I want to share a video put together by one of the teachers who was enrolled in our course.  Myriah relates her personal journey in overcoming some of her learning challenges.  I find the arrogant ignorance of some of Myriah’s college teachers appalling.  How do you respond?

Celebrating Diversity from myriahmichaux on Vimeo.

It is paramount that teachers recognize and remember that most of their students do not learn in the same ways that they themselves learn. Simply trying harder doesn’t work if you learn differently!

I’m especially pleased when I discover new resources that put multiple means of representation together in one place!  Here’s one that gathers text, images, and videos into one place.  Of course, you can add an audio version of the text as well, with one of many readily available text-to-speech options.

Navify is a service that combines Wikipedia articles with related videos from Youtube and online images.  So, when a topic is entered into the search bar, it brings up the pertinent Wikipedia article along with videos and images on the same subject.  With the multiple means of representation offered, there is a far greater chance of engaging a wider range of learners.

The first screen shot below shows the Wikipedia article that opens when ‘tiger’ is typed into the search box.  You can see the tabs above the article for Images and Videos.  The second screen shot shows what appears when the Images tab is clicked, and the third shows the videos.

It should be noted that it is up to users to select the images and videos that are associated with an article.  For all of the search terms I entered, I was offered an extensive collection of images and videos to choose from.  Since Navify is a relatively new service, there were relatively few videos associated with any of the topics I searched.

Two other features of Navify are also worth mentioning.  The first is that users have the opportunity to comment on topics.  Secondly, related topics are suggested with search results.

The internet provides us with a wonderful vehicle for sharing stories that have potential to encourage and inspire.  Encouragement is priceless, and there’s a growing wealth of it available online–completely free of charge.  Each of us has the opportunity to contribute our own encouraging stories and to pass along  the ones that encourage us.  Here’s the delightful story that Sam passed along.

Of all the social bookmarking services I’ve looked at, I think I like Diigo best. I particularly like the ability to highlight and annotate shared web pages. I’m not yet using Diigo to full advantage, and this post is not really about Diigo.

I want to point out the visual way you can share lists of websites. In special education, we’ve long known that many people with “special needs” require visual supports in order to learn effectively. I believe, however, that most of us learn better when visual supports are available. So, I’m discussing a tool here that may be of value to almost anyone. It’s definitely worth a look.

Webslides is Diigo’s very slick option for creating and sharing sets of bookmarked websites as interactive slideshows. With Diigo, I can organize my bookmarks into lists. Any list can then be shown as a “webslide” presentation.

Each website on a list is represented by the actual page that has been bookmarked. Seeing the page provides far more information than just seeing the website’s address in a list! The slideshow is interactive in that it can be paused and you can go directly to the website via a live link in the bottom left corner of each “slide”. The slideshow can advance automatically, and you choose how long each slide is viewed. Or, you can move through the slideshow manually, and you can also choose to go back to any previous slide.

Clicking the button below will take you to the slideshow of my list of 55 websites that that I think support science curricula. I would appreciate your comments on this format if you check it out. (If you are reading this post in a Reader, you may not see the button . Please click here instead.)

Slideshows of listed websites can be shared in several convenient ways. Each slideshow has its own URL, and that can be shared. A widget, such as the button I’ve used here, can be embedded on a website, wiki, or blog. Or, the slideshow itself can even be embedded, but I found the slideshow too large to embed effectively on this blog. Embedding the full slideshow worked much better on a wider wiki page.

]]> http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2008/05/25/webslides-on-diigo-online-resource/feed/ 9 http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2008/05/21/learnoutloud-online-resource/ http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2008/05/21/learnoutloud-online-resource/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 14:12:40 +0000 Paul Hamilton http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2008/05/21/learnoutloud-online-resource/ I really like the name of the website I’m writing about today. It’s a name that points to the reality that there are multiple ways of learning. For many individuals, it is essential to hear text read aloud, but I’m convinced that all learners benefit when multiple means of accessing information are available.

LearnOutLoud is a website that offers an extensive and eclectic collection of well cataloged audio and video that can be convieniently browsed. You can serch the site by author, title, or category. The main site is commercial, and titles are available to purchase by download or on a variety of physical media (CD, DVD, cassette). Online streaming and podcast subscription are other options that are available from LearnOutLoud.

LearnOutLoud also provides access to a large collection of free audio and video resources, and this is not just an afterthought. As much effort appears to be invested in support of free audio and video as in the money-making side of the venture. The free titles available here go way beyond classic literature in the public domain. Again, the collection is extremely well organized and easy to search.

While LearnOutLoud is a website geared toward adult learners, children have not been left out. There is a sister site called KidsLearnOutloud. Here, you can browse resources by age level. Again there is a subsection of free resources for kids.

The good news is that, with the technology available today, there is a plethora of tools available to provide numerous options for every learner. Because most of the emerging tools are free of monetary cost, because they are readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, and because they are easy to use, there is no excuse for teachers who do not use these tools or make them available to the learners they support.

Flypaper is a versatile presentation tool with an infinite range of potential uses by learners and teachers–to engage, represent, and express. Flypaper is easy to learn and use. It is a downloadable program for the PC, so it can be used off line when an internet connection is unavailable. Still, you can easily share your work online in the Flypaper “community”, or embed it wherever else you want to. Flypaper has made it easy to turn your presentation into a flash file, and you can even upload it directly to Youtube from within the application.

In a Flypaper presentation, you can include virtually anything you choose–text, graphics, audio, video, action buttons, hyperlinks, etc. I particularly like the fact that it is convenient for the presenter to add voice narration. A presentation may be a single page, or it may contain multiple “chapters” with as many pages as you want.

Flypaper encourages you to download “models” created by other users, and to use these models as templates for your own work. Flypaper offers tutorials for new users, as well as user forums. There is also a well organized 114 page user manual in pdf format.

I’ve embedded an example of a Flypaper presentation here that merely hints at the potential of the application.

Animoto Education Program It was love at first sight when I discovered Animoto late last summer, and I’ve had a great deal of fun with it since. I wrote about Animoto back in October, and then in January. The free version of Animoto allows 30-second videos, but after making only a few 30-second creations, I willingly put down the $30 for an “All Access Pass” that allows me to put together and download an unlimited number of “full-length” videos for a period of a year.

Now, teachers are being offered the All Access Pass free of charge, along with the same pass for each class member.

Animoto is an application that allows you to use digital photos to create videos easily and quickly. The shots are “animated” according to the accompanying music that is selected. You can choose from a variety of music tracks built into the program, or you can upload your own sound track. (By uploading your own track, you have the option of including spoken narration.) Finally, if you aren’t satisfied with your movie, you can “re-mix” and create a new and different version with the click of a button.

The potential classroom uses of Animot0 are limited only the imaginations of learners and teachers. Please take a look at Voices of the World, a project where schools from around the world have worked together and used Animoto to share their national anthems. You can also check out an Animoto example, created in the UK by Doug Belshaw to stimulate interest in a secondary school history course.

As an itinerant, I don’t have my own class to work with; but I do present at, or participate in, numerous workshops for adult educators. Sometimes it’s fun to put together an Animoto video to share before the workshop is over. The first embedded example below is from a Linda Burkhart workshop in Vancouver in January. The second example illustrates a personal use of Animoto–to package and share family memories. This one was of a special day we spent recently with our son and grandchildren.

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Loyal subscribers will notice that it’s been a while since my last post. I’m probably more sorry about that than you are. That’s because there is just so much that I’d like to write about! Sometimes, there are neither enough minutes in an hour, nor enough hours in a day. I’m back with one of those resources that has really grabbed my attention because of the potential it offers to all learners. Thanks once again to Molly, everyone’s favourite Demo Girl, for sharing it and for demonstrating what it can do.

Twiddla bills itself as a free “web-based playground” that requires no set up. Twiddla is indeed an online tool that offers a real time collaborative white board where people can work together to accomplish a variety of tasks with all manner of digital media. I think there’s also potential to use Twiddla as a presentation tool, as a study aid, and for creative expression.

For collaboration, Twiddla offers a whiteboard that can be shared by multiple users, as well as built-in audio and/or text chat that allows people to communicate conveniently while working together. In addition to putting whatever you want on the virtual whiteboard to brainstorm, or to create an effective presentation, you have the opportunity to bring web pages into Twiddla and to mark them up. It seems to me that marking up web pages is a terrific study aid for the learner or teacher who is doing or sharing online research.

Twiddla’s user interface is straightforward and extremely easy to use. Molly’s screencast at DemoGirl.com shares some additional features and does an excellent job of showing how it all works. I’ve embedded that here for your convenience. If you want to see a larger version of the screencast, you can do just that by going directly to DemoGirl.com.

In response to my last post, “cerebraloddjobs“–well known to anyone who has ever had reason to go for help to the edublogs.org forums–left a comment with links to an incredibly valuable resource. I want to highlight that resource here so no one misses it. Now that I’ve had some help finding him, I can hardly believe that I haven’t been aware of Gizmo Richards until now. Apparently, there are more than 130,000 regular subscribers who want to know what Gizmo has to say.

Tech Support Alert is a website that deserves to be bookmarked by anyone who ever uses a PC. Gizmo’s site offers a wealth of invaluable information in the form of “how-to” tutorials, independent reviews, incredible lists of the very best available free utility programs, and much more by way of practical tech support.

“The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities” is much more than just a list of terrific freeware utilities. Each program on the list has been thoroughly reviewed and is described in considerable detail. Alternative free programs are compared and contrasted. All information is current and is clearly dated. The list of software has been organized under 46 helpful headings such as “Best Free Web Browser” or “Best Free Digital Photo Organizer”.

In addition to what Gizmo offers on his website, he writes newsletters. Subscribers to the free e-mail newsletter have access to “The Extended List – 71 Additional Best-ever Freebies”.

Freebyte’s Guide to Free Graphics Software offers an extensive collection of links to sites where free graphics-related software is available. This is free software for download and installation on your computer. (The site does not link to online applications.) The majority of programs listed run in Windows, but there are some for Mac and Linux.

The list of programs is organized helpfully by category, as illustrated in the screenshots below. The quality of the listed titles I am already familiar with is generally high, so I expect it will be worthwhile to explore more of the software listed here.