Showing posts with label Tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tools. Show all posts

Monday, January 5, 2009

Tools and Sites I Use--One Year Later

Tools

tools by tashland

Last January I decided to write a post on the tools and sites that I was using on a regular basis.  I thought it would be interesting to do another list this year and see what changes, if any, there are.  The tools that I use daily have a star next to them, all the other tools I use at least on a weekly basis.  In no particular order they are:

  • Twitter* (microblogging tool)

  • TwitterFox* (Twitter client)

  • iGoogle* (customizable homepage with different feeds--I have Google Reader, calendar, Gmail, news, weather etc)

  • Google Docs*

  • Google Reader*

  • Google Calendar*

  • Edublogs

  • GMail*

  • Firefox* (web browser)

  • Flock (Firefox based web browser)

  • Delicious* (social bookmarking site)

  • Google Chat

  • Skype

  • MS Outlook (only because it is the mail program at work)

  • MS Word (for work documents)

  • iPhoto

  • Flickr

  • coComment*

  • co.mments

  • Blogger

  • Facebook (once I started using Flock I found I used Facebook more because of its built in Facebook client)

  • WetPaint

  • Wikispaces

  • YouTube

  • Google Search*

  • Elluminate Live

  • Wikipedia

  • WebCT/Blackboard

  • MS FrontPage (for work)


No doubt I've missed a few tools.  Compared to last year's list I've noticed the following:

  • Twitter is now on my list.

  • This year's list is way longer; 29 entries as opposed to 13, with 19 brand new entries.

  • 3 entries from last year didn't make this year's list: Google Notebook, Moodle, and Google Video.  Since I started using Delicious I found that I dropped Google Notebook.  I still use Notebook occasionally, but definitely not on a weekly basis.  Moodle was on my list last year because I was part of a pilot project with Open School BC using Moodle for some of our courses.  The pilot project ended in June '08 and so too my moodling.  My colleague and I are going to lobby the powers that be to allow us to use the Moodle server that they already have up and running, but just for in house use (ie not for students to access via the web).  Google Video, just kinda faded out for me.  Not sure why.

  • Wikipedia was the only wiki on my list last year.


So, I've done a lot more exploring and added a bunch more tools and sites to my toolbelt.  But hey, they're still just tools.  I could have five great hammers, but if I never used them, or had no skill with them, then so what.  It's not the tools per say, it's what you do with them.

Are you gobsmacked that one of your fave tools is not on my list?  Curious about a tool that I've mentioned?  Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Living Life On-line

The other day I was talking to a colleague who was bemoaning the fact that her computer crashed on her. It was report card time and she couldn't access her marks program, lost all her bookmarks, and needed to get/find the disks for her software. It made me think about how much of what I do is stored on-line. Bookmarks, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, e-mail; all on-line. Marks are on the district server (which I can access via the 'net.) For me that leaves my photos, videos and music which are not on-line.

How much of your computing is on-line? Are you up in the clouds, on terra firma, or somewhere in between?

head in the clouds

Photo by puja Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Thursday, June 5, 2008

My Quest to Kill Fewer People at My Presentations.

Earlier this week my colleague, Jodie Reeder, and I held a transition meeting for the students who will be entering grade 8 at our school next year. Our school is a little different as it is a distributed learning school--think correspondence/home schooling but within the public school system. We offer K-12 with an elementary (K-7) section and a high school (8-12) section. We've found that our students often have difficulty with the jump from grade 7 to grade 8, thus the transition meeting. This post isn't so much about the meeting, as the process of putting together the presentation--without any needless PowerPoint deaths...

My Well of Inspiration


Jodie and I spent a lot of time considering what we wanted to convey at the meeting; then it was my job to put together the presentation. Well, lately I've been trying to learn how to put together a really good presentation, or at the very least one that doesn't end up with me had up on charges of 'Death by PowerPoint'.

I've watched the very helpful and humorous video by Alvin Trusty How to Create a Great PowerPoint Without Breaking the Law. I've been to a number of presentations on the brain and learning where the key ideas were that images and (limited) text produce the most learning. I've also been influenced by Dean Shareski and his quest to help people improve their PowerPoint presentations and to make them bullet free :-) (just type in PowerPoint in the search box on Dean's blog and you'll find a wealth of resources on putting together a better presentation). Some other places of inspiration have been ZaidLearn's Is PowerPoint Evil? and Presentation Zen's Brain Rules for PowerPoint and Keynote Presenters.

Armed with the brilliant insights from these sources I set to work. And a lot of work it was! How to say what I wanted to with limited text?! How to find the images I needed (without breaking the law)?

Thank You Flickr and FireFox/Flock!


I've been using Flickr more and more lately for images for my blog and for presentations. I do creative commons searches with keywords for the types of images I'm looking for. It can be time consuming, but also very interesting. Not everyone tags their photos the same way that I would!

Helping in my Flickr search was a Firefox short cut that I'd read about. I forgot to bookmark the original post where I learned about this shortcut (dumb, dumb, dumb!) This blog post by Ted Carnahan, though, explains how you can use an interesting feature of Firefox bookmarks to help simplify searches you regularly perform on sites like Flickr, YouTube and a host of others. The long and the short of it is that now if I want to search Flickr using Firefox (or Flock) I can just type fcc and a space and then the term I want to search in the address window of my browser and bingo! I have my personalized search of Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licensed photos. Yippee! Want a photo of an apple--I'll just type "fcc apple" and viola--lots of photos that have been tagged with apple. I didn't have to be in Flickr already, pretty neat.

So You Couldn't Make it to the Presentation--No Problemo!


It took me a lot of time to build the presentation, but I knew that if I did a good enough job I could use it again next year and I could post it on the school website for those folks that missed out. (One student missed it because she wasn't told--apparently me speaking to her personally by phone and confirming her e-mail address and then sending the info didn't count...) The problem is that if you follow one of the great pieces of advice on doing really good presentations--limit your text--it doesn't come across very well on the web. Out of context, the wonderfully apt images may not make sense and your meaning is lost.

Slidecasting to the Rescue!


There is a way to produce a presentation that works live and on the web. It does take a little more work, but so would producing two entirely different presentations, no? SlideShare allows you to synch audio with your slide presentation to produce a slidecast. I've posted on how to do this here. Basically, I narrated the slides using Audacity (a free cross platform sound editor), uploaded my presentation to SlideShare, uploaded my audio (mp3) to a podcast site (in my case Internet Archive), then on SlideShare I linked the project to the URL for my audio, and then used SlideShare's slidecast editor to synch the audio with the slides. OK, so that's a lot of steps, but it sounds more onerous that it was, really.

Without Further Ado...


So, after all that build up I don't really want to post the presentation. I can promise you that it will not go viral. But it is what it is and if you're interested in seeing a slidecast, why not this one? If you are interested in how to prepare high schoolers and their parents for the world of distributed learning, check it out. If you'd just like to answer the question "why does she have a photo of bran muffins in a transition presentation?" then this is the slidecast for you! If you can't view the embedded slidecast in your reader, then here's the link. You can make the slide cast full screen and you can press the arrows to jump ahead in the show, if for example you are only watching to answer the burning muffin question ;-)


Your Turn


I've never podcasted before, so yes, I need to get a better mike.  If you podcast, perhaps you could let me know what some good (and free) sites are for hosting podcasts/mp3s.  I have used Internet Archive a few times, but I'm willing to try others.

What are your favourite presentation tools and/or resources?  Do you find slidecasts a useful way to get information?  Do you or would you consider slidecasting?

Suggestions on how to improve my presentation skills are also welcomed.

Thanks for reading, and if you watched my slidecast, double thanks!

Post Script


As far as I know, no one has died as a result of watching the above presentation.  I will keep you updated if this information changes.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Enough Text Already!

Give me pictures! Give me audio! Video would be great too!

Day 26


The task for Day 26 of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to investigate using multimedia for a richer commenting experience. I decided to follow Kevin's lead and try out Sketchcast. I had bookmarked Sketchcast a few months ago and this seemed like a good time to try it. Here are my reflections on how the 31 Day Challenge has impacted my blogging world (here's the link if your reader doesn't show the embedded Sketchcast below).


I have seen the use of multimedia in the comment section of blogs before.  Some will allow video, like this example from Dean Shareski on using Riffly.  Other folks, like Jeff Utecht, provide for webcam or audio commenting.  I've posted before on video use in blog posts and comments here; basically I find that I enjoy short, get to know the blogger videos.  Otherwise I generally prefer text as I can scan, re-read, and focus in depth on the parts of the message that interest me.  I think that talking head videos do not add a lot to the message; although you do get a better sense of what the blogger is like, which can strengthen your sense of connection with that person.

Why Sketchcast?


I haven't explored Sketchcast that much, but one of its strengths is that it allows you to illustrate your points, not just explain them verbally.

You Have The Final Word...


What do you think about using other media for comments?  Perhaps you'd like to leave your comment as a Sketchcast, or a VoiceThread, or a podcast...  I don't have any fancy media plugins for my comments, but you could do what I did on Kevin's post; I made my Sketchcast, then left a link to it in the comment section of Kevin's post.  I look forward to hearing from you in whatever you see fit!  You could cheat, like I did, and use your comment for the basis of your post for Day 26...

Sunday, April 13, 2008

How Do You Get Your Google Glow On?

My colleague, Jodie, and I got an e-mail the other day from the organizers of the Virtual School Society's Annual Spring Conference saying that they did have room for us after all to give our presentation Get Your Google Glow On and could we still do it? Even though the conference is next week (not a lot of prep time), Jodie and I are good sports and said yes.


Image: google_logo by keso

Nervous About the Presentation
Yes, I've been teaching for awhile now, but for some reason I'm more comfortable talking to an auditorium of high school kids than I am speaking to a group of my peers. Added to that, the last time I did a presentation at a conference was when I was wrapping up my MSc in Biology about 13 years ago; hopefully distance learning educators are less ruthless than grad students and post-docs who are trying to make a name for themselves!

Collaboration & Communication
Jodie and I are presenting on some of the many on-line tools that Google offers. We're highlighting Google Notebook, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. The presentation is aimed at beginners who have not used these tools before. We're planning on focusing on how these tools can allow for increased collaboration and better communication.

How We Use The Tools
Since September we've been using Google Calendar to post relevant due dates, exam dates etc. We created a separate calendar for each grade and students can subscribe to their calendar or just view them on our website (see the grade 9 calendar here). I teach at a distributed learning school where many of our students are working asynchronously. The calendar 'deadlines' have been very helpful to let students know if they are on track to finishing their courses on time.

Jodie and I use Notebook to book mark sites we want to show the students in a particular unit. We've just been working on a series of lessons on hatching duck eggs; Jodie set up a notebook and shared it with me so that I could add links as well. I also use Notebook to organize the links for my Elluminate Live! sessions.

As for Google Docs, I've been preparing my Elluminate Live! lesson presentations using the Presentation tool. To demonstrate how to solve Applications of Math 10 questions I set up a spreadsheet in Google Docs and walked a student through the process on-line. We're also starting to get students to collaborate with each other using the Documents software.

How Do You Use These Google Tools?
Do you use any of these three Google tools with students or colleagues? If so, would you be willing to share how they have been effective for you? If so I'd love to hear from you!

Post Script
I'm posting this using the Blog Posting option in Flock. I'm curious as to how this will work out as I'm new to using Flock.

Added after posting--The Flock upload worked fairly well, except that none of my font formats were uploaded (italics and bold).

Blogged with the Flock Browser



Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Look Ma, I'm on TV!

Fatty watching himself on TVLately I've been thinking about the following question; if I'm a visual learner, why do I have trouble with video? In the past month or so I've run into a lot more video on blogs. I'm not referring to people embedding YouTube videos or TED Talks. More and more people are including video entries and comments. Though I'm a visual learner, I'm finding that for a lot of content I'd rather text over video.

Here are some of the different uses of video I've seen on blogs (sans TED Talks and other formal presentations).

1. Video Comments: Not so long ago, Dean Shareski posted on Riffly, which allows people to leave video comments on your blog. It was neat to see and hear the people commenting, especially when they were people I've been reading on a regular basis. However, a number of commenters noted the downsides of video comments. In reply to Dean's post Sue Waters said, "it takes longer for you to take in the information from the spoken text because you can scan read with text" and Clay Burrel offered, "I’d rather have auto-transcription of voice-recognized audio. Who wants to have to watch a whole video comment to discover it wasn’t worth seeing? Or at least give us the fast-forward option."

Dean Shareski replied with, "I wonder if people had difficulty with the telephone when it was first introduced? Along with the cost, were there similar issues we now face with talking heads?" and later, "I wonder if many miscommunications I’ve seen on blog posts could have been cleared up had they used video." Dean's last point really resonates with me. I'm often putting in smiley faces to temper what I've written so that it doesn't come across as being too harsh. Others have 'LOL'-itis, presumabley for the same reason.

2. Video Posts: In March Stephen Downes did a follow-up post in video format (approx 16 minutes long) on his views on homeschooling. Some of Downes' views on homeschooling are seen as quite controversial. However, a number of the comments on this post mentioned the difficulties with the video format. For example, part of Jeremy Hiebert's response to the video was, "A spirited, reasoned response. I'll have to stew on it for a while, and maybe watch again before going too deep on a response. If you have your notes in digital form, would you mind posting them here as well? I think it's harder for me to follow and process the sequential nature of video." And from Dana Hanley, "Anyway, I'll respond in more depth tonight. Responding to video is a little more difficult.."

Charles Nelson posted a reply to Downes, and over half of what he wrote was about Downes' use of video: "his [Stephen Downes'] video made it clear to me that when using tools, we need to consider what they have to offer, how they can add to our message, and what we lose when using them." Nelson goes on to provide a good analysis of why he thought Downes' post failed and ends with, "This time requirement of viewing and understanding videos means that if they are to be used, they need to offer something that cannot be obtained in print only...". I highly recommend that if you are interested in the use and mis-use of video that you check out Nelson's full post here.

Of course there are others, like Gary Vaynerchuk who do video posts like this and this. I think that Vaynerchuk's video posts are successful in part because they are usually fairly brief (under 2 minutes) and have a single focus. Plus, he is so wired that it makes his message that much more intense.

3. Meet the Blogger: These are short video clips that bloggers post to build a rapport with their readers. An example of this is in Sarah Stewart's blog. She recently experimented with video and I felt like I got to know her a bit better seeing and hearing her. The key here is to keep the clip short. Which brings up another point; I'm a big fan of video skins (if that is the right term), that let you know how long a video is. Sometimes I don't have the time to watch a 15 minute video clip, so it is nice to know before I press play.

Perhaps in the future there will be ways of viewing videos that will allow us to easily scan and move backward and forward through the information. Or video coupled with text transcripts allowing you to scan the text and select the video when you find the part in which you are interested. Until that time, I'm going to have to really assess how I use video and how I ask my students to use video.

Having said all this, below is a brief (12 second) video hello from me. My goal; to create rapport with my readers and further establish my on-line identity. And no, my son never sits still ;-) A big thanks to Sue Waters and The Edublogger on info regarding embedding video on your blog! As a result I was able to modify the YouTube embed so that it did not include related videos, some of which were inappropriate.



What do you think about the use of video in blogs? Do you have some examples of successful video posts or comments? Or video formats that allow you scan, easily move back and forth, and/or bookmark video segments?Image: Fatty Watching Himself on TV by cloudzilla on Flickr. Creative Commons by attribution.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Making Twitter Work For Me

Back in January I wrote about Tools and Sites I Use, and I mentioned that I would like to try Twitter, but I had my concerns (intimidated, worried I'd get sucked into the abyss, etc) After that post Sarah Stewart and I decided to take the plunge. It took me awhile to feel confident enough to tweet, but I did start to get into the groove. Then I just stopped. The problem was I was using Twitter by logging on to the Twitter site. This was cumbersome so I just stopped.

After reading various posts on Twitter (eg here) I realized that I needed a browser extension for Twitter. I knew that Sue Waters uses Snitter, and Clay Burell was a TwitBin guy. I checked both extensions out and decided to go with Twitbin.

I'm now back in my Twitter groove! Twitbin is great! I downloaded the Twitbin extension for Firefox and I now have a cute little Twitbin bookmarklet and it is so easy to get my "live" Twitter window up (see image below). Now I just need to work on building up my network. If your interested in following me on Twitter I'm clthompson; I'd be happy to reciprocate :-)

Twitbin

Friday, March 7, 2008

Experimenting with Lab Reports and VoiceThread

A little while ago I wrote about how I like to try a new tool every week (give or take). After reading a post by Jeff Utecht earlier in the week, VoiceThread rose to the top of my 'Tools To Try' list.

Funky light

Jeff wrote about how a science teacher at his school, Carol Jordan, had her grade 9 students report the results of their science experiments. Instead of the usual formal lab report document, the students either created a YouTube video or a VoiceThread. I have been thinking about having students do lab reports in a different format so it was a very timely post for me! In his post, Jeff has lots of examples of both types of lab 'reports' which was incredibly useful to see what the students produced.

Last night I had insomnia, which was the perfect opportunity for me to try out VoiceThread! (With a 4 and a 6 year old where else do you find the time?!) I signed up for an account and created the following VoiceThread which provides information on how to navigate my blog. Lately I've had trouble embedding items in this blog, so first here's the link and now the embedded file: [kml_flashembed movie="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=76592 " width="480" height="360" wmode="transparent" /]

VoiceThread allows you to upload a variety of files; video, photos, documents etc. You can then comment using audio or video. In true web 2.0 fashion it also allows others to comment on your work, so feel free to comment away on my VoiceThread.

I did have a few technical difficulties with VoiceThread--the program wouldn't let me edit at times and I somehow ended up with a lot of scribbles on one of my slides--but all in all it was very straight forward. I could see students being able to figure it out and being able to start creating pretty quickly. Unlike SlideShare's slidecasting, which I posted on here, you record the audio directly on the VoiceThread site. With SlideShare you must produce your audio on your computer, host it on a podcast host, then link your slide show to the podcast host. So a bit more set-up is definitely required with SlideShare. SlideShare slidecasts do have a more professional feel to them, but VoiceThread allows for more interactivity.

VoiceThread also offers EdVoiceThread.com, with is designed for use by teachers and students. It is designed as a safe environment for students to create and comment on each other's work. They are obviously trying to address the security concerns that some schools and districts have with social networking type sites.

In summary, I think that VoiceThread is a pretty user friendly tool, and I don't think it would take much to get the students used to it and using it.

Image: Funky Light by Gaetan Lee

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Adventures in Slidecasting

There are so many web 2.0 tools, that it really is hard to keep up. In an effort to expand my web 2.0 horizons, I've attempted to try at least one new tool per week. I note which tools are receiving a lot of buzz or look really powerful and they end up on my informal list.

The latest tool that I've tried is SlideShare's slidecasting. I've seen quite a number of straight slide shows on SlideShare, but it was only recently that I played a slidecast. What is a slidecast? A slidecast is when your slides are synched to audio. It has the power of video, but is much simpler to make and the visual quality is excellent! In addition when you are watching the slidecast you can skip ahead to the slide you're interested in and the audio is still synched. At the bottom of the slidecast you can see how much audio goes with each slide.

To learn how to make your own slidecast, check out Jonathan Boutelle's slidecast. In addition to Jonathan's info, the following might help. To make your slidecast, you upload your slides to SlideShare and your audio to a podcasting host. In Slideshare you provide the url for your audio. One of the things that I found difficult was locating the url for my mp3 file. I still don't know how to find the url for the audio I uploaded to Gcast. I eventually loaded my mp3 file to Internet Archive. When you click on your audio file in Internet Archive you get a screen that looks like the image below. I've indicated in the image where you find out the url for your mp3 file.

Internet Archive

I decided to make my first slidecast using a Google Docs presentation I did for my Science 9 on-line class. It is on cell division. The slides were not geared to slidecasting, and have far more text than is necessary. I've never podcasted before, so there are definite problems with the audio--it is very quiet and there are no intros, outros or music of any kind. In the spirit of sharing though (see Shareski--Lesson #1 Share), here's my slidecast, warts and all.

[slideshare id=276642&doc=copy-of-sci-feb-20-1203656309380038-3&w=425]

SlideShare | View | Upload your own

In case the embedded slidecast doesn't work, here's the link.

One way to use slidecasting would be to prepare mini-lessons that can be posted on-line for students to access on an as needed basis. They could also come in handy on those days you require a substitute teacher :-) People can comment on slidecasts that you post to SlideShare. If students did projects involving slidecasting, their peers could view and leave comments. I could see using this to get students to make their own slidecasts to explain concepts.

I'm excited about slidecasting because it is relatively straightforward to produce, it has the power of video, the image quality is great, and all the tools are free! If you haven't tried it before, give it a look-see and maybe you'll add it to your list of tools to try.

Friday, January 18, 2008

I'm on Twitter

After my last post I got a bit of ribbing from Sue Waters, and encouragement from Sarah Stewart re: Twitter. Sue, a confessed Twitter addict, thought it was funny that Sarah and I were scared of Twitter. Not ones to be laughed at, Sarah and I decided to take the plunge together. Feel free to check out Sarah and my Twitter profiles.Free Bird

So, after a few days of Twittering, I have to say I can really see the power of the site. Post a question, and within a very short time someone's gotten back to you with some good information. You read a great new blog post, Twitter it, and now your 'followers' are onto it too. Cool! It is not as intensive as I thought it would be, mind you I have a teensy network. You really can just be a fly on the wall and participate when and if you fell like it.

My challenge right now is to build up my network. If you (or someone you know) are new to Twitter and trying to build up a network, let's reciprocate--you follow me and I'll follow you ;-)

Image: Free Bird by Southern Pixel

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Tools and Sites I Use List

Following Will Richardson's lead (and therefore TechCrunch's) I thought I would make a list of the Tools and Sites I currently use on a regular basis. Like Will, I'm just going to include those I use at least once a week, and I'll star the ones I use on a daily basis.

  • Google Search* (just discovered the 'define' feature--it's wonderful. In your search type "define:"and then a word and you'll get definitions from multiple websites)

  • Google Video* (less porn/questionable material than YouTube)

  • Google Notebook*

  • Google Calendar*

  • Edublogs*

  • Moodle*

  • Firefox* (I just love the tabs and that it is open source and not a Microsoft product :-p It blows Safari out of the water too.)

  • YouTube*

  • Google Reader*

  • Elluminate Live! (I teach in a DL program, so I end up tutoring over the phone quite a bit. Now, if a student has a math problem we usually just go into Elluminate and use the whiteboard--it's great. Better yet, it is available to all public school teachers in BC through a provincial license.)

  • Wikipedia

  • iGoogle* (I have Gsearch, Gmail, Gcalender, Greader, plus news and weather all in one handy place)

  • WebCT/Blackboard


List

It will be interesting to see how much this list changes in a year from now. Nine of the items on my list I was not using at all as of five months ago. Five of the items are from Google. Forgot YouTube, that's six. I sure hope that Google uses its awesome power for good and not evil, as they sure must know a lot about me!

Now here's my list of tools/sites that I would either like to start using or use more frequently. The ones I haven't tried sound really good, but I just haven't found the time to check them out. OK, I'll admit it; I'm actually scared of trying Twitter.

  • Twitter (not sure I get it, worried that it will suck me into the abyss)

  • Ustream (all this time I thought folks were talking about 'United Streaming' which I have found to be pretty ho-hum. Ustream--whole different thing.)

  • Del.icio.us

  • Flickr (I have an account, just haven't put the time into seeing how to make optimal use of it.)


Site that went from 'Cool' to 'Ho-Hum'; Facebook. When I first signed up it lived up to its 'Crackbook' nick name. But now I hardly ever check it out. Maybe I'm too old for Facebook?

Any tools/site you couldn't live without? I'd love to hear about them!

*List photo by nocos

Monday, December 31, 2007

Tools Are Important (but they're still just tools)

In April the VSS 2008 Annual Spring Conference - Learning: Anyone, Anytime, AnywhereVSS conference is happening in Vancouver and I was pumped about a session that I wanted to do with my colleague, Jodie. I went to the conference last year for the first time and I found it to be wonderful Pro-D and a great networking opportunity.

What Jodie and I wanted to present on were a bunch of cool Google applications that we stumbled upon this summer during our self-directed Pro-D. One of them, Google Docs, is a great little fairly basic on-line word processing tool. What makes it impressive is that multiple users can work on the same document at the same time and go back and view edits that have been made. It could be a very useful tool if you have students collaborating together on a project, or if you are collaborating with a peer (as Jodie and I have done).Google

We also discovered Google Calendar, which we have used with great success. You can do a whole lot of cool things with Google Calendar such as allowing others to subscribe to your calendar or you can post your calendar(s) to web pages. For example, check out the calendar on our grade 10 web page. We have been using the calendars to post deadlines and other important dates. Students and their parents have been finding the calendars quite useful. After these two great finds, I decided to check out More Google Products. From here I discovered Google Notebook, Blogger, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Reader, and much more.

So, basking in our Google Glow, Jodie and I thought we should definitely present on this at the VSS conference. But now I'm having second thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I love these Google apps. I use Notebook everyday, I have almost committed to switching all of my personal e-mail over to Gmail, I rely on Google Calendar (for school and home), the first thing I look at when I log onto iGoogle is Google Reader, and I entered the blogosphere using Blogger. (Wow, I hadn't realized how thoroughly entrenched I have become in using all things Google until just now!) So here's the thing; they're just tools. And there are other tools out there that do similar things. I don't know if I should be giving a presentation on tools. Especially since that's what it will be, a presentation. Not a hands on workshop. Just me and Jodie telling and showing. I have no doubt that people would come to a presentation on these particular tools, but how much of an impact will we make?

I'd still like to present at the VSS conference. And it is a Google tool that will be the inspiration (not quite the right term) for my presentation. What I'd like to present on is blogging. Not on how to get your students to blog--I haven't done that yet. No, on blogging as being central to an educator's professional development. I only really started blogging at the end of November, 2007. In the period of just over one month I've been exposed to so many fabulous ideas that have really impacted me as an educator. I'd like to expose the blogless to the thrills of conversing in the blogosphere.

What do you think; Blogging as a key part of an educator's pro-d, or should I just stick with the tool talk?