In the Clouds

My Thoughts Are Usually in the Clouds

          After my adventure with Twitter and blogging I found the use of cloud computing to be very clever and a great way to store and utilize information. Now the incorporation of tags was a different story for me. I was thinking “here comes the hard part”! The Wikipedia information pages explained what tags are; how to make them and their purpose seemed self-explanatory until I had to manage creating a tag cloud myself. As mentioned in my previous post, for years I’ve used Google to find everything I ever needed, not really utilizing the new forms of technology that could make my job easier. I think the fact that you can use a cloud server to hold your information without the use of a server at your business or home is great. I definitely see why it is a growing industry for accessing information with reasonable costs. Reviewing the Horizon Report and watching the videos opened up a new wave of information for me. I found many really neat programs and informational websites listed in www.cloudtrip.com.  I chose 3 cloud computing sites that would serve different purposes in my life.

          One was Common Curriculum, which is a plan book and lesson planner for instructors. I chose this program because I thought “what teacher doesn’t want a program or application that will help align lesson plans to the content standards?” It’s a free program for teachers or a very low cost program for an entire school to use. There are only a few steps to join and every step is broken down for you to help create templates, lessons, find standards and ways to communicate lessons with students and parents at home along with sharing with colleagues. The actual website www.commoncurriculum.com provides a video tutorial for those like myself who require additional visual aides to comprehend some of the simplest tasks! You can actually cut and paste lessons from other units or a colleague into your plans. If students were unable to complete an assignment in school it can be sent home with the student. Once a teacher is signed up it may take about 10 minutes to fill in your classes, days and times in to the your schedule. Once that information is in you can proceed to make a template that all of your lessons will automatically populate in. I thought it was great for those who need to print out plans for curriculum coaches and create plans in a color coded format. I plan on trying this program when I have extra time and will let you know how it turns out.

Align Lessons and Standards Faster & Easier!   www.commoncurriculum.com

          Several years ago I acted as an Activities Coordinator for a school I worked for. There were several field trips and activities students participated in that required meeting with parents and creating permission slips. We used a lot of paper for printing permission slips, informational packets and pamphlets for parents. When I noticed www.edtrips.com within the cloud computing sites I eager to see if it would be beneficial for teachers and Activities Coordinators.  This program can be used to not only create permission slips but collect payments and create information for the traveler. Pages created can be customized or one can use templates provided. It’s very simple to add in information you want and edit when necessary. Pages can be created for travelers to sign up and create an account to view and manage their account. I found this really neat for larger class trips to Washington D.C, Chicago or Cincinnati and camp that may require payment plans. Even day trips can be easily explained on web pages created. A teacher can explain what students plan to do on their trip and the lesson or standards connected to the trip and more. Chaperones for trips and activities can sign up when the activity is created, which I think is great. Everything that Edtrips provide is a great way to organize information, save time and communicate with others more efficiently, which is always a great for me as an educator. When I tried to sign up an create a demo trip webpage I had to repeat several steps such as sign in and join a list too many times. Hopefully once you put in all of your information it can be as easy as it appears and the participants on the webpage say! According to the comments on their blog and the webpage, teachers from all over the world use this application for various uses including extracurricular activities, home school programs, and church organizations. If you chose to have Edtrips manage your accounts for payments from participants Edtrips add a 4% fee to the cost of the trip and a 50 cents transaction fee. With that system there is no need for the school, teacher or Activities Coordinator to worry about handling cash or checks. Overall I think it’s worth looking into if a school doesn’t already have a technical system in place.

A New Way to Prepare for Field Trips! www.edtrips.com

 

 

 

              The third cloud computing site I chose to review interested me not only as an educator but a parent. Quipper Quizzes & Trivia, www.quiz.quipper.com is a great website that allows students to practice a wide variety of academic and fun skills through trivia games or quizzes. Some of the categories range from Arts and Entertainment to College Prep. Once you click on a category there are subcategories such as high school test prep, Biology, Geography, Math, and Languages. Once you select a sub category then there are more specific areas. I think this is an awesome website for students to use during transition periods, down time or even used in assessing their knowledge of specific subject areas. Explanations of scores, what Quipper refers to as “bite size” lessons are followed by multiple choice questions, and even suggestions to study and review mistakes. Participants can unlock bonuses based on progress when the quizzes are customized. Teachers can include a quiz along with videos, images and sounds pertaining to their own content. Teachers can assign customized quizzes or those already included as homework practice and monitor the results. One section provides additional resources for educators to utilize and collaborate. Parents can monitor their child’s scores and activities at a glance. A hotline telephone number is included for parents who have questions. I created a demo quiz for myself for a math concept and the steps were very easy to follow. I will definitely use Quipper’s quizzes in the future. I’m glad I chose to review the website from the Cloud Trip site.

Have fun While Learning! www.quipper.com

 

Ready, Get Set, Diigo!

            I really like what Diigo has to offer especially for collaborating with other educators and professionals. I think the tools associated with the program can really help me when gathering research and reading about specific topics that are included in lengthy documents or included with other information that is of no use to me. The ability to highlight, add notes and of course tag (a new thing I just learned from reading about “the clouds) is one great aspect of Diigo that sets it aside from other collaboration networks!” If anyone is “old school” and not as technically savvy as the younger generation like myself their FAVORITES bar is filled with multiple folders and sites. Now it can be bookmarked by Diigo with notes I’ve added. Having the ability to collaborate with others and view their ideas saves a lot of time during research because you know that the information is coming from your specific groups which are composed of members you have chosen to group with. You can even form your own group that consists of those who you want to share information with for specific classes or information if you like, which is again awesome for collaboration.

I chose to join two groups both related to Special Education. One group caught my attention because a member posted information on a topic that I frequent several times throughout the school year regarding special education students. A member of the Special Education Teachers group linked a website related to preparing students for post-secondary options and completing summaries of performance. I thought being able to follow a member of specific groups to be a lot easier for me than Twitter. The other group I joined is titled Special Education Technology Integration. This group contained a lot of pertinent information that coincided with what I’m learning in the ETPT 5550 course I’m taking. As soon as you click into the group there are members who have posted information related to websites on flipped classrooms, technology templates for class use, and tips on how to incorporate technology in the classroom.

 

The Big Picture

I gained a lot of knowledge by reviewing the short videos and tutorials listed for explaining Cloud Computing and Social Bookmarking. Diigo V4:Research: Annotate, archive, organize and Diigo V5:Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! videos were immense in increasing my knowledge of social bookmarking. I was able to process a huge amount of information watching the steps broken down in each video. I am pleased to have learned as much as I did. I can now feel confident in adding these resources to my technical repertoire of research and collaboration techniques to make my job a little easier! It is amazing that the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report of 2009 mentioned the evolution of cloud computing and now we can see the advancement of cloud computing year after year. These forms of collaboration will continue to evolve as technology advances. One week I am trying to take flight with the little blue bird a.k.a Twitter and now I’m in the clouds! What’s next…..