Learning Curve

straightening the curve

Archive for January, 2009

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Websites I Found Interesting 01/31/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted on on January 31st, 2009 in 21st Century Education | 1 Comment »

Websites I Found Interesting 01/30/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted on on January 30th, 2009 in 21st Century Education | 2 Comments »

Websites I Found Interesting 01/29/2009

  • ScribbleLive | Liveblog live blogging

    This live blogging service might just be even better than CoverItLive. During your event, you can cross-post to your Wordpress Blog, or embed an iFrame into any web page. You can also create customized HTML at the end of your event and paste it into your site. The best thing about our integration is the content lives on YOUR site that can be indexed by all search engines. Has simplified login, has Twitter integration, pagination, and language translation (love this feature). One of the greatest barriers to information on the Internet is language. ScribbleLive alleviates that problem by providing on-the-fly translation into English, Français, Italiano, Deutsch, and Español. That means that someone can be writing in one of a hundred languages and each post is translated instantly before your eyes.

    tags: education, liveblogging, blogging, blog, collaboration, microblogging, scribblelive, web2.0, technology

  • Social Media Classroom

    Welcome to the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory. It’s all free, as in both “freedom of speech” and “almost totally free beer.” We invite you to build on what we’ve started to create more free value. The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools. The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos. The Collaboratory (or Colab), is what we call just the web service part of it. Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMB materials freely, and we host your Colab communities if you don’t want to install your own. (See this for an explanation of who “we” are).

    tags: education, socialmedia, web2.0, Collaboratory, Howard Rheingold, collaboration, Learning2.0, SocialMediaClassroom

  • W3C Semantic Web Activity

    The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF). See also the separate FAQ for further information.

    Posted this link for students who will understand and then explain it to me. Compliments of Vicki Davis.

    tags: education, semanticweb, w3c, semantic, web2.0, web, xml, rdf, semantic_web

  • Vocaroo | Record and send voice emails

    Vocaroo is a shiny new service for sending voice messages across the interwebs. Puts a whole new (and easier) spin on podcasting and voice recording. Found this on Lee Kolbert’s Geeky Momma’s Blog.

    tags: education, audio, voice, tools, recording, web2.0, podcasting, vocaroo, recorder

  • NIBIPEDIA : Together We Learn

    Nibipedia First YouTube Wikipedia Mashup. According to troyapeterson in my PLN, nibistreams are kind of like videowikiblogs without writing. Definite application in math and science.

    tags: education, nibipedia

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted on on January 29th, 2009 in 21st Century Education | 1 Comment »

Students Guest Blogging: Doktor Faust

Cross-posted on Changing Connections and RJS SHS


Dr. Faust from RJ Stangherlin on Vimeo.

Long before anyone was involved in technology integration, long before the herald of 21st century learning and teaching, back in the 20th century, Frau Clauser challenged her students to create German videos. The following post and video was created by 5 very talented students. Since they are guest bloggers, I’ll let them tell their story.

Throughout the year of level three German at Salisbury High School, various authentic German tales and stories are implemented to broaden vocabulary and increase reading comprehension levels. After reading through a story and taking separate tests on vocabulary and content, a video assignment is assigned. This quarter we read the story of Doktor Faust, which was made famous first by Marlowe and then by Goethe. Frau has been assigning German video projects for well over five years. These projects test the creativity as well as the ability of several very different, busy individuals to come together and collaborate. These videos are a good experience to combine not only knowledge of the German language but also skills with technology.

This video of Doctor Faust was created by Todd Anderson, Nick Fisher, Ryan Maron, Chris Costa, and Erin Lobach. The video required over twenty man hours to complete and was a serious test of our skill and patience. We had numerous predetermined filming dates and, like most high school students, we struggled not to procrastinate. We worked tirelessly after school and on the weekends to finish this project. The days usually consisted of going to Todd’s house, planning the day’s filming, organizing costumes, and rehearsing scenes and lines. Rarely did we complete a scene on the first try. In fact, the average line took three to five takes to get right. All these takes caused numerous distractions and many laughs. We did learn from our mistakes and improved upon our shooting techniques. For the trickier scenes, there were hidden scripts the actor was reading from and in one scene the actor was reading off camera. Narration and the Devil’s voice are voice-overs done after editing with the use of a microphone. Editing, this time around, was extremely irksome and time-consuming but the utilization of the program Sony Vegas aided the process and made an amazing final product. The battle scene between the Devil and Doctor Faust was filmed first to guarantee we had ample time to edit in the light sabers (over 1400 had segments had to be drawn in) and other effects. Effect editing took about eighteen total hours, and was done after filming or when the group could not get together to film. We have raised the bar for film making for our fellow class mates and for ourselves. It will be a challenge to outdo ourselves on future videos for German class or any other class.

Click here to read an English translation by Erin Lobach.







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Posted on on January 28th, 2009 in Education | No Comments »

Websites I Found Interesting 01/28/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted on on January 28th, 2009 in 21st Century Education | No Comments »

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