Oh oh! We’re embedding the web again! Teachers can use SlideShare to upload their PowerPoint, Keynote or PDF slideshows. You can do so with ease using the kml insert shown in the tutorial that will soon appear here……. SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing slideshows on the web and allows for greater collaboration around these works-of-art <sic> after they have been presented. Sound recordings in mp3 can be attached to the presentations for greater immersion. When I get a moment I would like to do that for this one here too.
Empowering Inquiry Based Learning with Web2.0 Mash-Ups
‘Web 2.0′ and the new models of communication and research that it enables means teachers and students can embed and automate the inquiry based learning process. Instant messaging, blogging, podcasting, Skype, wikis, RSS are but some tools available in the ‘participatory social web’ that allow students to become knowledge creators and teachers to become facilitators. And the impact that this has on education could be enormous.
Using Meebo I’m experimenting with the possibility of deploying a chat room within a blog post. I’ve set one up on a separate page here as an anywhere/anytime access tool. The permalink is at the top of the banner menu.
The pedagogical uses of this tool is immediately apparent. I’ve used them in workshops for teachers to brainstorm and share ideas quickly. These work well when used together with a strategic open-ended question and added to a mindmap via Inspiration rapid-fire for example.
I’ve used them in workshops for teachers to brainstorm and share ideas quickly. These work well when used together with a strategic open-ended question and added to a mindmap via Inspiration rapid-fire for example.
Thomas L. Friedman, Journalist / Author, Book: “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” [Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux]
Friedman lists ten “flatteners” that have leveled the global playing field:
#1: Collapse of Berlin Wall-11/9: The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold war, it allowed people from other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. (11/09/1989)
#2: Netscape: Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by ‘early adopters and geeks’ to something that made the Internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to eighty-five-year olds. (8/9/1995)
#3: Workflow software: The ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved. Friedman believes these first three forces have become a “crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration.”
#4: Open sourcing: Communities uploading and collaborating on online projects. Examples include open source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon “the most disruptive force of all.”
#5: Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components, with each component performed in most efficient, cost-effective way.
#6: Offshoring: The manufacturing version of outsourcing.
#7: Supply chaining: Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river, and points to Wal-Mart as the best example of a company using technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping.
#8: Insourcing: Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, in which the company’s employees perform services–beyond shipping–for another company. For example, UPS itself repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub, by UPS employees.
#9: In-forming: Google and other search engines are the prime example. “Never before in the history of the planet have so many people-on their own-had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people”, writes Friedman.
#10: “The Steroids”: Personal digital equipment like mobile phones, iPods, personal digital assistants, instant messaging, and voice over IP or VOIP.
In addition to Friedman’s ten flatteners he also offered the concept of the triple convergence which created a new, flatter, global playing field.
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.
