In classrooms where the collection of data can be the basis of authentic learning experiences, Google Spreadsheets offers a variety of useful survey and live data collection tools.
This Google Map collates the favourite suburbs of the anyone in Australia - please add your data to the form below and then click refresh. This sort of real world data could be used by a town planner to gather evidence of preference amongst a demographic. This document is published on the web. The document is viewable here. Please add your data to the form below then click refresh to see you data mashed into the spreadsheet above.
This is an example of surveying participants using a Google Docs Spreadsheet to generate a form that gathers and displays GeoData in a spreadsheet live.
TokBox is a flash and browser based video chat tool that can be embedded in your website for free. To get started, the teacher needs to register, although users you want to video chat with don’t have to be registered. No other downloading is necessary. As more notebooks come with inbuilt webcams these flash based video chat engines will be come more commonly used. I highly recommend these amazing notebooks that have had in-built webcams for a couple of years
Wouldn’t this be great for students in different schools talking to each other about an open-ended learning task posted in the blog? Or for inviting an ‘expert’ to talk about the textual content of a post. I like how this tool promises to facilitate live communication but in the context of the content of a blog post. If you see me online, want to discuss this tool’s possibilities - feel free to initiate a video chat.
Adding video from flash based websites can be a useful way for teachers of keeping the content and focus on the page in which it is embedded. Edublogs supports many URLs that can quickly added to provide interesting starting points for discussion in the blogs comments.
The video above was designed to show teachers how to connect their classrooms to the world of information. Visit http://theconnectedclassroom.wikispaces.com/ to participate in the conversation or add your ideas.
The director of Edublogs James Farmer details the process behind adding a web video to a post in the 3rd minute of this screencast.
If you are interested in my usual opinionated diatribe on social constructivist use of the internet - my main blog is here.
This Edublog is intended to be a sandpit in which I throw together a mash-up of the embeddable web into a free Edublog without breaking it. It is a proof of concept - a free personal learning environment (PLE) can be built that includes video chat, blogging, folksonomy, instant messaging, tagging, social bookmarking, text-to-speech, RSS, XML, embeddable flash learning objects, podcasts, wiki, video chat, conversation, privacy and many other nifty flexible learning tools.
As we try to develop personal learning environments (PLEs) to help bring curriculum to 21C learners the open-source web is moving fast through the scalaeability of flexible mash-up structures - this blog demonstrates that any teacher can build a powerful PLE for free from the open-source web.
Any kid worth their Wii will tell you the same - "teh internet is my PLE dummy!" It's not about control it's about being flexible enough to be part of the conversation.
