Create your own Qwiki

Go to Qwiki and sign up.

Add Youtube movies or Vimeo, add pictures from your computer, photos from Flickr streams, Google Maps and text. Export to Youtube and then embed in wikis and blogs.

Get a Calendar Widget for your blog or wiki

Add a calendar widget to your blog or wiki by going to http://mycalendar.org
and search for your country. New Zealand calendars are found here.

New Zealand Calendar

or how about weather widgets

Weather in Auckland

Weather Today in Auckland

Post it Wars

I saw @mrwoodnz tweet about Post-it -Wars and then I read his blog post. I was confused until I read the link to the herald story about Post-it-Wars in France. It is a corporate 'collage' war using Post-it notes stuck to windows.
Have a look at the 20 photos on the Herald page.

Shaun had created his own Post-it-War using Linoit which enabled him to use different colour Post-its. I tried it out, it is not as easy as it looks.

Sticky Notes on Win7 worked quite well and was quite quick to create notes but there is a limit of notes, so use wisely.

iCardSort (Free or NZ $8.29 ) is an iPad app that was easy to use and didn't seem to have a limit on sticky notes.

There are other apps available for the iPad

• Sticky Notes free
• Sticky notes for iPad
• ABC Notes

So how could this be used in Education?

• create icons or emblems
• create flags
• take a popular graphic and problem solve how to make it with square shapes (i.e.stickies)
• investigate how pictures are made up of pixels and plot/plan a picture on a spreadsheet and then make it with the sticky notes
• have a post-it-war with other classes using the windows of the classes to show case your efforts
• if you are using technology then post images to a wiki or a blog

Thanks Shaun for making me spend 4 hours investigating this...it was great fun!

Educaplay: Make your own activities

Educaplay enables you to create activities and then embed in your blog or wiki. You need to set up an account. The default settings are Spanish, so make sure you select English.
Ways to use this in a classroom

• spelling word activities
• topic word activities
• shared book activities (as shown below)
• making crosswords about topics or books
• specific grammatical activities like changing tense, adding endings, plurals etc
• Comprehension activities

Make a Wordfind
Make a Cloze activity Make a Jumbled Sentence

Primary Wall

Just came across this link on twitter today 

 "@Elle_Gifted  Alternative to Wallwisher for primary sts shared by @plnaugle http://primarywall.com/ at Tech Smackdown #RSCON3."

Primary Wall looks like a great alternative to Wallwisher especially as it seems to be 'broken' quite often. It has a few different features from Wallwisher and is very easy to use.
Here is an example of what it looks like





And you can choose to send your notes to Wordle

And here is a list of ideas you could use Primary Wall and Wall Wisher for...

Vocaroo

This has to be the easiest way to make a voice recording and then embed onto your wiki or blog.

Go to http://vocaroo.com/
Click on Click to Record and then click Allow

Record your voice by speaking straight into the microphone.

Click on Click to Stop

Click on Listen or Record again

Click on Post on the Internet. Copy the HTML code and then paste into the Widget on a Wiki or a HTML Gadget in a blog.

Photobucket

Photobucket  is an online storage site for your photos, it is a one stop place where you can edit and create slideshows.
Upload photos to Photobucket.

Media: Upload your photos, create albums, view as slideshow, get embed code to add to blogs or wikis

Themes: Change the theme of your Media page
Organise: organise your photos into albums
Edit photos: Fotoflexer is integrated into Photobucket so that you can edit photos.
Tags: add tags to photos
Photo Products: for a price turn your photos into cups, calendars, books etc
Tools: Create interesting slideshows using filters and themes

Embeddable Books

There are several embeddable book and magazine makers on the internet and this was one I came across today. Create your book in Word or PowerPoint, save it as a PDF file and then upload to http://www.yudu.com
It embeds in this form

Enlarge this document in a new window
Publisher Software from YUDU

You can click on the above link to enlarge the document. This will be a great publishing tool for children and teachers to use, I could see them making story books and magazines, embedding on to their wikis and blogs and also downloading for off line reading.

Google Calendar widget in blogs

Saw this great idea on Sarah's blog, adding a Google Calendar widget to the side panel in a blog.

Go to your Google Calendar

1. Click on the drop down arrow next to your calendar
2. Click on Share this Calendar

3. Click on Calendar Details

4. Scroll down to Embed this Calendar and click on Customise the colour, size and other options

5. Deselect Print icon, Tabs, Calendar List and Time Zone


6. Click on Agenda







7. Change the width to 250 pixels
8. Change the height to 400 pixels


9. Change the 'Week starts on' to Monday

10. Copy the code
11. Go to your blog, click on Design, click on Add a Gadget

12. Choose the HTML/Java Script, paste code, click OK
13. Move the new gadget to somewhere in your side panel

Clever Stitch - Panoramic Photos

Download CleVR Stitcher to your computer. Upload several photos to Clever Stitch and the software will create a panorama mixture of your photos.

You can upload the finished photo to the Clever stitch site, and then copy the embed code to create an interactive Panorama on your wiki or blog.

Panorama of School View on CleVR.com

This is a panorama I made with my photos from Mount Eden

Lino It

Lino It is a an online stickies wall. It is similar to Wallwisher where you can post stickers, add photos and movies. You can also upload links to documents. It is collaborative and can be embedded into blogs and wikis. This could be a great presenting tool for students.

Once you have joined up click on Create a New Canvas
Choose a Background, Name your Canvas.







Choose who has access and the Details  you want to show. Click on Create a Canvas

Add Stickies by dragging a sticky onto the canvas and typing into it.
Add a photo by clicking on the Photo icon, insert a photo from your computer, add text by clicking on the Frame option.
Add a movie by making a choice from Youtube, Ustream or Vimeo, paste in the URL of the video.

Attach files to the canvas by clicking on the Attachment button. Choose a file by browsing and an upload link to the file will appear.
Add a Transparent sticky by clicking on the Transparent button, type your text in.

Extra Features
Click on the Information button on the Palette to show the embed code.
Dates can be added to text stickies.
Pin a sticky to a canvas by moving the mouse over the top right hand of the sticky, a pin will appear, click on it to pin it. To unpin it, click on the pin again.
Move the stickies behind or in front by holding down the (Option Key-Mac) (Alt key-Win) and clicking.
Add tags to stickies which enables highlighting of all stickies with that tag.
There is a peel off option, click on the tick icon at the bottom of the right hand side of sticky. Once it has been peeled it is gone forever.
Sizes and colour of text can be changed when editing.
Stickies can be resized by clicking and dragging on the bottom right hand corner.
New stickies can be highlighted by clicking on 'Highlight New'.

How to use Lino It

In the example below I have used Lino It as a Presentation instructional tool.

Other ways of using it

• collaborative question answer (you would do this in groups on computers
• as an alternative to PowerPoint presentations
• as an instructional tool
• introduction to new topic

Scribble Maps and Google

One of the schools I visit are doing a Pacific Migration Unit and I showed some of the teachers how they could use Scribble Maps as an activity.

Each child can create their own Scribble Map illustrating where they or their family came from.
Type in the address, press Enter.



Markers

Click on the marker button

Select a marker from the choices, look at the drop down menu for more markers.


Mark the spot on the map.  



 Annotate your Markers

Add pictures and/or movies to the markers by clicking on the Advanced Editing choice. Images can only be entered by using a 'URL' Check to make sure the image you add is smaller than 300kbs. If it shows up to large in the map, you can change the width and height within the code 'width="500" height="370"' change the numbers to about width = 125 height =95





 Draw a line using the line tool on the tool bar from one spot to the other.

Add text boxes by clicking on the ABC button. Click on the arrow button to move textboxes into place

Embedding

Click on the Menu button to Save and to embed into a blog or a wiki. Choose Widget/Embed.

The one problem I did come up with is in the embedding in blogs. I had to add a small bit of code to the html, so instead of this at the end

 The Scribble map embeds fine in Wikispaces.
This example shows some of the Volcanoes in Auckland.

Other Ways to use Scribble Maps

• plot places from a novel, journal story
• famous landmarks in your own country, the country you are studying or world
• plot a famous journey (Livingston, Shackleton, Hillary, Captain Cook)
• retell the adventures of an explorer, famous person
• retell your own family's migration story
• make up your own incredible journey plot the places visited and write/illustrate what you found there
• save the maps as pictures for inserting into Documents where students enlarge on what they have been writing about
• use with an Interactive Whiteboard (or projector on a screen) to create collaborative mapping
• improve students Geography by concentrating on a country at a time and find something indigenous to that country and adding it each day as a 'When we have a few minutes spare' activity

Keep up to date with new features from Scribble Map by reading their blog.
There are so many features that I haven't discovered yet, but I am sure your students will. This is an amazing resource which is always under development and being improved.