Second Life and Real Life

There has been quite a discussion in the Blogmeister forums about Imageshowing images of children on class blogs. The debate goes on about whether or not we should post children’s photos. I think it is great that we in NZ aren’t that paranoid as to believe that everyone is a potential child molester stalking class websites for victims but with this Reasonably Clever website you can create your own avatar out of lego and put that on your blog instead. I know a couple of boys in my class that will love a go at this! Here is my creation.

At the same website they combine lego with Comic Life and make clever cartoons. Kids would enjoy that as well.

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Talking of other lives- Scrumples Schnyder, Jojash McMillan and Pippi Ballinger met up on the roof of the Bloggers Cafe in Second Life. I took a screen shot while we were sitting round the campfire chatting. Jojash is really good at it and she teleported me there in a flash and gave me a blogger’s T-Shirt. Over the last few days I have been tweeting a lot with Twitter as well- username AllanahK. Sherryl hinted that Twitter might be a fun thing to try. Another means of communicating with like minded individuals via the internet. I can even tweet through my cell phone and receive tweets via txt like Dave Warlick does!

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And now to real life…

Through Twitter Jason Hando from Macarthur Anglican School in north Sydney put out a call for educators from around the globe to discuss their experiences using Web2.0 tools.The call was taken up by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Jen Wagner and my good self. I was aware I was boxing above my weight but am always up for new learning with others around the globe. These opportunities always present opportunities for me to learn as well as share.

Jason made a wiki to co-ordinate the venture. The concept was a fun one- that of speed dating!!! The idea was that participants would have 15 minutes to speak with each of the experts via Skype and then move on. Sheryl, Jen and Jen’s cat, Mac were on one computer and I had to hold the fort on the other. Scary stuff. I can really recommend you listen to Sheryl and Jen’s podcast which is much more eloquent that mine but here is the link anyway! Allanah’s chat with Sydney teachers.

Skitch- fast and fun image sharing

Now this is really cool. A few days ago I came across the demo version of Skitch. I emailed them and asked for a limited edition download. They emailed me back and said that when my turn came up they would let me know and I could try the demo. Then today Ewan McIntosh had five demos to give away- first in, first served. I was fifth!

Life is not a race to be first finishedI can recommend this really cool Mac Tool. It comes from the same people who made Comic Life so you know how good it will be.

Watch the intro video to see just how cool it is! You can…

  • Snap a website
  • Screenshot an application
  • iSight snap yourself
  • Quickly sketch an idea
  • Tap into your iPhoto Library
  • Re-open images from your Skitch History

Say it…

  • Annotate with circles and gorgeous arrows
  • Add text that always stands out
  • Scribble and jot… it’s automatically smoothed
  • Re-size and crop by simply dragging a corner
  • Drag the file to wherever you like, no need to save
  • Return to what you were doing — in seconds — not minutes!
  • Paste your mySkitch link into any web-page, forum or chat.

Uploaded with Skitch!

ULearn07

I just got this email in from ULearn07 organising committee. I really lashed out this year and volunteered to facilitate a couple of sessions and was accepted for both.

The ULearn07 Conference programme committee are pleased to inform you that your workshop/presentations entitled “Getting connected globally with podcasting” and “Adding bling to your blog” have been accepted.

Details such as room and breakout allocations will be available on the Ulearn website under the presenters tab www.ulearn.org.nz within the next two weeks.

I am looking forward to flying up to Auckland in the school holidays (3-5 October) with other members of our Waimea-South ICT cluster to the conference at the Skytower and hearing Ewan McIntosh keynoting F2F. It will be a shame that I won’t be getting paid to be there though. I am the taking ten weeks of Term Three as leave without pay to care for my mum who has just last week been diagnosed as having Parkinson’s Disease. As I am not getting paid for the pupil contact time I am also not getting paid for the non-pupil contact time! Mum is booked to be our cluster mascot at the conference but we will have to see how it goes. We spent this morning having ultra-sound and ECG scans at the hospital. Again where would we be without the use of technology- we were lucky enough to get the brand new ultra-sound machine that played Star Wars like lazar sounds as it captured frames! Mum was unimpressed- I thought it was very cool!

Being the  digital native that Marc Prensky thinks I’m not the internet has been a vast pool of information about Parkinson’s Disease, its symptoms, diagnosis and treatments. Knowing what we are up against is better than not knowing- and ‘just in time’ learning is what was needed.

With ten weeks to craft my presentations I am sure they will be just fab (Paul Harrington). Looking forward to networking with y’all (David Warlick) if you can make it.

Mediasnackers Podcasts

When trolling the internet I came across this Mediasnackers website with a series of very interesting ten minute podcasts from Wales I believe. My eye was immediately caught by podcast #88- an interview with ImageSir Ken Robinson. I have long been a fan of Sir Ken Robinson but there is plenty more of great listening here as well, focussed on creativity and youth using and creating technology in the 21st century-

Some names I know and some new ones to explore.

Embedding audio in your Blogger blog

Download Cross Country Podcast

First of all this only really works if you convert your enhanced podcasts or audio files to .mp3 files which is fine if you are OK with only listening to audio but I prefer to look and listen but there you go. Blogger is working on embedding video from within Blogger which is really cool as well.

To make the files in the first place you can use Garageband, Audacity, Audio Hijacker, Skype’s Call Recorder or whatever.

You then need to have your files hosted somewhere on line like File Den or Ripway or your own website I suppose.

Get the file location URL that will look a little like this…

Now copy and paste this into your new post surrounded by the code in red.

<embed src=”http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/7/2/1233706/COUNTRY.mp3″ autostart=”false” loop=”false” controls=”console” height=”62″ width=”144″></embed>

Voki- a talking widget for your blog


This is a cool wee Voki gadget that you can add to your blog that lets you speak when you are too shy to stand in front of the camera or if you’re too poor to have a camera in your computer. For some reason it won’t embed in Edublogs 🙁 so I have to link it my class blog to view- just click on the photo!)

I found this through Welsh blogger Paul Harrington linking to foreign language learning blogger Joe Dale who linked to French learning site of Nodehill Middle School, Newport, Isle of Wight. We are all interconnected on the web. What do you think?