It fits well inside Blogger. A bonus is that as it embeds you can chose to only have the audio play when you click on the little speaker icon. That’s great ‘cos I find it irritating to have audio play on a blog when it hasn’t been asked so the audio doesn’t come to you uninvited. The only downside I can see is that comments go live immediately. For school I would like to see some form of comment moderation or at least notification of new comments but I don’t think it would be a huge problem.

For next year I thought it would be fun to take a photo everyday- children could add a photo highlight a day and we could grow our portfolio over the year embedded in our blog.

Give it a whirl and create one of your own!

Click on the graphic to view the video with TeacherTube.

Angela from CORE asked me to do a write up for it for the Time4Celebration theme so I had to make up a scholarly dissertation on why I did it but it was really just a bit of fun. Here is the blurb I wrote for @Ageja

• Purpose – The project started out as a bit of fun- it ended up that way too. We thought we would make a collaborative video in a similar style to the http://wherethehellismatt.com video that is wildly popular on You Tube. By having a collaborative dance video we were able to transcend cultural and language barriers as everyone loves to move and dance- it is pretty universal.

• Process –I wanted the video to have an element of New Zealand wide participation but also wanted to include our global audience so I blogged about it on my education blog and on Twitter I also mentioned it when I was moderating the K12OnLine conference These avenues ensured that we got more than just New Zealand videos and added a little cultural diversity.

• I asked that people email their videos to my little used gmail address so as to keep my main email spam free in case it got picked up by a spammer. I had a bit of trouble converting some of the videos as they came from various operating systems and in a variety of formats so I had to use a couple of online video converters and my clever Adobe Flash Video Encoder . I learnt new stuff cos I had to grab a couple of videos from people’s Blogger or Flickr accounts and turn them into movie files on my Apple. I used Orbit Downloader and it was fortunate that I had Parallels on my Mac so I could change the format using the free PC Format Factory to convert the Flash files into something that I could easily edit.

• I used iMovie06 to create the final video as I haven’t got the hang of iMovie08 yet. I then exported it as a Quicktime movie file for uploading into ‘the cloud’. Along the way I either stripped away the original soundtrack or lowered the volume so that a universal sound track from FreePlay Music could go over the whole set to tie the thing together. I also added subtitles so people would know where in the world the videos came from.

• The finished the movie was uploaded to Fileden here so that people could download the 24MB file and save it without having to worry about buffering or viewing on possibly blocked YouTube or Flickr sites. I also uploaded it to Teacher Tube that was less likely to be blocked and YouTube so that kids could actually find it for themselves. In this way people could either view it directly with streaming video or download the higher resolution video if they wanted to to play it back for whole class viewing.

• Product – People were asked to send in up to 20 seconds of video so I could put it together with the final cut off date 7 November- giving people plenty of time to organize themselves. The quality of the resolution of the video varied quite a bit as some teachers did not have access to digital video recorders but all videos were included in the spirit of global collaboration.

• Reflection – It would be great to do a similar kind of thing again as it was so much fun to see what others had come up with and didn’t take very long to complete. It just needed someone with a bit of time on their hands to act as a hub for everyone to send their videos in to. Kids seem to have got into the spirit of it and look forward to seeing the finished published product.

Thank you so much to all the contributers and their classes from around New Zealand, Canada, Bangkok, the United Kingdom, @fionagrant, @charbeck, @kathycassidy, @lisibo, @efreeman, @nzchrissy, @keamac, @teachernz, @leannehough, @lenva, @jaminlietze, @njt24 and to the hundreds of kids and their teachers who enjoy a sense of fun and adventure who like to participate in a community wider than their classroom walls.

You rock!

New lesson for me- Flickr videos are only 1min 30seconds. I will have to cut it up. That’s a pity though so I suggest if you want good quality you go to the Fileden link and download the whole movie in Quicktime – 24MB

Then you can share that document with others just as you might do in Google Docs. But here’s the really cool thing you can do as well. On the far right hand side of the screen you can see the icon- MEET. Thought I would give it a try and find out who I might meet.

Turns out it takes you to Adobe ConnectNow- through which I can share my desktop with others. OK this looks fun but I need someone to share with. Enter Skype and Twitter. Raewyn from school was on Skype and I sent out a general Tweet asking if anyone wanted a little playtime! Colin Warren a educational tertiary level blogger from from Geelong, Australia, answered my call. Together we played and found out pretty much how to work the screen sharing application by talking about it with Skype and sharing the iSite video. The screen capture is of how it looked from my end as Colin opened up his desktop for us to look at. Through this medium we shared photos and movies directly from my desktop.

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I liked the interface and it all worked smoothly after we had played about for a bit trying to get the sound working. We nearly had to resort to using the HELP tab but resisted the temptation.

It is great to have a PLN that is so wiling to try new things and learn with each other across the globe.

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article that you can download as pdf.

Life is not a race to be first finished pdf

To see what it looks like click on the above link or the graphic. Great if you’re not fond of reading on line. A thought ran through my mind as I re-read the newspaper- without this blog I would not have the motivation to write at all- and I have written and shared quite a bit over time!

And then to finish off I uploaded it to Issuu an on line publisher to give a cool little page turny look to the whole thing. To see it in a better size click on OPEN PUBLICATION.

It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do but I keep getting sidetracked by new finds and interesting conversations. The school holidays are great.

The writing of my first cluster milestone is starting to weigh heavily on my mind. I suppose its a bit like writing school reports- a necessary evil.

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I thought the cloud generated by my tweets was interesting. I highlighted some of the most often used words- they emit a sense of what I want my interactions with my on-line network to be like so I am quite pleased.

Thanks to Paul Harrington et al for this little quest. Questionaut is a fun quest as it attempts to get your brain to think logically and go exploring! At first play I found it rather frustrating until I realised that there was a rhyme and reason to it all. There are eight levels in the quest and at the end of each level you get asked a variety of science, maths or English questions.

For example in this level you have to put an icicle in the test tube, open the box of matches, open the LPG gas, strike the match, light the burner and turn the gas up to boil the melted icicle which forces steam onto the fan, which lifts the plug hole to let a wee man out to ask the five questions which you have to answer correctly to fill the fuel to get you on to the next challenge.

I mentioned Twitter in conversation- not really meaning to go into it but got asked about it and found it hard to explain without a demonstration so put out a quick tweet asking for a hello. Within seconds I had received tweets from Brisbane, Sydney, Shanghai, Washington, Vancouver Island, Regina, Winnipeg and Wellington! Awesome stuff guys. Thank you.

On another Twitter related moment. Last night I got an iChat request- did I know how to get rid of the outside link you get when you upload a Powerpoint to Slideshare? No I didn’t!

I posted a Tweet asking for help. Simplyarun from Slideshare caught the tweet and gave me a hand to look good! He posted a fix for the problem within minutes. Awesome stuff, Slideshare. Well done.

This photo is a mash-up of our collaboration between Paul Harrington’s class in Wales and my own Moturoa class at Appleby. Over the year we had been building links between our classes- so much so that  children felt a personal connection with Paul and his class. The children were familiar with each other via our blog posts, podcasts and Skype conversations. The connection became face to face when Dino and his  family spent time in Paul’s class while on a family holiday in the UK. We came in to school late at night so we could talk to Dino and his  Welsh buddies directly via Skype video. The virtual friendships become real.

The photo credit from the Welsh end of the conversation goes to the Times Educational Supplement that did an article on how classrooms use Skype to link up globally.

3 Simple Meme Rules:

• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter.

So here is my challenge to you to do the same…

Sarne’s View- @sarnee

Widgets and Wikis- @Keamac

Thinking Past the Square- @heymilly

I am in a bit of a blogging frenzy at the moment but couldn’t resist sharing this great find from Andrew Churches of Educational Origami fame. The Historic Tale Construction Kit is an on line storytelling site that is just so easy to use and I could imagine it hooking some kids into wanting to write a whole series of slides, developing character and plot along the way. Cheers Andrew.

I am most honoured and humbled to be invited into such an austere community and hope that my contributions have proved to be worthwhile. As the first round draws to a close I would hope that some of those connections made can continue from outside of that Ning.

Because our school holidays were on I was able to join in a couple of Elluminate sessions with the cohort. It was great to be able to participate live in rich conversations about harnessing the power of the connections made on the web to create a Personal Learning Network.

In this introductory video Will talks about how we might build these networks, how they might look, the transformative nature of a PLN and how we might help children navigate their own networks safely, ethically and effectively.

I am so looking forward to facilitating the 14 schools in the Discover IT Tasman ICT cluster throughout 2008 achieve just those sort of connections. In case you haven’t heard via Twitter I have taken leave from Appleby School for 2008 and will work as a roaming ICT facilitator based in Motueka.

What a wonderful opportunity for me learn and make a whole lot of new face to face connections and develop that sort of network with students and teachers so close to home.

Exciting times are ahead.

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The idea is that each user decides on an instrument- strings, drums or piano and we all get together to play on a large chord grid. You can chat while you are doing it and give each other prompts and maybe orchestrate your contributions. When I first toyed making music there were about eight of use all banging away- a cacophony!

I gave it a rest and came back later when only Assaf and I were playing. It was almost a conversation of music as we communicated only through the keyboard. Magic really.

Have a listen! For those interested I used Audio Hi-jacker to record the audio.

assaff-and-i.mp3

I quite like it in a soft sort of sweet way!

My first is of Tiny Ted the small geocache bear sent to us from Paul Harrington in Wales. I staged this photo down at Nelson’s Tahunanui Beach- so typical of the NZ summer. Paul and Tiny Ted were the springboard from which we forged links between our classes. Children could so relate to him and he became an integral part of our day. We miss him as he is now with April Chamberlain in USA.

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My second photo is of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and I as she visited Nelson for the TUANZ conference. I am indebted to Sheryl for her friendship, openness and how she took me under wing to mentor my entrance in to the Web2.0 educators’ learning network.

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My third photo was one I shared with Sheryl as Queen Elizabeth visited the College of William and Mary where Sheryl works. The photo tells the story of how I met Her Majesty when she visited Nelson when I was a ten year old. Sheryl posted it to her Flickr account and invited people to share in my 50th birthday celebrations. That photo garnered 36 global comments. Click on it to see the story in note form. I was in awe and it showed me the power of networking.

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My fourth is of a group of children in my class collaborating on a wiki and learning together oblivious of the camera- the way learning in the 21st century should be.

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My fifth is a photo taken by Jane Nicholls at ULearn07 with a group of New Zealand edubloggers and Ewan himself. It was a great learning experience when virtual friends became real life ones. Click on the photo to see who’s who!

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My last is one of Mum and I taken recently. Mum and I have been through a difficult time with her diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease but I still appreciate the time we still manage to have together.

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I know I can’t count well. Happy New Year to one and all.

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Lisa Parisi, from New York, and I have recently collaborated on a Hemispheres Wiki. Lisa’s class set a couple of questions that could best be answered by people living in the Southern Hemisphere and we set about answering them from our own experiences showing photos and videos of our findings. The seasonal differences were highlighted by our class photos on the ‘about page’. Lisa’s children were standing in their playground surrounded by snow and mine were on the beach.

And just so you know- we found that water in the Southern Hemisphere twirls in an anti-clockwise direction when going down a sink plug hole!

I can’t wait till our next Skype collaboration- maybe with Lisa Parisi from New York as we learn together via our hemispheres wiki to find out about how things work in our different hemispheres.

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After an all day Sunday session at school tidying up for move to another classroom and a new level of children. I felt in need of a little light relief as I had cleared my Bloglines and checked out the tweets and thought I would ‘Google‘ myself. I was amazed that this German blogger had found his/her way to my Teacher tube Video, One Woman’s Wanderings with Web2.o. These links are truly incredible.

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It was also interesting to see just how much of a web presence there was.