Create a site on Page flakes.  It will display the name you enter in, so select carefully.

PageFlakes uses the RSS feeds to send the page to you.  For example, if you want to display all your students’ blog sites, or all of our campus blog sites, you can click the ”Add feed”  button. Paste the URL of the blog’s home page into the box provided.   Click add feed, and then it adds it to the front page of your Page Flakes site.

Then when you go to PageFlakes, you’ll see a display of all the different feeds at once.  It automatically updates them once you go into the site.

You can also add news feeds, podcasts, plus links you use.  To add a link, click “Add Flake” and click on the flake for a favorite/website.  Then paste the link in.

This is an excellent tool for students to use to gather research or to use for yourself to keep up with news articles or blogs.  Come by for a lesson in how to use it!

A blog by definition is a web-log: a site where articles are entered like a journal and displayed for a global audience to post comments about the article. The content stays the same; its just the comments that are added by the audience that add to the page.  A user usually makes a blog to host their own commentary on a particular topic. For example, this blog is only about the Project Technology workshops. I have a completely different blog that is about various technology issues and discussions. Both are commentaries on different topics but I allow anyone to post comments about each of the topics.

A Wiki on the other hand is a site where anyone can edit the content of any article posted. So, instead of me posting an article for someone else to comment on – anyone could change the content of the article or add more information to it. Some wikis require commentors to create an account to make the changes. However, there are many that do not and the articles are freely edited.

The best example of a wiki is Wikipedia – an online encyclopedia of information that is changing every second.

While many feel that this type of tool could be used inappropriately by students; there are many educators out there embracing the use of wikis in the classroom. Below is a list of uses of wikis used in K-12 classrooms as well as many universities:

• Wikis are used to provide space for free writing
• Class topics are debated – including assigned readings
• Classes can share resources for collaborative research
• In group projects, students can keep a journal of the work perfromed by the group
• Collaborative documents such as essays written by an entire class
• Teachers discuss curricular and instructional innovations
• Encourage students to revise Wikipedia pages or to take on a new Wikipedia assignment
• Inspire students to write a Wikibook

If you attend the Project Technology workshop this week, let us know what your comments about it. Let us know if you can/can’t use Wiki’s in your classes.

The free content can be found at Itunes, Yahoo, or http://www.national-geographic.com/podcasts.

Shows include NG News, Afropop Worldwide, and Traveler Magazine’s “50 Walks of a Lifetime”.

Picasa also has a built-in photo editor where you can remove fuzziness, red eye, and even crop pictures. When you have a folder of pics ready for a project you can make a screensaver, create a photo slide show, print your photos at home, send photos to Google Photo to be professionally printed, upload your pics to your Blogger site or to your Personal Google Home page, or you can create a CD of a picture slide show to share with family and friends.

All of this is for free. All of it is extremely easy to use!

Handout from today’s session: Google Earth, Froogle, Picasa Handout

This morning we went to the Nile River, we viewed Westlake from the satelite view, and we went to Area 51. I provided a handout that showed some ways teachers use Google Earth. These inlude measuring distances between places; viewing and zooming to particular places and/or their 3-D buildings on the terrain; Google Tours – which is a picture report created by the Google Global Community of the area. Another interesting thing is the fact that Google allows users to post their own comments about particular areas on the map and to comment on other areas using their free accounts. You could visit Paris, France and post comments to others who visit it online about tips for travel or other things.

With this in mind, some educators in the UK are creating online Google Tours where they are able to store data about their research on their own Google Earth type page you can visit and use in your classes.

I would use Google’s search engine to look for “Google Earth Lessons” to find out how other people are using it. Has anyone out there used it in their class or see a way to use it? Post your ideas here.

Google Earth Document - Click here to download the handout