Thing 10: Creative Commons

Have you ever found a great photo on the Web and used it in a PowerPoint, on a blog, or even in a print publication you were making? Did you feel guilty about it? I know I have! We're not technically supposed to use someone's work without their permission, but, getting permission can be time consuming, and besides, what if the creators don't mind? The people at Creative Commons have given creators of original works an option to give their works a Creative Commons license. This license allows people to use their works, always with attribution, sometimes with other optional stipulations.

Watch the videos below:

Now visit the Creative Commons website for an overview of the CC philosophy and the different licenses creators may choose for their works. Also, CC licenses aren't just for photos: they can be used with video, music, writing, scientific research, anything that would normally be covered under a copyright license!

Discovery Exercise:

• Watch the videos
• Visit and explore the Creative Commons website
• Post your thoughts about Creative Commons. Does CC seem like a good idea? How could you use it with student projects? Could this help or hinder their understanding and respect of copyright law?

Thing 9: Online Books/Book Cataloguing

If you're following along on the original "13 Things" list, you may notice we're jumping ahead this week. Originally, RSS Feeds were scheduled as our Thing 9. I'm moving that back a few things because Google is working on releasing Google Reader as an educational app. What does this mean for us? It means we can use the Google Reader to grab RSS feeds using our Coe email accounts. If this still means nothing...just wait and I'll explain it all in a few weeks!

Thing 9: Online Books/Book Cataloguing (Week of July 26-30)

This "Thing" is more for fun and for personal use, but you may find that it has potential for classroom use as well. If you're a reader, it's always a good idea to keep a list of what you've read so you can make recommendations, look for books by the same author, and well, because sometimes it's just fun to make lists. Several online book cataloguing sites have popped up in recent years, each of which allow you to create your own "book shelf", tag books, find forums to join, get recommendations, and see what other people are reading. Three of the most popular are GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing. For this Thing, you should visit each of these sites, take the tour or read the How It Works section, and choose one in which to create an account. Try adding 5-10 books, create tags for them, add them to the appropriate shelf, and anything else that strikes your fancy. I have an account on LibraryThing, username LisaWiebenga. Check me out! I also have added a gadget on the sidebar of this blog that shows random books from my LibraryThing (scroll down below the Blogroll).

Discovery Activity:

• Explore GoodReads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing
• Create an account in one of them
• Add 5-10 books
• Add tags to each book
• Add book to the appropriate bookshelf (if applicable)
• Post your username and which application you used
• Post about your experiences using the application. Would you use this? How and why? Could you see any way to use this in a school setting?

For fun (optional):

• Add a gadget to your blog displaying books from your account (each of the three applications has an option to get the code to embed onto your blog, website, etc.)

Thing 8: YouTube & More

By now, the world knows YouTube as the source of all things video on the Internet. And I do mean “all things.” The good, the bad, and the ugly are all there for all to see.

Thing 8: Video (Week of July 19-25)

YouTube revolutionizes the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video. YouTube is now owned by Google, so it will be interesting to see the how the evolution/merging of the two sites happens. Right now, a search of either one returns results from both sites.

There are dozens of other video sites, but among the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day. For those who register for a free account, YouTube provides additional features turning it into a social networking service.
These features include the ability to…

• create a profile
• customize your profile with favorites, playlists and subscriptions to channels & tags
• upload & tag your videos
• "friend" other YouTube users
• send messages and even broadcast messages to all your YouTube friends
• rate and add comments to videos
  

A social site like YouTube democratizes film making, the same way blogs democratize publishing. The videos vary in lenght (up to ten minutes) and run the gamut of subjects. You'll find personal rumblings, amateur TV shows, wedding videos and other personal videos people upload to share with family and friends. But you'll also find famous scenes from movies, music performances, vintage television advertising, videos of speeches by Nelson Mandala, Martin Luther King, Jr, and JFK, the first moon landing and animations of DNA replication.

For Thing 8, you will do some exploring in YouTube or Google Video. Find a video that relates to your personal interests or area of scholarship, or that simply appeals to your sense of humor.

Speaking of sense of humor:




Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube or Google Video & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog. Enter a keyword or words in the search box. After you find a video, you can learn more about it (including what tags it has) by click the little double-arrow icon directly below the video. This opens an area with more information.
2. Place a YouTube video inside your blog by following these instructions. These instructions show how to place other video in a Blogger post.
3. On your blog: why did you choose this video? Have you used online videos in your classrooms or for your work before? Would you in the future? Have you uploaded any of your own videos to an online sharing site?
   

Thing 7: Social Bookmarking

Yay! We're just past the half-way point in our 13 Things adventure. Boo! Summer is half-way gone.

Thing 7: Social Bookmarking (week of July 12-18)

The next Thing we'll be looking at is social bookmarking using Delicious, which will help you organize all of your favorite websites.

Watch this explanation from Common Craft and then sign up for a Delicious account. When you first look at Delicious, check out some of the "Fresh Bookmarks" and "Popular Bookmarks" to see how they have been tagged.




Once you've created a Delicious account, add and tag some of your favorite websites. Post your Delicious username on your blog (mine is lisa.wiebenga), then, once other people have started posting their Delicious usernames, add a few of your colleagues to your network. You can add me first just to see how it works. When you're finished, create a post and reflect on your Delicious experience. Do you see this as a useful tool? Would you actually use this? How could it be helpful in a school setting? If you already use one of the other social bookmarking sites, feel free to share that and your thoughts about it rather than create another account (but at least look at Delicious).

Discovery Exercise:

• Create a Delicious account and add websites
• add me to your network (lisa.wiebenga), then add a few of your colleagues
• Create a post about your experience AND post your Delicious username

Just for fun:
Look at Stumbleupon; you don't have to create an account (unless you want to after learning more about it here), but this is an interesting way to see what the general public is discovering on the web. Click "Discover" and you'll see current sites getting top rankings. On the right-hand side you'll see a list of popular tags. Look around a bit and perhaps you'll find something exciting.

Diggo is another bookmarking site to check out. Diggo is quickly gaining popularity with new features like post-it notes and the ability to create thumbnails of saved link pages. Feel free to complete your discovery exercise using Diggo if you prefer.

Thing 6: Twitter

Willie Nelson does it. Ellen does it. Your favorite NPR hosts do it, too! And now it's your turn. No longer is Twitter mainly used to let the world know what you had for breakfast: surgeons use it to instruct medical students and educate the public, politicians use it to update their constituents, the Red Cross uses it share emergency information and educational leaders use it to share new ideas and engage in dialogues with interested "followers."

Thing 6: Twitter (Week of July 5-9 if you're working by week!)

Read the article "Twittering, Not Frittering, Professional Development in 140 Characters" from Edutopia OR 10 High Fliers on Twitter from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and then create a Twitter account for yourself. If you're comfortable with this, set your account as "Public" (that way we can all find you on Twitter). If not, then you have to approve individual people to be your followers. Do a few Internet searches to find leaders in your area, and chances are that they will have a Twitter account (for example, I might search for leaders in the world of educational technology). "Follow" at least three of them, post your Twitter name to your blog (mine is lisawiestro), and then let us know who you're following.

In addition to following each of you, when you've got your Twitter accounts going, here is an example of some of the people I'm following:

• David Warlick (a well known leader in ed tech)
• Bryan Alexander (another ed tech guru, works for NITLE)
• OnPointRadio (one of my fav NPR shows - people tweet questions, host Tom Ashbrook frequently reads comments and questions from real time tweeters)
• Chronicle of Higher Education (tweets links to the major stories)
• IADeptofEd
  
• CoeBRAI (follows Coe's RAGBRAI group with daily updates from the road)
• usedgov (US Department of Education)

Discovery Exercise

1. Create a Twitter account
2. Find at least 3 people to follow
3. Retweet a post or two from someone you're following
4. Post your Twitter name to your blog
5. Tell us who you're following
6. Reflect on your experience using/reading about Twitter. Do you think you would use Twitter? How could it be applied to an educational setting?

Thing 5: Online Photo Sharing

Here we are, leaving June for July already and soon to be on THING 5!

You may already have an account with an online photo sharing site, or perhaps you've had friends or family send you a link to their online albums. Photo sharing sites have progressed beyond being warehouses for photos, however: many let you edit, crop, organize, share, add comments, tag, create photo groups, and even apply cool effects to individual photos.

We're going to be exploring Flickr, which is one of the most innovative photo sites around. You'll be creating a Flickr account, uploading some photos to it, tagging those photos, and then posting a photo to your blog. "She's crazy!", you might be saying. But I'm not, trust me. You can do it! I chose this Photo Sharing Thing to occur right before July 4th; now you'll have practice for posting all of those great family picnic pictures next week! If you don't have access to a digital camera, you can talk to the AV department and request to borrow one.

Your goal for Thing 8 is to create a Flickr account and upload at least THREE photos. You should then TAG the photos with keywords and tag at least ONE of the photos with the keyword coe13things (no spaces). Make these photos PUBLIC (you have to check a box making them public), so that we can search for them on Flickr. You should then write a blog post about your experience with Flickr and make sure to include your Flickr name so we can find your pictures.

Here are some resources to get you started:

• Flickr Tour
• Flickr FAQs
• "Classroom" groups on Flickr (school-related photo groups that have been created by teachers)
• From the Flickr homepage be sure to type coe13things in the search box to see what images have already been tagged (You'll see mine!)
  

Discovery Exercise:

• Go to Flickr, create an account. Upload a few pictures. These can be pictures you take specifically for this exercise, or some you might already have taken. Be sure to tag at least one of your pictures with the coe13things tag. Use any other tags that you'd like to include.
• On your blog: post some commentary about online photo sharing: do you have previous experience? Have you already used Flickr? Does it have any value for your class/office/life? What's the benefit of a site like Flickr over emailing a picture to your mom/student/supervisor/friend?
  
• ALSO on your blog: add one of your pictures! Flickr allows you to automatically post your pictures to your blog. First, you'll have to set up your Flickr account to recognize your blog (instructions here); then simply click "blog this" (as noted in the instructions) above the photo you want to be included in a blog post.
  

Just for fun:

• in Flickr: map your photos, explore (I love the "story in five frames"), look at the Flickr blog.
• outside of Flickr: check out BigHugeLabs and have some fun with your photos. Create comics, sports cards, comic book captions, movie posters and more.
  

Week 4: More on Blogs (June 21-27)

Now that we have our blogs established, it's time to get connected. For Thing 4, you'll be commenting on and following some of your colleagues' blogs, in addition to tagging the posts you've created so far. First, choose at least three of your colleagues' blogs (see the sidebar on the right), and comment on their first or second post. Commenting on blogs allows us to ask questions of one another, make suggestions, or simply to reply to what has been written or posted. I will be commenting on various blogs throughout the 13 Things program. Once you've commented, you should then "follow" those blogs. Oh, and "follow" this blog (13 Things @ Coe), too. As you can see in your own blog, I have "followed" you- so you can now see my picture on your blog's sidebar. Now when I log into my blog and look at the Dashboard, I can see what's been updated on the blogs I'm following! Cool, right? Also, let's "tag" the posts you've created so far. Tagging allows you to categorize your posts, which is really helpful if you blog regularly.

To "tag" your posts: go into your old posts by clicking "edit posts" on your dashboard. On the bottom of the edit box, you'll notice a place for labels. As you start to create labels, you can click "show all" if you have trouble remembering the name of your tags (tags and labels are the same thing).


Discovery Exercise

• Take some time to explore a few of your fellow participants’ blogs (listed on the right). Leave a comment on 3-4 different blogs.
• Follow the 13 Things @ Coe blog AND the blogs you've commented on.
• Use key words to tag the posts you've created so far.
  
• Post to your blog. Why do you think commenting is important in online communities? What might this mean for students who share their writing online? Write something about who you're following and the tags you've used.

Just for fun (optional): check out Technorati; Technorati is a search engine for blogs. According to Technorati's self-description:
Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time and surfaces them in seconds. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere.
Scoll around - note the top risers or fastest fallers. Check out the top 100 or blogs with most recent posts. Technoriti ranks based on links compared to other blogs with similar content.