Google Earth Postings

It's the first time I've tried to geo-tag Milford Sound in Google Earth. Open the Milford Sound.kmz file under Google Earth Postings menu (you need Google Earth application which is another of Google great freeware).

This approach offers potential to be applied in project based learning for Environmental Science, History and Social Studies, Ecology, English Language and English Literature. See example here. The information and media representations in the geo-tag sort of get connected in a meaningful way to the actual 3D visualization of the actual location in Google Earth. In this way, the situatedness of the learning at the various locations during the learning trail or overseas learning journey can be preserved.

I would imagine that if there are more people geo-tagging Google Earth locations meaningfully, then we can be surfing a 3D geo-web. Other than searching for locations, maybe we should be able to search for geo-spatial content as well? Or maybe web 2.0 kind of 3D geo-web applications?

VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a platform for pupils to discuss and comment on slides. Comment and discussion threads can be in the form of voice, text and doodling. These threads are directed at the specific slide of discussion, not achievable by other asynchronous discussion platforms. You can get a free account and try commenting on my slides on derivative of sin(x) here.

Learning Strategies Blogging

Reading the learning strategies carnival post by Steve caused me to think about how by consciously blogging about their learning process and strategies in problem/project based learning, pupils can develop the meta-cognitive skills to self-regulate and self-direct their learning.

Mashup

I think my blog may be an example of a mashup blog with various third party applications APIs (such as fleck it, answer tips, 3 column blog layout etc) integrated into the blog. This is done with the help of html editing in blogger. Therefore, mashup is basically programmable web for you to have a hybrid of web applications in one site.

Adobe Bridge for Bill and Melissa Sabo's fle learning task

Batch processing of images using Adobe Bridge can be useful in creating multimodal presentation for your social documentary. View the video below for some ways you can do this.

Audacity and "Where The Wild Things Are" podcast

Yesterday, I had some fun in using audacity in remixing music and my classmates Andrew's narration of "Where The Wild Things Are", a well-known children's story by Maurice Sendak. This is done for the purpose of our fle learning task. The development of the finalized podcast was actually not so easy as Andrew's narration was done independently of my music story board. It was an emerging and creative process as I split, cut, overlap and remix it to the appropriate tempo of the music accompaniment. The other way of doing it will be to get the story board out first. This approach may however impede the narration flow of Andrew. I guess each method of producing a podcast has its own merits and difficulties, you just have to know which works better for you.

Have a listen to it, or try the learning task at the podcast site with your students.

Answer Tips for learning

To illustrate the potential of Answer Tips for learning, here's 2 suggestions:

1. Design an interdisciplinary (language and Science) performance task where groups of students work on producing stories about Science and technology for their Science Blog. As students peer review each other's Science Blog, Answer Tips can then serve as effective tools to bridge student’s understanding of complex Science and technology phenomena, which students typically have difficulty understanding because such concepts are ultimately language-based (Gregory, 1988). Here's an abstract from one of my paper for you to try out Answer Tips. Don't know what avascular is, just double click on the word to find out. It is hoped that Answer Tips.com can improve the technology by incorporating flash-based/Virtual Reality simulations to its explanations of scientific/technical concepts.
   
   "We develop and calibrate a mathematical model for avascular tumour growth. The model is formulated as a set of partial differential equations describing the spatio-temporal changes in cell concentrations based on reaction-diffusion dynamics and the law of mass conservation. Unlike existing models, the current model takes into account the dependence of the cell proliferation rate on the growth inhibiting factors secreted by necrotic cells; furthermore, the model incorporates an element of random variation to the mitotic rate and nutrient supply. The model is solved using standard finite difference techniques. Results obtained from the simulation compare well with published experimental data. The biological and clinical implications of these results are also discussed."
   
   
2. For language teachers designing online journaling tasks around students' areas of interests and yet catering to the special learning needs of students of mixed ability (such as those students with reading comprehension difficulties), you may consider integrating Answer Tips with text to speech applications for firefox (you can download the text to speech applicaton from my fletls files, it's called clickspeech_bundle_v1.3. You then must open the file from firefox browser and restart firefox after installation). In this way, students with special learning needs for reading comprehension can listen to any part of their classmates blog post read to them as well as double click on any word to understand its meaning in the context of the post entry.
   

You may view the video file for Answer Tips and text to speech illustrations.

Reference:
Gregory, B. (1988). Inventing Reality: Physics as Language. NY: Wiley.