SchoolNet webinar recording (12/09/2013) 'Let’s create a Learnist Board' (by Fiona Beal)

 

On Thursday 12th September I presented a webinar for SchoolNet entitled ‘Have you discovered Learnist boards? Try creating one...’. The webinar took place at 3:30pm. Thank you to all who attended the webinar.

Presentation
My presentation is given below via Slideshare and you can download it if you wish to.

Let's create a Learnist board from Fiona Beal

Summary of the webinar
Name: Have you discovered Learnist boards? Try creating one...
Summary: With the Internet being so HUGE these days educators have to become master curators of content. A Learnist Board is a really useful way to curate and keep a record of the information that you need. I love using Diigo, Pinterest and Scoopit for curation purposes, but Learnist has its own unique properties that sets it apart as a useful way of collecting the sites you want to keep.

Webinar recordingIf you wish to listen to the presentation the recording link can be found at http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p9tg7wom9gp/

Webinar recording: Mindmapping with iPads and other devices (by Carolyn Bruton)

 

Yesterday we held two SchoolNet webinars presented by Carolyn Bruton, a teacher who is an expert in Mindmapping. The first one took place at 3:30pm and the second one was a repeat that took place at 6:00 pm. Thank you to all who attended the webinars

Presentation:
Carolyn’s presentation is given below – Carolyn has kindly agreed that teachers can download it.

Recording link:
If you wish to listen to the presentation the recording link can be found at  http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p9ns17glj1f/

Mind mapping on your i pad and other devices by Carolyn Bruton from Schoolnet SA

Webinar recording ‘Spice up your classroom with Games’ (17/07/2013)

Yesterday we were very fortunate to have a wonderful guest presenter, Arjana Blazik from Croatia speaking on our SchoolNet/Microsoft  webinar on ‘Spice up your classroom with games’.  

Arjana is well-known in many different international circles. I met her at the world finals on the Microsoft Innovative Teacher competition in Cape Town in 2010 where she represented Croatia with her winning project entitled Greetings from the World. After that I met Arjana again at the inaugural Partners in Learning Institute in Seattle in July 2011. Since then Arjana along with Bart Versvijel from Belgium have been involved in running four online Internationl Teachmeets as well as a number of online activities for the European SchoolNet’s e-twinning project. You can read Arjana’s blog ath ttp://traveloteacher.blogspot.com/ Arjana has been featured on Anthony Salcito, Vice-President of Microsoft’s blog, Daily Edventures as a global Education Hero – read about her here:ttp://dailyedventures.com/index.php/2012/06/28/arjana-blazic/. Arjana has a great interest in games in education and was privileged to attend a European workshop run by Ollie Bray from Scotland (who is known as THE games in education person). 

The presentation, website links and the recording link
Here is the presentation link:
  


Here is the link to the various sites that Arjana referred to:
http://instablogg.com/joj1DOv

Here is the recording link from Adobe Connect: (33 mins)
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p3wrmova9gu/
(sound problem in one or two places)

Webinar recording: Even MORE uses of PowerPoint (19/06/2013)

Last week our webinar was entitled ‘Did you know PowerPoint could do all this?’ where we looked at 10 uses of PowerPoint apart from the normal use of making a presentation. This week we look at Part 2 of the series entitled ‘Even MORE amazing uses of PowerPoint’. Do we realise the potential that lies within this Microsoft product? You’ll be astounded to see how many more uses there are for PowerPoint and that it could be one of the most powerful and diverse applications you use.
Name:Even MORE amazing uses of PowerPoint
Summary: This is part two in the series about Microsoft's PowerPoint showing even more uses than we looked at last week. You will discover that PowerPoint is both powerful and diverse in the ways that it can be used.
Presenter: Fiona Beal from SchoolNet
Recording URL:  http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p49j0dtg4lg/

Here is a SlideShare of the presentation used in the webinar for a quick summary
Even more uses of PowerPoint

Webinar recording from 12 June 2013 'Did you know that PowerPoint can do all this?'

Yesterday Our SchoolNet webinar was entitled 'Did you know that PowerPoint can do all this?'  (presenter Fiona Beal)  Our webinar quota was reached and consequently Adobe Connect excluded several people from participating in the webinar. We apologise for this and we are adding the presentation plus the recording to this post. 

The webinar summary
This webinar was the first in a two part series about Microsoft's PowerPoint. Often one hears the words 'Death by PowerPoint' but in fact this programme has a HUGE variety of wonderful uses that you may not know about. There are many exciting ways to conduct presentations - Keynote and Prezi just to name two.  In this first webinar we introduced some of the amazing things that can be done with PowerPoint other than just being used for presentations.  A subtitle for this webinar could be 'Ten things that you can do using PowerPoint apart from the normal use of making a presentation'. But these amazing uses won't be all - next week we'll continue with more PowerPoint features that you might not know about. Join us!

Webinar recording (20 mins)
Thank you to those who attended or wanted to attend. Here is the link to the recording.
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p5ae57e6jn7/

The presentation used for the webinar

Did you know PowerPoint could do all this? from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording: How to create and publish digital media online (09/05/2013)

The webinar summary
This webinar supports week four of the Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook Project course. We will be looking at popular creative, free applications especially appealing to students for creating and publishing stories online. We will also look at other ways of publishing digital writing online especially when the writing has been created using a PowerPoint presentation. 

Webinar recording
The webinar attempts to pull together the different aspects for this week.  Thank you to those who attended. 
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p7zimfhxk2w/


The presentation used for the webinar
I have put the presentation used in the webinar into Slideshare and here it is:

How to publish digital media online from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording: Add your story to PowerPoint and illustrate it (03/05/2013)

The webinar summary
In this webinar, which supports our online course on Digital Storytelling, we will add our already created story to PowerPoint and find ways of illustrating it.

Webinar recording
The webinar attempts to pull together the different aspects for this week.  Thank you to those who attended. I am adding the 6pm webinar:
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p16xkoenx12/

The presentation used for the webinar
I have put the presentation used in the webinar into Slideshare and here it is:

Add your story to PowerPoint and illustrate it from Fiona Beal

A contribution on avatars from Thaiurie  Govender
During the webinar Thaiurie mentioned another possibility as far as illustrating a story goes – namely the use of avatars and speech bubbles, and kindly sent me a presentation with ideas about creating avators which I am embedding here. Thank you SO much Thaiurie.

Webinar recording: It's time to write our stories (25/04/2013)

The webinar summary
This webinar looks at the task of writing a story for the African Storybook Project. We will look at the different parts of story writing such as audience (characteristics of a Grade 3 child), finding inspiration, getting started, story structure, elements of a story, rubric for the African Storybook story contributions, and more...

Webinar recording
It will be useful to listen to the webinar to get the full gist of what is being said about licensing. Thank you to those who attended. I am adding the 6pm webinar:
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p1db9meti2z/

The presentation used for the webinar
SlideShare is a useful free tool for sharing PowerPoints, Keynotes or PDFs on the web. I use it constantly. I have put my presentation into Slideshare

Its time to write our stories from Fiona Beal

So let’s get writing – it might not be as difficult as you think. Maybe just give it a go and see where your story takes you. If you don’t like it you can write another one!

Webinar recording: how do I add a free license to my digital writing? (17/04/2013)

The webinar summary:
This webinar supports our current course on digital storytelling. What is the deal when we post information online? Can anybody use it? This webinar looks at free licensing supplied by Creative Commons and shows how to apply it. It will also show the free licensing we will use for our digital stories.

Webinar recording
It will be useful to listen to the webinar to get the full gist of what is being said about licensing. Thank you to those who attended. I am adding the 6pm webinar:
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p7woivx7ca8/

The presentation used for the webinar
SlideShare is a useful free tool for sharing PowerPoints, Keynotes or PDFs on the web. I use it constantly. I have put my presentation into Slideshare, and please notice that I have pasted the same license that we will use on to the title page! That’s how easy it is to license something!

How can I add a digital license to my digital creations? from Fiona Beal

What if this is all too complicated for me?
That's how I used to think! But don't worry - all you need to get from the whole licensing issue is that we will send you a little tiny, block to paste on your story or your learners' stories (like I have done on the presentation in the webinar recording above). 

Webinar recording: So how does a Google hangout work? (25/03/2013)

Google hangouts are a free video chat service from Google, connected to Google +, that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats with up to ten people at a time. There are enormous benefits to this for education. This is the webinar recording entitled 'So, how does a Google hangout work?

Summary of the webinar

Google hangouts are part of Google plus. This video chat feature allows you to invite nine others (total of 10) to video chat, IM chat, watch YouTube videos together, share documents and much much more. These are perfect for professional development or planning sessions

Google #17: Webinar recording ‘Let’s explore Google Chrome and its extensions’

Google Chrome is definitely a fascinating and very user-friendly browser.  Some of the things I love about using it are:

• You can easily create many different profiles for Chrome so that each email address you have uses its own profile.
• The URL bar is called an Omnibox because you can search from it just as if you were operating in Google Search. 
• One can paste all sorts of bookmarklets in the bookmarks bar. i.e. Pin it for Pinterest, ‘Scoop.it’ for Scoop.it etc.
• There are so many wonderful time-saving extensions to add to the top right portion of the browser.
• There are many applications that one can install on to the Google Search page for quick access.

Webinar recording
Last night SchoolNet hosted a webinar called ‘Let’s explore Google Chrome and its extensions’. Here is the recording link.

Webinar presentationThis is the webinar presentation on SlideShare.

Google chrome from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording: Let's explore Google Chrome and its extensions (05/03/2013)

Google Chrome is definitely a fascinating and very user-friendly browser.  Some of the things I love about using it are:

• You can easily create many different profiles for Chrome so that each email address you have uses its own profile.
• The URL bar is called an Omnibox because you can search from it just as if you were operating in Google Search. 
• One can paste all sorts of bookmarklets in the bookmarks bar. i.e. Pin it for Pinterest, ‘Scoop.it’ for Scoop.it etc.
• There are so many wonderful time-saving extensions to add to the top right portion of the browser.
• There are many applications that one can install on to the Google Search page for quick access.

Webinar recording
Last night's webinar which supported our current onlne course 'Google for Professional Development' was called ‘Let’s explore Google Chrome and its extensions’. Here is the recording link.

Webinar presentation
This is the webinar presentation on SlideShare.

Google chrome from Fiona Beal

Webinar recordings: 'Bring Your Own Device – does it work?'

In this webinar we discussed BYOD (Bring your own device) which is a current buzz word. Basically instead of schools going to the expense of buying and maintaining technology devices the students are encouraged to bring their own devices from home – smart phones, laptops or tablets of one sort or another. What is your opinion on this? You would imagine that something like this wouldn’t work because of perhaps teacher skills in managing different devices or students forgetting their devices at home or not owning a device. Our two ladies in this webinar tell us what they have experienced at their respective schools..

Our two presenters

Nina Adams is the Innovation head at St Cyprians in Cape Town and she is responsible for technology integration throughout the school. Michele Botha is the Head of the Intermediate Phase at Somerset House Primary in Somerset West and she is also responsible for technology integration at her school. In this webinar they each relate the ins and outs plus successes of introducing the BYOD approach at their schools.

Thank you to these two ladies. (Adobe Connect can be troublesome at times but these two ladies persevered). 

Nina Adams from St Cyprians in Cape Town

Title:‘To BYODly go…’
Webinar recording:http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p67ctfy140o/ (23 mins)
Prezi Links: http://prezi.com/mqzvyevtmkv4/to-byodly-go/


Michele Botha from Somerset House Primary ‘

BYOD? Our Grade 6&7 pilot (Michele Botha) from Schoolnet SA

Title: Bring Your Own Device Pilot Project”
Webinar recordings:
Part 1: http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p7djdadlj3g/ (3 mins)
Part 2: http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p2pioozxfja/ (9 mins)
Presentation: Slideshare presentation can be viewed above.
Presentation Link: BYOD? Our Grade 6&7 pilot (Michele Botha) 

Webinar recording: Get the hang of a Google hangout (27/11/2012)

What is a Google hangout?
Google+ is Google's new social networking tool. I have only just discovered its amazing potential since attending the Google Teacher Academy in New York in October. Google has put a lot of funding into developing Google+ and they are committed to making it work well for education, so it will just get better and better I am sure. Once you have created a circle of friends in Google+ you can choose to hang out with them on Google+. This allows you to video chat, IM chat, watch YouTube videos together, and more.

Summary of benefits
Google Hangouts are part of Google+, Google's new free social networking tool. On a Hangout 10 people (possible 15 on Google Apps) can:
*video chat
*IM (instant message) chat
*watch YouTube videos together
*collaborate on a Google Doc
*use a whiteboard collaboratively
*add effects for fun
*record the Hangout directly on YouTube
*live stream for more viewers
*A minimum of two people
*and more…

A Slideshare showing the steps
This slideshare was used in the SchoolNet webinar of the same name and shows the steps in creating a hangout.

Get the hang of a Google+ hangout from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording:
Last week SchoolNet had a webinar whih was presented by me (Fiona Beal) on 'Get the hang of a Google Hangout'. Here is the recording. 
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p6kgz1ndmhz/ (22 mins)

Ideas for using a hangout in the the classroom
• Read a story
• Bring in an expert/guest speaker/author|
• Share from a Slideshare
• Homework tutoring
• Professional Development meeting
• Work on a project together
• Virtual penpals
• Global classroom discussions
• Career Day wit panelists
• Attend other hangouts (Google has a whole library of hangouts)
• Extended discussion on a class topic
• Subject-related hangouts
• Conduct workshops and seminars

Additional reading and viewing
a) A tutorial 
Please note that Google updates its products continually so some features in this video might look different.



b) Further Reading
*How to use Google Hangouts 
*How to Use Google+ Hangouts for Teaching
*How to create a Google event

Webinar recording: Get to know Google+ (20/11/2012)

Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like are all social networks. They’re designed to let you share up-to-the second updates, ideas, thoughts, links and media with your friends and the public. There are a few features which makes Google different from these other networks.

• Google has integrated Google+ with its other services (and continues to do so) e.g.Search, YouTube, Gmail and more.  Google+ is already built into services you use every day.
• Google+ uses the concept of circles (groups), and this differentiates it from Facebook for example as it allows users precise control over who sees what. 

Webinar presentation
This is a Slideshare of the webinar presentation on Google + from last night.  The webinar covered:

•What is Google +•Highlights of interesting features
•Circles
•How to write a post
•How to receive a notification
•Benefits to education 

Get to know Google plus! from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording
Here is the webinar recording.
Get to know Google+


Further reading
1) Google + - what does it mean for education?
2) 27 ways to use Google+ to support education (a presentation)
3) Circle me up - exploring circles in Google+
4) 40+ Google tips for newbies
5) The Google+ 50
6) The Google plus project - a quick look
7) A livebinder of Google+ resources
8) Classroom uses for Google+

Webinar recording: Get the hang of a Google hangout (27/11/2013)

What is a Google hangout?

Google+ is Google's new social networking tool. I have only just discovered its amazing potential since attending the Google Teacher Academy in New York in October. Google has put a lot of funding into developing Google+ and they are committed to making it work well for education, so it will just get better and better I am sure. Once you have created a circle of friends in Google+ you can choose to hang out with them on Google+. This allows you to video chat, IM chat, watch YouTube videos together, and more.

Summary of benefits
Google Hangouts are part of Google+, Google's new free social networking tool. On a Hangout 10 people (possible 15 on Google Apps) can:
*video chat
*IM (instant message) chat
*watch YouTube videos together
*collaborate on a Google Doc
*use a whiteboard collaboratively
*add effects for fun
*record the Hangout directly on YouTube
*live stream for more viewers
*A minimum of two people
*and more…

A Slideshare showing the steps
This slideshare was used in the SchoolNet webinar of the same name and shows the steps in creating a hangout.

Get the hang of a Google+ hangout from Fiona Beal

Webinar recording:
Last week SchoolNet had a webinar whih was presented by me (Fiona Beal) on 'Get the hang of a Google Hangout'. Here is the recording. 
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p6kgz1ndmhz/ (22 mins)

Ideas for using a hangout in the the classroom
• Read a story
• Bring in an expert/guest speaker/author|
• Share from a Slideshare
• Homework tutoring
• Professional Development meeting
• Work on a project together
• Virtual penpals
• Global classroom discussions
• Career Day wit panelists
• Attend other hangouts (Google has a whole library of hangouts)
• Extended discussion on a class topic
• Subject-related hangouts
• Conduct workshops and seminars

Additional reading and viewing
a) A tutorial 
Please note that Google updates its products continually so some features in this video might look different.



b) Further Reading
*How to use Google Hangouts 
*How to Use Google+ Hangouts for Teaching
*How to create a Google event

Webinars - a great tool for professional development

webinarsSubmitted by Fiona Beal

SchoolNet is planning to introduce regular webinars for educators in the areas of technology integration and good classroom practice. I am in the process of contacting South African educators that I know of who have expertise in certain fields to see if they would be willing to share their expertise and host a webinar somewhere along the line. But what about you? To start off we will confine this to SchoolNet Premium members. If you are a SchoolNet Premium member and you have something you would like to share that could benefit us all, please let me know. Initially the time span will be 45 minutes with another 10-15 minutes for interaction...and we'll take it from there!

30 tools in 50 minutes

But now. let me talk about a webinar I listened to last night. It was wonderful. It was given by Steven Anderson  Web20 classroom fame. I was keen to hear what he had to say about 30 tools in 50 minutes. Educators LOVE knowing about resources so the session was packed with people from all over the globe. (By the way the webinar was presented by Simple K12).

He divided his favourite tools into 6 categories. I liked his emphasis to start with. It is not about tools. The focus in any lesson should be on the content and good curriculum delivery.  The tools certainly spice things up and catch the learners' attention. It's a case of 'Right tool, right time, right job, right people'.

Images

1) Compufight.com searches Flickr for images with the Creative Commons License.
2) Flickr.com for storing, looking for and sharing pictures.

3) Aviary.com is a free Google very-easy-to-use photo editing site

4) Piknik.com is another great photo editing site

5) Big Huge Labs.com to create varied fun photo items

OK, so I have tried Big Huge Labs and have created a mosaic and here it is!

What I love about using these free tools in the classroom is that the learners can go home and try them out there.

Audio and video

Vocaroo.com is a very simple audio recording site. Great for sending a simple message to your students.

Screenr.com is a simple, free easy 5 minute screencasting site - you can recap a way to do a Maths problem for example.

Jing.com Also for screencasting but can do a bit more than screenr

Skype.com for free computer ro computer calling. You can do screen sharing as well. What about getting authors to come in on Skype and say something about their book?

Voki.com sends a message. Use for introductions, instructions etc.

Collaboration

1) Linoit is a corkboard brainstorming tool

2) PBWorks and Wikispaces for wiki collaboration

3) Ning a great collaboration site but no longer free

4) Googledocs amazing for sharing - 100 can work on the same document

5) Google Forms are very useful

Chat and backchannel

1) TodaysMeet is a really useful classroom tool. Very popular at conferences.

2) Tiny chat.com for video chatting

Presentation tools

1) Creative commons.org has a great search feature on site

2) Sliderocket.com has amazing, professional presentation templates and tools. You can also set up collaborators.

3) Prezi.com for different kinds of presentations

4) Livebinders.com is a three ring binder on the web.

Mindmapping

1) Mindmeister.com a free web-based mindmapping tool, very simple to use and exportable.

2) Bubble.us.com is also a web-based mindmapping tool with less options than Mindmeister. Easy to use.

3) Lovely charts.com a bit more difficult with lots of icons

4) Popplet.com is also a great mindmapping tool

Essential tools

1) Embedit.in can embed s nearly everything into a blog or website

2) Zamzar.com converts one file type into another one

3) Twitter.com is a must for every educator. 140 character microblogging tool. 

4) Readit later.com keeps track of information - anything you don't have time to read right now you just click.
5) Diigo.com allows you to keep bookmarks and also share your bookmarks. You can also automtically save them to delicious another bookmarking service.

6) Google calendar keeps you updated amd you can share shedules.

That's just a quick overview of a few useful tools. I wonder what you would add to this list? Please feel free to add some suggestions in the comment box. It would also be great to hear how these can be used in lessons.  It would also be useful to hear what the problems are in using Web 2.0 tools in your classroom.