Using Flickr in classroom

Here is my Prezi on how to use flickr creatively in a classroom. I have made some videos to explain my points. I think this presentation is a comprehensive one on the features of flickr which can be used in teaching and encouraging student creativity.

Here is the link : http://prezi.com/n1wfonvuk56i/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Thank you for watching.

End of the course reflections

Reflections

This was a great course for me. I learnt about the names as well as their usefulness for a large number of web 2.0 tools, which, otherwise, was impossible to know about. Also, it was exciting to read the replies by others on my posts as well as on others posts. I think, this is a great feature of the various web 2.0 tools which allows are to perform all types of work, which , earlier, could be done only by installing a software on a computer and that is also often by purchasing the software with a price. Many of the web 2.0 tools are free or at least has a free trial period. For small amount of work for a class or course, it is enough to use the web 2.0 tools to get the task done even with the trial or free version. I think this is revolutionizing the education scenario.

I evaluated

Penzu

Blurb

Coggle

Udemy

Zamzar

I liked exploring all these tools, and also I enjoyed posting and commenting on Voice thread projects of different groups. My most favorite web 2.0 tool is Udemy , it’s a great learning resource and teaching platform for both students and teachers. Especially these days MOOC is becoming an important method of learning and udemy can be a great tool for open platform based online learning.  Anyone can go to Udemy and check for their favorite topics, they have it all (well, almost)!

Another thing, I must mention is that, this class was special, I got a chance to be familiar with the students from medical center too. Like, how they may use the tools in their fields or how they think about the tool and also their comments on posts from their point of view, which was very valuable as I don’t get a chance to interact with people from a complete different field, during a coursework. Often, times I was so impressed by some posts from people from both UH and Med center, I felt like I don’t have any word to comment on those brilliant posts. Also, I would like to mention the valuable comments by the instructors as well as the teaching assistants helped me a lot to improve.

Thank you everyone for making this course so special and enlightening.

Tool review : Zamzar

Zamzar review.

Name of the tool : Zamzar

URL : http://www.zamzar.com/

Primary category for this tool: Productivity

Please describe this tool in your own words :
  
Zamzar is a Web 2.0 tool to convert various file formats to other file formats. It allows to convert the files on a web based platform even without registering or logging in. This is a very useful tool as one do not need to install any software on the computer to use the Zamzar website.


 What do you need to know before using this tool?:
 Users do not need to create an account before using it, however they need to know how to use internet and web browsers and save files.

How do you use this tool? (Write the basic steps using a numbered list):

1. Go to  www.zamzar.com/

 all the other steps are summarized in the following video

 

An example :


Here is the download link after conversion I received from Zamzar

http://www.zamzar.com/getFiles.php?uid=988c93ff35ff5bd996697e2ffadf55d-a8b37792462de1fa&targetID=KWEBPhg_YfzLmqKFtASr3dr8J5NxiMAnb


 Please describe a scenario of how you might use this tool in a teaching environment 

 Very often I have seen that even if I had asked my students to send their online assignments in the MS word format, so that I can grade and comment on the file itself, however, they send the files in PDF format. I can use Zamzar to convert the PDF file to a Word document. Also, I can ask my students to convert any document file into a pdf file format using zamzar.

 
 What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?

It allows both student and teachers to  files for free, hnece they can take advantage of it.


 What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?

 Main disadvantage is  that under the free version, it shows tons of advertises which is quite distracting. Another disadvantage is that zamzar does not support youtube , so downloading and converting youtube videos are not possible with Zamzar.

Udemy review

Udemy review

Name of the tool : Udemy

URL : https://www.udemy.com/

Primary category for this tool: Networking

Please describe this tool in your own words :

Udemy is a platform to learn and teach new skills and topics. One can learn and teach a number of skills and tools from various instructors, both as free and paid courses.

What do you need to know before using this tool?:
Users need to create an account before using it, hence they need to know how to use internet and web browsers.

How do you use this tool? (Write the basic steps using a numbered list):

 Go to https://www.udemy.com/

all the steps are summarized in the following video

 

Please describe a scenario of how you might use this tool in a teaching environment (about 500 words):

  For en example, I may  use this tool to teach students how to use Adobe photoshop lightroom. I think Adove LR is better than Adobe photoshop for photography editing purpose. A lot of people do not know how to use this software. I would like to create materials and video lectures for learners. I would like to keep it free initially. And based on the student responses, I may charge some fees in future, Udemy will allow me to connect to the students.

What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?:

Main advantage is that it is free and   does not require the instructors to be affiliated with an organization unlike Coursera.

What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?As I mentioned on the review, many of the courses are not very trustworthy and reliable. They are poorly built on content and still charging money. Learners may not be very benefited fro those courses.

Voice thread post

Voice Thread post of Module 4

Topic : Our topic was provided by the instructors. The topic was "What are the challenges and the rewards (for students, for teachers, for schools) for distance education?"

Presenters :  Andrea, Tuhin (group leader), Thanh and Bryan.


Link to Voice thread : here is our post : http://voicethread.com/share/5878180/

Collaboration work: Based on the instructors's suggestions, we decided to keep our slides to maximum two per person. We shared our slides content and narration ideas via google doc files as well as email for main communications. Andrea and Thanh adopted the style of using cool graphics on their slides, whereas I and Bryan adopted the text based approach.

After everyone sybmitted their content to me, as a group leader, I made a powerpoint. Our team members were very serious and hard working. They made my job very easy.

Experience with Voice Thread:

My experience is good. It is a very useful tool. However, I already knew how to use it, so I didn't have to learn much. But sharing in the CUIN group didn't work for me first time. But in my second try , I was successful. 

Voice Thread educational use: 

Voice thread can be used very effectively for group discussions or class discussions. A teacher can post a topic and allow her students to discuss on the topics. And she can monitor how the discussion is going on.

Also, voice thread can be used by collaborators in educational research. Especially when people are meeting only online.

Coggle review

Coggle review

Name of the tool  : Coggle

Tool url : https://coggle.it/

Primary category for this tool: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Please describe this tool in your own words:

  Coggle is a completely free, simple to use mind mapping tool that's easy to get started with. Sign in with a Google account of your choice and you're  ready to go . Double-click on any item to edit it, and click the plus signs on either side to add branches to your mind map. Click and hold to drag them around the canvas to design your mind map any way you like. Coggle will automatically assign different colors to your branches, but clicking on a branch will bring up a color wheel so you can personalize it yourself. When you've finished a map, you can download it as a PDF or PNG, share it with others who can just view it or, if you allow it, edit your mind map. You even get auto-saving and revision history, so if you want to see what your mind map looked like before someone you invited started working with it, you can. Best of all? Coggle is completely and totally free. It's designed to help you understand things, and then share your knowledge by arranging your document in the same way that your mind works.

What do you need to know before using this tool?:
Users need to create an account before using it, hence they need to know how to use internet and web browsers.However, Coggle uses google account credentials, hence if you are looged in to your google account it is easy to log in.

What do you need to have before using this tool? (Resources):
There are no required resources necessary prior to using this tool. 

How do you use this tool? (Write the basic steps using a numbered list):

1. Go to   https://coggle.it/  . You will see the following page

 2. Click on Sign up USING google. If you are already logged in to google account

3. After logging in , one will see the following page. Click on 'create' to create a new Coggle

4.  Key board short cuts

 5. Now check the following audio file and combine it with the key board shortcuts described in the point 4 to understand the images under the point 6 Section.

                        Audio review

 6.

And Finally

7  Locate or create your own example of an educational resource created with this tool and discuss what you found or created. Also, please include the URL for this example orembed it into your blog post, if applicable.

Link  

8. Please describe a scenario of how you might use this tool in a teaching environment (about 500 words):

 As I mentioned in my audio clip, Coggle can be used to explain any subject with different sup topics or classifications. for example, a teacher while explaining types plants , can use Coggle. wheres starting from the main bigger domain of plants , gradually creating branches based on the types of plants and sub branches. It will definitely help the students if the can see the connections and roots of information about different types of plants. The learning will definitely be more fun for them. In act the teachers can  give the students an assignment while they need to classify something into categories and subcategories. Coggle will be definitely a fun for them, while learning and exploring the topics.

9. What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?

 It's a great tool for real time mind mapping, the ideas can be expressed and shared perfectly and that is also for free.

10. What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?:   

It requires a google account and  it accesses all the google information, where as it is not a google product. This does not look a very good option for non google users.

Blurb review

Blurb review

Name of the tool : Blurb

URL : http://www.blurb.com/

Primary category for this tool: Creativity tool

Please describe this tool in your own words:

Blurb is a web 2.0 tool which allows users to create, self-publish, promote, share, and sell their own print and ebooks. The main aspect of Blurb is that it is a self publishing tool, one can completely modify and choose how the final product they want , for example, in the form of an ebook or a hardcopy or a Ipad version.

What do you need to know before using this tool?:
Users need to create an account before using it, hence they need to know how to use internet and web browsers.

What do you need to have before using this tool? (Resources):
There are no required resources necessary prior to using this tool. However, one must have some digital images to upload.

How do you use this tool? (Write the basic steps using a numbered list):

1. Go to  http://www.blurb.com/

2. Click on Join today, you will see the following page , type the relevant information, like name, email and password

 3. Once you are registered sign in with your ceredentials

 4. After signing in, you will see the following dashboard type page

 5. In the section DIVE IN, click on start your book today, you will see the following page.

 6.  Click on DOWNLOAD Bookwright, you will be directed to the following page

 7. Next will appaear the following page, click on accept to move forward.

8. After clicking on ACCEPT, the page will try to download the BOOKWRIGHT installation file,  click on Save file

 

 9. Click OK to install the software

 10. 

 11. After installing BOOKWRIGHT, open it to create a new book, you will see the following window

12.  Click on start a new book, you will get following options

 13. In this case I chose the standard landscape one, and it asked me to save the project with a name, in this case I chose the name UH

 14.Now add the image files you want to include in the book in the following way

 15.  After uploading all the files, click on FILE and then UPLOAD, the following page will show up.

 16.  After the software finishes uploading the photos and finishes the project , it will show the following options

 17.  One have to pay in order to get the hard copy album or the ebook

18.  After clicking on CHCEKOUT this page will show up, and one have to pay!

 

Locate or create your own example of an educational resource created with this tool anddiscuss what you found or created. Also, please include the URL for this example orembed it into your blog post, if applicable.

I didn't find any way to share an ebook or album for free, it seemed to me that even for the Ebook , one need to pay.

Please describe a scenario of how you might use this tool in a teaching environment (about 500 words):

If I were a teacher, and I take my students to travel to another country for an educational purpose, probably I would like them to keep their memories individually in a nice way and I think in this respect even if they have to pay, students should use the great features of blurb, which allows to make a professional looking album at a much cheaper cost. Blurb has all the features which allows an user to choose images, for the album , resize them, customizing the effects, I am sure if students are given such resources they can show their creativity at a great level. It can improve their self respect as well when they will see their final product in terms in a hard copy or ebook made with professional looking materials. Teachers also can keep one copy for future demonstration as well as memories. 

What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?

Teachers can use this tool  for their students to share their class project or a story.

What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?:  

 I think the main disadvantage is that it is not free.