You can only tell the shape of things by looking at the edges – Ken Price

An article by D’Arcy Norman on the dismantling of CAREO, U Calgary’s digital repository.

CAREO was important, back in 2001-2004, as a prototype. As a sandbox for trying out some of these concepts. As a place to easily host metadata and content and try the repository model. From that perspective, I think it was a huge success. Without CAREO, I would likely still be saying that we need centralized institutional repositories to tightly manage resources.

But, because of CAREO, I now know that we don’t need repositories at the institutional level. Personal repositories are much more powerful, effective, and manageable. They’re called blogs, maybe you’ve heard of them? And small pieces, loosely joined. Want to manage photos online? Use Flickr. Videos? Use YouTube/GoogleVideo/etc… We don’t need a monolithic institutional repository.

…

Sure, we were naive, but we meant well. And now, hopefully, people will learn from our successes, failures, and mistakes, and not be doomed to repeat them.

Google Earth kmz files

Here is a resource that may be useful for Google Earth, or at least as an example of how students could share geospatial ideas

Nuclear reactor KMZ file for Google Earth

There is a story here!  Until last week, KMZ files (the file format that is used by Google Earth) were not able to be uploaded to Edublogs, as they came up as a dangerous file type.  After a few queries, and a bit of investigation, the good people at Edublogs verified that the KMZ  is an OK file type , and they can now be uploaded. And the actual changes took less than 12 hours. Overnight in fact.

This is a quite incredible response for a service that is free to individual teachers. I can’t think of many “commercial” providers that can come close to that degree of responsiveness.  These people deserve congratulations.

 kp

Want to start building a WebQuest in powerpoint? This Generic webquest template may be useful.

Then you can upload it to your own edublogs professional blog.

Ok, so you have planned a great WebQuest, and you want students to be able to get to it. How do you do it?

Here are some options: Webquest hosting

Ken’s presentation is provided below (as a PPT file). Hopefully it will stimulate some thinking and encourage librarians and library staff to delve into using Web 2.0 applications to assist teaching and learning

ASLA Tas presentation Ken Price 17-18 August 2007

Pageflakes

www.pageflakes.com/
http://kenprice.pageflakes.com/Default.aspx 

Del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/practicalclassroomstuff http://del.icio.us/svshslib
http://del.icio.us/tasite07  (username  pwd available)

Library-specific examples:

http://del.icio.us/chelmsfordlibraryhttp://del.icio.us/kkerns  

Google Earth

www.googlelittrips.com/
London timeline (kmz file –needs to be locally held in Google Earth)

www.youtube.com
www.teachertube.com

Example of YouTube in classroom www.thecorner.org/hist/video/v_ww2.htm  

Webtop applications 

http://www.thinkfree.com/ 
http://docs.google.com 

Flickr

Art – www.flickr.com/photos/ha112/414146234/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/learningandteachingscotland/241343007 

Recipes -www.flickr.com/photos/ldandersen/2573806/

Mind- and concept mapping

www.mindomo.com  -  username and password available
http://bubbl.us/

Notes

http://notemesh.com/

Diagramming

http://www.gliffy.com/ -  username and password available    

Video

http://www.jumpcut.com/
http://www.uthtv.com/
http://www.uthtv.com/wiki/index.php/Teacher_Resources

Curriki

www.curriki.org

Edu 2.o

www.edu20.org 

Rate My Teachers Aust

http://au.ratemyteachers.com/