Week 5 - The Dreaded Prezentation!

Okay, so I am not a fan of Prezi as I am such a linear person (although I have no issues chasing links all over the web!!!) Prezi gives me vertigo and I know lots of people out there like it, including teachers and students at my school where I introduced some staff to it in 2010. You can't convert me though as I now feel a Prezi is as passe as a Powerpoint presentation (big statement there!). I found a great blog from someone  - MartinLIS6303 who is also doing a similar course to this and he discussed MS Powerpoints versus Prezi. I think, as other comments also do, the convenience of Prezi is and had mad it popular. The fact that you don't have to have MS Office is handy but we are going about to roll out Google Docs for all students so the cloud issue will be overcome. Anyway, here is a Prezi  in draft format..it has a long way to go but I think I will finish it and have it running in the Library and on the library wikispace.... more holiday work!

Getting the Most out of Your School Library on Prezi

Sliderocket - looks similar and good for business with it analytics and something I will explore...after I stop watching all the presentations. Just watched a great one about Flash and all its irritations...I have had my browser crash 3 times today because of Prezi (yep it's using flash).

Online Video - Online videos are the way of the future. I am not sure this is the blog for it but I am constantly amazed at where video has and is taking us, in particular learning and innovation. As TED's Chris Anderson says, in the video embedded below, online video is bringing about the biggest learning cycle in human history. His TED talk is worth the 18 minute viewing time. As a person with a librarian background (and one who constantly questions how libraries are inventing themselves) I thought it very insightful when he also said that video is "more important" than print.  And he has a point - face to face communications are what our brains are wired for (probably explains why I hate telephone calls!). Anyway...as Chris explains (with a prezi)
        CROWD ACCELERATED INNOVATION = crowd + light + desire
       ...just watch the video...it tells the story much better....




Another interesting bit of information from this video - Chris Anderson comments that Cisco believes  by 2014 90% of traffic on the internet will be video. I wanted to verify this comment and followed links to the Cisco Visual Networking Index which has this flash tool that allows you to create a graph for you blog to show the growth of such data. And I would like to have shared that graph but I can't get the embedded code to work... so using another tool they had I found out some telling statistics for Australia -  "In Australia, 14 billion minutes of video content will cross the Internet each month in 2016, up from 4 billion in 2011. Further, just in Australia, 14 billion minutes (27,261 years) of video content will cross the Internet each month in 2016. That's 5,452 minutes of video streamed or downloaded every second....It really is changing the way I think about technology and schools...enabling students to be part of the innovation and creation is going to have to be a top priority.

On to Week 6...

Week 4 - I Chose Diigo

For this module I chose to investigate Diigo. With Diigo I had already set up an account when there was all that fuss with Delicious a while back and there were fears it would be shut down. I converted all my bookmarks to Diigo but never went back to check the other features out. So I did today and signed up for educator access (not sure what I get there but will see when approved). And as I look at what's new on the Diigo site I read that there is lots there for educators and students, particularly the highlighting tool. I am just going through people to follow and I like how this is similar to what I do in Twitter. Just applied to join a group...Diigo in Education and with 10000 members should be lots to learn from this Diigo PLN. What I already hate is the Diigo frame on the top of any link (even when I try to open in a new tab)....ugghhhh..but it only seems to happen when I follow  link from people I am following....hmmm. Oh and I just linked my Delicious account with my Diigo account so I can update both at the same time while I work out which one to keep.
Update re automatic linking - it doesn't seem to work in Delicious! Anway, am exploring Diigo and just got my Diigo Educator badge...

I am going to also check out Springpad when I get time but that's enough blogging for now...I have 6 modules to catch up with this week while it's quiet!

Week 3 when we are up to Week 7

I think the most important thing I am taking out of this training is the same way I feel about Web 2.0 in general..there is so much great stuff out there to learn about and use.....just not enough time.

Anyway, I already tweet at 2 places - one is my pln and one is for where I work.  I quite like tweeting cause you don't need a lot of time to use and can dive in or out when you have a few minutes to spare. I also use my pln to remember great online articles, websites and tools that I have found online. I do sync all my bookmarks through Google so I am repeating myself but it works.

Pinterest...I am not a collector and I worry about the copyright issues with pinning other people's images. I did read an article that made me think twice and while I know the article considers copyright in the USA, that just muddies the water as I am sure many people don't know from what country their pinned images are from. So, while I see great uses for Pinterest  such as for Visual Arts students deciding on a major work theme, it's not for me right now.