Glogster EDU. My Grasshopper Mocha.

(Please stay with me; this short digression does relate to tech/ed.)  I’m a big, no HUGE, peppermint mocha fan.  I eyed a special called grasshopper mocha at a local coffee shop I frequent but thought, “Why change a good thing and possibly waste $3.50 on something that probably won’t live up to my expectations?”  One day, I was in a crazy, risk-taking mood and blurted out, “Grasshopper mocha, please.”  To my pleasant surprise, I discovered this drink is a delight!  I now order grasshopper mochas more often than peppermint mochas and recommend them to others. 

About a week ago, I had a “grasshopper mocha” tech moment.  I’ve been pleased for several terms now with Weebly for Educators and Posterous in my classes.  On the spur of the moment, I gave the Glogster EDU account a whirl.  Wow, am I glad I did!  Below is a Glog that I’ve been working on in collaboration with my Vocabulary class students. (Click here or on the pink Glogster box below to view full size.)  It’s a work in progress—shortened because it is only a month long class and we began in week two.

Glogster EDU has a lot to offer.  For starters, it’s a free.  The teacher can create student accounts and manage them.  Accounts can be made private or public. Edu Premium accounts are also available.  Many educators are already on board.  There are glogs to explore in a multitude of categories ranging from language arts to science.  Here is a link to one I like called What Do 21^st Century Students Need? and another entitled Best of TED for Teachers. (A downside I sometimes encounter is that glogs may take a few minutes to load, but hopefully wait time is worth it.)

Stay tuned for more posts on my uses of Glogster EDU combined with Pic Lits, Wall Wisher, and some of Daniel Pink’s thinking.  Drop us a line to share your Glogster EDU.

Happy Glogging!

Blogging as a Springboard: OSU INTO Presentation

We enjoyed giving our first co-presentation at a recent OSU INTO faculty development day.  The Prezi presetation below gives an overview of the main points.  Here are some links and sites we recommended to our audience.

Some recommended posts and links we have made so far for professional development

• Our Networks, Ed Sites and Web 2.0 tools tabs are works in progress.  They provide a place to start exploring and are categorized. 
• (ESOL specific for our presentation audience)  Check Out the 21st ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival, Blogging Around ESOL, and  Links of the Month: February
• We RSS feed to the blogs and podcasts we have listed as well as others and highly recommend it!

A few posts that show our application of web 2.0 tools in the classroom

• Jing Offers Alternative Ways to Provide Feedback 
• Prezi Meet Jing.  Jing Meet Prezi 
• Mix It Up With Animoto 
• Playing With Words

Blogging Platforms we currently recommend

Posterous
Weebly--educator's account
Blogger
Future posts will continue to highlight these and other blogging platforms for educational uses.

A big thanks to those of you who attended our presentation, gave us additional sites, and expressed ongoing interest!  We invite you to participate by letting us know of future posts, workshops, or presentations you would like to see; contributing links; and/or sharing what has worked in tech in your own classes or professional development.

Happy blogging!

Posterous: A Simple, Effective, On-The-Go Blogging Platform

Tech: As I drove to the airport on my departure for the US, I uploaded two apps to my iphone that served their purpose during my travels in South America.  These two beautiful apps go by the names of Posterous and Photo Shop Express.  This link is to an example posterous site I created, BoliviaExample.posterous.com.  It gives an example of how I combined them when I was in Bolivia.

Posterous is a useful site on its own.  I took advantage of the on-the-go feature to make all of my posts entirely from my iphone.  This feature requires wifi access to publish, which created some fun wifi quests for me in the locations I found myself.  I typed and saved drafts of my posts on buses, taxis, hotels, airports, a dessert, mountains, and various cities.  Then, I published them when I located a precious wifi connection.

Although I opted to post from my iphone, it is also easy to post from a computer.  The autopost option allows users to post to many different platforms, including Blogger, Vimeo, and You Tube.  Settings can be made private or public.  A site can be configured for individuals or for group contributions.  Pictures, videos, audio files, and documents can all be posted.  Here's a link to FAQs about Posterous.

The P.S. Express app helped spruce up the pictures I snapped on my iphone.  I only used the edit feature, but this app has more to offer as well.

Met Ed (Applications):  The simplicity of Posterous has a lot to offer education as does the option to use it with a smart phone,  ipad, etc.  I am looking for ways of making smart phones my friend and not my enemy in my adult ESOL classes. (See Kacey’s post on their future projected growth.)  Here are a few of many possible uses in the hands of the students:

• Science:  Documenting the steps in an experiment.
• ESOL:  Taking and describing pictures of new vocabulary words.
• Writing: Using a series of pictures to write a story or as an alternative to a book report.
• Collaboration with other classes:  Teachers and students pose questions and classes in other locations respond.

Happy blogging!