Skip to main content

FlatClassroom

By

The question of whether safe social networking sites exist, or at least some safe enough for the school to feel comfortable with, is a good one. The question led me to a post saying yes, SNs do belong in schools, and a link to a project where it seems to be done, The Flat Classroom Project. It's named Flat Classroom because it's goal is to link students internationally, breakdown the walls of the classroom so to speak.

It's based on Ning and Wikispaces.com. I don't get why you need both but if you signup for an account you have to create the wikispaces account as well. Right now they have a special offer - k-12 teachers can get a free $50/hr account for their Plus plan. I lied about my school and don't know how to unlie so I could not signup yet 8-).

You can create blogs, add pictures, text, widgets, and I think you an create forums but didn't see a link for that. Anyone can create an account with a Ning account which opens students to the world - but you can make your Ning a closed one. But then they can't exchange with others outside our walls... so perhaps we can have an adiditonal public account for sharing student work or inviting discussion from students internationally. They could raise crosscultural issues, and issues of native rights etc.

For more... here's the CNET article that got me started


Wikispaces private label tutorials (corporate site): http://blog.wikispaces.com/2010/03/new-private-label-video-tutorials.html ($2000/year unlimited users)

Ning system admin privacy controls http://about.ning.com/safety/ncsafetysettings.php

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Schools of the Future: Acquiring and Representing Knowledge

By
This year's Schools of the Future conference was an information-rich event. When we think of the future, more than a few of us probably also think of technology. That association certainly carries over in the interpretation of the conference title Schools of the Future . Indeed, many topics besides educational technology were covered; however, the technological advances were a strong highlight at the conference in my view. As mentioned in one of Cassie's previous posts , there are online classes everywhere. The first few links on my list reference ways to learn on your own (i.e., ways to acquire knowledge). The second set of links refer to ways of representing knowledge. **Note:  All icons link to the affiliated website.  Academic Earth has hundreds of free online lectures from prominent university professors, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, The University of Houston, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Michigan State, Princeton, Rice, UCLA, UCSF, and the list
Post a Comment
Read more

Geotagging

By
A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe
6 comments
Read more

Zoho Creator

By
I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both
6 comments
Read more