Mining for Web 2.0 Technologies, #2 (polleverywhere.com)

Poll Everywhere is a feature packed web based response system. Not only is there a free web based version, but you can respond using standard SMS or Twitter. The results are displayed live in your browser or within Powerpoint.

Below are two live polls you can access to see exactly how Poll Everywhere works. One is a multiple choice example and the other is a free text polling example. You can vote by either of the three options shown.

 

Mining for Web 2.0 Technologies, #1

The purpose of the weekly Mining for Web 2.0 Technologies postings is to share favorite Web 2.0 technologies. Each week I will make a brief posting of one of my favorites hoping that you will respond with yours.

There are several Web 2.0 definitions being used, however for these postings it is simple:

Web 2.0 technologies are those that use the web to promote and provide collaborative opportunities.

Web 2.0 Mining #1 is TinyChat. TinyChat provides a means of creating a free and immediately available chat room. As you create your chat room you have several options available as shown in the image below.

TinyChat Controls

Once created, the chat room will look similar to the one I created below.

Newly created chat room

You can start your broadcast at anytime. There is an option to personally invite attendees. As shown below you can decide whether you broadcast using your webcam, audio only, share your desktop, and even record the session.

The TinyChat web site sums it up this way:

“Tinychat delivers dead simple video conferences without the extraneous ad-ons and inconvenience, making video conferencing an accessible, uncomplicated experience. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux; with Firefox, IE, Safari, and Chrome; and there is a version available for iPhones. You can have up to twelve people in a room with HQ video (200 via chat only), protected by passwords and moderators, share your desktop with them, and your conferences can be recorded and embedded on your website. But the best news is this — we can provide all of these awesome features in a package that is attractive, streamlined, and easy to understand. Tinychat is the ultimate meeting solution for those who want to meet without stress and hassle.”

 

How Do I Find Twitter Value, not Tweet Exhaustion?

Twitter is currently ‘the’ social, Web 2.0 craze (1382% yearly growth). Certainly not every social craze is worth investigating, but Twitter seems to be one that provides considerable value or worth to its many users.

Although a Twitter user since October 2007, it has just been the last year that I discovered Twitter Value. Here are five things that I feel have contributed to this value discovery:

• Finding the right Twitter client
• Following and being followed
• Watching a Tweet Cloud
• Watching a filtered Tweet stream
• Trying it, trying it, trying it ……

Finding a Twitter client

The Twitter browser interface is not the best way to experience Twitter or to find Twitter Value. Once you begin following your tweep, the tweet flood starts and will appear to never end causing Tweet Exhaustion. One way to manage this is to parse your tweets into a manageable grouping. The best way to accomplish this functionality is to use a Twitter client like TweetDeck which runs on a Mac or PC or Nambu which is Mac only and also has an iPhone client or Seesmic Desktop which runs on a Mac or PC. Each one of these clients provides a way to display filtered tweets in a columnar fashion making it much easier to view the tweets.

TweekDeck, Seesmic Desktop, and Nambu each provide the following functionality:

• a user defined filter by hash tags (#) or keywords which becomes a real-time filtered tweet-stream column until the user elects to remove
• the ability to create groups
• a column for all @replies or mentions
• a column for direct messages

All but TweetDeck allow for multiple accounts. All but Seesmic have a Tweet Cloud.

Following and being followed

Followers (your Tweeps) are a critical part of the Twitter environment. Not only do you share with them, they all share with you. With engaged followers one has the ability to crowd-source asking for ideas, seeking help, etc.. The more followers you have that are engaged with your tweets, the more valuable crowd-sourcing becomes.

The best way to grow your followers is to follow people that have similar interests as you. Generally this will work because most people will return a follow with a follow. You can find people of similar interests by using search tools such as these:

http://www.twellow.com/

http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter

Another way to find the right tweeps is to search on a term of interest such as “academic technology” and then investigate some of the people that show up in this filtered Twitter stream by going to their Twitter homepage and looking at their current tweets. Follow the ones that look the most promising, hopefully they will follow you back.

Additionally value can be found is by following special users, these are users that do not normally share your personal interests, but they share information you are interested in. For example here is a list of Twitter accounts I follow:

• @BreakingNews (Breaking News)
• @TWCi  (Weather Channel)
• @foxnews (Fox News)
• @wsj

Here are a list of newspapers that use Twitter:

http://graphicdesignr.net/blog/2008/10/09/september-newspapers-that-use-twitter/

Here is a list of health or medical uses of Twitter:

http://medicalstudentblog.co.uk/twitter-top-100-health-and-medicine/

Here is a list of universities on Twitter:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Universities

Here is a list of government agencies on Twitter:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/USGovernment

Here is a list of Police and Fire services on Twitter:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/PoliceAndFire

Watching a Tweet Cloud

With TweetDeck and Nambu a word cloud made up of Twitter words is available. This is a great way to keep up with what is happening news wise or what is being shared via Twitter in real-time. The actual Tweet can be viewed just by clicking on a word in the Tweet Cloud. Tweet You can also watch a current Tweet Cloud at http://www.twitscoop.com.

Watching a filtered Tweet stream

Creating a Tweet stream of a filtered term or terms that you are interested in will provide a focused column of tweets. All the Twitter clients previously mentioned have this functionality. This will also expose potential Tweeps of interest that can also be followed.

Trying it, trying it, trying it ……

The final thing that can be done to find Twitter Value is being a persistent user even when value has not been realized. It will take a while to realize ways that Twitter can bring value in your particular case and it will take time to gain enough followers to be useful to you. The only way to accomplish this is being active on Twitter. Give it a try!

 

Planning an Innovator’s Room and a Teaching & Learning Center

I am currently designing two new and very specialized rooms for our university. One of those rooms is called the Teaching & Learning Center (T&LC) which is for faculty use only. An instructional technologist oversees the T&LC and works with faculty to incorporate new and appropriate technologies into their pedagogies. Faculty can come to the T&LC where they will be exposed to the latest technologies and they can find help in creating content.

The T&LC has several workstations for faculty in addition to two sound-proof recording rooms equipped for creating video and/or audio podcasts or to do audio/video editing. There is also an area for reading and studying along with several LCD panels that will have continual podcasts or tutorials running. One LCD panel will be dedicated to a Twitter feed filtered for educational technology tweets.

The other room in called an Innovator’s Room and will be used by faculty to innovate their pedagogy. This will be done by allowing faculty to reserve the Innovator’s Room for a semester which means the Innovator’s Room is in their control for that class period all semester. Once the semester is over the faculty member will share with other faculty what worked well and what did not.

The Innovator’s Room will be equipped with modular furniture, including the podium that has all the control sytems embedded, and it can be configured however the faculty member prefers. Three of the four walls will have ceiling to floor whiteboards with eBeam units being using to turn different parts of the whiteboard into smart-boards thereby allowing electronic capture. There will be  four ceiling projectors that will be used in several ways along with two-way video and wireless mic options.

If you have any suggestions on improving these rooms, please leave me a comment. Thanks.

 

Evernote, one cool geeky tool with many uses and its free.

Evernote is one of those applications that when discovered, you get all geeky excited. Evernote is a capture and document archival system that works with your mobile phone (iPhone version), your desktop and your browser (you get a free web account that syncs with all the other devices) and there are both a Windows version and Mac OS X version. 

Evernote is organized in a way to allow one to store captured or archival information into a series of notebooks. Captures can be sent directly to an Evernote notebook (folder like), documents can be printed to Evernote in PDF format, or new notes/documents can be created from scratch within Evernote. You can store images, documents, web pages and page captures easily in Evernote and find them by searching for them at any time.

One of the coolest things I discovered about Evernote was its ability to capture using the iPhone camera. Often when I am in meetings and much of the discussion is on the whiteboard, I take out my iPhone and use Evernote to capture the writing on the board. Not only have I captured writing, but it becomes searchable in Evernote! Evernote has a phenomenal OCR engine. Look at the example below. The first image is an iPhone Evernote capture of writing on a whiteboard. Following that image is an image using the same file capture  in which I did a search for the word “pipeline”. Notice it found it. Amazing OCR capabilities!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evernote is a most handy tool and one side benefit is it automatically syncs with all Evernote devices.

 

Live Documents, Office for the Internet Generation

There is a new online office suite in town, Live Documents. What seems to set Live Documents apart from other online office-like applications is that you can use it online or offline depending on your need at the time. According to the web site:

“Our delivery model is unique – a new way that merges the richness and responsiveness of desktop software with the collaborative capabilities of web-based service to create a user experience that is congruent on both the browser and desktop.”

Live Documents “gives the choice of using either the desktop or the browser as your platform of choice and what’s more, switch seamlessly between the two at any point of time without having to sacrifice the benefits of one model for the advantages of the other.

You can create, view, edit and share documents on your desktop or your browser and your documents are automatically synchornized across both platforms without requiring any manual overheads. And if you happen to offline at any point of time, you can still open and edit your documents on your desktop – all the changes that you make are automatically cached and pushed to the server the next time you go online.”

To use Live Documents all is needed is a free account. Currently only the Presentation product is available. Give it a try and let us know what you think about it.

 

The Pulse smartpen by Livescribe, a fantastic handwriting capture tool.

The Pulse  is truly a revolutionary handwriting capture tool. Not only does the Pulse capture what you write, it also links audio to it! How cool is that? This means you can take notes in class and at the same time capture the lecture. You can then replay any part of the lecture by just tapping the area of interest in your notes.

A nice video demo can be found here as well as the specs on this sleek tool.

A few minor drawbacks:

• the battery is not replaceable
• the Pulse uses Livescribe’s specially printed paper (however it is possible to print your own paper)
• ink cartridges must come from Livescribe

 

Keurig B30, single cup coffee brewer – yes it does make good coffee!

This post is more gadget than anything else, but I am testing the Keurig B30 Mini Personal Brewer. I am a coffee lover who takes each cup seriously. I really cannot enjoy or drink  red-can or blue-can coffee, I like a good brew made from arabica beans. I was somewhat doubtful that this brewer would make good coffee using its patented k-cup technology, but I must say I am pleasantly surprised. This single cup brewer is great and can make very good coffee, tea or hot chocolate. It now has a place in  my office.

K-cups can be found at several places:

• CoffeeWhiz
• GreenMountain
• CoolBeansPods
• CoffeeforLess
• Amazon
• Target
• BestBuy

 

 

SimplyBox, a simple way to share snippets of web pages you have captured.

SimplyBox is an online tool that allows you to collect and organize parts of web pages (called items) that you find important and want to share with others. Each collection of items becomes a box and each box can contain items on any subject/category you want. 

SimplyBox also works well with other social tools such as: Facebook, Google, YouTube, Blogs, etc. 

SimplyBox does not work with Safari yet, but plans are that it will soon. Once you begin using SimplyBox it installs a toolbar as seen below:

 

 

According to the SimplyBox Blog:

“SimplyBox can play different roles in education. For some it is a fantastic research tool. For others it enhances virtual learning/tutoring. Students like it for writing papers. But what many educators are telling us is that the biggest value our solution offers is the improvement in the learning collaboration between teacher and student.”

 

How to save those YouTube videos for later use.

How many times have you found a video on YouTube and wished you could save it to your laptop (Mac or Windows) to show at a later time? If you are like me, there have been times in which I wanted to do just that so I could show the video in my classes. 

Well there are at least two (2) tools that allow this. The one with the most features is TubeSock. With this tool you can download videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, and other sites saving them to your video iPod, Mac, PC, or PlayStation Portable. The cost is $15.

Another tool is KeepVID, which is free, but lacks a lot of the functionality of TubeSock.

 

Drop.io the easy way to create shareable classroom file drops

Drop.io is a simple way to share/publish files for your students. I have used drop.io with my graduate students when I needed to share documents and some of the students had trouble getting them via their email accounts and it has always been a reliable tool, not mention “free”.

Drop.io has the following features (taken from the website):

• Drop.io is an easy to use, online file sharing service that provides users with a simple and private way to share images, video, audio, documents and other digital content through unique, user-created and controlled sharing points called ‘drops.’
• In just two clicks, users are able to seamlessly create personal sharing points, upload content via web, e-mail, MMS, Facebook, Firefox extension, phone and fax inputs and share it with friends, family and colleagues through drop.io’s various web, e-mail, MMS, twitter, iTunes and fax outputs.
• Each ‘drop’ is non-searchable, non-networked, does not require any type of account registration and can be password-protected and set to expire after a period of time.
• Drop.io is used by a wide range of users seeking a convenient and secure method for sharing all types of digital content, ranging from mothers sharing baby photos to large companies using ‘drops’ as collaborative workspaces.

 

You can try out drop.io here: http://drop.io/.

 

Teaching with Twitter

http://campustechnology.com/printarticle.aspx?id=69555

The above link is a good interview of David Parry, assistant professor of emerging media at the University of Texas at Dallas. In the interview, Professor Parry talks about “Teaching Twitter”.

 

Best Online Collaboration Tools 2008 – The Collaborative Map

Check out this collaborative tool map showing the best tools of 2008:

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/12213323

 

OpenDNS, a great free way to keep kids safe online.

OpenDNS is an industrial strength DNS provider that adds many well thought out and really cool features, one of which is Internet safety.

The following features are from the OpenDNS web site:

• Web Content Filtering
  Filter undesirable content on your network, from sites that are unsafe to sites that are inappropriate for a learning environment like your school. It’s as easy as checking a box and your filtering settings take effect in minutes. Choose from more than 50 filtering categories.
• Proxy and Anonymizer Blocking
  Proxies and anonymizers — the tools commonly used by students to bypass filters — are no match for OpenDNS. Simply check a box to block them and gain peace-of-mind knowing your filtering is airtight.
• Phishing Protection
  Schools like yours can’t take their chances when it comes to phishing. Keep students and faculty safe from phishing sites with our industry-leading anti-phishing service. Over a quarter million phishing sites blocked to date.
• Faster Internet
  Our global routing technology makes your DNS requests route automatically to the OpenDNS server closest to you, making Web sites load noticeably faster.
• CIPA Compliance
  The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) ensures schools like yours block access to unsafe content. Easily achieve CIPA compliance required for federal funding with OpenDNS.
• Zero-Downtime Network
  A more reliable network for you means no more intermittent outages and fewer support requests. For teachers and faculty it means no loss of valuable class time caused by network downtime. Schools that can’t afford downtime use OpenDNS.
• OpenDNS Guide
  Search results get students and staff back on track when they mistype a URL or try to visit a site that’s down. Our smart “did you mean?” spelling suggestions help point them in the right direction, instead of showing them a hard-to-understand error page.
• Customization
  Your school’s logo and your custom message on the OpenDNS Guide and block pages help communicate your school’s Internet policy to students. They/ll understand OpenDNS is a school-approved service put in place to make their Internet experience safer.
• Statistics
  Detailed statistics will empower you to see which Web sites are problematic for your network and easily spot trends before they become problems. OpenDNS gives you the tools to do this, coupled with the tools to take action.
• World-Class Support
  Get top-notch support from The DNS Experts. Our escalation protocols ensure you get the support you need, when you need it.

 

OpenDNS is suitable for K12 institutions, Higher Ed institutions, homes, small business, churches, etc., in other words in any situation where there is an Internet connection involved. If you do not elect to use it, you are missing out on a great reliable tool.

Here is how you can use it.

 

Google Docs Offline

You can now access your Google Docs offline while at the same time keeping the offline version and the online version in sync. 

 

https://docs.google.com/offlinehelp?hl=en_US

 

 

 

Insight into the iKnow Initiative

 

The Freed-Hardeman University iKnow Initiative

 

The iKnow Initiative is a new and exciting change happening at Freed-Hardeman University (FHU). Already gaining national attention, iKnow is an initiative aimed at improving the overall student educational experience using mobile technologies. These technologies consist of Apple MacBooks and either an Apple iPhone or Apple iPod Touch.

Starting in the Fall of 2008, all incoming freshmen and freshman faculty at Freed-Hardeman will be provided the MacBook and their choice of an iPhone or iPod Touch. The purpose of integrating these mobile technologies with the overall educational experience is to enhance instruction, to engage the students more effectively, to prevent the learning process from being a passive-only activity, and to improve learning outcomes, thereby effectively helping our students become life-long learners.

It is important to recognize that the purpose of iKnow is not to place mobile technologies into all student and faculty hands because it is simply available; rather, it is to integrate the mobile devices into the pedagogical and social experiences that students participate in while pursuing their college degree thereby helping achieve the University’s goals..

Certainly classroom usage of the mobile devices can allow for misuse; but, compared to the overall benefits of having the mobile technologies available, the iKnow Initiative benefits outweigh potential misuse. 

The first area of benefits is the iKnow Suite of Applications developed by the iKnow Development Team at Freed-Hardeman. These applications consist of functions as simple as taking class roll to giving online quizzes. 

Below is a brief overview of the iKnow Suite. To Access the iKnow Suite go to http://m.fhu.edu.

Selecting the iKnow link, carries one to the login page where, once authenticated, the student or faculty member will access the iKnow portal. Students and faculty have access to various types of functions and applications. 

A second benefit of iKnow is that the mobile technologies serve as communication tools. The iPhone and iPod touch enhance communication between faculty,  students, and Freed-Hardeman at large:

• Faculty members are able to extend the classroom beyond the physical limitations of traditional rooms by using the iKnow applications. 
• A campus-wide emergency alert system called LionAlert is now available to all students. 
• The Pipeline is an iKnow application that serves as a campus information feed similar to an RSS feed. Content providers can post to the information feed and students can elect to subscribe to any feeds they want. Currently, more than twenty-five (25) feeds are available with the capability to add more. These feeds are Twitter-like in that you can post only 140 characters. Pipeline is intended to be a conduit of burst-able information.

A third benefit of iKnow is the preparation of the student for working in a technology-filled work place. It makes sense to integrate the technology students are using and interested in while using it to enhance the educational experience while at the same time preparing them to be efficient in these pervasive technologies.

 

 

 

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner by Bombich Software is a great Mac solution for cloning (bit to bit copy) your MacBook. Besides being FREE, this product is very powerful and fast. I did a complete clone backup of my Macbook Pro in just over an hour. It has a built-in scheduler for clone or incremental clone backups.

Another valuable feature of CCC is that you can mount the drive and pull files off of it as needed or since it is a bit to bit clone copy you can boot from it. That can be really handy in a crisis.

 

Pedagogical Tweeting

Twitter was originally released for public use in August 2006 as a way for a few friends to keep up with what each was doing. It very rapidly caught the Web 2.0 wave and became a favorite micro-blogging tool for many Internet users. 

 

Most early tweets were generated mainly by those fondly called “early adopters”, present company included. I began seeing the power of Twitter in October 2007 while sitting in a Starbucks in Seattle and created my account, m_scott. Although none of my friends were tweeting at the time, I set out trying to recruit them. It took several weeks before the first friend became interested enough to join and that is when d_w_scott finally agreed to test Twitter with me. By the Spring of 2008, I had also incorporated it into some of my classes at Freed-Hardeman University. So for those that consider Twitter a waste of time, especially pedagogically, here are examples that will hopefully provide insight into a simple, cool, social, engaging, participatory, Web 2.0 tool.

 

In class I required my students to sign-up for a free Twitter account. The expectations for the class were that each student would tweet at least one current technology news article weekly. No students had used Twitter previously, so the experience was completely new. The student response was mainly positive with many students posting more frequently than required. Several students began using Twitter as a means of communications, sharing class discussions, new technology resources, etc. Overall it allowed the students a chance to learn and experience a new Web 2.0 technology while also allowing more participation which enhanced the students classroom experiences.

 

Here are some links to others using Twitter in a pedagogical setting:

http://web20teach.blogspot.com/2007/08/twitter-tweets-for-higher-education.html

http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-professors-tips-for-using-twitter-in-the-classroom

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2825/more-on-academic-twittering-breaking-down-the-classroom-walls

http://searchenginewatch.com/3630980

http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/187

http://www.mobile-learning.blog-city.com/using_twitter_in_education__what_the_mlearn_audience_though.htm

http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/2008/06/10/academic-uses-for-twitter/

 

One can use Twitter via the browser or there are many Twitter clients available. My favorite client is TweetDeck as seen below. One really neat thing about TweetDeck is the ability to view a word cloud (tag cloud) of world tweets and immediately know what is happening world-wide that might be news-worthy. Notice the word cloud below, DOW shows up prominently. Well it just so happens there is much tweeting going on about the Dow today, it dropped nearly 500 points, falling to an eleven year low. 

 

Feel free to follow my tweets here.

If private tweets interest you more, you should check out Yammer which will limit Tweets to your University or corporation.

 

VirtualBox, an easy way to run Windows on a Mac.

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

This FREE virtual machine runs Vista, XP, and Linux flavors like a champ in Mac OS X Leopard!

Here are some screenshots.

 

Tired of the iPhone Automatic Backup Every Time You Sync?

Tired of the iPhone Automatic Backup Every Time You Sync with iTunes? You can disable this feature. See below.

From terminal in Mac OS X Leopard enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

 

Project Management for the Mac

If you need an industrial project management tool comparable to Microsoft Project, Merlin by ProjectWizards may be a good choice.

 

Looking for pedagogical uses of the iPhone and iPod Touch

If you have incorporated the iPhone or iPod Touch into your pedagogy, please share your experience here.

 

Useful & Free iPhone apps

Although having only been using the iPhone 3G since July 2008, it has proven to become a tool I heavily rely on. Email, Calendaring, SMS, web access via Safari, etc. are great applications I use daily, but there are also several excellent applications in the iTunes App Store. Below are several I have found to be helpful, free, and worth the installation.

Mobile News – Free

FaceBook – Free

Clock – Free

Evernote – Free

Sportacular – Free

AOL Radio – Free

RDP Lite – Free

VNC – Free

SpeedTest – Free

Ping Lite – Free

Fring – Free

Holy Bible – Free

iTalk – Free

Google Earth – Free

 

Campus Technology 08 – Day 2, part 1

The first session I attended today was good and it was titled “Supporting Next-Gen Academic Development in a Web 2.0 World”. The presenters were Dr. Robert Bruce , Associate Dean, DIIA, and Dr. Susanna Wong Herndon, Associate Director, DIAA, from the University of Texas. DIIA is the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment. Of interest is the inclusion of “Assessment”. The purpose of DIIA is help faculty discover Web 2.0 tools and to identify strategies in pedagogical implementation. The presenters also mentioned how important it is to have an instructional and teaching unit for the faculty.

According to the presenters, Next-Gen learners have the following qualities:

• mobile
• digital
• connected
• experimental
• immediate
• social
• desire to be engaged in the teaching & learning process
• desire to be part of a vibrant community
• desire to learn, collaborate, innovate, and be challenged

Web 2.0 technologies have the capabilities to attract Next-Gen learners. Examples of such are:

• social applications
• mobile pedagogies
• educational games
• geospatial technologies
• immersive, enriched media

 

Sterling College: Social Learning and Digital Communities

Social Learning and Digital Communities: Sterling College .