Week 8: Thing #18 Zoho Writer

I thought I would share the Digital Storytelling Planning sheet I created for our after-school Digital Storytelling club. I decided to try sharing the document through Zoho Writer's blog posting feature. After signing-up and reading the Zoho benefits page, I imported my document and played with the formatting. When I posted it to my blog, the document was WAY TOO BIG so I changed the font size to 8 pt and imported the document again. It's still a bit too long, but was a good exercise in exploring and playing with Zoho's tools. I decided to publish this document so that it would create a permanent URL accessible to anyone. By clicking on the link at the beginning of this post, you can access the document. I also explored the 50 different templates they have available for folks to use. These templates were not as exciting as some of the other Web 2.0 tools we've looked at in this class, but definitely have a practical use!

Week 7: Thing #16 Wikis

Wikis are Web 2.0 tools that I was fairly familiar with before taking this class. I contributed to a class wiki as part of the Librarian Leadership Academy in Anchorage this past summer and came away inspired to create and use one to help encourage collaboration between teachers and between students at Glacier Valley. I worked and collaborated with several teachers on a Storytelling unit and initiated a gvstorytellers wiki to document our process. Even though the Storytelling unit involved the integrated efforts of classroom, library, visual art, special education and extended learning teachers, I ended up being the only one documenting the process on our wiki. I think the wiki format was still too new for folks to feel comfortable adding their perspective and lessons to it, so I made sure to act as the role of documentarian for the project. My hope is that this unit will be used by other teachers to serve as a resource and reflection on what did and did not work. Teachers can continue to add to it to refine and enrich the unit.

I just started an after-school Digital Storytelling club and hope to create a wikispace for students to write and share their scripts, as well as edit them after reading comments from fellow club members. It will also help me keep all of their writings in one easily accessible place and allow them to work on their scripts and react to others from their home. I could also see using a wiki for student-generated book reviews.

Of all of the wikis I explored, I found Joyce Valenza's teacherlibrarianwiki space the most useful. It serves as a knowledge base: a gathering space for school librarians to share ideas, lists and effective teaching practices. I particularly liked the book lists for students, including the Must Have Graphic Novels Primary list and Booklists for Elementary Students.

Week 6: Thing #14 Technorati

I had a chance to explore Technorati during our RSS Feeds assignment. Out of all of the online tools I used, Technorati was by far the best. I liked the support they offer, including the advance options to narrow your search. I created an account and claimed this blog! After watching Technorati tour, I checked out the "What's Popular" section and found a video highlighting President Obama's "Open for Questions" an online town hall forum to encourage direct dialogue between the President and the American public. I think the idea is innovative and effective. The questions President Obama addresses are the top questions from each category that received the most online votes. I didn't have time to watch the entire video, but was able to read the transcript and scroll down to his response concerning education. I like his attempts to maintain close contact with the American people and the internet is a great way to do it.

Then I started searching the blogsphere! Unfortunately, Technorati does not have Education as one of its dedicated channels, so I typed in "arts education" and came up with 13,088 results!! I narrowed my search by limiting it to blogs (not posts), English only and a lot of authority. What I found most helpful was the window located on the right sidebar called "Tags" which lists the other tags used by people who also searched under the tag "arts education." I found very relevant blogs in a short time this way. I also liked searching the blogs that were listed within those blogs I tagged as my favorites. Once you find like-minded people, you can find links to blogs and other internet resources on their blogs that you would bookmark yourself.

Here are the blogs I listed as my Favorites so far:

• Storynory: Free Audio Stories for Kids
• Creating Lifelong Learners
• Artful Innovation
• Teaching Online Journalism

Here are the indirect weblinks I found searching "Digital Storytelling" on Technorati. With my new Delicious Firefox plug-in, I instantly bookmarked all of these in my Delicious account with tags! I'm starting a Digital Storytelling after-school club tomorrow, so today technology has been my friend!

• DigiTales: Storymaking Files
  
• Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
• Online Tools for Digital Storytelling
• Jashon Ohler: Art, Storytelling, Education & Technology
• Center for Digital Storytelling
• Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling
• BBC/Wales: Guide to Digital Storytelling
• Primary Source Learning
• Scott County Student Digital Stories
  

One question: I was able to find the 100 Most Popular Tags on Technorati, but not a list of all of the tags. Any advice?