Bonding through Blogging: March 2012

There are many url shortening online programmes around, and I could never quite understand the need for them until I started sharing and networking! For example when using Twitter a long web address will use nearly all your 140 characters! The application I have tended to use is Bit.ly.com, so I thought I would do a quick share on how it all works. Below is a screenshot of the Bit.ly interface.

Whenever I start communicating with my PLN using Twitter, the first thing I do is open Bit.ly So let me explain how it all works.

1. Open https://bitly.com/ and join as a member. You don’t have to join, but if you do you’ll find a record of everything you have shortened! When Bit.ly starts you’ll get this empty blue box at the top. That s where you will paste your web addresses.

2. Copy the web address you wish to shorten and paste the long address into the blue piece. It will immediately shorten it to a new short address. From this...

3. ...to this! The new shortened address happens almost immediately! All you do now is copy it and use it!

So, to summarise. Join Bit.ly and it will keep a record of your shortened addresses for you. The shortened address is easier for people to click on and it works especially well with Twitter and Facebook where you have a restricted number of characters.

Why not give it a go!

Friday, March 16, 2012

Have you been to a TeachMeet or iPadMeet in South Africa yet?

Recently I attended another of Elkanah House's TeachMeets (Elkanah House is a school in Tableview, Cape Town), and I asked Linda Foulkes if I could use her blog post as a guest post. Linda is responsible for the training and testing of Grade 8 to 10 students on the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification. She is a Microsoft Office Expert and ICDL Advanced Trainer. In addition to her role as Staff Trainer and High School ICT Integration support (ICT Department), she also belongs to the Academic Department as Grade 8 Tutor Teacher. Linda absolutely loves spending her time researching social media and relevant technologies with connections on Twitter (@folklind) and Facebook, as well as her blog at http://folklind.wordpress.com; and she enjoys imparting this knowledge as professional development, enhancing teaching experience for teachers/students or simply just to boost efficiency in the workplace. Apart from that Linda is the person who is running with the TeachMeet idea at Elkanah House.

On Saturday 25 February 2012, Elkanah House hosted its third TeachMeet, as well as its second iPadMeet. The response and attendance to both meets were extremely rewarding. Forty six dedicated people interested in sharing, presenting and soaking in ways to use ICT in the classroom joined the TeachMeet. During second session, fifty four participants, passionate about using the iPad as a classroom device, attended the iPadMeet. The events were run one after the other to allow participants to enjoy both meets or collaborate with others during the short break between events.

Here is what happened at the Meets?

The meet kicked off with a “welcome housekeeping” presentation, which can be viewed here for those who are not sure how a TeachMeet event is run. Essentially, on signup one would choose one of the following options:

Keen Bean – a presenter who shares an idea, lesson, a tool in a timeslot of 3-5 minutes – presenters receive a gift of jelly beans
Enthusiastic Lurker – just there to soak up the environment and enjoy the day!

Di de Villiers from Somerset House seemed to have managed to get a reserved seat! She has attended every Meet we have had so far and always sits on the couch in the same spot…so I decided to reserve it for her!

The Keen Beans shared a huge range of resources and the number of presenters doubled since the last meet! A huge thank you to Nicole Masureik of Pinelands High as well as Mnr Maree of Bishops who were unable to attend but contributed by sending a virtual presentation for me to share with the audience. So if you are unable to attend a meet…you are always able to contribute and share with others…video yourself or a presentation and send to me. Well done to those who presented on the day – more information about these presentations, as well as photographs, videos and resources can be found on the TeachMeet wiki – http://elkteachmeet.pbworks.com – continue reading this post to see what was presented!

Presentations

Carolynn Bruton [ex Springfield] – presented twice, once on Organising you iPad and iPhone and then Transferring your Pics between Devices.
Organising iPad TeachMeet.pdf; Transferring pics.pdf
Fiona Beal [SchoolNet] presented on Google Forms – So Easy to Use:
See this post on the SchoolNet blog
See this as a Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal/google-forms-so-easy-to-use
Jenny Martin [Somerset House] on Using Triptico in the Primary School Maths Class Word Magnets.pptx;http://www.triptico.co.uk
Karen Stadler [Elkanah House] took us on a wonderful tour through Epic Citadel during the iPadMeet–KStadler_epic.pps – visit Karen’s blog at http://karenstadler.wordpress.com or ipad wiki: http://just-ipadding-along.posterous.com
Nicole Masureik [Pinelands] – presented on Using Screencast-o-matic
www.screencast-o-matic.com. This video demonstrated the recording of on screen annotations in PowerPoint for Teacher Professional Development.
Screencasting.mp4
Mnr Maree [Bishops] – took audience through Using Tumblr in the Afrikaans Classroom
http://bishopsafrikaans.tumblr.com
tumblr in afrikaans.mp4
Siobhan Louw [Somersert House] – presented her Term Long ICT Project – Planning a Virtual International Holiday
S Louw TeachMeetFeb2012.pptx
Siobhan Louw [Somersert House] – Shared an App called Boxee during the iPadMeet session
S Louw boxee.ppsx
Cheryl Douglas [Bishops] – presented on Using OneNote to produce Biology Notes on the Endocrine System
Endocrine system.one
Fiona Beal – [SchoolNet] – showed us How to make a Protopage
How to make a protopage
Louise Leigh [Herzlia] – shared her Integrated ICT Tasks in Mathematics – Google Docs Grade 9 Data Handling Research Project
The Environment – Research Topic and Introduction; Design of a Survey/Questionnaire, Administering a Survey, Organizing Data by making tally tables, Double bar graph, calculating averages, writing a report on results and report features of graphs, writing a conclusion with informed opinion and findings, a Bibliography, and finally to present. ICT Integrated Tasks.pptx; ycling Herzlia 2009-2012.pdf;9-Recycling Double Bar Graph 2012.xlsx; 9-Graph Project 2012.pdf
Peter Schutte [Wynberg Girls] – presented on using Edmodo in the Maths Class
Edmodo_Teacher_Training_Presentation.pptx; Edmodo__a_student_quick_start_guide.pdf; UsesforEdmodoAllgradelevels.pdf
Gilmour Gordon [Elkanah House] – shared his Music with Audacity, Movies with Sound project with the audience
[email teachmeet@elkanah.co.za for access to dropbox folder if you would like to view / download this presentation due to size limitations
Alan Goldberg [Digicape] – presented on iBook format / Author, Popplet Lite,and the use of a science iPad app and gadget during the iPadMeet.
Jak Tangkuampien [Elkanah House] presented on Marking with the iPad.

Without the above Keen Beans as well as the Enthusiastic Lurkers the 2 hour sessions would not be possible. I encourage everyone to continue sharing and collaborating amongst each other, to visit the wiki, interact with others and mail teachmeet@elkanah.co.za should you have something to share at the next meet.

A special thank you to:

*Christiaan Vlok – Elkanah student for video footage and photos
*Arthur Preston – Elkanah House Senior Primary Principal for twitter backchannel
*Karen Stadler – Elkanah House ICT Integrator for the twitter backchannel
*Gareth Davies – Business of Teaching – for the donation of magazine prizes
*Bongi Damane – Elkanah staff member for organising the refreshments
*Fiona Beal – SchoolNet for her continued support and encouragement

Continue the collaboration on twitter : #elkteachmeet and #SAipaded

Photographs of our Meets

TeachMeet-Photo25feb2012

View more PowerPoint from TeachMeets @ Elkanah

TeachMeet Photos 25feb2012

View more PowerPoint from TeachMeets @ Elkanah

TeachMeets in other parts of the world!

*Ireland joins TeachMeets – visit the wiki on http://tmbelfast.wikispaces.com/)
*Australia is having a huge one this Friday evening where they are trying to beat a world record for TeachMeets. Check out the ustream here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sydney-teachmeet
*This Saturday, a big virtual International Teachmeet with 32 presenters from 20 countries (Fiona Beal of SchoolNet is one of the volunteers…go Fiona!) was held. Visit http://teachmeetinternational.wikispaces.com/
*http://www.blogtalkradio.com/btrplayer.swf Do you listen to blogtalkradio? Lots of great discussions happening here!

HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON @ AN ELKANAH TEACHMEET OR IPADMEET!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Why not install and use Tweetdeck for Twitter group chats?

Last Monday night from 8:30pm – 9:30pm one of our social media in education activitists in South Africa, Arthur Preston, Head at Elkanah House Primary School in Cape Town, introduced a Twitter chat for South African teachers on the #edchatsa hashtag. It was a wonderfully stimulating chat with many teachers from around the country participating. Teachers only got to know about it via Twitter and had a great chat about the topic, “If there was one piece of technology that could change South African education what would it be?” You can log in to Arthur Prestons's blog http://headthoughts.co.za/edchatsa/ to vote for the topic for this coming Monday night. Here is the list of topics:

To be able to participate properly in this type of Twitter chat one needs to use an application like Tweetdeck where you can see a number of columns of Twitter at the same time. So this post is about Tweetdeck. It is a fantastic application to use. Here is a view of my Tweetdeck interface. This illustrates the columns.

Getting started

Search for Tweetdeck on the Internet and download the free application to your desktop (http://www.tweetdeck.com/). It will ask you to set up a Tweetdeck account. One can use the same username and password as one’s Twitter account to simplify matters. Once installed, Tweetdeck looks like you see above arranged in columns. You can now add as many columns as you like.

The columns

The columns work like this.
a) On the very left is your Home section where you receive the tweets of all the people you are following. This is the same as your timeline in Twitter.

b) Next to that you will get your Mentions column where you are notified if anyone retweets one of your tweets or sends you a message.

c) Next is your Inbox which shows the tweets or direct messages you have just sent to others. In fact this default column (Inbox) could be called the Direct Messages column since it records the direct messages that you send or receive. These do not show up in your All Friends/Home column because they are to or from you personally.

d) After that you can add your favourite # columns. I have #edchatsa, #edtechconf, #SAipaded, #ict4champions and #sateachers. That reminds me to mention that your Tweetdeck interface shows five columns but at the top is a little icon – it's a horizontal scrollbar - where you move across to the next lot of columns. I guess you can have as many columns as you like, with five displaying at a time.

To add a column click on the Add column button and write in your choice of # hashtag.

You can move the columns around

To move a column just check on the little wheel on the top right of each column and a box comes up giving you the arrows to move the column left or right.

For the purposes of the #edchatsa on a Monday night I have moved my #edchatsa column right next to my Mentions columns so that I can write easily and receive any @fibeal messages.

How to create and send a message

To create a message click on the little blue pen icon on the top of the interface.

This will open the box to write and send your messages. When the writing box opens write your message making sure it doesn’t exceed 140 characters, and press Tweet.

How to send a direct message to someone

Hover your mouse over the avatar of the person and the word More will appear on the top right. click on More and it will take you to another icon with a little dropdown arrow. Click on that and a box will open that says “Send a direct message”.

How to reply or retweet

Hover your mouse over the avatar of the person and a bar comes up containing an arrow, a group of arrows a star and the word more. The single arrow is for Reply and the group of arrows is for Retweet.

So, why not give Tweetdeck a try?

Friday, March 2, 2012

Why not become a ‘curator’ with Scoop.it and create your own online magazine?

You have probably heard the word ‘curator’ being bandied around? ‘Curating’ is one of the latest buzzwords and that is what Scoop.it does. (I haven’t yet investigated Paper.li but it could be similar). So, what happens is you join Scoop.it (http://www.scoopit.com) and choose a topic you would like information about.

Scoop.it then crawls the Internet searching for articles based on the keywords you have given to your search topic. You then curate by choosing which articles you would like to use in your magazine, and Scoop.it forms it into an attractive easy-to-read online magazine.

What I LOVE about Scoop.it is that you can also follow topics that interest you. I follow 34 topics that interest me and Scoop.it keeps me informed in much the same way – a magazine type format for me to page through at leisure. Marvelous! When reading a Scoop.it all you do is click on a block and it takes you to the original artecle.

So for example… this is how Scoop.it keeps me informed about the latest on my topics of choice.

In case you would like to know all the steps on how to work with Scoop.it please view my Slideshare.

Come 'Scoop' with me - Fiona Beal

View more presentations from fionabeal.

Pages

Monday, March 26, 2012

Our weekly Diigo bookmarks 26 March 2012

Monday, March 19, 2012

How to shorten those long web addresses using bit.ly