Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Do the Mash: Mixing Tools to Create a Custom Cloud-Based Learning Tool

These are my notes from Stephen Best‘s presentation, “Do the Mash: Mixing Tools to Create a Custom Cloud-Based Learning Tool” at the “Teaching and Learning in the Cloud Conference” in Holland, Michigan on 21 Oct 2010. MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. All of Stephen’s resources are listed on his conference session page. THIS IS A GOOD SET OF TOOL LINKS.

We are going to use the analogy of a “pizza” to discuss these tools.

Think of these first tools as the crust:

General Publishing Tools:
http://www.google.com/ig
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://edu.glogster.com/
http://edublogs.org/
http://blogger.com
https://sites.google.com/
http://wordpress.com
http://moodle.com

After we get our base (bread and dough) then we cut and paste stuff to put in/on it. No one wants to eat pizza that doesn’t have anything on it! That’s called bread, not pizza.

I THINK THIS ANALOGY IS GOOD.

Presentation Tools:
http://prezi.com
http://slideshare.net
http://280slides.com
http://sliderocket.com
http://docs.google.com

SlideShare is the only site I’ve found to date which lets us users upload Keynote presentations. Free version of SlideShare is limited to 100 MB total. (I AM THINKING YOU GET 100 MB PER PRESO?)

I LIKE HOW THE DEMO OF PREZI HE IS USING IS SET UP AS A WHEEL:

Prezi Demo by Stephen Best

Sliderocket also permits live presentations, like for a webinar. (I NEED TO GIVE THIS A TRY!)

Next set of tools are video tools:

Media Sharing Tools – Video
http://youtube.com
http://vimeo.com
http://www.teachertube.com/
http://kaltura.org
http://screenr.com/
http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
http://screencast-o-matic.com/
http://www.podesk.com/

I THINK PODESK LOOKS GREAT! SIMILAR TO PODCAST PRODUCER BUT FOR VIDEO, AND THE APP DOES ENCODING! CROSS PLATFORM TOO! WOULD BE GOOD FOR HOME GROWN VIDEO LECTURECASTS, LIKE I AM DOING WITH AUDIO LECTURECASTS THIS YEAR!

Pro version of Screencast-o-matic let’s you record and publish up to an hour each, $9 per year

When you consider using free tools, ask yourself if that company is going to stay around for the long term.

Photo sharing sites:
http://flickr.com
http://smugmug.com
http://www.aviary.com/

STEPHEN’S EXPLANATION DURING THE SESSION OF CREATIVE COMMONS IMAGES ON FLICKR CONTAINED AN INACCURACY. HE SAID ALL FLICKR CC IMAGES CANNOT BE USED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES. THAT IS NOT TRUE FOR FLICKR CC ATTRIBUTION ONLY IMAGES. THEY CAN BE USED COMMERCIALLY WITH ATTRIBUTION.

Aviary Hall of Fame has great gallery of images
– free Google Apps add-on for Aviary is available (plug in)

Documents and Other Resources
http://scribd.com
http://issuu.com
http://www.docshare.com/

Scribd documents are searchable in their embedded form.

Other Apps to Share:

http://cloudapp.com/ is great for transferring large files, there is no size restriction.

http://www.imaginationcubed.com/ is a great site for creative drawing online. (MUST BE ALL FLASH BASED, NO ALT HTML5 VERSION IS AVAILABLE ON THE iPAD.)

YouTube is the most used search tool now for our students doing their homework. It is THE best site of all these sites. And it is blocked in 90% of our schools.

MORE REASONS TO ADVOCATE FOR BALANCED CONTENT FILTERING IN SCHOOLS!

http://bigbluebutton.org/

BigBlueButton is an open source project that is built on over fourteen open source components to create an integrated web conferencing system that runs on mac, unix, or PC computers. In the true sense of open source, we invite you to try out and participate in our project.

More on Stephen’s website!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Comments

One response to “Do the Mash: Mixing Tools to Create a Custom Cloud-Based Learning Tool”

  1. Brooke Avatar
    Brooke

    Hi! My name is Brooke and I am in Dr. Strange’s EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. I will be looking at some of your post over the next two weeks and commenting on them. Then after the two weeks I will be summarizing your post and my opinions onto my blog for other classmates to view. You can view my blog at http://broadusbrookeedm310.blogspot.com/.

    I enjoyed reading your post “Do the Mash: Mixing Tools to Create a Custom Cloud-Based Learning Tool.” I am new to a lot of the websites I have been learning about in my EDM class; blogging has been on of them! Your post gives lots of helpful websites that can be useful both inside and outside of the classroom. Some of the websites I am familiar with like Google, you tube, flickr, and Google docs. Many of them on the other hand I am not familiar with. I am looking forward to viewing some of the listed websites to learn more about technology and what all is offered that can be used to help create cloud based learning tools. I believe that creating this type of learning environment for students will keep students interested in learning what is being taught! Thanks for sharing this post and websites with us!