Sunday, February 26, 2006 

Introduction to the Internet

A 6 hour course over 3 days on the basics of the internet. A community association course.

Getting Started




Searching

Email

Web Browsers
  • Customization
    • Text size
    • Homepage
    • Bookmarks
    • Toolbar

Downloading

Keeping it Clean

Best sites


Create your own space

E-Commerce
  • Banking
Bonus Stuff:

Friday, February 17, 2006 

Digital Storytelling

This session will be presented at the Prairie South Teachers' Convention on February 22/06.
Download the PPT.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Short version is that it the use of multimedia (images, video, audio and text) to tell meaningful stories that illicit an emotional response beyond the fact based presentation of ideas. Some stricter definitions stress the use of all these media, however, I'm a bit more loose in my definition to include any stories that include 2 forms.

Why we would use Digital Storytelling?


This is the way we best communicate. Purpose and Audience are essential ingredients for storytelling. Web publishing is an intergal part of digital storytelling. Sharing with the world beyond your classroom and including personal connection brings motivation and meaning to student work.

Examples:


  • Stop Animation....created by a grade 9 student in Moose Jaw. Maybe our next Spielberg or Tim Burton.
  • Identity 2.0...Dick Hardt's presentation using PowerPoint in a way you may not have seen before.

Tools:


  • Swish...free trial...low educational pricing
  • PowerPoint...part of Microsoft Office
Resources:

Friday, February 10, 2006 

RSS

rss

What is RSS?
  • Real Simple Syndication
  • uses xml code to create and subsribe to content
Why do I care?
  • Helps manage information...
    • Allows you to utilize a news reader to subscribe to weblogs, news media, searches, and other rss enable web content
    • Makes your web experience more focused and richer
  • Saves time...
    • Instead of visiting all your favourite sources, you go to one place
    • News readers summarize content to make it easy to decide if you want to read it or discard it
How do I use it?
  • Find a news reader
  • Add or import feeds
  • Create folders to organize sources
  • Save particulary important post to clippings folder
  • Email pertinent articles from within bloglines
Other Resources
Update: Here's a link to my RSS talk at SACE 2005