Discovery Learning

I don't know if this is one-time deal, but I got the wmv file from PS3 to download completely in minutes. However, I did it from my desktop instead of the laptop, which never would load entirely. Was it my laptop causing the hang-up or something else? The world may never know.

Thing 23 - It's a Wrap

I found a number of the things to be informative, interesting, and enlightening. I'm a creature of habit and embedded myself in a few different sites to visit on a regular basis. Rarely did I endeavor to set up or visit social networking sites until I was required to set up a Facebook account. Even now, I rarely go there and if I do, it's just to see what other people have posted. I guess I'm a fairly private person when it comes to advertising my goings-on online.

My favorite discoveries were:
1. Online productivity tools - having these apps available for free is wonderful. I can see these wiping out Microsoft's Suite, which is way overpriced.
2. Web 2.0 Awards - This took me out of my "Internet Box" and to some very cool sites that I have bookmarked and will make good use of.
3. Photostory 3 - the concept is great. Will the finished product ever download to a blog? We'll see.

I love learning and Library2Play has taught me some new things that I value. My list of resources has grown thanks to this professional development.

I've racked my brain for ways this program could be improved. All the hyperlinks worked. The write-ups for each thing was an easy read. Plenty of good examples and tutorials. The things themselves are very useful to people in most occupations. Directions/activities for each thing were clearly understood.

Library2Play is an educational experience than everyone can benefit from doing.

Thing 22 - Nings

Ning is a free online application platform that allows users to build social networks and websites for public or private use. Ning allows the user to choose a combination of features to create a customized social network including blogs, discussion forums, photo sharing, polling, RSS feeds, member profile pages, and more. It also allows integration with Internet applications such as email, MySpace, Facebook, and You Tube.

The ability to poll can give the administrator of the site an insite of what his students or peers think or understand about a particular subject. The administrator can compile applicable videos from You Tube to show to a group or allow members of the group to post assigned videos. The same can be done with photo sharing. The use of MySpace or Facebook allows for easy distribution of information and media, easy posting of activities, and promotes communication and community among a group.

Ning is an all-encompassing social networking site that I see having a bright future. The most impressive thing to me is how this application as well as many others that I've learned about through Library2Play, is that no programming experience is needed to make things happen. I'd put myself in the average group for understanding technology, but the numerous applications that I've played with these last few weeks have posed to be quite easy to do.

Thing 21 - Videocasts and Podcasts

I've heard about podcasting and vidcasting, but had never gotten a clear picture about what they were. Now that I've created a videocast through Photostory 3, the benefits of this program in the classroom, boardroom, and other areas are easy to see. Library2Play gives these ideas: "Book reviews posted on line for sharing with other students, book reviews done by a librarian or teacher for "virtual" or "digital" booktalks, sharing a voice performance with others, sharing a presentation at a conference or other such gathering so that those unable to attend can hear the speaker." No offense to Animoto, but vidcasting has the same bells and whistles plus quite a bit more. Additional features include the ability to add narration, manually choose slide transitions, unlimited length for presentation (a membership fee has to be paid to play a presentation over 30 seconds on Animoto), publishing to a remote program such as .wmv (Animoto is played strictly through its website). I plan on using vidcasting during this coming school year. I can easily see my first project being a short Social Studies/History vidcast to be used with an Activstudio lesson. [2 days later] I've tried to download this vidcast, in wmv format, and not gotten more than 31 secs out of an approximately 3 min discussion with music accompaniment. I then converted the wmv to mov (Quicktime) and avi, both acceptable by Blogger, but neither of those loaded either. Very annoying. Oh, did I mention that I gave it 10 HOURS to load?

Thing 20 - You Tube and Teacher Tube

You Tube and Teacher Tube are resources I have used for years for various purposes. For educational purposes, both sites are good, but Teacher Tube tends to make their videos more accessible for downloads or embedding. Thus, educators can probably save time by going straight to Teacher Tube if you want to embed a video as part of a presentation - say in Activstudio.

Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Awards

The Web 2.0 Awards list has a number of sites that I found quite interesting. Del.icio.us, Craigslist, Twitter, Flickr, and a couple others are sites I'm already familiar with and enjoy what they have to offer. Some of the sites I viewed are below. Although the Awards site lists the 1st-3rd place plus an honorable mention, I've only looked at the 1st place winners at this time.

A number of these sites are good for personal use. Upcoming.com is an excellent site for finding events coming up in your neck of the woods. What I appreciate is the events that are listed are not all high ticket items. Events such as the World Series of Dogs to Basics cooking classes are posted. Searches can be done by category or date. City Searches are nowhere near as comprehensive. Another site I was looking forward to using for digital storage and remote access was Omnidrive. Unfortunatly, it's been discontinued. This seemed unusual for an award-winning site. That's the business world I guess. I LOVE the widgets site YourMinis.com. All types of widgets are available to embed on your blog or website. I placed the Internet Radio on this page, but it was a little too much with the Rollyo search and books already showing, so I removed it.

Sites that educators could absolutely take advantage of from the awards list are del.icio.us, .docstoc (many educator created forms and lessons), GoogleBlogSearch, and Flickr.

I'm looking forward to previewing the 2nd-honorable mention places in the near future. It's like looking for buried treasure.

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

Open Office.org is an online suite of apps similar to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To download to your computer is free. It also appears to be very compatible with Microsoft Office. You can transfer or copy and paste information from one app to the other in most cases. I also found that documents can be converted to PDF format with Open Office.org.

Disclosure time - I bought a PC from a guy off Craigs List. I test drove it before purchasing, and everything worked fine, including all Microsoft Office apps. Four months after taking the pc home, a notice appeared that the trial version of Microsoft Office had expired and I would have to purchase the suite (which is costly). Needless to say, I was a bit miffed by this revelation. With Open Office.org (OOo), no purchase is necessary nor are there any compliance or licensing issues. Big bonus!!

Okay, I had to download OOo to explore and learn for myself what it's all about. The advantages mentioned above hold true. The only downside to OOo that I can determine is in time management. The app takes a little longer to open and to save than does Microsoft Office programs. It's not a big deal except that we've been spoiled on the timelessness that it takes to perform these functions with Microsoft Office. It's kind of like going from dsl back to dial-up, but no where near that extreme.

OOo is a viable and excellent alternative to purchasing Microsoft Office, if you want to save some cash. Newer versions are continually being produced in an effort to keep up with current trends so it seems that OOo will be around for a long time.