Techniques for uploading images into your Blogger post.

In many cases, uploading an image into your web based content can be a confusing operation.  Questions may arise such as;

 - Do I need to have the image saved on my computer?
 - Where can I upload my image in order to host it?
 - Why can't I cut and paste an image into my blog post?

In order to assist you in selecting the most appropriate method of uploading an image into your Blogger post, I have produced the following tutorial. A Youtube link is provided here.

Adobe Generation Task 4

This month I am participating in the Adobe Generation ANZ Program for teachers.

The first course is called Digital Creativity in the Classroom.

From the Course Home page:

"This course is all about Digital Creativity. Photo imaging, animation, video and web design, all set in the context of the classroom."

"We will learn key digital skills and how to build a learning resource online for your students. We will share our best practice and expertise to help you develop your knowledge and understanding. We will work with Photoshop, Flash, Premiere and other Adobe tools. We will meet professionals from industry and find out more about their use of digital media within industry as well as hearing how other teachers have engaged and succeeded.

Each week the course will build upon a specific element of digital design and introduce you to new digital skills."

(http://anzmoodle.adobegeneration.com/)

This week, our final task is to produce a Blog post that assists students to learn a specific element of curriculum.  The challenge is to use each of the three previous medium that we have been taught; Photoshop, Premier Pro and Flash.

My next post will be my response to this task, you can access it here. 

Adobe Generation Task 3

This month I am participating in the Adobe Generation ANZ Program for teachers.

The first course is called Digital Creativity in the Classroom.

From the Course Home page:

 "This course is all about Digital Creativity. Photo imaging, animation, video and web design, all set in the context of the classroom."

"We will learn key digital skills and how to build a learning resource online for your students. We will share our best practice and expertise to help you develop your knowledge and understanding. We will work with Photoshop, Flash, Premiere and other Adobe tools. We will meet professionals from industry and find out more about their use of digital media within industry as well as hearing how other teachers have engaged and succeeded.

Each week the course will build upon a specific element of digital design and introduce you to new digital skills."

(http://anzmoodle.adobegeneration.com/)

Below is my attempt at Task - A 1-2 minute video made using Adobe Premier Pro

Adobe Generation Task 2

This month I am participating in the Adobe Generation ANZ Program for teachers.

The first course is called Digital Creativity in the Classroom.

From the Course Home page:

 "This course is all about Digital Creativity. Photo imaging, animation, video and web design, all set in the context of the classroom."

"We will learn key digital skills and how to build a learning resource online for your students. We will share our best practice and expertise to help you develop your knowledge and understanding. We will work with Photoshop, Flash, Premiere and other Adobe tools. We will meet professionals from industry and find out more about their use of digital media within industry as well as hearing how other teachers have engaged and succeeded.

Each week the course will build upon a specific element of digital design and introduce you to new digital skills."

(http://anzmoodle.adobegeneration.com/)


Below is my attempt at Task 2 - A Flash animation about my department.

I have written a post about Adobe Flash in the past (here and here) and consider myself to be reasonably adept at using Flash. I still find it quite difficult to achieve what I can picture in my mind and my one piece of advice would be to keep it simple..!

I am looking forward to a session on game development in Flash because it would be great to learn how to apply actionscript to my animations effectively.

Adobe Generation Task 1

This month I am participating in the Adobe Generation ANZ Program for teachers.

The first course is called Digital Creativity in the Classroom.

From the Course Home page:

 "This course is all about Digital Creativity. Photo imaging, animation, video and web design, all set in the context of the classroom."

"We will learn key digital skills and how to build a learning resource online for your students. We will share our best practice and expertise to help you develop your knowledge and understanding. We will work with Photoshop, Flash, Premiere and other Adobe tools. We will meet professionals from industry and find out more about their use of digital media within industry as well as hearing how other teachers have engaged and succeeded.

Each week the course will build upon a specific element of digital design and introduce you to new digital skills."

(http://anzmoodle.adobegeneration.com/)

Below is my attempt at task 1 - Inspired by the HOPE poster by Shepard Fairey

I loosely followed a tutorial on YouTube featured here.

PowToon

PowToon is a really powerful presentation tool that gives users the opportunity to design and build great presentations or videos incoporating a large nuber of cartoon (silhouette) and stick figures. 

Also included into the package are a wide range of props and text tools that enable the user to present their message clearly and creatively.

Below is an example which I designed to promote my subject area;

Ed Tech CC Assignment 6

Use Google.maps to create your own custom map that includes pictures of places.

The map below is a tour of my recent Eurpoean Holiday. When using Google Maps, I found searching for destinations quite easy, but linking them up and adding images is a little more difficult.

My first issue was importing images onto my map.  You need to select the Rich Text tab in order to reveal the option to include images and then, only have the option of adding an image URL.  Thus, I needed my photos online.  To solve this problem, I used a Google option; Picasa.

REVISION: The above option didn't work for me, the images appeared as an error box.  I eventually managed to add images using the "embed image" option in Picasa and adding it to the text using the HTML option in Google Maps.

Picasa is another post altogether, but in brief, is an image manager, sort of like itunes, that manages your images on your pc, allowing you to share them and access them online.

Pictures uploaded, I began adding locations and found that adding locations first, then joining them with a line at the end was the most effective way of linking everything together.


View My European Holiday in a larger map Or here

Ed Tech CC Assignment 1

Signs and Symbols

I experimented with Aviary - Raven Vector Editor to create a logo for my department.  I am familiar with Adobe Illustrator and found Raven relatively easy to use.  There is only a limited range of tools, however they are certainly to tools you would generally use most when creating vector images and for a free online image editor I found it excellent.

I spent about 30 mins experimenting with Raven and designing my logo.  It is very basic, due to my still being on school holidays and not into the work routine at the moment! I would have liked to follow a more refined design process and have enjoyed reading how others have developed their ideas and generated solutions.  Hopefully I will be able to take a more in depth approach in future tasks.

Looking at the Aviary Suite, it seems to be quite a find and I am looking forward to experimenting with it some more over the coming weeks.

Appreciate the comments and hope you can guess the department in which I work from the logo..!

Ed Tech Creative Collective

Looking forward to collaborating and experimenting with a range of digital technologies over the next 12 weeks as part of the Ed Tech Creative Collective.

“Tell us something about yourself and what you hope to get from joining”. 

There is an "About Me" link somewhere towards the bottom of my blog which, by following it, will help to explain a little about myself. 


I am working in a 1 to 1 laptop school in Sydney, Australia and am looking to continue finding ways to engage my students in digital and social media.


I have seen and used a lot of Colin's work and am enthusiastic about being involved in the EdTechCC and look forward to the new experiences ahead.

Photosynth

This week I discovered an app called Photosynth. It is Microsoft software that enables you to create panoramic pictures of 3D environments. The app is available on the iphone or directly over the web at www.photosynth.com. Silverlight is needed to run the app which you will be prompted to download when required, takes about 30 seconds.

I saw huge potential in the app in preparing virtual tours, either of school environments, project displays or as multimedia based projects.

Below is an example of the finished product... A tour of my office.. You can drag the mouse around the screen to see a 360 view of my office.



I am still playing around with it but am keen for comments, suggestions and recommendations.. I will follow up on this post in the coming weeks..

Stuff I got from Twitter

Over the past 12 or so months I have been following a number of people on Twitter and emailing myself any useful links and resources. It has been hard to keep up with all the correspondence I have been sending myself and thought it would be a good idea to keep it somewere other than my inbox, somewhere that my PLN and others can access and use it...

In order to give a point of reference to the material I have kept, I am a secondary design and technology teacher and have made an effort to keep resources that would be useful for my classroom.

• Google Calender of Educational Twitter Chats from @Web20Classroom
• 14 Free and Simple Digital Media Tools from @Web20Classroom
• Learning with Mobile Devices Resources from StMarys City Schools
• Websearch Skill Developent - A Google a Day from @Web20Classroom
• Be Very Afraid (BVA) Listen to Learners presentations
• Most influential Educational Twitter accounts to follow from @ToddAHoffman
• What does innovation in the classroom look like from @Web20Classroom
• 80 Online Tools and References from Hubert Yee @edutopia
• Top 10 Tips for assessing Project Based Learning from @edutopia
• Mobile Learning around the world by @ggrosseck
• 8 ways to support teachers integrate technology by @Web20Classroom and Edtechtoolbox
• Radio and Podcasting applications from @courosa
• 90 (more by now..!) Educators share their best blog post from @Web20Classroom
• Tools for teaching students at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy from @Web20Classroom
• Become Teacher 2.0 with these Web 2.0 tools from @GlogsterEDU
• 6 new Technologies set to change education from itslearning.net
• 
  

This is a start..! I have about 30 more to go but alas, must head home..!

My Favorite iPhone Apps

Having spent alot of time writing about Computer based applications that I have been using (and I have a lot of catching up to do..!), I thought it would be fun to write a list of my favorite apps for the iphone. Whenever I meet someone with an iphone, generally the first thing we do is compare and discuss the apps we have, so there is my inspiration to do it here. I also use a range of apps for work and education, so there is some value is posting this list here at the GOOD WORK stamp.!

In no particular order, my favorite and most used apps are:

1. Twitter - Great to keep up with my twitter feed whilst on the run. I would often fall 5 or 6 days behind until I installed the app and used it regularly. Now I don't miss a thing..!

2. MakeUseOf - Only just started using this and it is great.. Some new and interesting products and articles from which new suggestions are made based on what you have previously read. Great for tech resources and keeping up to date with technology.


3. TuneIn Radio - Thousands of radio stations at your disposal. Great for listening to live sport in other states and countries.

4. Kindle - A great reader with links to Amazon, easy to download books and read on the run. Text size can be adjusted, along with a number of other settings.

5. Meporter - Not a lot of people using this yet but I think it is a great idea. Write an article and post it, along with images for instant news in your area. Potential is great, I just wish more people would get on board and give it a go.

6. OzTV - Never go without a TV guide again..! Australia wide, all stations, too easy..!

7. TeeToGreen (Pro) - This is my favorite golf GPS app. I have tried a few and always come back to this one. Recording scores is possibe, but I just use for the great GPS interface.

8. Game Time - Another sport app that I use to keep up to date with the NBA. Live games can be purchased for about $1 and plenty of archive footage is available. Was awesome keeping up to date with the recent finals.

9. Egg Timer - Didn't have one last month when I really wanted a boiled egg, downloaded it free and have been enjoying soft boiled eggs ever since..!

10. Localscope - A bit like doing a google search but results are sorted in terms of distance away from you. I was looking for Thai, easy, 4km away.. Good for when you are out of town.

11. Ebay - A simplified mobile version, great for those last minute grabs when you are away from the pc and aren't a sniper..!

12. TCU - Mobile banking... Teachers Credit Union has a mobile version of their site, easy to access and complete simple transactions.

13. Find iPhone - Find my iPhone is essential for all iphone users. Find your lost iphone via gps in an instant. You can also disable and send a message to your phone begging for it back..!

14. Pkt Weather - A bit more juicy than the standard weather app on the iphone. Able to monitor multiple locations and great 7 day forecast.

15. Evernote - Cloud storage at its best. Download this onto all of your devices and files are easily accessed from all. I have three PCs and the iphone, transporting documents between them is as simple as a right click.

16. SchoolBook - Takes a bit of time to import your timetable, then, never forget what classes you have coming up ever again.. Great for checking what work needs to be prepared for the next day.

Hope you enjoyed my list. I look forward to suggestions and recommendations. Please feel free to comment below and don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Adobe Flash Mach 2

Just about to finish a unit in which students design and create a Flash movie, such as a game, educational tool or digital story. In order to assist students in gaining a sound understanding of the Flash workspace, I used some existing and created some new tutorials. Here is a link to one; Buttons Tutorial

The document also includes a link to the working example which is featured below.



I have found Flash CS4 to be extremely versatile and CS5 is even more so, however you really need to have a good basic knowledge of the functions before attempting anything overly creative or code heavy.

Adobe Flash

Just wanted to prepare a quick post about Adobe Flash as I have been playing around with it over the holidays and haven't posted anyting for a while..!

Flash is a vector based animation package that can be used for just about any mulitmedia purpose imaginable. I have use it (and a competitor version; Corel RAVE) to produce simple animations, learning resources, videos, games, presentations and even structured lessons. Within the CS5 version it is even possible to make iphone apps.

One great example of a Flash project is the Impossible Quiz..

But lets not get ahead of ourselves...

Firstly, Flash takes a long time to learn and understand how to do even the most simple of animations. Once you understand the language of Flash it becomes easier to use, however when teaching students to use it for the first time, allocate a large amount of time to explaining the theatrical setting in which Flash is based, for example, terms like stage, scene, frame, etc are used to describe aspects of the software package. Some prior experience with Adobe products will help, however there is a steep learning curve.

Secondly, you need to be a good artist. To produce projects of a reasonable quality, you still need to be creative and artistic. Although Flash provides a wide range of features and tools, becoming a skilled user takes time, practice and a certain artistic flair..!

Thirdly, you need to have an understanding of coding. Flash objects can be told to do a wide range of things. If you think about an interactive learning resouuce, there are a number of options and animations that behave in certain ways, depending on the users selections. All of these tasks are called behaviours and Flash uses a coding language to get them done. Although there are some hints and basic code completed for you, some understanding is still necessary.

Finally, you need a good plan. The more complicated your project becomes, the more important a plan will be. Each scene in your project needs to be created from scratch and in order to make life much easier, certain aspects can be reused and repeated. I would certainy encourage a detailed storyboard be used even for the most basic project.

Some issues that I faced included:
* Understanding the terminology and processes can be quite time consuming. Figuring out how to tween, control buttons, etc can take a while.

* Being a vector package, importing images can be problematic. Issues with transparent backgrounds, resizing, colour changing, etc. can all occour when importing a bitmap image into the project. And unless you are skilled a producing high quality images in vector form, you will need to import images.. You will need to use a package such as Photoshop to prepare your images prior to importing into Flash.

* Once an item has been put in the timeline and tweened, changing it is problematic..! Any changes you make may result in an undesired tween, the removal of your tween and/or unwanted chages to other componenets of your project. This is generally a beginners problem and once you understand the way Flash operates it is easy to aviod these problems. Using labels for your keyframes and in your coding of behaviours is one of the best things to learn early on..!


Some positive aspects I discovered included:
* The flexibility and unlimited scope of the package is what really makes it great. Once you have a basic understanding, you just want to learn more and begin all sorts of crazy projects.

* Flash makes it easy to organise and find your cast of objects. The toolboxes are easy to understand and navigate.

* Although I have said Flash is quite difficult to learn, a majority of the learning involves exploring the vector graphic aspect of the software. In terms of automation, Flash does much of the work for you when producing projects.

* Support is excellent. There is a huge range of educational support for Flash, including videos, tutorials, forums, etc. Make great use of them. A collegue handed me her notes from an AIS inservice which helped me a lot.

Please feel free to comment and check out my previous posts.

Wordle

Ever seen a cloud of words on someone's blog or webpage and wondered what it was or how to do it.? Well Wordle is your answer.





Wordle uses the frequency of words used in a body of text to determine the size of each word featured in the cloud and creates a pictorial summay of the document. Word clouds can be made from words or just metatags in your website, to give users an idea about what the important points of the text are.



There are a number of word cloud building tools out there, all with a range of features. Blogger even creates one for me,featured on the left side of the page, based on the lables used throughout my blog. The picture to the right was created by Wordle using the words from my previous post about Prezi.


Wordle is really easy to use, online based and free. Students can either cut and paste text directly or type a web address to create a word cloud. Once the cloud has been created, it is simple to edit, colour and arrange words as required. There are even some advanced features available for web developers.

Some other possible classroom uses for Wordle include analysis of a body of text, deconstruction of a body of text and highlighting important points.



Some issues that I faced included:

* It is a java based app and requires java to be installed.

* You are unable to save the finished file anywhere except for Wordle's public gallery. The alternative is using the print screen function and editing / saving in paint or similar software.

* The drop down menus don't allow you to scroll, so when navigating them and using the scroll feature on your mouse, the menu disappears and the web page scrolls down..

* There are a limited amount of colour and formatting options. Randomising continiously is the best option, waiting until you find the best fit for your document.



Some positive aspects that I discovered included:
* Wordle automatically removes common words and also allows you to toggle this feature.

* There are a wide range of languages available.

* Quick, easy and free to use.

Please feel free to leave a comment and check out my other posts.

Prezi

If you are an aspiring Mac user but are stuck with the Windows platform, specifically Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi is a great way to make Mac stype presentations on the web.

This free online application is a simple way of creating presentations that can be shared, stored and presented on the web. The real winner however is the animation between slides, already used widely by Mac users and not available to those using Powerpoint.

The user interface is very simple to manage and although only some very basic features are available, it is still quite effective. Users are required to enter data onto a canvas, either text, images (uploaded) or shapes, and each item added becomes a new slide. Once you have finished adding data to the canvas, you join the elements with a "storyline", which when presented, is used to indicate the order in which each slide is presented.

Education users are well looked after, given free access and increased storage space and after creating an account, access is unlimited and free to all. You can sort and view presentations by friends, peers and other users very easily. A great tool for students to use without the need for saving, transporting and uploading presentations.

Some issues that I faced included:

On one occasion, I was unable to upload any images. The button just did nothing and despite a number of restarts, no luck. I was going to try using Mozilla rather than IE however upon trying again today, the feature works again.

The options are quite limited in terms of templates, however those with a big imagination will produce great things.

Prezi works best when you have a plan and a number of images ready to go. I would encourage students to search for heaps of relevant images, store them in a single folder, then begin preparing their presentation.

Some positive aspects that I discovered included:

The zebra tool is a great innovation, allowing users to zoom, rotatate and resize using the same tool. This allows you to increase or decrease the size of elements of your presentation, which is useful when you find yourself zooming out to fit in more things and finding that the font size keeps decreasing..!

There are a number of support avenues, including instructional videos, written tutorials and plenty of demo presentations.

Very simple interface, easy for students to pick up and work with.

Issuu

There are a wide range of web based applications available to students and teachers and sorting through the useful and the phishing is quite time consuming and difficult.

Issuu is an online magazine viewer, whereby users can access free content presented in the form of a magazine. You need to become a member to upload, however viewing is free.

I have found issuu useful when asking students to produce mock magazine articles, posters and powerpoint presentations. Students can either submit their work to me and I upload the best of the group or they can upload themselves, depending on the need.

Issuu is a great way for students to broadcast their work, share ideas and also conduct research.

Some issues that I faced included:

* Uploading word documents results in some strange formatting issues. Upload in .pdf for best results.

* Changing the size of the viewed documents is a bit tricky. Full screen function is available, however if you want to view a full screen, zooming in and out can be a pain.

Some positives aspects that I discovered included:

* All types of presentations can be uploaded; posters, powerpoint, documents, ect. A great, online viewing tool.

* Search feature means active design (or other subject content) magazines can be viewed. Like sending the students to the library without the books.

* Students can search my login name to find all of my publications, meaning I can post plenty of content and students can find it easily.

* You can sign in with your facebook account and receive notifications to and from facebook.

Google SketchUp

Across a number of classes I have been using Google SketchUp as modelling, drawing and animation (see here for animation) software. Although it does have a steep learning curve and some pretty fundamental shortcomings, it is a great entry level CAD drawing package and it is free.

There are a wide range of professional CAD software providors that produce scaled down versions for education purposes, however you generally need to purchase the professional version in order to get the use of the scaled down version. I use Pro Desktop with more senior students.

My current year 8 students are developing a sustainable house design, using SketchUp to produce an initial floorplan, before importing images from the 3D Warehouse to fill their home with appliances and features. Finally the students raise the walls of their house, use the paint feature to add texture and they are done. A 3D house.

I would certainly recommned completing the range of useful tutorials provided within the software. They make life much easier and students can also work through them on their own.

Some issues that I faced included:


* SketchUp has some minor issues that mean you have to make sure that you do everything in the right order. This sometimes means you need to delete what you just did in order to redo it in the right way.

* The move tool works in two ways, stretching your drawing when not exptected and requiring you to highlight all of an object in order to move it. If this object shares a line with another piece, then you are not able to move it without affecting the other object.

* Many of the tools have some interesting or strange ways of using them. Following the tutorials and with some practice, the package becomes easier and easier to use.

* The old versions are not compatable with new versions, for example, work done in previous years cannot be opened in the new, updated version for viewing this year.

Some positive aspects I discovered included:

* Firstly, it is free. This means it is great for one off projects and is easy to download and share.

* The rendering features are easy and effective. There are a wide range of paint options which can add a variety of textures, colours and effects to your designs.

* The animation feature is great. You can produce fly-throughs and a range of other features similar to Flash animations. A student initially figured this out and showed me; quite simple and effective.

* The ability to import and export images from and to Google Earth. This means that a house or landscape can be imported into a Google Earth image and presented as if it existed in that space.

* Simplicity. Many of the CAD programs I have used are very complicated and require plenty of training in order to produce a simple object. Google Sketchup enables you to draw a wide range of objects with relative simplicity.

Sustainable House Design Learning Object

One of the units I teach to year 8 students is a sustainable house design project, where the students are required to use Google SketchUp to design a sustainable house. More on SketchUp in my next post.

Prior to beginning work on the house however, I spend some time identifying sustainable design options with my students. Along with some great resources found by a fellow staff member (JT), I came accross this online resource made by the Queensland Government; Designing for Sustainable Living.

The learning object focuses on the design of a family home and incorporates a number of options and decisions that can be made. A final sustainablity report describes the impact of the decisions made and allocates a points value to each. Students finish with a final score (out of 300 I think..!)

There is quite a bit of written content embedded in the learning object and in the past I have prepared a worksheet for students to complete, however this year, I had students participate in an onine discussion (as described in the wikispaces post) which worked well and allowed students to access a record of their thoughts and actions which could be applied to their own house design later on.

Some issues that I faced included;

* It is a bit confusing to save your work and after creating a user, you need to use the same computer in order to retreive your work.

* It is possible to flick through the avaialble options and choose the one with the most points.

* Navigation is a bit confusing, especially at the start. You need to click "Siting" to return to the list of options to follow.

Some positive aspects I discovered were;

* The embedded content is very useful and can be printed out and used as notes for revision / application to students own project.

* The graphics are quite good and the layont works well.

* The range of sustainable options is very high and the module exposes students to a wide range of products and features.

Wikispaces

After my first experience with Blogging, I took a year off classroom based social media and did some research. The prospect of starting 7 or 8 blogs in 2009 didn't appeal to me and I went in search of a means of creating my own webpage. A place where I could upload all of my presentations, word documents, sound files, videos, etc. I was initially confused. Did I have to build my own web page and host it, paying all the associated costs..?

No... I stumbled upon the wiki...

In late 2009 I started my first wiki, as a trial run for the following year and found it extremely useful. The wiki I have created this year allows me to prepare a new page for each of my subjects and to link additional pages to each as required. Wikispaces also allows educators to upload and manage their wiki at no cost and I currently have 59 "files" uploaded onto my wiki.

Wikis are much more user directed. Rather than be constricted by the gadgets of a blog, the designer has much more control over the content and formatting. Images, videos, hyperlinks, and other content can all be formatted as required.

Some issues that I faced included:
* In order for my wiki to remain private, students need an account, email address and to ask permission to access my blog. Once this is done however, it is smooth sailing. I took about 30 minutes to get my class started.

* If I left my wiki public, it may be edited and changed by anybody = Public. There are a few issues associated with this; privacy, IP protection, etc.. I'm not too concerned about people using my work in their own classrooms, what I was worried about was people deleting my wiki content. I'm sure there are ways around this now, however I am yet to experiment with an open wiki. Comments and suggestions welcome..

* I fear that at the end of the year, I have to begin a new wiki because I would prefer to reveal only the current work to the students and add new content to the wiki as it becomes relevant. If you are happy for the content to stay on the wiki all year, then no dramas.

* Students still need a medium to create work of their own. Unless they are completing all classroom tasks in a workbook, they will need to begin a blog or wiki of their own which the teacher will need to access.


Some positive aspects I discovered included:
* One big winner with the wiki setup is the attached discussion tab. Students are able to discuss their work and "chat" on the wiki framework. I found that starting a discussion post each lesson allowed students to multi task, completing a classroom activity on the web (or otherwise) and talking about it via the discussion post. I found that they asked eachother questions, rather than myself if I was busy, and because I was the administrator of the discussion, I could monitor their discussions, deal with inappropriate comments and teach responsible use of the web.

* The freedom of the wiki is a big advantage. I was able to include all content and upload most file types that were needed for my classroom.


Please feel free to comment and leave suggestions for improvement.