Thing #24 of “23 Things”

Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

This is the most unexpected thing of all... Really, I did not expect thing 24 at all…

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I am back. The most important thing that I discovered working on this assignment is that there is more information out there that I can handle… and it is getting worse… or better, depending on how you look at it. I had a lot of fun doing this exercise and it gave me many ideas. I also think that my written English got much better... I never studied English before; I learned it by trial and error, by talking to my friends and my kids, with the help of MS Word and the internet!. My only hope is that I will find the time to continue to explore and use these ideas.

Let me answer each question separately:

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

My favorite exercise was creating “plug and play”, ready to go, easy to use and make websites which could potentially became useful tools when teaching my students. My favorite discovery was the wikis. I did know about how Wikipedia worked but never had the opportunity to make or work with a wiki. I see a lot of potentially good applications for wikis in the classroom.

• How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?

It revived my interest in the internet and the things that I can do and learn from it.

• Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

Yes, thing 24 was much unexpected!

• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Just concentrate on the 23 Things instead of the many other assignments going parallel to this one. At least minimize the amount of assignments additional to the 23 Things and work more with the 23 Things. Let’s face it, many of us were teachers with a very limited amount of time. For example, there is no need (in my opinion) to write another paper with 1500 words or more. We did it in Assessment, in Models of Teaching and not to mention in Dr. Buttery’s class. There is no need to do anymore… really.

• How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher?

I want to use the same idea in the future with my students (2300 Things). But I would have to modify it greatly because I teach freshman in HS. By doing one thing at a time you end up doing a lot and not even realizing it, and that is important because it is easy to became discouraged when you see that you have to do a lot of stuff. APSU 23 Things presents one thing at a time and this way it is less intimidating.

• How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.

In the thing about lifelong learners I said that I was bad planning. Let me say it this way: I plan to continue with the spirit that Dr. Wall has motivated in us… that is my plan… Not much of a plan I know, but a plan nevertheless.

Seriously, I decided to write the story of my life and post it on the internet. Hopefully, someone will read it and pay me millions to write a book… Ok, at least as a legacy for my family and since my family it is all over the world (Spain, Cuba, Miami, Bolivia etc) , the best way to reach all of them with pictures and text is with the internet. My old friends are even more spread out and they, being part of my life, could help me write it, if I use a wiki and a blog site.

Finally, thank you Dr. Wall for always having a smile for us (and an email answer for me!) and make this class instructive but yet fun. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this before I get my final grade since I could have to change my opinion… just kidding! No, really, people could think that I am saying this only to soften you up ah… Oh well, I am too old to worry about that. I really enjoy having you as a teacher… you inspire me!

Ridelto

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Thing #23 of “23 Things”

Creative Commons

I suppose the credits at the end of Learning 2.0 – 23 Things for teachers is evidence of this.

Credits

Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers is based on Learning 2.0 - 23 Things, a staff development program for the Mesquite Independent School District. That program was based on the Learning 2.0 program that was designed by Helene Blowers and adapted by the California School Library Association and others. Content and style for Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers has been borrowed and duplicated with permission, under a Creative Commons License.

How am I going to use this knowledge? Umm… Let me see. First of all, I will teach my students to give credit when required by law and to do this in a clear and correct way. Second and last, I will keep this in mind all the time and will always credit those who deserve the credit, not only because it is the law, but also because it is the right thing to do. I really don’t know what else to say here other than… FINALLY DONE! Yeahhhh!

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Thing #22 of “23 Things”

Podcasts: No iPod Needed!

Ok, now I get it, a podcast is any audio or video content delivered over the internet in a program or episode fashion. It is like radio or TV over the internet and not in real time. It is just an mp3 file. It turns out I’ve been subscribed to podcasts for a while now unknowingly. I watch House and Dexter over the internet. When a new episode becomes available a “new episode” flag shows on top of the picture of Dexter or House and I can watch it anytime I want and as many times as I want because I own the episode. Amazon’s shows and movies podcasting are not free and therefore they are not just MP3 files that I can move from media to media, but the idea is the same.

So obviously podcasting, like everything else, is evolving. When I searched the internet for podcasts of interest I immediately found several. Interestingly I could not find a way to add the RSS to my website… they do it differently, they add the RSS to your browser‘s taskbar and automatically download the mp3 directly to your computer so that you could listen to the podcast, in this case an audio recording of an interview, offline.

I decided not to subscribe to this podcast because once subscribed, the website would download to my computer not only the interview that I was interested in, but also all the previous podcasts or episodes.

Here is the podcast I was interested in: Twenty-two minute podcast Interview with V.S. Ramachandran, Professor and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition in La Jolla, California. You can click on this link or go to Educause Website to see (or listen) all their podcasts.

Learn Out Loud requires a paid subscription of $12 and up and it is more like a website where you can buy audio books or listen to those included in the subscription without paying an additional fee. The other three are actually podcast searching/holding tools. I liked Podcast alley better. I did a search there and found another podcast that I am interested in and perhaps other students and teachers may also be interested in. It is called Teachers Teaching Teachers or TTT. I subscribed to this one and added the RSS to the end of my blog page.

I don’t plan to make any podcast for now for my students but I definitely would like to eventually create some explaining math concepts, to use as a teaching aid or when I am absent. Ideally I would like to make my own collection of mp3/mp4 podcasts or audio/video clips or tutorials created by me or by others. Only time will tell.

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Thing #21 of “23 Things”

Animoto

I always wondered what tool people used to create the video clips found in you tube with music, transitions and text right on the pictures and videos. I guess Animoto is one of these tools. I wish they would give you more choices for you to customize and of course, for free. Animoto is a good idea but I suspect there are better and free web applications on the internet that allow you to do more than Animoto. Please correct me if I am wrong, or tell me if you know of any other tool.

I chose to use pictures of my dogs taken recently by my daughter. Since just uploading 10 pictures to make this Animoto composite clip seemed too simple, I decided to give the pictures some effects to see if the final product had some sort of originality!

The good thing about Animoto is that you don’t have to do anything, it does everything for you. This is also a bad thing. It would be great if you could switch to manual mode and combine or create effects on your own.

Apparently Windows Movie Maker let you create similar video/picture compositions. I have not done my podcast yet but I suspect that the MAC application that I am going to use for my podcast also let you create such video compositions since I have heard very good things about it.

Although this is not a very fun thing to do (since you don’t do anything really!), it is always fun to learn something new, something that may come in handy when customizing my family pictures' website. Besides, I am glad that it didn’t take me hours to finish this “Thing”.

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Thing #20 of “23 Things”

Tou, Too, Can YouTube

This was supposed to be an easy “Thing”, and it was, but it took forever. As soon as I began to look for videos worth posting here… guess what happened? Too many videos are worth posting. So I decided to look for one relevant to teachers, something different, when I came across the No Child Left Behind debate. Interesting stuff… The divide is obvious and it seems to me that more and more people don’t like the original law. But it is a law, who cares if you like it or not? Well, apparently it is up for reauthorization. The President is definitely looking into the law to at least adjust it and hopefully make it better. Since I saw so many opinions, many of which I couldn’t fully fallow, I chose to go with our President’s opinion about the role of the federal government in enforcing this law: Barack Obama on No Child Left Behind

As I have mentioned before in my blogs, I use YouTube all the time, for songs, recipies, expert advice, you name it. I like that YouTube is open to anyone, experts and novices, and we, the public, are the ones who decide who is the expert and who is not. I like that the product goes straight from the creator to the consumer, without a middle man to become rich. So many new people creating can only generate the best. Here is, in my opinion, an example of a young couple with a brilliant future thanks to YouTube (and their art of course!): Pomplamoose Music

Something that I would find useful to have in my library website is ratings, comments and the counters (a visual display of how many people access the video). I would change the way YouTube reports the number of hits; I would divide the hits by category. For example, how many people watch the whole video, how many people watch halve of it, one quarter etc. This would give a better idea about the quality of the video. Some people start the video with some sort of hook, a false or deceiving start, and then they change to something completely different. A “Category Counter” will prevent such videos to succeed in their deceiving efforts.

About Taylor’s Mali video: Powerful thing! I would show it to my students if it wasn’t for the “middle finger” and one more word. I watched all the videos I could find from him. Another one I liked was: Totally like whatever, you know?

I agree with Dr. Wall that there is a lot of unwelcomed stuff, a lot of trash in YouTube. This site is definitely NOT for kids. Unfortunately many parents don’t realize this.

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Thing #19 of “23 Things”

Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

First of all, I loved TeacherPop network. This place is not just another educational website created for teachers, but it is a “local” one. It is great to have a place where you can keep in touch with your classmates and talk about topics related to the teaching profession with teachers from here. I think this alone is already ideal.

Of the social networks listed here I liked Open Source Food because of the beautiful pictures accompanying the recopies. I still prefer YouTube for recipies though. For example, I search for “Puerco asado” in Open Source Food and found two recipes, while YouTube returned too many to count and these were actual footage of people cooking the “Puerco asado”.

What I found interesting that I may use later is TeacherPop itself. Not only to get ideas from other teachers but also to communicate with my classmates after the class is over, and to comunicate with colleagues. Hopefully they are also planning to come back to TeacherPop after this class is over.

I was aware of social networks because I’ve been a member of “Secretos de Cuba”. This is an online community of the Cuban exile. I’ve been posting on this site for a couple of years (in Spanish). Please don’t try to translate their posts with an online translation tool… what you get is a horrible version of what is actually written there.

I decided to translate a song by Wylli Chirino, a Cuban singer in Miami, which defines the Cuban community in the US and especially in this Cuban network. I could not find a translation on the internet and even the lyrics that I found in Spanish were incorrect to some degree.

Wylli Chirino – Ya viene llegando (It is coming)

When I was just a kid back in the Antilla

My father dressed me as a sailor

I had to navigate 90 miles

And start my life as a foreigner

Fleeing the sickle and the green olive

Running away from this absurd ideology

Because I never wanted to be an appetizer

Of hatred, resentment and apathy

In the case I brought a hummingbird

Martí‘s book, a dream and a Danzón

Beny Moré came as stowaway

Next to The Matamoros and Cumin

I also brought a palm tree and a hut

And even “Pinar Del Río” I relocated

To my humble place of accommodation

Around the Twelve Avenue of the Southwest

Eh, eh….

Thus began the hard reality, Oh God!

Of anyone who throws himself into the “maroma”

To survive outside their own language

Their customs and identity

And what needed to happen, happened

From my new city I took its coat

Because resignation is a loyal friend

Of man when has to migrate

And despite the distance and the attack

Of a rigid almanac, I live with the luck

To feel Cuban to the death

And to be a lover of liberty

Now that my people lives hopeful

I feel inspired and I’m singing a Son

Announcing to all my brothers

Our day is already coming

Oh, oh

It is coming

Oh, oh

It is coming

And everyone is waiting

It is coming

Ay, beautiful and exquisite Cuba

It is coming

Because we are people who go singing

It is coming

I want to see my flag flying, Cuba is waiting for us

I will sing my song from my heart

It is coming

In the gazebo in “Consolación's Park”

It is coming

Every day I love you more my beautiful Cuba… I love you more

It is coming

From San Antonio to Maicí, for Maceo and for Martí

Ya viene llegando

Nicaragua
FREE!
Colombia
FREE!
Hungary
FREE!
Czechoslovakia
FREE!
Romania
FREE!
East Germany
FREE!
CUBA
FREE!

It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming

When I was just a kid back in the Antilla

[Cuba is the biggest island of the group called the Antillas and located in the Caribean Sea]

Fleeing the sickle and the green olive

[The communist flag hammer and sickle and the green olive is Castro’s uniform]

Martí’s book, a dream and a Danzón

[José Martí was a Cuban poet and patriot. A Danzón is type of Cuban music or rhythm]

Next to The Matamoros and Cumin

[Cuban musicians]

I also brought a palm tree and a hut

[The Palm Tree is in the official Cuban shield. Cuban country-people live in huts made out of palm trees]

And even “Pinar Del Río” I relocated

[Pinar del Río is one of the old six Cuban provinces where Wylli Chirino is from]

Comment to Dr. Wall post on TeacherPop:

Absolutely yes! The problem is that I cannot play anything from YouTube in my school. There must be a way around this and I think I have the solution. I will embed the YouTube videos that I want to watch in my Windows Live site. I am not sure this will work but it may, so I will check it out. If you know of any solution to this problem please let me know. As I explained in my 23 Things blogs I have been using YouTube to learn stuff for a while now and I have found very good videos about Algebra that I would like my students to watch. Right now I am using videos from http://www.learner.org/index.html. This website has tons of good educational videos, but it is limited to the website creators’ vision. I think YouTube is better because anyone can post on it; but a section just for educators would be even better.

I noticed that your link was not a YouTube link but a tinyurl.com link. Is this a useful thing? This website says that the url created this way will never brake. Is this true? If it is true – how do they do it?

Ridelto

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Thing #18 of “23 Things”

Explore Social Networking

I don’t have a lot to say about this thing. It turns out I already had a MySpace account. I created a new one anyway using the same email address that I use for most of the Things in this class: Ridelto@hotmail.com. My MySpace url or web address is www.myspace.com/ridelto. It doesn’t make much sense to create a new website when I already have the www.ridelto.blogspot.com website as well as the Wiki site, the igoogle page, the MS live pages etc. Also, I don’t really like the way MySpace sites look like and other things. I don’t like the layout system they have and I certainly really don’t like that several wannabe musicians use the MySpace customization feature to sell their product. I am not sure about which one of these sites had most useful features. They are both similar. Perhaps MySpace is more appealing. From my point of view they are just like the rest of the websites explored previously in these 23 Things. The main difference is that you can talk to people and socialize while you are on your site. This is not new, but I think is the main reason why MySpace is so popular. I remember loving ICQ before America Online took over to destroy the essence of it and make it into a money machine (I never used it again so I really don’t know if they corrected this). This combined with the possibility to listen to music while you are working on your space and texting or talking via webcam makes the difference. I personally don’t do any of those things but I can see how it can be used in the classroom, for example to have and meet a distant class friend, say in a different country, with which regularly a conversation is established during a lesson to collaborate and share ideas.

I searched for friends but the only one that I decided to add was my younger daughter Alberta. I know that my other two daughters had a MySpace site for years but apparently their accounts are private so I didn’t find them.

Educator should know how social networking works because they could use it in their classroom as I explained above to get their students to collaborate with other students around the globe in real time. Another reason is because most students, at least in HS, are using MySpace and FaceBook to socialize and communicate with each other, therefore, we should be informed about these tools.

Unfortunately, there are issues discouraging teachers from having their own MySpace account to interact with their students. Some people believe that adding your students as your “friends” is not right, especially because this teacher-students interaction will happen outside the school environment which is not seen proper by many. The word “friend” when referring to your students doesn’t seem right. I, personally, don’t plan in using this MySpace site, as I did with the previous one I had, which I made before I became a teacher.

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Thing #17 of “23 Things”

Tagging and social bookmarking with Del.icio.us very similar to each

Once again I was surprised and impressed by the reach of these seemingly simple ideas such as social bookmarking. My initial thought was that social website bookmarking was useless or at less unnecessary. But I was wrong. This is a sharing club if you will. Remember Napster? The power of Napster and later LimeWire and other files sharing internet software was in the numbers… millions of people collaborating and sharing files (music, pictures, movies, programs etc) directly from computer to computer or “peer to peer”. Well, Delicious.com and Diigo.com are similar ideas but instead of sharing files you share your searched product, your invested time, the information that you have found, in the form of a website, as a result of your activity on the internet. And the power once again is in the numbers. Like Wikipedia, if someone is wrong about something, it doesn’t matter because a thousand other people most likely will be right and you are guaranteed to get the best product anyway.

I wish Google had something similar. I always prefer a well know company (a brand name product). For example, it turns out Furl doesn’t exist anymore… when you click on the Furl link (www.furl.net) you are immediately taken to www.Diigo.com. I suppose they change the name from Furl to Diigo. Also, Magnolia is accepting subscriptions only by invitation so I did not explore it. I did look at Delicious via the APSU account provided for exploration but I did not join in because I already had one created when I was hired as a teacher over a year ago. I tried to look at my old account but for some reason I was unable to sign in.

During my exploration of Delicious I realized how useful it can be for everyone and especially for teachers. It is like a search engine with limited but intentionally and properly selected sources. At the end I decided to join in www.Diigo.com because I this one not only allows you to bookmark websites but also let you save them either as a snapshot or completely. A service similar to Google’s cached websites, but instead you choose when to cache or save the site. Imagine not having to worry about links that don’t work anymore since the links to your saved sites are guaranteed to always work. Of course, if Diigo decides to shut down you will be in trouble. This is why I said before that I wish Google had something similar since Google is on the rise and will probably stay with us for many years to come. It would be better if Diigo allowed to choose to save the websites also in your own hard drive together with the internet or just let you save locally but share globally in a “Peer to Peer” fashion, like Napster or LimeWire. I think the browser; the IE or Google’s Crome or even the OS should include this functionality.

Years ago MS was experimenting with something similar. With Windows 98 you could easily customize your local folder to include background pictures, internet or local links etc to make your folders look and feel like a website. I think MS was thinking about blending in the internet with your computer at home and make the internet browsing and your computer “browsing” look the same. Somehow they did not continue in this direction. Either way, I think I will use Diigo a lot from now on. It installed in my computer as a toolbar. Eventually I will explore Delicious with my Mac where I initially installed it but right now I need to go to sleep.

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Thing #16 of “23 Things”

Get Organized with Web 2.0 Tools

iGoogle, PageFlakes, and Netvibes are very similar to each other. They all are very simple to set up and useful to keep organized. All of them allow you to customize several pages via tabs. PageFlakes and Netvibes have the tabs on top and iGoogle has them on the left side which makes it a bit less obvious at first but equally useful. I chose to stay with iGoogle for several reasons, some more important than others. iGoogle has a more attractive and innovative look, but more importantly, I was already using iGoogle because Google has combined many other services that I use all the time on this page, such as Gmail, Maps, internet search and more. This is how my iGoogle page looks like now:

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

I have already made this page my permanent page and I plan to customize it further.
In reference to the online Calendars I looked at Scrybe. Scrybe is not accepting subscriptions at the moment but I look at a video clip where Scrybe is explained. I could not take a look at “30 Boxes” because I would have to create an account and I didn’t want another account. Again, Scrybe seems very user friendly and useful, but once again I chose Google Calendar for reasons similar to the ones explained previously. I am not using Google Calendar but I may, because it is on the internet and therefore I will have access to it from anywhere. Right now I am using MS Outlook at home and my “smart phone” when not at home, but I don’t like that I have to synchronize them all the time manually. I wish my cell phone would connect to my computer automatically via my wireless network when I am at home without my having to actually connect it to my Vista desktop computer, open Outlook and manually synchronize the calendar. The only problem with Google Calendar is that I don’t know if I can synchronize my calendar with my cell phone. If I do, I will definitely prefer Google over Outlook.
“Ta da list” or “Remember the Milk” are online To Do lists which require you to create an account. Honestly I don’t need this, simply because the things that I have to do are always clear in time. Without a To Do list I never forget to do anything. Very rarely I forget something that I have to do. Jott don’t appear to be an online To Do list. Perhaps their new owner got rid of that. To Do lists seem to be too much work for me and I don’t have the need for one.
I would recommend the Google online Calendar since it is online and it is for free. I am considering using it myself. I will also recommend iGoogle.
I decided not to do the Challenge part this time.

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Thing #15 of “23 Things”

What in the world is a Wiki?

I really liked Wikis. It is amazing how a simple idea can became something huge, like Wikipedia. I can see a lot of potential for Wikis now and in the future… too bad I didn’t see this years ago… I would be rich by now. But the hard thing is to see the reach of an idea before everyone else, not after…
Anyway, teachers can really use these "wikis" in their classroom (an obvious statement), especially history teachers, English teachers, social sciences teachers etc. I don’t think math teachers can use wikis now so much. The reason is because it seems there are no wikis where you can write formulas; equations etc (correct me if I am wrong). In other words, there are not public wikis with symbolic editing.
I would love to see a wiki created by one of the leading companies producing mathematical tools today, such as MathWorks which produces MATLAB and Simulink, or PTC, previously own by MathSoft, the creator of MathCad or Wolfram Research with Mathematica, or MapleSoft with Maple, or even Texas Instruments with their new TI nspire calculators (CAS and regular) with symbolic capabilities.
My wife and I own Maple and MathCad 14 and I have worked in the past with all of these software packages capable of doing much more than just calculations. They are programming/simulation suites designed for engineering and science at the highest levels.
It surprises me that these companies don’t have a Wiki friendly software package yet because it seems to me it is a great way to acquire users at early ages which is very important because these programs are not simple to use.
MathCad 14 (and also Maple) have a symbolic editor page which looks just like this page but wider, technically it can continue as far a you would go to the right (obviously there is a limit to this). On this “superpage” you can write whatever you want and anywhere you want… text, formulas, pictures, freehand writing (with an electronic pen or the mouse), graphs etc. This page automatically recognizes any math language an automatically calculates anything that could be calculated and if you need anything you just right click and ask for it to get the answer. Of course, you must know mathematics but it makes your life a lot easier.
Here is how MathCad looks in my computer.

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

Imagine if you had a Wiki looking like this where you could leave not only text comments but also math comments. Imagine if there was a place on the internet where you could create a Wiki for your students where you could speak the language of math.
I visited the suggested examples wikis but none was about math. The WikiEducator link by the way takes you to http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/ just like “10 reasons why your next pathfinder should be a wiki “.
I also “explored” the APSU sandbox and it didn’t seem very user friendly. I created a new page named Ridelto and pasted and played with some text and then uploaded a picture file which did not go directly to my post as you would expect. Of course I didn’t spend much time on it but still…
Finally, I created my own Wiki located at: http://www.ridelto.wikispaces.comi/
I thought it would be a good idea to use a Wiki as a way for my readers (Do I have any?) to help me correct my grammatical and orthographical mistakes… Perhaps my professor will do that hehe. I even added a link to every one of my posts (which are repeated verbatim in my Wiki) to facilitate this “human spell checker”. Anyway, here is the introduction to my Wiki:
This Wiki contains all my answers (blogs) to an exercise for an Austin Peay State University class (EDUC 5540-81). The exercise is about the new trends and technologies used on the internet (Web 2.0); and it is divided into 23 parts or assignments named “Things”. The name of the exercise is “23 Things” and each “Thing” or assignment posted by Dr. Anne Wall can be found at:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23

This Wiki itself is one of the assignments: Thing # 15 - What in the World is a Wiki?
The idea is to collaborate on this Wiki to correct grammatical and orthographical mistakes that I may have made since English is not my first language. I will appreciate any help from anyone.


Thank you. Ridelto


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Thing #14 of “23 Things”

Go with the Flow

According to Wikipedia:
“A flowchart is a common type of diagram, that represents an algorithm or process, showing the steps as boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting these with arrows. Flowcharts are used in analyzing, designing, documenting or managing a process or program in various fields.”
“A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.”
In other words a flowchart is a graphical outline of a succession of steps in a logical process such as a decision making procedure, a sequence of steps in solving a mathematical problem, the order in which some steps must be taken etc.
A mind map on the other hand is a simple type of flowchart used to visualize ideas or concepts to better organize thought as when brainstorming. Mind maps are visual lists or outlines of ideas.
I first used flowcharts in college to “plan” complex computer programs to schematically visualize the steps required to solve a mathematical problem without missing any. I have used them since mostly for the same task but also for other reasons. In the past I used Visio for complicated flowcharts or just drew them by hand.
Electronic schematics can be considered as very sophisticated type of flowchart where instead of a few boxes with simple meanings such as “if-then-else” or “Yes-No” boxes, you have pictorial representations of integrated circuits (IC) with very specific and complicated meanings that can be connected in a myriad of ways, all of which have distinct but predetermined outcomes.

I explored Gliffy.com and Bubbl.us

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

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Thing #13 of “23 Things”

Web-based Applications

I am a big fan of MS Office, but I can see that Microsoft will have to freshen their approach and think of something similar to this ZOHO Writer, free, on the web, colorful, elegant, user friendly and fun, otherwise they will lose their grip and become part of the past.
As I write this blog I am expecting in-line spell check with word suggestions and sinonims and antonyms as in MS Word but so far I don't see anything happening. I read in the welcome document that ZOHO Writer has spell checker for more than 70 languages and that it checks for all those languages automatically. I misspelled some words on purpose but so far I don't see any corrections. I see… you must click on the button labeled "Spell Check"; it doesn't do it automatically. This is understandable since this application is on line and "in-line check" needs speed and resources not available to a web application. I spelled "sinonims" wrong and the suggestions were simonizes, simonize, singsongs and singletons. MS Word suggested synonyms, simonies and synonyms'. Clearly MS Word did a better job. The word "blog" was underlined as a misspelled word with 13 suggestions while MS Word acknowledged it as a correctly spelled word.
One thing I've been waiting for years is to have tabbed Documents in Word, but for some strange reason Microsoft has not decided to include this feature in their editor even though several other word processors such as this one and even MS Excel and MS Works have it. These last two had tabbed documents for years, way ahead of everyone else... but MS Word doesn't!

The three previous paragraphs were written using ZOHO Writer. They were made public and can be seen here: http://writer.zoho.com/public/ridelto/Thing-13

Obviously ZOHO Writer is a good solution for those who can’t afford or just don’t want to spend money buying MS Office and with time is going to be a very strong contender of MS Word. Microsoft already has a strong competition in OS. For example, Linux, an open-source OS with many variants, some of them actually with a price tag, or Open Office which is a free open-source software suite similar to MS Office. By the way, if you are a student you can buy MS Office (and other software) for a fraction of its price (see http://www.studica.com/, http://www.campustech.com/, http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ or, in some cases, at http://www.amazon.com/
Online applications are not a new thing. Ten years ago it was clear that one day will came when all applications will be online with perhaps some exceptions for security and high speed reasons. We used to imagine an internet where the computers at home were just terminals connected to a supercomputer, the internet, running all kinds of web programs free to everyone or available for a small monthly fee. Something like Netflix, which lets you watch any movies (in their repertory), but better.
Of course, ten years ago that was impossible because the internet was too slow (dial up). We used to talk about a wireless internet with access directly from our brains… well; we still talk about this one, but as a future technology. However, the wireless internet is already here. Amazon Kindle is a good example.

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Thing #12 of “23 Things”

Google is Not Just for Searching Anymore


Before this class I used Google almost daily to search the internet for pictures, videos and information in general; for maps and to play with Google Earth looking at places of interest from the sky or from a bird’s view. It turns out Google is much more than that. Now I am using it to compare prices of products that I am interested in buying by using Google Shopping. It almost always finds better prices for me; sometimes considerably better. I am beginning to use my Gmail account (Ridelto@gmail.com) and now I know how to search for images that I can use without worrying about copyright problems.
I spent a great amount of time playing with the “more” and “even more>>” menu items of the Google Classic Home Page. Surprisingly, I found “even more” stuff to incorporate to my list of useful tools.
I discovered that the iGoogle personal customizable page is like the “private web site” that I was looking for in Thing #10. I created my own iGoogle personalized page and began to use it right away because when I click on Google on my toolbar it now takes me to this personal page and from there I can click on Gmail on top of the page to go to my Gmail email account or to go anywhere since this page is very easy customizable and I can add links to the internet or to my own computer folders and files. Here is a screen capture of my monitor showing my iGoogle page.

Click on the picture to see the actual screen capture from my computer
With so many new things to keep up with, organization is the key word and Google realizes this.

I have Daily Literary Quotes on my iGoogle page, Art of the Day, Puzzles, News, Jokes of the Day among other things. A page like this one could be used as the perfect home page for school computers with only those gadgets of interests to the students and teachers showing on the page.
But this is not all. I looked at every one of the “even more” tools. In previous posts I either talked (or they are self explanatory) about Blog Search, Books (they are not free), Custom Search, Earth, Images, Maps, News, Product Search, Videos, Web Search, Blogger, Gmail, Reader, SketchUp, etc.
So I will talk about those tools that got my attention. I installed and used Google Chrome in my desktop PC. It is nice, but as all new software, it is not yet supported by everyone and therefore I rather continue to use MS Internet Explorer 8 with its wonderful tab system. Google Alerts is not my thing; I already have plenty reaching my several email accounts (I do check all of them daily)
I didn’t look too much into “Checkout” but I use “Shopping”. Google “Desktop” is very handy when you cannot find a file that you know you have somewhere in your computer but you don’t remember where. It is a local (to your computer) powerful and fast search engine.
Google Finance must be useful for those who have business or investments… not me! I cannot see the use of Google Health, Toolbar and others.

I’ve been programming computers for years and therefore I subscribe to some developers’ forums which usually are good enough, but I can see that Google “Code” can be a powerful tool for software developers in search for code or solutions to their coding problems.
I didn’t spend much time exploring Google Labs… not enough time! There are some new and useful tools to explore and use in the future. Google “Calendar” is wonderful (and free), but I use my cell phone (basically a handheld PC) and outlook so I don’t need another calendar. Same thing with Google “Documents”; I use MS SkyDrive and I don’t need another place on the internet to “hold” documents, but this tool is great for those who need a place on the internet to have their documents and access them from anywhere. Of course I also recommend SkyDrive. One important difference is that SkyDrive gives you 25 GB with every hotmail account and clearly shows how much you have used. I didn’t see any usage indication in Google Documents.
Google “Groups” is another surprising tool that I see myself using in the near future. You can search, find and join groups according to your interests, location, language… according to anything you can think of.
Picasa is just another powerful picture sharing/holding/editing place similar to the ones previously discussed in “23 Things”
Google Talk is great for texting from your computer. My cell phone has a keyboard but my fingers are too big therefore I hate texting. Google Talk promises to change that for me.
Google Translate must be used with caution. If you think that you can understand another language just buy using these automatic translators think again. Use it only to get an idea. I have seen many and very important mistakes made by these translators. Of course, they will get better, but they are not there yet.
The last useful tool that I am already using is GOOG-411. It is the Google equivalent of dialing 411, the phone directory feature of the telephone companies, only free, better and with a more motivated customer service.
There are some many options in Google More that I am sure I will be coming back again and again in the near future and Google will find the way to add more exiting and attractive “things” to keep everyone coming back.

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Thing #11 of “23 Things”

Finding Good Feeds

I began really early in the morning to work on this Blog (around 6 AM). Three hours later I was still looking for good blogs, reading and watching videos which came back on my searches. This is the problem with searching the internet – you will find all kinds of things that will interest you and you will “spend” time on it without even noticing it. Once again I forced myself to stop and just do my assignment.
Syndic8.com has an unattractive interface but will give your results from different countries (10 random countries) clearly marked plus the newest sites, newest users, most popular etc. It even gives you some statistics.
Thechnorati.com has a more attractive interface with lots of options. Because of this I think it is less intuitive that Google. This one is more like a search engine similar to Google. You can search videos, photos, blogs, news etc.
I could not connect to Feedster.com therefore I can’t say anything about this one. Topix.com looks like an electronic newspapers with ugly and very distractive ads which made this site not appealing to me. When I try doing a search a popup window appeared (even though I block popup on my browser) advertising screen savers. A second search returned zero results but a lot of new adds.
Google Blogsearch is the simplest of the three but more powerful as you would expect from Google. To compare Google with the rest I did a simple experiment. I searched for apsu23things with all of them. Only Google found a lot of stuff – many APSU students’ blogs. It pretty much found everyone’s things including Dr. Wall’s
Then I search my name thinking that perhaps Google will not find me. Surprise, Google found my blog and my other websites. Google is the winner! But we already knew this right?
I added to my Blogs Google Reader:
· Edublog Awards since there are many more Blogs that I would like to read.
· Always Learning by Kim Cofino in Thailand.
· Clif’s Notes on Educational Technology somewhere in the US I think by unknown (Clif!)
· Learning 2.0 by Jason (He is from Texas but also Blogging “Things” like we (APSU) are.
What I like about reading blogs is that Blogs are more personal and can be local. It is like having many friends and being able to talk to them even though sometimes they don’t talk back or even listen. It is like listening to friends without interrupting them and participating in the conversation only after they are done and always when you are ready to say something.

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Thing #10 of “23 Things”

Set Up an RSS Reader and Add Feeds

I chose to set up an RSS with Google Reader because it was easier since I already had a Gmail account, but also because I know that Google is not likely to go away anytime soon. Also because Google has proven to be good, i.e., user friendly, innovative, inclusive etc.
Here are the 5 feeds that I chose to subscribe to:

1. KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News
2. Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers
3. Sylvia's 23 Things
4. Texas Tornado
5. KStanley_EDUC 5540

RSS are definitely a good solution if you are fallowing several “Blogs”. It works as an email account which only delivers selected emails with updated information about your topics of interest. Most prestigious websites do allow you to choose them to send regular emails with their updated information. Many let you decide how often you want the updates and those which add a lot of information daily, will let you choose what information you want them to update you on.
RSS let you see changes on any website or blog, leaving the owner unaware of this. I like Stephanie Gottschalk’s (Texas Tornado or Miss Texas) definition: “It's like creating your own newspaper of your interest” “…your very own customized newspaper.”
I think the best part of this activity (and the 23 Things in general) is all the questions it raised. As I was thinking about this tool, I remembered two books that I read a couple of years ago by Ray Kurzwail: “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. Ray Kurzwail is a famous American scientist, an accomplished inventor and more importantly a visionary. His main idea (he has many!), explained in “The Singularity is Near” many years ago, in a nutshell, is that technology is approaching an explosive moment, a singularity, at which point new discoveries and new technologies are going to happen on weekly, daily and even hourly basics. We are seeing this happening already! So much is happening on the web that we just can’t keep up with everything. According to him it is going to get worse. RSS is only one of many desperate solutions humans are using to keep up with this explosion in information.
I think (I suppose I could cite Kurzwail here!) that the solution is going to be Artificial Intelligence. Funny, yes, these are my own thoughts thanks to him and many, many conversations I had with many, many smart and not so smart people over the years since I was in college, in the eighties, when I used to argue with philosophy students, physics students and math students about the future, about today and tomorrow, about computers and AI, the universe, astronomy (not astrology please) about consciousness, extraterrestrial life, multiverses and even the supernatural… yes, all these questions in the eighties. In other words, at one moment we will not be able to keep up with all the new technologies, discoveries, ideas etc and we will have to rely on AI solutions – Software that searches, chooses, summarizes and even make decisions and creates for us. This is where we are heading folks (read Kurzwail and many others in his references!). If you pay attention you will see that it is happening already.
I can barely keep up with all my passwords, my email accounts, my websites, my pictures… even my friends and family members! Not to mention all the things that I must and want to learn, the games that I like to play, or the books that I want to read. To all these I just added these 2300 things that I am working on for this class which, I must say, has given me all kind of new ideas. Hey, I am even thinking about writing a book on line. Imagine that… no pressure, no deadlines, no API references, your own format… no profit? Most likely, but definitely, a lot of fun and a medium to reach anyone, especially my family. It is like publishing for free (It seems to me that formal papers will became less important in the future).
To answer the question “How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?”- I think teachers can use it the same way everyone else is, to organize themselves and their students. Perhaps teachers could teach students how to organize themselves in cyberspace.
One final thought: I would like to see a place on the internet where I could create personal hidden websites, private websites, places that only I can access. I would use this website to collect in one place all my website links, all my email accounts links, all my passwords (not sure about this one), names of friends, addresses, phone numbers etc. If anyone reads this blog and knows of anything similar please let me know (Update: iGoogle is a partial solution because... Wikis could be a better solution).

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Thing #9 of “23 Things”

Online Image Generators

Ok, I must stop now. This is really addictive. There are literary hundreds of tools on the internet that can be used to customize pictures, texts, videos and, I am sure, music and other stuff. This is addictive because is a game. Unfortunately, as any game, it is mostly a waste of time. But it was fun! Hopefully I will stay away from it as I do with my favorite game – The Sims!

I went to so many “places” that I don’t remember most of them now! Let me see… I decided to make the Header on this blog with http://www.spiffytext.com/.

I selected a cool background and some cool font but when I uploaded it onto my Header I noticed two things. First, the banner would not stretch all the way across the page (it was not wide enough). Second, the picture had their internet address embedded into it on two opposite corners. I decided to fix this. To make sure I am not ignoring any copyright rule I want to make this clear: I made the banner shown on this page with spiffytext.com. Please visit this website to make your own banner!

Then, thinking that perhaps I will have to get rid of this banner anyway, I decided to make my own. You can scroll down to the End of this page to see it.
I continued to play for a few hours making useless creations. Someone said that art is supposed to be useless so I don’t feel too bad about it. Looking at different text generators I found one that I thought would be interesting: Confucius Says Generator. I thought this tool shows Confucius quotes randomly, but it is just a caricature of Confucius with a text on top which can be customized:

I thought the coolest think was to make a caricature from your actual picture. Don’t go to www.Zwinky.com. This website says that you can create a cartoon of yourself for free but when you click on “Let’s go”, it just closes the tab on your browser and who knows what else it does.
I was determined to make a cartoon of my picture so I continued to try different sites. I found a promising one: http://www.cartoonme.com/. I entered a fake email address (baba@hotmail.com) and uploaded a picture of Eintein and this is what I got:

I couldn’t find anything for free so I gave up.

By far, the best picture effect that I found was how to make a 360 degrees panoramic picture with a normal camera. You must take several overlapping pictures turning around less than 90 degrees every time until you turn all the way around.

Then you load all the pictures with a freeware (http://www.photo-freeware.net/autostitch.php) and wait a couple of minutes. The composite picture is saved in the same folder where the rest of the pictures were with the name pano.jpg

After you make the panorama picture, open it and zoom in to see the height of the pano-picture as wide as the height of your computer monitor and then begin sliding the button slider of your picture viewer to have the same feeling as if you ware turning slowly around and looking around yourself 360 degrees. Here is My Barrio: (Click the picture for better resolution)

For step by step instructions on how to make this panorama picture go to this internet site:
http://eventhorizons.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/make-your-own-360-degree-panoramic-picture

I’ve been thinking about how to use these tools in my classroom. I teach mathematics in a high school so I don’t see much use for Them in my classroom. I can see how teachers in elementary and middle school, and even teachers of other subjects, can use these tools. Art teachers could use all of them. Obviously, as a way to enhance the classroom website, these “image effect generators” and “Text generators” are very handy. But I cannot think of anything else for mathematics. Perhaps math teachers could use them when they are making a new PowerPoint presentation to animate some math explanations or to create some drawings related to the lesson at hand. I personally do this with MS Paint. I never do anything complicated enough to require a better image editor such as Adobe Photoshop.

A free program which claims to be “just like Photoshop but free” is GIMP. I haven’t used it but on a first look it doesn’t seem to be able to do “panoramic stitching”

In conclusion, free image, text, video and sound editors are a lot of fun and very handy to create attractive documents such as web pages, PowerPoint presentations, papers, custom books etc.

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Thing #8 of “23 Things”

Flickr Mashups

I was somewhat disappointed to find out that most of these Flickrbits can be used only with Flickr. In Thing #7 I chose not to open an account with Flickr since I was given a second option and because I already have my website with family pictures. Therefore, it took me a long time checking all theses kr-tools and find something interesting, useful and of general use. Also, I could not get over the lack of intuitiveness in these names. Names like Gickr, Chasr, FlickrSLiDR don’t say anything, they just don’t stick and nowadays is unnecessary to give names like those. It reminds me the days of DOS with black and white screens (or black and green) and names with maximum of 8 alphanumeric characters and one three-character extension. Almost all of these gadgets do things that you can do at home with pictures from your computer by using some freeware from the internet. In my opinion the flickrbits keep the users entertained with Flickr pictures and forget about the rest of the internet. Also, you will never use any of the picture editing flickrbits if you have Photoshop.I decided to look at Mashups since they are more independent than the kr tools. Of course, many Mashups in Flickr let you use only pictures from Flickr. The idea of a Mashup is to combine information and functionality from two or more sites or sources to create something new. For this reason Mashups by nature are site-independent. A useful and commonly used effect is “slideshow” of pictures. You can use this effect in your home computer as a screensaver or you can “embed” a slideshow html code into your blog site to show pictures to your visitors, one at a time, every few seconds. Most of the popular picture posting web sites let you choose this effect when you are creating your album, but blog sites require you to add it by yourself (update: There is a Gadget here at Blogger.com which allows you to add this effect to your blog without effort - Slideshow). I found a kr which does exactly this: http://www.gickr.com/First I selected family pictures, pictures of flowers etc and transformed them with Photoshop by using mainly one effect, the smudge tool! Truly, I had done this before to make tiny wall pictures for “The Sims”, a game that I used to play when I had time. If you look at these pictures long enough you will see a picture of my family (not smudged up!).

Make your own animation

The next thing I did is something that may be useful for anyone, especially for lifelong learners! You can use this at school with your kids or at home for yourself. I am sure there are similar slideshows out there that do the same thing: Show words with their definitions as a screen saver one at a time.

Make your own animation

To do this I selected the words that I wanted to learn. I used a collection of words from a pack of flashcards that I found in my daughter’s room. You could subscribe to http://www.dictionary.com/ and choose to get the word of the day or get the word of the day for the last 10 – 15 days etc. Then I used an old electronic dictionary that I still use today made by Microsoft (QuickShelf 2000) to find the definitions of the words. After I find the definition I press the key PrtScn present on all regular PC keyboards. PrtScn stands for Print Screen. Pressing this key on a PC is the same as copying the screen with the copy/paste commands of any program. I never remember the key combination for a Mac (it is not as intuitive as PrtScn)… but Dr. Wall told us the other day! I use both Macs and PCs, but I prefer my Vista Desktop Computer. I prefer this one for many reasons, some of the main ones are:
. My Vista desktop PC never crashes. I had this computer for 2 or 3 years and I don’t remember it crashing even once.
. I made it by myself (secret: it is very easy to make a PC) therefore I chose my own monitor (I bought a 32 inches LCD TV at Best Buy), amount of RAM memory, hard drive, motherboard, microprocesor etc.
. I have bought over a hundred programs and I keep buying the newer versions. These programs are always released for PC first and a few months later, if ever, for Macs. Many of my programs have compatibility problems when installed in a Mac.
. There is by far more software out there (free and not free) for PCs than for Macs.
. I like Tablets (Tablet PCs) but Macintosh doesn't make Tablet Macs (Update: They finally do!). I bought my first Tablet Laptop in 2004. Now I own a Slate (a Tablet PC with detachable keyboard)

After I copied the whole screen with PrtScn I opened Paint, a program that always comes with any PC because it is part of the Windows OS, and pasted it there with the regular key combination “Ctrl + V” or click on the “Edit” pull down menu item and then click on “Paste”. Then I selected the area of the screen that I wanted to crop with the “select” tool. Next I did “right click” on the selection and clicked on crop from the popup menu that appears when I “right clicked” on my selection. Finally I clicked "Save As..." from the File pull down menu item and I saved it as a .jpg file choosing JPEG as the “save as type” (click on the right arrow to see all the file types available). After I have saved 10-15 words that I wanted to remember, I created a screensaver slide show. There is no need to use a third party application to make a slide show of selected pictures in PCs (I don’t know in MACs). In vista: Right-Click on the desktop, select “Personalize”, then “Screen Saver” and “Photos” and change the “settings” as pleased. In Windows XP: “Right-Click” on the desktop + “Properties” + “Screen Saver” + “My Pictures Slideshow” + customize settings as pleased. In Windows 98 and older versions is similar to Windows XP. This will give you a “Vocabulary Flashcards Slideshow Screensaver” in your PC. To get it here I just used http://www.gickr.com/.
I liked some other tools, such as retrievr, mappr or colrpickr. Here is one more reason why I didn’t like Flickr – While playing with colrpickr, one picture got my attention. When I tried to see the picture I got this message:

I don’t like control either! Here is a partial snapshot of my screen at this moment (via PrtScn + Paste in Paint + crop + save as).

Can you guess what picture they wouldn’t let me see? (Note: The lady is not naked) I would continue to do things here but it is already Sunday and I have classes to prepare, HW to grade, grades to enter etc! Until the next thing! Ah! My feelings about personal pictures - I think they are clear from this blog! I normally keep family pictures to the family. I don’t post anything that I wouldn’t do or say in public, but for example, my daughters don't like some of the pictures I have posted of them; therefore I would avoid upsetting them by not showing those pictures to everyone who knows them, other than family.

Note: Please email me if you see grammatical and/or orthographical mistakes in these blogs (I know there must be many!). My email address is Ridelto@hotmail.com

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