Why Don't You...?
Why Don't You... Explore?
Explore the resources outside your institution that can be brought in physically or digitally
What is outside of the school boundary that can help learners inside the formal classroom? What resources are there that can help utilise local, national and international resources for the benefit of learners?
Tools are listed below; approaches are listed on the right-hand side.
Tools:
StumbleUpon
Grupthink
Grokker
Clusty
Shakespeare Clusty
Creative Commons archive
Podcasting mini-guide
Open Source Alternative
Diino
PicFindr
Mycoted
37signals
deviantART
Bubbl.us
Skrbl
StoryBox
Video and media hosting
Flipbook!
VideoEgg
Sakai
Go2Web2.0
StumbleUpon
Keywords
Searching, sharing, social software, delightful
Aim of tool
StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites that build from your personal preferences. The pages you stumble upon are recommended by those who you have marked as ‘friends’ or by one of the two million other users who have expressed similar interests. Once you have looked at the page, you can simply submit your like or dislike for the site, which in turn makes your next stumble more appropriate.
Education scenario/possibility
Stumble is a delightful way to navigate the web, rather than searching from a textual prompt, Stumble allows learners to be surprised and excited by the wide range of websites that the site offers – based upon your previously-indicated interests and the way in which you use the site. It provides an interesting discussion point about the many ways in which you can find information, but overall it is a wonderful way to be surprised and delighted by websites, videos and images that are linked to your interests.
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Grupthink
Keywords
Free web 2.0 tool, sharing, social software, questioning
Aim of tool
Grupthink provides an online space where users can ask open-ended questions and receive a wide variety of answers from either your own created groups (classes, year groups, thematic etc) or from all people using Grupthink. Where this may provide a huge number of conflicting responses, the social tagging element of the site provides a method to navigate the (potentially) vast number of responses – as whilst providing answers, users can also rate other contributors' answers.
Education scenario/possibility
Listening to the views of all school members of community groups can provide a huge number of conflicting responses – from what playground toys to buy to considering issues of building new schools. This tool enables all users to share their answers and by rating others’ responses a greater understanding of widespread opinion can be gathered. Classroom use, where students collect answers from home to sharing questions and conversations between schools groups, schools or communities. Grupthink can provide a tool to support questioning and differentiate between varieties of answers.
Grokker
Keywords
Visual search engine, search engine, visual tool, map
Aim of tool
The technology behind search engines has continued to change dramatically since the beginning of the 21st century, with increasingly complex weighting systems, algorythms, and scope. The way that search engines display their findings, however, has remained relatively static. Grokker makes a step towards offering a 'visual search engine' in that it offers the option to view results in a visual, rather than strictly text based, environment as a 'map' of results. There are many layers to the map, depending on the number of results, which are organised into spheres using key words and phrases that the search engine itself has organised the results into. This approach is visually effective, and provides an interesting route to grouping search results that allows different ways to view and interact with them.
Education scenario/possibility
Grokker provides an alternative way to browse through information listed by search engines. This tool could be used by learners in addition to traditional list-output search engines as a way to help understand that there are different ways that information can be presented. Alternatively, using Grokker could provide students with an interesting question around different ways of grouping information; different relationships between data and different methods of sorting. The tool can also be used in comparison to other search engines to help structure different discussions around searching or information management. Of course, it can also be used as a more beautiful and enjoyable tool for searching.
Clusty
clusty.com
Keywords
Search engine, meta tagging
Aim of tool
Clusty provides a different way to search the internet. It searches a wide variety of other search engines and brings the results to one page. The interesting part of this tool is how the results then are clustered into groups, highlighting particular links between the search results.
Education scenario/possibility
Searching a given topic online often results in long lists of potentially valuable resources. Clusty can provide users with visual indications of the relationship s between search results as well as providing users the opportunity to look into particular themes of the search. A search (for example) on the role of women in science, creates themes of gender, research, play, initiatives to increase participation, conferences, achieving excellence in science, essays, past and present etc. Key themes for a research topic in this area are beginning to be highlighted through Clusty for learners to investigate in more detail.
Shakespeare Clusty
Keywords
Clusty, search, meta-tagging, English, Shakespeare, language, literature
Aim of tool
Clusty provides a different way to search the internet. It searches a wide variety of other search engines and brings the results to one page. The interesting part of this tool is how the results then are clustered into groups, highlighting particular links between the search results. This tool within Clusty allows users to search within each of Shakespeare’s works as well as searching sections, collections or all of Shakespeare’s work.
Education scenario/possibility
Students studying elements of Shakespeare can search for particular key words against individual characters, work or collections. It can provide an incredible resource to learners who want to think about particular themes within Shakespeare and want to find particular words as mentioned by characters, or within wider collections of works.
Creative Commons archive
Archives of 'Commons' licensed content - see links below.
Keywords
Free media, creative, archive, commons, license, commons
Aim of tool
These tools aim to share digital media resources, such as photographs, video and audio, for use outside of the commercial sector. This covers both personal and not-for-profit use, and comes under a Creative Archive/Commons license permitting the distribution of derivate works with appropriate credits given.
Education scenario/possibility
As digital tools, such as personal computers, mobile phones and PDAs become more readily available, to some degree they are also becoming more readily immersed into our everday practices. Both in the home, and in school, learners and teachers are building digitally-based works and resources. However, strict corporate copyright regulations could potentially mean that an innocent exercise could be a liability for a an individual or institution, such as a school.
Commons resources are set up so that individuals and not-for-profit activities can get free access to resources that are otherwise difficult to get a hold of. For example, a class of learners may wish to work with digital video. They may have content they have created themselves, and they wish to supplement this with historical footage; or perhaps they are creating a more artistic montage video and are looking for interesting video filler. Access to decent quality digital media, especially video, is generally unrealistically expensive - and this is where the Commons License helps to provide archives of resources that can be freely used for just these purposes.
Links
creativearchive.bbc.co.uk
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
creative.bfi.org.uk
www.channel4.com/fourdocs
www.channel4.com/pixnmix
www.teachers.tv
Podcasting mini-guide
Archive of podcast recording and editing tools:
Keywords
Podcast, recording, editing, audio
Aim of tool
As podcasting has become more commonplace, communities and groups have developed resources that automate and simplify much of what used to require specific technical knowledge. Utilising these resources, any individual will find it relatively straightforward to produce and share their own webcast.
Education scenario/possibility
Podcasting refers to the distribution of media files across the internet. The unique thing about podcasting is that this transfer of media can be automated by certain software, such as iTunes. Many prolific and passionate teachers are already using podcasting as a means of helping to share and disseminate their own practices with other teachers in combination with other web-based tools such as blogs.
For those that are new to the process of creating a podcast, these free resources provide an easy to follow guide. Students and teachers alike can use this as a means of creating published content, something that could be used as a group around any number of activities or projects, or even just as a way to communicate their ideas to each other and more distant groups.
Further links
www.apple.com/itunes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
10 podcast recording and editing resources:
www.odeo.com
www.audioblog.com
www.gcast.com
www.podomatic.com
clickcaster.com
www.makepropaganda.com
www.lionhardt.ca/wps
www.wildvoice.com
www.podcaststation.com
www.voiceatom.com/audiobay
Open Source Alternative
Keywords
Open source, software, personal computer
Aim of tool
Providing expansive and searchable lists of open source software, osalt.com acts a directory. The key idea behind the site is to encourage users to try and eventually adopt open source applications with a mind to lessen the monopolistic hold of many software companies. Open source largely is free software (although not always) which lowers the barrier to entry in using the tools, and this directory points users towards a wide variety of open source softwares: from open source media centres, and video editing software to art packages and word processing software.
Education scenario/possibility
The osalt.com directory could prove a useful resource for both teachers and students who either are unable to get hold of certain documenting or visual editing software, or want to try different applications in order to understand that the 'computing environment' is not limited to particular softwares or environments. However, osalt.com is a directory, it is the tools within it that may be used for a wide variety of learning and organisational opportunities.
Further links
www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/
Open_Source_report.pdf
Diino
Keywords
Online desktop, file storage, accessibility
Aim of tool
Diino is an ambitious tool that emulates a desktop environment, yet is hosted online. It requires that a program be run on the user's local machine, however administrator access is not required as the program does not actually need to be installed. The application itself is primarily a file hosting service designed to simulate the Microsoft Windows Explorer directory, and it can be set up so that multiple users have access to the same 'desktop'. An e-mail client is also integrated into the application. The key advantage to using something like Diino is that, theoretically at least, a user will be able to access their data and files wherever they might have internet access. There is a free account that comes with an allocation of several GB of memory, and this allocation increases if a user subscribes to a paid service.
Education scenario/possibility
Diino could be used to allow learners and teachers to store their files and data on the web-based server, either relying on it solely or using it to backup and synch from their work and home machines. This would mean that they would be reliant only on getting access to a PC computer with internet access to access their files, rather than being restricted to a specific machine or having to use portable data transfer devices. This would likely be seen as a tool for convenience, and potentially also for reliability.
Diino could also be used as a place to store current work so that multiple users can access the same files. This may be useful for collaborative activities, for sharing work between teachers and students, between peers, or (due to its reliance on the internet) between co-learners in different locations.
As far as practical considerations go, there are two potential concerns with deploying the Diino client application on computers within schools. Firstly, there may be issues with the school's firewalls and data transfer blocks. Secondly, although the application doesn't need to be actually installed within the system registry (which would require administrator privileges), there may be concerns with the very fact that this software exists on school computers without being digitally verified.
PicFindr
Keywords
Photographs, images, resource, free
Aim of tool
The intention behind PicFindr is to simplify the process of finding stock photography, making PicFindr a kind of image search engine. In response to the search term you have entered, it accesses various image hosting websites. Importantly, it also lets you filter the resulting images according to how strict the Intellectual Property (IP) as ascribed per image - essentially finding images that you can reuse without cost or IP issues.
Education scenario/possibility
PicFindr has many potential uses within the educational context. Although there are many image hosting websites, PicFindr is relatively unique as specifically a stock photography search engine - with a key benefit that it indicates how the images can be used (for example what publishing rights are linked to the image or how the image can be reused). It could be used as a general resource for teachers and learners when digital images are required.
Further links
There are other photography and image hosting websites, and if IP is not an issue then these can also be useful: images.google.co.uk, flickr.com etc.
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Mycoted
Keywords
Wiki, innovation, tools, creativity
Aim of tool
Mycoted aims to improve creativity and by providing a repository of tools, techniques, mind exercises, puzzles, book reviews etc. As it is wiki–based, it is open to everyone and can be written by anyone.
Education scenario/possibility
Developing activities, lessons and projects that can foster students’ innovation and creativity can be approached in a wide variety of ways with a large number of techniques and tools. This site provides a large number of approaches and tools (some widely used, some specifically designed for a particular need) that can be accessed by anyone. The site also provides the opportunity for teachers and learners to share their ideas, strategies and tools for supporting innovation and creativity.
Further links
Creativity techniques: www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques
37signals
Keywords
Project management, cheap Web 2.0 tools, suite of tools, collaboration
Aim of tool
This is a collection of tools that make project management easier between different parties – and considering the number of different projects managed by teachers and learners, this may provide a useful suite. Basecamp provides tools for project management and collaboration; Campfire provides an instant messaging system designed for group interactions; Backpack provides information organising tools and calendars – all of which can be shared with remote collaborators.
Education scenario/possibility
From students managing their own projects, to accessing remote experts and resources, 37signals provides a wide range of tools from professional practice, presented in a way that is simple to use and to manage. By using web-based tools to organise learning activities, learners have greater flexibility in when they access them and when how they organise meetings, sharing resources and setting goals and assessments. Student controlled activities that involve collaboration and cooperation can be helped through the use of such tools.
Further links
Tour of the applications: www.basecamphq.com/tour
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deviantART
Keywords
Art, community, social software, images, photographs, free
Aim of tool
DeviantART is a website that hosts an online community of artists, ranging from photography through to flash animation. Where it differs from straightforward image hosting sites such as Flickr (flickr.com) is that it is designed to provide the space for a peer review community. DeviantART is a social networking resource for artists of all abilities both to view each others work for inspiration, as well as use each others works under a copyright policy that both promotes and both protects image copyrights. In many cases, this allows images to be used by other users in their own work with appropriate credit to the original artists given.
The focus of the social community on deviantART is built around user’s portfolios, which in many ways act as visual blogs.
Education scenario/possibility
In the narrowest of its capacities, as an image hosting site deviantART provides a way of showcasing an individual's own work, with space for others to comment on the works that are submitted. The diverse range of professional through to casual capacities of members has built a social community that offers constructive feedback. The website's genuine focus on all things 'art' means that almost all of the content is user created, and to a very high calibre. At the same time, the deviantART web community is free to join and as such provides a large resource of freely available images that can be used in other member's own work.
DeviantART is already being used by the students of educational institutions as a way of creating a portfolio of their work and discussing their works with their classmates as well as other members of the community.
Bubbl.us
Keywords
Free Web 2.0 tool, mindmap, brainstorm, collaborative, cross-site
Aim of tool
As with any mindmapping software, this tool provides a way of capturing discussions, planning sessions or ‘brainstorming’ activities in a mixture of multi-coloured diagrams – highlighting links between ideas or discussion points. The advantage of using the internet-based bubbl.us is that learners can collaborate on a document without being in the same place and that the intuitive application can be navigated without having to use a mouse. Mixing this with a voice tool (such as Skype, YackPack etc) could provide an even richer method of interacting around a shared document. Maps can then be saved, printed, e-mailed or shared more widely via the web.
Education scenario/possibility
Collaborating during idea generation activities, capturing discussion points, organising ideas, using mindmapping activities to share understanding of a particular topic or even mapping out the resources available to the learner for a particular project is possible with this software – but being able to create (for example) a mindmap of local historical events, could become much richer when collaborating between secondary and primary schools students, the local museum and parents and grandparents. Using this software can begin to extend the activities within the classroom to others outside and provide students with wider access to other experts and peers beyond their immediate environment.
Skrbl
Keywords
Collaborative, free Web 2.0 tool, whiteboard
Aim of tool
Skrbl is an online shared space that allows users to annotate documents, draw and write text from any internet connection. Skrbl can be kept private from other users or shared – allowing both personal and shared activities to take place. An added benefit of using Skrbl is that it is easy to upload images, files or documents that can then be accessed by those you are collaborating with.
Education scenario/possibility
Many activities that require learners to collaborate or share ideas around a blank piece of paper, or activities that require learners to annotate text or images can be undertaken through Skrbl. The benefit of Skrbl being a collaborative online resource is that the activity is not confined to who is in one classroom at a time. Using Skrbl with small groups (both in one classroom and online) provides the opportunity for students to access new collaborators and new opportunities to work across locations and times (continuing Skrbls started at home in the classroom, and those started in the classroom at home).
StoryBox
Keywords
Free Web 2.0 tool, sharing, social software, story making, video, text
Aim of tool
StoryBox is a site to publish stories – visual or video-based or textual stories, StoryBox provides a space for sharing imaginative stories or historical accounts, documentary recordings or rants about current events. Once published, all stories can be reviewed by anyone and commented upon by (free to join) members.
Education scenario/possibility
Providing a real audience who can give feedback and comments to stories and video compositions, students have a space where they can freely share their imaginative ideas or documentary reports. The site can also be used to search for different stories as inspiration, based upon themes, title or ranking.
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Video and media hosting
Online video and media hosting websites (various - see links below).
Keywords
Video
Aim of tool
Rather than listing these sites independently, below are a collection of the most popular online streaming video websites currently accessible:
www.aniboom.com
www.blip.tv
www.bolt.com
www.break.com
www.collegehumor.com
www.comedycentral.com
www.dailymotion.com
www.ebaumsworld.com
www.gofish.com
video.google.co.uk
Education scenario/possibility
Video hosting websites allow people to upload their own video media so that they are accessible across the internet without incurring any costs. This in itself is a useful resource allowing people to share ideas with each other in a public and democratic domain. In addition to this, there are many web-based applications being written to allow people to manipulate existing videos, or borrow aspects of, using the existing resources available on websites such as those listed above.
Not all of the content of these video hosting websites is necessarily appropriate for children, and the educational merit of much of the content might also be questionable. Outside of the formal learning environment, however, young people are accessing these sites. Questions can be asked about the most constructive ways of using these sights and in what ways schools can help learners navigate them appropriately both in and out of schools.
Further links
VideoEgg is a video hosting site, but offers additional services including editing software and a community focused agenda - www.videoegg.com.
Flipbook!
www.fabrica.it/flipbook
www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbook
(NB: the Flipbook! website is not currently online)
Keywords
Animation, tools, creativity, art
Aim of tool
Flipbook! is a simple animation tool hosted by Fabrica, a communications research outpost sponsored by United Colors of Benetton. To create an animation you simply draw out a series of frames using a 'line tool' on the website's bespoke interface, and the output is very much a digital flipbook. It is free to make a Flipbook! submission, and they are all open to both public viewing and rating.
Education scenario/possibility
Flipbook! is good example of a 'Just Enough' resource. It is not intended as a professional resource, but rather is seen by Fabrica as a toy that is open to interpretation. The animations are automatically shared, and this inherent property of the site creates a visibly constructive space.
This is a constructive short-term user tool, but the limitations of the animation tool are what make it fun and accessible. All learners, including students, teachers, parents etc, should be encouraged to use creative social tools like Flipbook! at least once.
VideoEgg
Keywords
Video hosting, online communities
Aim of tool
VideoEgg is a video hosting site designed to support online communities with video content. It offers a comprehensive platform including the facilites for video creation and distribution. A unique property of VideoEgg is that it offers an ad network aimed towards online communities specifically, and this means that there is the potential for users to earn revenue from the creation and sharing of their own video content. VideoEgg is not intended to stand alone in the same way that, for example, YouTube or video.google.com, but is an effective video resource specificly for online communities such as Bebo, Hi5, Dogster etc (for a full list, see VideoEgg website).
Education scenario/possibility
The popularity of VideoEgg is down to the it having been well concieved and well written. Within the realm of the established online communities that VideoEgg is designed around, it is an unparalled video resource. In the context of education, if students or teachers were a part of these online communities then VideoEgg should be one of the first ports of call when using video content.
Sakai
Keywords
Collaboration and learning environment, schedule, discussion
Aim of tool
The Sakai Foundation sees the act of teaching as an authoring environment in itself, and its goal is to enhance and improve the practice of teaching through effective collaboration and informal dissemination.
Sakai provides a collaboration and learning environment that supports groups of people working together. Inspired by Lotus Notes, which was a basic collaboration system, Sakia core application is to help organise and coordinate collaborative calendars, schedules and discussions. Around the core modules the software is aimed more specifically at uses within education, such as the building and sharing of electronic portfolios and presentations. These additional modules are intended to be fully cutomisable to each organisation according to how it will be used, for example as a research collaboration system, a teaching collaboration system, or even as a large-scale file storage system for students and teachers.
The application is a conglomerate of different modules of software all designed to be able to talk to each other realiably, and is based on a form of open source software called community source software. The difference here is that whilst contributions are voluntary, the Sakai Foundation acts to coordinate aspects of the software development.
The software is free to use, with a recommended number of users anywhere between one and 100,000, and the Sakai support community is free to join.
Go2Web2.0
Keywords
Directory, Web 2.0, tools
Aim of tool
The significance of Web 2.0 is that it reflects a shift towards web based applications, that is to say they are encompassed by the web browser and don't need installation locally. Go2Web2.0 offers a substantial listing of Web 2.0 applications, listing over 1,000, and acts as a searchable directory of free web based and web-centric applications. The list is set up as a grid of icons, and clicking on a webpage's icon will bring up a link and a short description of the websites function as outlined by key terms. The list of websites can also be searched/filtered with these key terms.
Education scenario/possibility
This directory provides a substantial number of resources within it, and is a resource in itself.
Further links
Go2web2.0 has a blog that is updated with recommended applications: go2web2.blogspot.com