id=11

BP8_2009103_MediaAsset1

This video would be to convince teachers to use voicethread.com in their classes.