On the 12th Day of a Christmas....thoughtful ways to give

We'll go a little off track on this last day of Christmas and talk about how the internet and it's wide variety of tools can help us have a BIG impact with a small gesture. I'll highlight three easy ways to use your internet connection to change someone's life (by loaning, giving or clicking...)

Do you have an extra $25? Don't worry, you'll get it back! Kiva is an online, mico-finance organization. It works like this: a woman in Uganda makes her living selling food from a cart. Her cart falls apart, and she needs $ for a new one. You loan $25 to her through Kiva, which works through a micro-financing organization in Uganda. The women gets a loan of $100 (or whatever she requested to purchase or build a new cart). She makes more money because her cart is more effective. She re-pays the loan. Kiva gives you your money back (or lets you invest it in someone else's loan request). The total amount of money loaned through Kiva to date is over $170 million. The average loan size per individual is only $360. That's a lot of people getting helped! The underlying mission of Kiva is to alleviate poverty by connecting people (through lending).

Do you have an extra $10? You don't get this back in green, but you'll get it back by improving the educational experience for someone right here in your own community. Donor's Choose is "an online charity connecting you to a classroom in need." It works like this: a teacher identifies a need in his/her classroom (something the tight educational budgets aren't able to handle). He/she writes up a project on Donor's Choose website. You and your extra $10 look through the requests on the Donor's Choose website until you find one that deserves your $10. You can search by state, city and school. Cedar Rapids currently has 10 or 11 open projects. As you peruse the site, you'll see teachers are requesting anything from pencils for poetry writing, to a set of books or instructional materials, to ipods or a data projector. You can give anonymously or if you choose to share your identity, you'll get a thank you from the teacher.

Do you have some time to click? Every day you visit The Hunger Site and click the big yellow "Click Here to Give" button, you're giving 1 cup of food to a person in need. Your screen will show you a list of sponsors who are actually funding the cups of food (in exchange for the opportunity to advertise to you). Even better; if you don't have all of your holiday shopping completed, consider shopping on The Hunger Site. You'll find unique gifts, made around the world (and from here); and with every item you buy on the site, you'll also be funding a food donation. For instance; I ordered one of these awesome bags for my sister-in-law. It's hand-made by Cambodian women out of recycled rice bags. When I purchase this, I'm helping a Cambodian woman retain her financial independence, I'm supporting recycling, and I'm donating 50 cups of food toward the fight to end world hunger (and I'm also giving my sister-in-law a bag as cool and unique as she is).

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a relaxing break. Upon your return, check your mailbox for a Brewed Awakening's card! Enjoy a cup of coffee to ease yourself into the Happy New Year!

On the 11th Day of Christmas...a visual thesaurus

Used with permission
from DiscoveryEducation

The word is right there on the tip of your tongue...but you just can't make it come out! You've got lots of other words that mean something close...but just not the right word.

You need a visual thesaurus. A visual thesaurus shows you all the synonyms to your word, plus, with a click of the mouse allows you to drill deeper into one of the related words, and then see all of the synonyms to THAT word. Somewhere in that exercise, you'll find the perfect word.

The Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is actually a commercial tool, with a limited free interface. Even with it's limitations (you'll have to click "try" when you first start, and you'll be limited to a handful of drill downs) the tool is rich. Enter a word you'd like to explore, and you'll get a pop up application with all the related words, plus definitions of your original word. Click any of the related words, and get a new view. You can print with the free trial, but you won't be able to save your word searches or share them. A membership will cost $19.95/year. Also worth noting is the information included on the main Visual Thesaurus website: a word of the day section, a blog feed written by writers talking about writing, featured word lists, lesson plans and more.

Other visual thesuarus tools to try:

• Visiwords: very similar to The Visual Thesaurus, but not quite as robust: you don't get the drill-down functions, and you'll have to decode the color codes to determine meanings based on word type (nouns have a purple background)
• Lexipedia: again, very similar in visuals, but this one, in my humble opinion, is a bit easier to read than Visiwords. Mouse-over tips help you decipher color coding, and you can show or hide different word forms (keep nouns, hide verbs when applicable).
• The benefit that both Visiwords and Lexipedia have over The Visual Thesaurus is that they are free (open source).

Go ahead, start visualizing!

By the way...if you have kids, these are great tools for vocabulary building.

On the 10th Day of Christmas...Mind Mapping

Bubbl.us is an online tool for brainstorming or mind mapping. You remember brainstorming from your earlier education days, right? You start with a concept, usually in a bubble in the middle of a page. Then you start thinking of all of the other related concepts (in bubbles surrounding the initial concept). Brainstorming helped you look at all angles of the concept, to sort out related items and visualize connections. Mind mapping is similar, except the concepts are things you know or you are studying, and you are connecting them to other things you know (or are studying).

We probably have a pretty good idea of how to help our students or fellow staff utilize brainstorming techniques, but have you considered helping them create mind maps (sometimes referred to as concept maps, too) of new concepts being introduced in class? For instance, in our Pagan & Religious Holidays 101 course, as we introduced Christmas, what relationship does it have to All Saints Eve? How does it connect to holidays that share both pagan and religious roots? How does it connect to holidays with a central (or two) male figure? Helping students tie new information to content they've already mastered has ties to constructivist learning theories.

Here's my mind map of ME (created on Bubbl.us and exported as an image):

To create your own:

1. Go to bubbl.us and click "Start Brainstorming"
2. Put your mouse over the "start here' bubble that appears. If you click the words (Start Here), you'll be able to edit them. With your mouse held over the bubble, you can get tool tips for each of the options in the bubble (for instance, to add a child-bubble, use the icon in the middle on the bottom - the tool tip says "Child Bubble: create new child bubble).
3. A free account will allow you to share your bubble with other collaborators, save it online for future additions, or get an embed code
4. Without an account, you can export your work as an image. There is a small "Menu" button in the lower-right hand corner. Export as .jpg or .png to suite your needs.

Let the brainstorming begin!

On the 9th Day of Christmas...Interactive Timelines

Have you ever found yourself getting the tail end of a story, but wishing you'd been paying more attention? For instance, you can't help but know now that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange got arrested for something and there's been a lot of hacking reported. When this whole thing started, perhaps you weren't paying much attention because Wikileaks sounded like something that needed the attention of a tissue or a plumber.

One way to get the full-spectrum scoop is to view the news on a timeline. Newspapers have been publishing timelines for years; you probably had to create a timeline for your 6th Grade Social Studies class about something. Interactive time lines give you images, links to deeper information, and the ability to scroll at your own pace through detailed, chronologically sorted information.

Dipity is an interactive time line tool that features timelines from current events and almost any other topic you can imagine. Dippity features user-generated content (with a free account, you can create and share your own timelines, too). You can search timelines by subject. Check out these interesting timelines to get an idea of how an interactive timeline works:

• Andy Warhol timeline created by the San Jose Museum of Art as part of "The Prints of Andy Warhol" exhibition in Spring 2009. 
• The Secret History of Those &$%#ing Symbols was created by one of the Dipity creators based on an article published on Gizmodo by Bryan Gardiner. Look at this one if you've ever been curious about why the power button to almost everything today is a circle with a line through the top.
• The Crafton's: could you live on a boat with your spouse and three teenage children for seven years? The Washington Post frequently uses timelines to help illustrate stories. This story has a link to the Crafton Family Timeline on the right-hand side.

There are other interactive timeline sites, but Dipity is definitely the one worth checking out today.

On the 8th Day of Christmas...a different way to search

Today we'll look at three tools that might change the way you search the internet. Or, maybe they'll just give you a new perspective on searching.

Feel free to test them all out, or pick the one that seems like it might be best for your current searching needs.

1. Google Squared. Google Squared is in the "Google Labs" - meaning it's been developed, but hasn't been fully adopted yet (sometimes this means bugs are still being worked out, sometimes it means Google is still determining whether there is an audience for the tool). What is it? Accoding to Google: "Google Squared takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web." Essentially you get a table, presenting common information from the sites returned into columns. You can add columns (topics suggested in a drop down based on the content). Here's my search for "Dogs". You'll see I got a column for item, description, image, country of origin, weight and height. If you hold your cursor over the description, you'll see the name of the website providing the information. Google Squared works great when you're searching for an "object" based topic (dogs, cheese, antibiotics, classic cars, etc.) because you'll get a visual overview of the results. One more interesting thing about Google Squared: like most things Google, you can save and share your results.


2. Search Cube. What is it? (according to searchcube.com) search-cube is a visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, three-dimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninety-six websites, videos and images. You've just got to try it! Manipulate your cube by dragging with your mouse to rotate, or by using the arrow keys on your keyboard to flip the cube. Click one of the squares to open the represented website (if you just hold your mouse over a square, you'll get a description, URL and other information off to the right).

3. Viewzi. This search engine builds "views" of your search results. The default view is the power grid, but based on your topic, one of the other views along the top may offer a more detailed result. The other views include:

• website screen shots (just flip through one by one, sort of like photos on an iphone)
• site information (giving you details like how much traffic the site gets daily, when it was last updated, if it's been tagged elsewhere
• video view, news view and photo view are similar to Google's image, news and video search

Try some new ways of searching today!

On the 7th Day of Christmas...Mashups

Make up?
Mess up?
Hush up?
Push up?
Catch up?
Patch up?
Wash up?

No, MASH UP. According to Wikipedia, "a mashup is a web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services."

For a visual mashup, think poster presentation meets digital web. Your mashup (or digital poster) can have videos, links to websites, text, audio files, images and more (some mashup sites allow you to embed applications like counters, surveys and games).

Here is an example of a mashup I created called Santa Claus.  I used Middlespot,  a free tool (no registration required) that allows you to combine text, pictures, video, web links and embedded web content on a customizable background. You can share your mashup by sharing the URL or embedding it on your own webpage or blog. If you want to access your mashups on other computers or browsers, you'll need to sign up for an account (free).

A visual mash up is not the only type of mashup. Data mashups combine multiple data sources to allow you to cross reference or cross analyze different data points. Check out DataMasher. With a free account on DataMasher, you can create your own custom data sets; without an account, you can look at data sets created by other users. Data comes from data.gov and other state and federal governmental sources. Bear in mind, this is not considered rigorous statistical analysis--because the data sets are determined by users, and the information on cross-referenced data sets may or may not have a strong relationship. It is, however, a great place to start looking at trends and data, and it's user friendly (and user-generated) and visually appealing.

Try a little mashing of your own today!

On the 6th Day of Christmas...Tiny URL

You've found what you want more than anything for Christmas on Amazon.com of all places! Now you'd like to send a link to your favorite find to Santa @ north pole dot com. But your link contains 211 characters. It seems long and unwieldy and you're afraid the link will get broken when you email it and Santa will bring you another sweater vest.

TinyURL to the rescue! Copy and paste your LONG link into TinyURL (tinyurl.com). Select a customization if you'd like, or TinyURL will create a random one for you. My 211-character link was shorted to http://tinyurl.com/xmasliwi.

Try it out! Put the Tiny URL of something on your Christmas list in the comments.


By the way: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator....it's geek-speak for web address. Just in case you didn't know.

The 5th Day of Christmas...WallWisher

Have you ever wished you could have a place for people to post notes online? A virtual bulletin board, so to speak? Wish no more...introducing Wallwisher.

Wallwisher is an online notice board. You can customize the background color/themes, add graphics and introductory text and then share the URL with people you'd like to have posting to your board.

How could you use it?

• Have your students post ideas for group projects, brainstorm results, a short synopsis of a reading, pre-thoughts on the next big project
• Use it as a place for departmental suggestions or meeting ideas
• Have your family post their Christmas lists, so you'll have them all in one place!
• Here's my Wall Wisher example. Double-click anywhere on the board to add your sticky note.

Start yours: go to Wallwisher. Click "build a wall". Choose your customizations, including background texture, title, subtitle, graphic (upper left...it's required; you'll upload your own or use one of the presets). You can even customize the URL.

The 4th Day of Christmas...your online playlist.

Creative Commons Attribution

The holidays require a bit of music, right? So, on the 4th day we'll have fun with music.

Grooveshark is an online playlist generator. You can create a 'playlist' (a list of songs you want to listen to) and then click 'play' and enjoy some great background music. If you're a Pandora fan, this is similar, but no ads, and no sign up required.

Start by typing in the name of an artist or a song or genre. Click the + sign to the left of the song you want to add to your play list. If you prefer, click "Playlist" (in the upper right hand side to the left of the search box) and you'll find playlists already created based on your search criteria. Continue to add songs to your list until you've got enough for an enjoyable listening experience!

For anyone participating born after 1980, the image on this post is a record on a record player.

The 3rd Day of Christmas...online picture editing

Have you ever gotten a photo email attachment and opened it, only to find the picture was so big the only thing you could see on your screen without scrolling was a NOSE?

Picnik is an online photo editor. Picnik allows you to upload a photo, change it's size, add embellishments (like text, frames or effects like sepia tone) and then re-save the photo to your computer. You do not need to create an account. If you choose to create a free account, you'll be able to upload multiple images and make collages. Picnik also offers "premium" services; meaning you can pay a small membership fee and have access to more features.

This is an example of a photo I edited in Picnik. I changed the size, added text and add a frame.

You'll find lots of seasonal features (you can create your holiday cards, or add Christmas stickers to your photos, or if you're a football fan, you can add face paint to your photos in your team colors!)

To resize photos to appropriate sizes to email or put on a blog, upload a photo. You'll be in the "edit" tab; click "resize" from the sub menu list. Make one of your dimensions somewhere between 300 and 500 pixels (dimensions are locked, so you only need to change horizontal OR vertical).

Check it out!

The 2nd Day of Christmas...online scheduling

Have you ever tried to find a common free time to meet with multiple people? Did it involve multiple emails, and you with a grid scribbled on scratch paper trying to figure out how many people were free at 3pm on Wednesdays? There's an easier way.

Doodle.com is an easy, online scheduling tool. Click "Schedule an event" to get started. You'll give your event a name, an optional description, and your name. If you provide an email address, you'll get an email every time someone updates your Doodle.

Next, select the dates and then times you would consider for your meeting times (your invitees will put a check mark next to each date/time they'd be available).

You'll get a URL to send via email. Here is an example of an invitation. You'll also get an administration link (to see results, make changes). Both of these links will get emailed to you.


Give it a try!

The 1st Day of Christmas...cell phone polling

Poll Everywhere is the free, online alternative to "clickers" in the classroom. This tool allows you to survey your class (or office mates, or friends) using their cell phones or a web page.

So, you write a question in the poll (ex. "If Santa loaded up his sleigh tonight, would you get coal or presents? answers: Coal, Presents). The website will generate a nice graphic, with your question and responses. It will tell your audience to sent a text to #22333. The responses are numerical, too (so to choose "Coal" you'd enter the number next to coal in the subject area of the text).

You'll see immediate, anonymous results.

You can also have people answer the poll by using a website, rather than texting with a cell phone.

Example
Take my poll:

• if you have a cell phone click here 
• if you don't, answer the question online here

How it might be used:

• have a question up as students are coming into class...take the 'temperature' of your class about a current event or a topic they've read or prepared...
• poll your office mates on where to go for lunch during finals week

Other things:
You can create an account (free) and create multiple questions and save them together. There are also paid licenses which allow you to put keywords into the responses, meaning your respondents would text the word "coal" instead of the numerical value associated with the answer in the free version.

12 Days of Christmas at Coe

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

For 12 days in December (any 12 days - at your convenience) we'll explore 12 web tools. NONE of these web tools will require you to create a login or password to play*. Some of them have the potential to simplify your tasks, some of them are just for fun, and some might become your new favorite online tool!

And, that's not all! Just for playing, you'll be rewarded with a free cup of coffee ($10 gift card value) from our favorite local coffee spot, Brewed Awakenings! No sign up, no major tracking, no real implementation requirements...just you playing with some new (or maybe old to you) online tools!

How Will This Work? Over the next week, I'll add 12 postings highlighting 12 different online tools or websites for you to check out. You'll check them out. You might find one or two that have immediate application for you; or discover you're already using one or two. Once you've explored the tool, comment to the blog post. Is it something you could use? How? Have you already been using it? How? Is it a waste of time? Why? You can explore at your own speed. You can look at all 12 tools in one sitting if you want, or you can explore one every day between now and December 20. I will have ALL 12 postings completed by December 8.

Do I need to sign up? No. Just comment on this blog. Comment on each of the 12 Tools postings. On December 20, I'll review all of the comments. If you've commented on each of the 12 posts, I'll put your coffee in campus mail...a hot, fresh cup o' joe will be waiting for you in your mailbox after break.
(Disclaimer: a gift card for a hot, fresh cup o' joe will be in your box, not the real cup o' joe).

Ready? The FIRST Day of Christmas will be posted soon!