Tuesday, June 9, 2009

To the best of my knowledge I have finished

9:13 Am 10 June 2009  Australian time.

To the best of my knowledge I have finished the School Library Learning 2.0 tutorial. I want to thank Jackie and Connie and all the others I know nothing about for your work on the project...

A big thanks to Jeanne for telling me about it.

It's the first real intellectual challenge I have had since the turn of the century. You are well on the way to developing a working model for online education. With a few tweaks here and there it would make a required course of study at college or university. In addition other units can be modeled after it. I think you have a real winner.

George


#23 Week 9:


Summarize your thoughts about this program.

At last just about finished! Just this and the end of unit survey to complete and I can get stuck into something else.

First I must say I'm not a librarian' however I did take a few classes when working on my degree in educational media, some 35 or so years ago. I concentrated on the media production and AV side of the library media specialist training. But over the years the little bit of library classes has helped in my research.

I found this program to be exciting and well worth the effort I put into it.

In addition I can see that a lot of time and effort, on the part of the people that put it all together was well worth the time I spent doing it.
I'm envious of those of you who put it together, you had the wonderful tools to do it with the blog, Wiki and all the other tools used to assemble this gem.

When I started on my studies in online education I was limited to working with Golfer, bulletin board's, and email to do all the things you can do now with such ease. When the web browser cane along I thought I had died and went to heaven.
Well I think I have said enough about how great you efforts have been an pass on some of the things need to be looked into.

When I started I ran into a number of glitches that may be due to the browser I'm using. It may be worth a note; if you are using version 8 of Internet Explorer you may have problems with cookies not being excepted from some of the sites and you may need to adjust the settings on your browser to allow for the acceptance of cookies. See Week 5 for what to do about it.

There are also a number of dead links in the week 9 things. Not sure if it is the code or if the sites have moved or been taken down.

Some of the things need just a little more how to do it. Perhaps a help file Or Q &A to help out the people that lack experience working with some of the tools.

I found the blog layout would get a bit boring. It works well for people that have not done any web development and there is nothing wrong with the WYSIWYG. It certainly makes it easer for people to get their ideas into print so to speak. I found some simple HTML tags that work well in the blog, perhaps a thing on using some HTML to dress up the blog would be worth addinga, “If you want to experiment with HTML”, to the things.

And to bring things to the end I must say CONGRATULATIONS to the teem that developed this package I know a lot of hard work went into it.

I looked over the questionnaire but didn't fill it out as I didn't fit into the target group. An old classmate from my college days suggested I try it on for size that I would like it. Well she was right I did like it and hope I can contribute to in in some way. To sum it up in one word FANTASTIC

Pick out your own description from below:


194 words for "fantastic": Barmecidal, Barmecide, Gothic, absurd, adroit, airy, alien, antic, appalling, apparent, apparitional, arbitrary, astonishing, autistic, balmy, baroque, beguiling, bewildering, beyond belief, bizarre, brain-born, capricious, chimeric, chimerical, clever, cockamamie, concocted, conspicuous, cooked-up, cracking, cranky, crazy, crotchety, deceptive, delusional, delusionary, delusive, delusory, dereistic, dream-built, dreamlike, dreamy, eccentric, egregious, enigmatic, erratic, erroneous, exceptional, exotic, extraordinary, extravagant, fabricated, fabulous, fallacious, false, fancied, fanciful, fancy-born, fancy-built, fancy-woven, fantasied, fantasque, fascinating, fictional, fictitious, fictive, figmental, flaky, florid, foolish, forged, formidable, freakish, great, grotesque, harebrained, hatched, high-flown, humorsome, illusional, illusionary, illusive, illusory, imaginary, imagined, implausible, impossible, incomprehensible, inconceivable, incredible, ingenious, insane, invented, irrational, kinky, laughable, legendary, loony, ludicrous, made-up, maggoty, manufactured, marked, marvelous, massive, miraculous, misleading, monstrous, monumental, moody, mortal, motiveless, mythical, nonsensical, notable, noteworthy, noticeable, notional, odd, of mark, ostensible, outlandish, outrageous, outre, outstanding, overwhelming, passing strange, peculiar, petulant, phantasmagoric, phantasmal, phantom, phenomenal, poppycockish, preposterous, prodigious, put-up, puzzling, quaint, queer, quirky, rare, remarkable, ridiculous, rococo, seeming, self-deceptive, self-deluding, sensational, signal, silly, singular, specious, spectacular, spectral, splendid, strange, striking, stupendous, superior, supposititious, temperamental, terrific, towering, tremendous, trumped-up, unaccountable, unactual, unbelievable, uncommon, unearthly, unexpected, unfounded, unheard-of, unimaginable, unique, unlikely, unprecedented, unreal, unrealistic, unreasonable, unrestrained, unsubstantial, vagarious, vagrant, visionary, wacky, wanton, wayward, weird, whimsical, wild, wonderful, wondrous


George

#20, 21 & 22 Week 9:


Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio

#20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and sharevideos.

I viewed the Videos:

Introducing the Book
Web 2.0
Library 2.0 Manifesto
March of the Librarians
Jack O'Connell Goes Back to School

Loved them! Great little send up on the help desk.

By chance a few days ago I came across the following video clip and It upset me to no end. How can the police manage to get away with this kind of thing. It shows me that there is still a long way to go before things like I viewed in this clip come to an end.


Once again its a person of color that is beaten and for what we may never know. The man made on hostel moves I could see from the tape and what could he have said to cause that kind of a reaction from a police officer.

What the strange thing is, why would a police officer care weather the man's jacked was zipped or not. Who knows perhaps its breaking the law for a black man to be on the street without zipping up his jacket.

What ever the the reason nothing can justify that attack and arrest of that man.I find that I'm torn on weather I like or dislike YouTube. On the plus side a number of very informative clips manage to find there way into the light of day that might never have made it due to government censorship or some other means of cover up.

On the down side the stupid thing some people do for there five minutes of fame only to encourage others to to the same only to be one up on the other.

Woooooohh!!! there lad Don't get carried away move on to the next 'thing”. Your nearing the end of the tutorial.

As for potential there are certainly a large number of items on YouTube that are worth having in a library blog.

Now for inserting the video into your Blog there is an adjustment you will need to make so that the window will fit into the column of your blog. The with of the column is 420 pixels wide.

The Windows from YouTube vary in width. The original size of the one I inserted into this column looked like this: [object width="560" height="340] To adjust it to fit into the column it was necessary to change the width and hight to; [object width="420" height="261].

NOTE: there two places in the code that need to be changed to work properly.

#21 Podcasts (You don’t need an iPod!)

Problems here most of the links were dead or web pages missing. Can't seem to make any working connections to your recommended links.

Not having sucsess I goggled “podcast” and found a collection at podcast.com. Click on the buttons below to visit a collection of educational podcast and view a podcast on An Introduction to Project Learning



#22 eBooks and Audio eBooks

What can I say? Not being a Librarian I didn't have a clue that any collection of this extent existed, simply for the band width required to download it. What a wonderful collection. I can see that I will be reading and collecting a library I never dreamed I could have to treasure.

I have included links below to eBook sites so that any one reading this Blog will also have the opportunity to take advantage of the collections of clasic books.






Monday, June 8, 2009

#18 & 19 Week 8



#18 Online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.

All I can say is that its amazing the change that has come about in the last few years with regards to Online productivity tools.

As a matter of fact I ran a goggle on “web-based productivity applications” And a very long list of applications and information was generated. Many of them are free and for that reason you must but up with some inconvenience of having advertising distracting you from what your doing... But then it is free!

Secondly I look at the online versions and find them satisfactory for learning about the different office applications. However, I would be very reluctant to put any sensitive information on them. The major drawback to the online applications is that you must be able to go online to take advantage of all that is available.

That brings us back around to stand alone free and inexpensive software to do the same thing off line.

Goggle “ free and inexpensive” and and find curriculum materials as well as software and hardware.

When you Goggle “free and inexpensive software” again there is a very long list of goodies. Do take care some of the items are download for free and you may get the first year free but after that you will start receiving accounts for the annual subscription.

I have started a document on Goggle doc to collaborate with others working on a project . We have not got down to the nitty gritty as yet but I can see the defent advantage of using it to develope
I think that just about winds it up for this 'thing' so I can move on to the next.

#19 The Library Thing

I think this is a great tool! As my collection grows I'll add my new books it to my List. This could also be used as a reference list for publication of conference papers etc. Added my five bucks. Had to scrounge around to find what I have and managed to find five of them.

If you click the button below it will take you to my Library Thing.



Not much of a list at this point, only a few survived a large number of moves.



Been there and done that. Sadly I have but one book in my collection. With all the moving around I have done in my life I have but one book that I treasure and have managed to keep.

It looks like a good place to find books of interest for those wanting to add to their library. A excellent source for librarians wanting to find Books reviewed by their peers and not a publisher just selling books.

I have joined The Library Thing And registered “The Indian Tipi: It's History, Construction, and Use”.



I used this book to construct my tipi when living in Colorado before to coming to Australia. I wish I had been able to bring it with me but it would have been hard to get 18 lodge poles into my bags an on the plane.

I used the book once again when at The Tasmanian State Instate of Technology to supervise the School of Art Students project on American Indian Art.

On the left is the photo of the tipi I built when in Colorado.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

#16 & 17 Week 7

Another new experience went to the Wikis and opened my account.

Not to sure as to how I feel about the Wikis just yet the one I set up seems to be a bit buggy had some problems setting up my profile. Going to see if I can find some tutorial on setting them up.

Found a help file on the Wiki but its not much help the help file said to create a new page go to the side bar but cant even find the side bar.

Tried to find a help file but the help file was no help at all. I gave up on that Wiki account and went back to Goggle and found another one called WetPaint. Just click on the button to take you my Wiki Home Page Reawara Research and Development.




On my Wiki you will also find a more detailed Profile about me and where I have been for the last 70 some years.

I recommend that when you set-up your Wiki you Goggle “educational wikis”.

There is one drawback to the Wiki that it has advertising in it but it's free! If you want to remove the adverts you have to buy a membership.

Here is another HTML tag you can use on your blog to link to another source.

If you would like to put a link button on your blog pages this is best done with a small form tag As follows:

<FORM ACTION="The URL" METHOD=GET>
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Text on button">
</FORM></plaintext>

Having looked at the Wikis listed in the tutorial I do believe that they can be a wonderful tool for interaction in an educational stetting. The WetPaint Wiki Has many good features and allows for a multimedia approach for the pretension of learning tutorials.

#17

I Visited the California Curriculum Connections wiki and posted the following comment.

My initial experience with the Wikis was not a good one. Some how I found a wiki that did not work well and had many problems with it. I wasted a lot of time trying to make it work and just had to give up on it. From there I did a goggle for educational wikis and found a suitable one. When starting out with little or no knowledge about a web tool its important that the participant has a satisfactory experience or they may just through in the towel, walk away from the tutorial and not finish it.

I would suggest that a list of some simple, easy to develop, wikis should be placed into the tutorials so that the first experience is a positive one. From there they can goggle for others that may better fit the subject they want to develop if none of the listed ones are satisfactory

When looking over the number of people starting the Tutorial and the ones finishing It would appear that there is some reason why they dropped out. There is a survey at the end of the tutorial for those that finish but what about the ones that don't get that far?

Perhaps if there was a link in each of the 'things' that linked to a, (Please tell us why you are not able to complete the tutorial) survey, as to why you did not complete the tutorial.

This would alert you to problems that may not be obvious but are a stumbling block for some. From my experience from doing the tutorial so far, (I'm a few years behind In the Technology) I was getting frustrated in some of the 'things' and had I been a little less determined to complete the tutorial I could have easy tossed it in.

George

Saturday, June 6, 2009

#15 Week 6 The Horizons Report


To comment on The Horizon Report at this time would not be complete as Just to see what the past reports were about I goggled it and found a total of eight reports one of them an Australian New Zealand report.

The report start in 2004 and at this writing there are two 2009 reports. It would appear I have some home work to do before I make any comments on the project at all.

I will comment to making my observations on the Report at a latter date.

I have added the links to the reports to this posting for those of you that have not been aware that there were more then the one report.

With the links supplied you can read the reports on line or download the PDF documents to read at your leasure.

About the graphics on the right of this text:

I'm finding there are lots of things that can be added into the blog by using the HTML tags.

This time I just went to the web page and opened the page to view the html version of the page. That can be done by going to the View menu and select Source.

That will open a window and you will be able to see the html code. All I did was to find what I wanted and did a copy and paste into the CoffeeCup Free HTML editor And have a play with it until I got it the way I wanted it.

The Window that opens is a read only document but it can be copied. You can't edit the document from there

I have found it a great way to get the address of pictures etc. Always remember to give credit to the source of the item copied or linked.

The thumbnails you see are linked from their server as well as the download links.

I did make an attempt to change the format of the table but could not get it to work for me so I just went with the flow so to speak.

Guess I have spent enough time on this for now!George




Horizon Reports

HRK09cover.gif

Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition pdf.gif
web version

HR09cover.gif

2009 Horizon Report pdf.gif
web version
Japanese version pdf.gif
Spanish version pdf.gif
Catalan version pdf.gif

HR08-anz-cover.gif

2008 Horizon Report Australia-New Zealand Edition pdf.gif
web version

HR08cover.gif

2008 Horizon Report pdf.gif
web version
Spanish version pdf.gif
Catalan version pdf.gif

HR07cover.gif

2007 Horizon Report pdf.gif
web version
Spanish version pdf.gif
Catalan version pdf.gif

HR06cover.gif
2006 Horizon Report pdf.gif

HR05cover.gif
2005 Horizon Report pdf.gif

HR04cover.gif
2004 Horizon Report pdf.gif


Friday, June 5, 2009

File Hosting Servers

File Hosting Servers:

If you Goggle Free File Hosting Servers you will find a number of them listed. Don't just grab the first on that comes along have a look at all the pitfalls that may be hidden along the way. Many of them have tones of advertising pop-ups And as a free user you cant always be sure your files will be there. I you have a large number of files you send out to friends and family you might just want to pay for the service. There are advantages for using the files servers as you will not have to use up your monthly allotment of file up/down load Gb's.

I have uploaded a number of conference papers as am example and for those that are interested in computers in education.

List of Publications Authored and Co-Authored

By George Duckett

From January of 1994 to March of 1997, George Duckett was enrolled in a PhD program at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia. He was working on expanding his PhD. studies started at the University of Tasmania in Launceston, Tasmania Australia. His studies were in a Pre-service Teacher Education Program for Educational Computing. On moving to Deakin, Duckett shifted the emphases of his study from Pre-service education to Teacher Professional Development in Information Technologies. During his studies He attended conferences, presented and submitted papers to Journals. The following are copies of his published work.

The files below are in PDF format and are housed on file hosting server. To view them you can download then by clicking on the link. When the web page appears click on the free user button to download the file

Published Papers:

1995

#13, 14 (Week 6)


#13 Tagging

This has great potential for finding information and being found by others as soon as the glitch in Technorati's server is fixed I will clam the blog and code my postings accordingly. This site makes tagging clear and should be used in the beginning of the tutorial

Del.icio.us

Had a look at Del.icio.us and found it was not something I would use. I did not find the tutorials that useful. The movie clip was out of focus and was very hard to follow. Not enough there to motivate me to use Del.icio.us. However I can see it would be useful in a library for reconditioning books and articles to patrons

#14 Technorati

Registering with Technorati

Description of my blog with a max of 250

Re-inspired to contribute to Educational Research and Development of online educational material using the Blog. Working in collaboration With educators and industry to develop online or classroom learning/training units of study.


Tags for my blog
education
computer
school+library+lairing+2.0
research
pyramid
George+E+Duckett
in-service
pre service
online+computer+education
Delivering+Professional+Development
Online+Instruction
instructional+model
online+tutorial
professional+development
Instructional+design
Photo+Essay

A choice of the following buttons for my blog

Add to Technorati Favorites

Add to Technorati Favorites

Add to Technorati Favorites

My Bio. and Interests for my blog with a max of 250 characters

Bored with retirement I have been re-inspired by an old classmate to contribute, to Educational Research and Development of online educational material, in collaboration With educators and industry to develop online learning/training units of study.


George

Thursday, June 4, 2009

#11 & 12 (WEEK 5) Play around

Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list

Looking at the Seomoz.org Web 2.0 Awards shows an amazing number of online tools for just about anything you want to do.

At the moment I'm very interested into Collaborative Writing and Word Processing as a priority. Taking a look at Google Docs and White board. They look like the best bet for some of the activities I'm hoping to become involved in. All I need now is to find some one to try it out with. If any of you out there are users of the fore mentioned applications drop me a line and we can give it a try.

There's not a lot to say about any of the applications other then to say I am using Flickr and Picnik to store and edit photos for downloading to The blog etc.

The Rollyo

The Rollyo looks like a great tool that enables you to home in on specific sites to search their data bases. The application allows a link to your personal search engine to be placed onto your browser tool bar for easy access.

The interface is a little confusing after you have installed it into your browser. Clicking on the icon takes you to a starter page ,then you need to scroll down to find the links to your Rollyo home page.

It take a bit of playing around to get it set-up but then things seem to work well after you have chosen the sites you want to search.

I have managed to find about 20 sites that store information on my subject matter, computing in education,in-service and pre-service teaching. The nice thing about it is that you can create as many search engines as you like . As you discover new sites to search you can modify your existing engines.

As I work through this tutorial I keep experimenting with different ways to present my work into the Blog. This time I'm writing up this blog entry with my FREE word processing application called OpenOffice. Its compatible with Microsoft Office and other WP applications.

This time I'm trying the export to HTML to paste into My Blog to see how it works.

PS

It works but takes some editing. Once you edit out the unwanted text, the blog editer will help weed out tags that the are not allowed. I will test a few more conversions that may come in handy and save time when you want to post list et.al.

George

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

#10 (WEEK 5) Play around

Play around with online Image Generators

My first try at this didn't work very well, problems with “fd Klickr Toys”, bad connection again. I had to reset the cookie acceptance again to get it to work properly. It might be a good idea to add the trouble shooting hint to that section of the Week 5 Play week as below:

If you have any problems with the “fd Klickr Toys” working properly try this;

Go to Tools Menu /Internet Options/Security tab

Move the slide all the way down and click on Apply.

Go next to the Privacy tab:

Move the slide all the way down and click on Apply.

When you have finished working with Klickr Toys return to the tools menu and click on the default level button.

The applications should work properly after your browser has received the cookie. If not repeat the above trouble shooting fix. Be sure to reset the settings you changed in the Internet Options back to default!


Exercise #10

Play around with with an online Image Generator.

Sample 1 Palette Generator

Creates a harmonious color palette from a photograph. I think its great for picking colours to go with Pictures; a great aid for designing graphics. The only drawback to it is that the swatches are in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format for PhotoShop or compatible applications. To get around this I used HyperSnap to edit it to a JPG file. See My first post, HERE for a link to fhe HyperSnap website.

Sample 2 CD/DVD Cover

Make a personalised cover for a CD or DVD's This toy places a photo on a pattern for a soft cover or cutout the picture and slip in into a jewel case cover. Very handy to have when should you need a temporary cover to protect the disk from scratches. A quick and easy was to present a gift of a home made CD etc.

Sample 3 cube

I liked the cube. Makes a nice little “thingie” to have around the house to display your photos. Or it could be used to play a game of some sort by using pictures of subjects, throw the dice and make up a story about the picture that comes up.

Captioner and Trading Card




Captioner


Trading Card


Love the captioner. That will be so much fun to play with and create some funny photos. The trading card is great as well . Students can use them to make trading cards of themselves to give to their friends.

Other than that there are toys for making ID badges that can come in handy for conferences and meetings to add a touch of class to what often is a BLAH meeting. It's so easy to make the badges etc. on the spot now that we have digital cameras.

Did you Know???

One last thing I have been working on during play time is trying out some different things in the body of the blog. It seems that you can use HTML tags to do a few different things:

Tables
Justify Text
Bring in graphics from other sources than Flickr

Just to mention a few. I'll keep working on it and see what else I cam add to the list.

The source for the HTML code that I'm using is the CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor.

That seems to be one of the latest editors out. Click Here Click Hereto go to the post for the link to CoffeeCup software.

To Justify text use the following Tags

<div align="justify">Put he body of the text here</div>

Monday, June 1, 2009

#8 & #9 Week 4 Learn about RSS feeds etc.


The Cat

Found some interesting news feeds that will fit in very well with the theme of my blog. A number of the feeds have to do with free and inexpensive software and and other technical information that I think may be of value to Libraians and Teachers.

The RSS Feeds are far better than the old news groups as they include graphics that you don't need to download and patch together to see.

Goggle Reader selections:

3d
Blogging
Facebook
Freeware
Open Source
Software
Web-Authoring

Bloglines selections:

BBC News News Front Page World Edition
Bloglines News
Design*Sponge
Dictionary.com
Word of the Day
Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog
GigaOM
librarian.net
Library Stuff
ReadWriteWeb
ResourceShelf
The Shifted Librarian
Silicon Alley Insider
Slashdot
TechCrunch


They are areas I have found to be important in the development of online educational units of study; Important in the sense, due to the cutting of education budgets world wide, to accomplish the development of any educational material, online or hard copy classroom aids. By saving money in this way it will give more to areas that need more funds.

Just for fun the other day I Googled myself to see what was left of my presence on the net. To my surprise I found an old paper that I co-authored with Professor Valdemar W. Setzer in 1994. He has republished it with additions.

I have been told that there are many of you interested in gaming so I have put a link to “THE RISKS TO CHILDREN USING ELECTRONIC GAMES” below.

Click here to view the paper

Click here to view his web site

I think that brings this part of the SLL 2.0 to an end.

George