WEEK 6 Thing #15

Creative Commons gives copyright owners the authority to control how they want their works to be used by others. Some rights reserved include for non-commercial purposes only or to give attribution to the use of others' works.
Sharing of creative works, e.g. photographs, music, art and videos, opens up avenues of collaboration and improvisation; and this is how the new use of internet should be.

WEEK 6 Thing #14

Technorati is a blog search site. Blogs can claim (register with Technorati) their sites, tag them and Technorati will rank the site by its Authority number (a number based on how many sites are linked to that blog.)
Tagging the blog is important if we want others to find our blog and connect to the blogosphere.

WEEK 6 Thing #13

Del.icio.us is a social networking tool, apart from bookmarking websites.
Once registered, we can click on the del.icio.us button to bookmark any site visited and tag it with keywords. This is a powerful tool because we can use any unique keywords that suit our application, so that when we do a search using these unique keywords, we get the site that we want, easily!
Another good thing about this is that the bookmarks are portable, so we can refer to them from any machine, anywhere.

WEEK 5 Thing #12

Rollyo -- roll your own search engines.
I've done one on Good Sketching:

Select...Educate the TrainerGood SketchingSearch The Web

This rollyo is useful in limiting my search for good sketching sites.

WEEK 5 Thing #11

I like Web 2.0 Award winner del.icio.us. It bookmarks different categories of sites and the people who bookmark them. This allows people of like tastes to view each other's blogs and communicate.
Ning is a social network, bringing people with the same interests into the same network. News, videos, podcasts, etc. regarding the area of interest are placed into that blogsite, so that members can view and comment. It is like a small community sharing similar interests.

WEEK 5 Thing #10

Image generators are useful in creating colourful and interesting illustrations in Powerpoint presentations. I like fd's Flickr Toys on making the cover for CD/DVD -- don't need to have a jewel case. OR can create a 256-piece puzzle using your own image!

This cartoon is done by ComicStripGenerator. But there is only so much we can do -- change title, talk box.

This Classroom Learning 2.0 course is getting really interesting!

WEEK 4 Thing #9

I have put 2 websites among other RSS Feeds in Google Reader:

• Straits Times Interactive (www.straitstimes.com)
  This keeps me in touch with the local news. This is also useful in referring students to real life examples to illustrate a topic in a lecture. The only problem is keeping up with the reading, because it keeps piling up!
• About.com Drawing / Sketching (http://drawsketch.about.com/)
  This site teaches about drawing skills in perspective, which students have some difficulty understanding and applying. Again, very useful in bringing another perspective in teaching the topic. Any new topic or change in website will be known to me -- this keeeps me from being embarassed when I refer to a non-existent site!

WEEK 4 Thing #8

RSS is so useful. This is what MeL's Digital Dropbox should be -- whatever is read should show as such. Imagine going through the whole long list of submissions in MeL, not knowing which are read and which are not.
Google Reader is easy to use. The search for RSS feeds is easy to use, whereas I couldn't open Feedster search tool. Reading through the Classroom 2.0 guide on RSS was quite a chore -- some of the videos or audio casts were so amateurish. The one on Technorati Tutorial was badly done -- I could hardly understand what was being said!
RSS can be used to keep up-to-date with changes in relevant websites, especially if they are linked to our module material in MeL.

WEEK 3 Thing #7

(a) Technology of interest

The technology that interests me is software that can edit and improve audio recording. Some of the features include:

• removing background noise
• enhancing different tracks, e.g. vocal above instrumental
• adjusting the volume to create fading in/out
• introducing echo
• adjusting the speed of different sections
• cut and paste
• combining different tracks which were recorded at different times

In the hands of the master, an average recording can sound quite professional.

(b) How I can use Flickr in teaching

Flickr allows searching for pictures related to any topic, by searching according to tags or keywords. There are thousands of related pictures, some of them so professionally taken that they can pass off as poster images. This is better than scanning images from books/magazines. These pictures can then be included in MS Powerpoint presentations to enliven the lecture.

Another interesting aid is to use YouTube. This is better than borrowing video tapes from the library and arranging for a video player in the classroom.

WEEK 3 Thing #6

Students nowadays are brought up with the "maid mentality" -- they can leave things around, and the "maid" will clear up after them.

Look at this picture I took somewhere in NP:

• sweet wrapper
• tissue paper
• water bottle
• newspapers
• plastic bag

This is just after one afternoon of usage.

The same goes for the situation in the classroom. You can find sweet wrappers, erasures, crumpled paper, used pens, pencil shavings, etc. at the end of a lesson. Never mind the wastepaper basket is just at the door, and they can always bring along their rubbish and drop them off at the door.
A worse situation in my class is when students use the drawing equipment I supply, and at the end of the lesson, I have to go around the classroom picking up, sorting and storing them in the cupboard. Hardly do you see students well-behaved enough to keep them where they took from.

Any wonder why the Tray Return System in the canteens will not work?