Multi-faceted Refractions

Today, Google released a new collaborative tool , Google Presentation, to round out its suite of products. During our Lower School and Middle School opening Faculty Meetings, I showed teachers Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets which can be used by students as substitutes for Microsoft Word and Excel. These are tools that would allow students to work via a web browser, which would allow for students to work both at home and school without the need to have the application on either computer or emailing work back and forth. It also would allow for students to collaborate on documents together, which opens up a range of possibilities.

To see an example of Google presentation, you can take a look at this presentation created by a group of teachers today (http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?fs=true&docid=ah4zsdj46b66_578cv4×7#)

Google Presentation is their first attempt at provide users the ability to create slide shows via a web browser, making a presentation application independent. This first attempt does have limitations. There are no transitions and limited templates, although this may be an advantage, since in most of the projects, students can spend more time look rather than content. At this point, you export the presentation into a PowerPoint format.

Advantages to this is that a project can be simultaneously edited. You can import PowerPoints, but there may be other solutions which may be better, such as SlideShare. It does keep a history so you can revert to a previous version.

Like the other collaborative Google Apps, Docs and Spreadsheets, I am guessing that this product is not finished and that additional enhancements will be added in time.

I think that his will be worthy of  use in many of current uses and the ability to collaborate will make this a powerful tool.

As I noted earlier this week, I spent a part of my weekend following the thoughts and ideas being shared at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai. Since then, several of the participants have taken the time to reflect and share their ideas and thoughts via their blog posts and podcasts of the sessions.

This morning, while reviewing my RSS reader this morning, I found a post from Kim Cofino, who is a 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School in Bangkok, Thailand.  In her post today, 20 Project Ideas Inspired by Learning 2.0, she outlines many great global project ideas that she was brainstormed with other teachers both at the conference and virtually.

With our goal at school to have our students to become more active and participating global citizens, I am hopeful our teacher will take a look at some of these opportunities to allow our students to connect with others. I look forward to sharing these projects.

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When we think of teachers, we often think of the adults in learning community. However, we should never discount what we can learn from our students.

Today, while speaking to a senior about an issue unrelated to technology, I noticed that he was using a web tool that I was unaware of, Flashcard Exchange (www.flashcardexchange.com). He had created a set of flashcards to review for a class of his. What was interesting about this site, as I began to poke around, is that you could create tags for the flashcard sets. This ability to tag your sets allows for others to search for your set and for you to search for other, so that you can take advantage of what others have created.

Thinking that I had stumbled upon a really great tool, I tagged it into my del.icio.us account. Imagine my surprise when I found out that 1845 other users had already located this tool.

This tools looks like a great resource that students can use to create review tools that they can use online. This online access may be something that will appeal to their desire to work more online. You do have the ability to study and play a memory game. With a paid account ($19.95) you can print cards and export them into other applications. Looks promising tool and I think that everyone should take a look at this tool to see how classes can use this tool. I can imagine a time that a homework assignment is for someone or a group in a class to create a set for each unit to help their classmates study and learn.