Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media.^]Yahoo has reported that Flickr has a total of 51 million registered member and 80 million unique visitors. In August 2011, it reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images. For mobile users, Flickr has an official app for iPhone and for Windows Phone 7, but not for other mobile devices.

On Flickr, you can choose to make your photos either public or private (but more than 80 percent of the 5.5 million photos are public.) You can annotate your pictures, adding captions within the frame, or post comments below other users? photos. Most significantly, you can append "tags," adjectives that describe the photo?s category (such as "dog," "poodle," "cute"). Then all of the photos that share a particular tag can themselves be explored as a group, which online pundits call a "folksonomy."

The result is something that approaches a vast theater of collective performance art. Various groups on Flickr are devoted to photo collections of confusing street signs, mannequins and Halloween costumes. There's a group devoted to pictures of dogs, naturally, but there's also a group devoted to pictures of dogs' noses. One popular thread includes photos of circular objects framed within squares. Fake says that the best part of the service is finding like-minded shutterbugs and getting recognition for your art. "There's a real magic to getting reactions to the work you've done," she says. (11 March 2005).

Classtool.net

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System is an observational tool that provides a common lens and language focused on what matters—the classroom interactions that boost student learning.

Data from CLASS  observations are used to support teachers’ unique professional development needs, set school-wide goals, and shape system-wide reform at the local, state, and national levels.

Based on research from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and studied in thousands of classrooms nationwide, the CLASS tool:

• ·        focuses on effective teaching
• ·        helps teachers recognize and understand the power of their interactions with students
• ·        aligns with professional development tools
• ·        works across age levels and subjects

Each template can be saved as a stand-alone HTML file or as a Widget that can be embedded into a blog or wiki - as long as it is non-commercial. Please note, however, that downloaded HTML files still need to communicate with the ClassTools server and therefore require a computer to have an internet connection.

Animoto

Animoto is a web application that produces videos from user-selected photos, video clips and music. Animoto automatically analyzes music, photos and video clips, and orchestrates a custom video. Leaving you and your students free to focus on the content and narrative of their videos. Animoto is a web tool that allows users to easily incorporate images, text, and music into web based videos.

Strengths

•     Animoto is intuitive and easy to use. It is easier and faster than creating a PowerPoint and yields much more visually satisfying products.

•     Great selection of images and music on the site or you can upload your own images

•     After you choose your images, text and music the site then adds effects to create a very interesting dynamic presentation. It really looks professionally done.

•     Can upgrade videos to DVD-quality

•     You can add text (title slides) to the presentation

•     If you do not like the video, hit the remix button and animoto will not only redo the video but it will save the original version

•     You recieve an email notification informing you when your video is finished

•     No limit on how many videos you can create

•     For a small price of $3.00/video you can make a full length video and for a $30.00 annual feel you can make as many videos as you want.

•     For a very reasonable price, you can create videos on Animoto and have them put on a DVD and shipped to your school/residence.

•     With the limited text capabilities, you will be able to practice how to make your idea clear and concise.

•     Animoto could be used as the alternative narrative method literally without using lots of language in your literacy classroom.

•     You can easily upload your video to any networking sites with one click!

•     You can watch all of your videos from your primary Animoto.com account on your iPhone.

•     With an All Access Pass you can now create full-length videos, directly from your iPhone.

•     Videos can be embedded easily into other sites.

•     Overall design, graphics, ease of use, etc. are attractive to a wide range of age levels.

Weaknesses

•     The 30 second limit for free videos does limit the amount of information you can present.

•     You do have to create a user account to create videos.

•     Must be 13 years old to create membership in Education edition.

•     Limited text capabilities (text cannot be added to pictures)

•     You can only select one song; site offers limited selection of songs to choose from or you may upload a song you purchased online.

•     Could be difficult to use in the classroom with younger students (C.Caves)

•     Not compatible with BMP images

Opportunities

•     You can easily share your videos through many social networking sites like Facebook or embed it using HTML or share it as a web link.

•     Animoto for Education edition allows you to set up accounts for students. Other people cannot access your students’ videos or contact students through the site.

•     Can upload directly from the animoto.com site to youtube.com

•     Students can be as creative as they wish with Animoto and personalize their photos with music.

Threats

•     If students are using the free edition (rather than the Education edition) it sounds like there may be the potential for them to view other videos that could potentially be inappropriate.

Ideas for the classroom

•     Create a 30 second commercial or public service announcement about…

•     Summarize the main idea of this passage in images and words in 30 seconds or less

•     Create video flashcards for vocabulary keywords

•     Great for brainstorming and storyboarding

•     Create a simulated field trip

•     Great way to market your program to your school and local community

•     Present wonderful end of the year videos

•     Have students create a 30 second video about themselves at the beginning of the year so that everyone can get to know each other.

•     Great way to introduce a new learning concept to students.

•     Great way to evoke student interest. I am using it for Antigone.

•     Have students create a short photo brochure of a country you are studying.

•     Allow students to showcase their pictures taken on a particular topic as part of a larger project. (C.Caves)

•     Have students create 30 second news briefs about historical news events, natural disasters, or any event that ties into curriculum

•     Have students collect pictures around a certain topic, create Animoto, swap Animotos, then use for brainstorming a creative writing piece.

•     Students can create short videos showing the steps they took in completing a Science Project. This would highlight the Scientific Process and they can share their work 

Meebo me

Meebo Me is is a social platform connecting users with their friends across the web. It began in 2005 as a browser based instant messaging program which supported multiple IM services, including Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, ICQ, MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, CafeMom and others.

Meebo me is a widget that can be installed on any web page. A widget is aimply a piece of code that you can insert into your web page to display content. Meebo Me helps libraries offer patrons help where and when they need it, for example, on the Ask a Librarian web page or anytime a catalog or website research produces zero results. This allows people to IM you without being logged in or even registered with an IM services. Under the Meebo preference options, you have an option to create and customize a widget.

Duke University Medical Center Library began using Meebo in January 2007. The initial project was a soft rollout with no marketing while the librarians integrated Meebo into the daily reference workflow. A Meebo Me widget was embedded in the library's Ask a Librarian web page, Clinical Tools page, and Facebook page and on each public computer in the library using the Active Desktop feature. Usage has steadily increased. For a more complete list of libraries using Meebo, see the Library Success wiki at http://www.libsuccess.org. Forty-five libraries have listed Meebo or Meebo Me as a method for conducting IM reference

Features of Meebo

• Customize the Meebo background and text color.
• Display emoticons, or smiley faces, in your messages.
• Play a sound to alert you when you send or receive an instant message. This can be useful as you will probably want to leave the Meebo window open and start a new window or tab to continue using the Internet.
• Save your conversations. To view the chat log later, right-click on the buddy's name and select View Chat Log. One drawback is that chat logs can only be viewed by individual buddy name, not in one long chronological list, making them difficult to use for monitoring reference transactions or for training purposes.
• Select a custom buddy icon by clicking on the Meebo logo that appears next to your welcome message in the top left-hand corner.
• Block users who are not on your buddy list (not recommended if you are using this for virtual reference).
• Sign-in with an invisible status so others cannot see that you are online.
• Download a Firefox browser add-on that allows you to have visual notification when your buddies log-in or out or IM you. Another option is to have your buddy list embedded in your browser window. This offers you an easy way to share links and images by dragging and dropping them on a buddy name.

Although Meebo has only been around a few years (September 2005), it has quickly grown in popularity. In fact, Meebo reported that “in March 2008 more than 30 million people used Meebo to the tune of 5 billion messages”. While other IM service providers offer web-based IM, not many offer the same services and features as Meebo, including their aggregator function. True to their open source background, Meebo encourages users to submit applications built on their provided API, report bugs, and give suggestions. Ultimately, Meebo offers a lot of great services at a great price…free!

Forums

Forums are useful for many-to-many communications and discussions. Many discussions can be conducted at the same time, and the information can flow equally in both directions from the original posters and the readers, who themselves become posters when they reply to the original post.

An online forum is a web based community of users where they can gather to discuss any topic that you can think of. Forums grow as the community of users grow and add content to the forum. An Internet forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a "thread". It can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as wish to. Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.

The forums are friendly, interactive discussion areas of our site where members can ask for and share their opinions, advice and experiences. It is a friendly discussion area on websites. Members can post questions and read and respond to posts by other members. The information provided on forums is contributed by people just like you. You can get a lot of great cruise advice in our forums. You should keep in mind that any information and advice offered by other members should be taken with a dose of common sense and treated as a starting point for your cruise research.

Forums are very useful as educational tool because one of its goals is to provide a place where educators can discuss how they are using models in the classroom as well as share their own experiences, trade advice, and ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, share their own material. For the international projects, it is sometimes used. I must say that they have very positive results. They have used forums in a level teaching (English) for some years. They have found out that forums work least well as discussion of issues and topics because not all students will use them or risk themselves so they have not made such on-line discussions integral to the teaching and learning; in which they function as an additional.

I am new to the idea of using forums for this purpose but my first foray into this area with a school in Taiwan was very rewarding and I learnt from it. The forums are very useful for the sharing of materials; posting of materials by myself; homework setting and sending to me; research sharing and posting queries for classmates and myself to assist with. Our forum has become a much more lively and effective source of e-learning for students. I think it takes time for a student forum to gain momentum - but if the right spirit of sharing and cooperation can be fostered, then it can work really well. Our forum boards are moderated by teachers and students but in reality, a well-established forum "polices" itself.

In conclusion, forum is a cheap and cheerful way of using team blog. This means that the person creating the blog has administrative privileges, and invites the pupils/students to the blog as contributors. If you're a member, you can post, but anyone can access the blog and read it. Sometimes blog contributions are part of students' portfolios; sometimes they're places where students post send-in tasks; and sometimes they're forums for interaction on a more general level between students (often in different countries).

LibriVox

LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher.The LibriVox objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".

In December 2010, it had a catalogue of over 4,500 unabridged books and shorter works available to download and produced on average 90 audiobooks per month.Around ninety percent of the collection is in English, although LibriVox recordings are available in 33 languages altogether.

The initial response to this question was positive enough that the first LibriVox recording was made available in MP3 format within a month of the blog going live. It was a recording of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, with chapters recorded by McGuire and eleven volunteers who had been attracted by the blog.

The main features of the way LibriVox works have changed little since its inception, although the technology that supports it has been improved by the efforts of those of its volunteers with web-development skills.

LibriVox is considered to be an educational tool because of its contibution to the public who cannot afford to buy books. The digital library made possible for the readers to access easily to books in different genres. It is more useful because it is in audio form. It is also helpful because it is free. All the readers to do is to have a computer and an internet connection. Truly a great help for strrugling students and teachers.

Classblogmeister

CLASSBLOGMEISTER: As One of the Relevant Educational Webtool

          One of the greatest gifts that God has given us human beings are the ability of learning, thinking and performing in an excellent way. These bequests were just few to all things He has done and continually doing in everybody’s life. Thus, high technology nowadays is one of the evidence of his great sustenance in us. This has made us live life in an easy and comfortable manner.

          As a student and a future teacher, Classblogmeister is one of the educational tools here in the realm of technology that captivated me. The tool that is being used these days can be called “blogging”. This gizmo enables an individual to easily circulate information regarding to its interest, it may be a breakthrough, insights and others.

          Classblogmeister is an engine tool that was highly developed for classroom usage. A lot of practitioners like teachers around the globe have explored and realized that this webtool can enhance great chance in getting high learning to students aside from the old school scenario. The learning would also be extended on air, in the chosen free time of the student.

          For the teachers’ welfare, the educational webtool can also accommodate large class size. It helps teacher to be organized in the files, assignments and other requirements of the students. In short, it aids the common problems of the teacher: lost data.

          Students were also given advantages. This site could really hand students’ obligations in no time. Competence in technology will be also a product of this comprehensive webtool.

          Further, it can give opportunity for open communication between students to teacher and teachers to students.