Is our educational system killing the creativity in our students?
Friday, January 29, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
BP9_2010013_Web2.0Tool3(Fuze Meeting)
While looking into ways to save money for my company I came across fuzemeeting.com and was excited about its possibilities. Fuze brings together the ease of a browser based platform with the tools to include almost any type of file source together in a collaboration setting that could be used for meetings, presentations, and trainings. My father and I are starting to brainstorm more entrepreneurial ideas associated with adult education and trainings and fuzemeeting.com might be a way for us to reach customers about our products more effectively.
Some of the benefits Fuze brings is that it does not require a download in order to run on someone's computer or phone. It can broadcast in HD and they have patented an almost perfectly synchronous presentation platform so there is no delay from what you say and present to what they hear and see. Another advantage is that you can set up a meeting in advance and load your PowerPoints, Excel spreadsheets, YouTube videos, and virtually any other type of media. However, if you need to change things on the fly or add something while you are presenting you can do that as well with a couple clicks on the dashboard. You can also share your screen with everyone else so that they can see what you see at the same time. The following video I found on their site will give you a better idea of how a company uses this tool.
Some of the drawbacks that I can potentially see is that it does cost around $280 a year but that does include unlimited meetings. Each meeting is limited to 25 participants and the site is a little unclear on just what they define as "fetch minutes" (each meeting you can fetch people in real time to bring them into the meeting but they do not specify if that includes the initial fetching before the meeting starts) and they don't tell you that you can cancel your free membership before they start charging you a fee. If I could use it for free for the 30 days like they claim and then cancel I would be very interested in using this product. Let me know if you or someone you know has used Fuze or another site like it and your comments would be appreciated.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
BP8_2010012_One Minute Message #1
Mitto.com is a great way to keep your usernames and passwords protected and all in one place.
BP6_2010012_Link to Comment on Another's Blog
BP5_2010012_Web2.0Tool2(Voice Thread)
If you are a person who loves to look at pictures whether they are old, new, yours, someone else's, and are always wondering what the story was behind them then this site is for you. Voicethread.com allows you to upload a picture and then comment on it. Now you are probably asking yourself, "self...how is this different than all the other sites that allow you to comment on a picture?" Well let me show you.
Click Here.
Now you can use video, audio, and text to leave comments to enrich the experience. My initial thought was for a history class viewing photos of the Vietnam War taken by a veteran. He/she could explain where they were, or how they were feeling to give the students a sense of realism. There is something very powerful about someone telling a story with pictures and in their own words that are auditory to the audience. Another application could be for an art class as students comment on what they see when looking at Michaelangelo's La Pieta or Van Gogh's The Starry Night. English classes could use this as a way to tell a digital story perhaps by having each student add four lines of text.
The nice thing about voicethread.com is that if you use it for educational purposes the site has included several security features that will allow correct collaboration for your classroom. For instance, the students can not invite anyone who is outside of the educational thread set up by the instructor. You don't have to worry about them pasting it on Facebook and then finding 100 comments left by bored teenagers on a random Saturday night. Another positive is that the information stays beyond the school year. So the kids can continue to add, view, and work together long after the class is over.
On a personal usage level, I also thought it would be really cool to get the old photos from my grandparents and have them narrate as kind of a living history of my family. So that my children, grandchildren and their children would have a chance to not only see their relatives but be able to connect with them on a more personal level.
Check it out, mess around with it, comment on mine if you would like, but let me know your experiences with it because I am really excited about this site.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
BP4_2010011_RSS Feeds
Since I started a new job and am beginning the process of starting my own company I looked into Web 2.0 sites that had RSS Feeds involved with different aspects of business.
Chargify.com
This blog keeps me informed on the advances in billing and the site allows you to setup credit card transactions for your business. The first 50 customers you set up are completely free and it is encrypted and secure. This would allow me to charge people for my services easily and effectively.
Kublax.com
This blog is great because it contains information from the United States and Great Britain and the site has a great budgeting tool that uses your bank information to set up charts, graphs and spreadsheets. It would allow me to see where my company's money is being spent and the percentage of income each expense takes up.
Mitto.com
Since I am dealing with a lot of customer contacts and their websites, Mitto allows you to store all of your passwords and logins for many different sites. The RSS Feed will update me on new websites that will accept Mitto. This would allow me to save time and the hassle of trying to remember bookmarks, passwords, and login information when I travel.
Datalightproject.com
My new job requires a bunch of spreadsheets with various columns, headings and information. This feed updates me on new versions of their products and the site would help by sorting the information and then allowing me to manipulate the now sorted information however I wanted so that reports, charts, and presentations would be more precise and efficient.
Startups.com
This is a great blog that has other people who have questions when they start up their own business. I hope to use this to learn from other people either through their mistakes and/or their successes.
BP3_2010011_Web 2.0 T1 - Kublax
After looking at various Web 2.0 sites and exploring the various tools therein, I decided to look deeper into Kublax.com and their budgeting tool. When I taught Economics to high school seniors I would always do a budget project as one of the last assignments for the semester. I wanted to give my seniors an idea of what it would be like to live on their own. I made them find a place to live, made them pay for everything including sewer/water, cell phone, groceries, and other various bills a typical person would have in any given month. Then I would show them how to use Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet that included their income, bills, money left over (if any) and so forth. One of the problems with this however was that the graphs were a little two involved for this project that only lasted a couple of days.
The budgeting tool on Kublax would solve that problem and break their spending down even further. The website was easy to use and I loved how each month was displayed as a pie chart. Then you could just click on each piece of the pie and it would give a detailed breakdown of all the spending that occurred within the designated area. If you wanted gas for your car as one of your areas, then you could see how much you spent, when you filled up, and what portion of your spending it encompassed. This would have been a great tool to use for the final portion of the project so that they could see just how easy it is to spend your entire income on bills.
I am going to use it this for the McSherry budget starting in February to see if it will help with cutting costs on certain areas. It will also allow me to see our income now that I am starting a new job, get paid on the 15th and 30th and have a different pay rate.
BP2_2010011_EduUses4Blogs
How do we transition from the "old school" way of education with our brick buildings and standard lecture practices to the new way where technology facilitates learning? One of the ways is to use blogs creatively and correctly. Marti A. Hearst, a professor in the University of California, Berkeley School of Information says, "a blog search should be able to accomplish three tasks: find out what people are thinking about a certain topic over time; suggest blogs that are good to read for their style, personality, and other criteria; and find useful information in older blog posts, along the lines of standard search of more static documents"(Savage 2010). If educators could use this as a checklist for themselves and their students, imagine the type of quality information one could find in a short amount of time.
Savage, N. (2010). New search challenges and opportunities. Communications of the ACM, 53(1), 27-28. Retrieved on January 10, 2010 from DOI:10.1145/1629175.1629183
Saturday, January 9, 2010
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