Signing up with L8r will allow you to have three pending emails at any time for free, but if you need to send any more than that, it will cost you. You can purchase 10 emails for $1.99, 200 emails for $9.99, and 1,000 emails for $24.99. When you run out, you’ll be switched back to the free plan. Now, you may be wondering, why pay for L8r when you can send emails in the future with a service like FutureMe for free? Paid users of L8r get more features like file attachments, the ability to send HTML email, unlimited pending emails, and SSL security. L8r will also get rid of that annoying “sent later with l8r” message at the bottom of your messages.

What I like about L8r is that you can create email drafts and view pending and sent email in the messages area just like you would a normal email client. The benefit of this is that you can keep record of sent mail and fix any mistakes you have made in a pending email before it gets sent out. L8r will also send you an email when a message cannot be delivered and put it in the “undelivered” tab. This way, if you sent a message to an email address that doesn’t exist or if someone’s mail server is down, you can find out what email didn’t make it and send again. Another feature is the ability to send an email to more than one person. You just separate multiple email addresses with a comma in the “to” field and L8r will send to each recipient.

Even though L8r isn’t anything all that new when compared to email reminders (except that it sends up to five years in the future), I think it’s a pretty neat service. I can see it being helpful for people that use reminders in their daily workflow and need more than basic text messages. You can have three pending emails at any time for free and get extras like HTML mail, attachments, and SSL when you pay for more. Something L8r may also want to consider is allowing users to send recurring messages to themselves for repeating tasks and personal goals. I also ran into a couple minor problems. First, when editing an email, the time did not offset properly from its original set time. Also, when trying to buy more email credits, L8r directed me to a PayPal checkout for Netherlands users and I couldn’t make a purchase. (Maybe not such a minor problem) Otherwise, everything ran well and future emails that I sent out arrived on average 2-3 minutes after my set time.

As a last note, another service similar to L8r and FutureMe is FutureMail which allows you to send email in the future as a note or reminder to yourself. FutureMail also has this neat concept of a “FutureMail Blog” where you get a public stream of your future messages and an RSS feed to share with friends.

When you sign up, OpenTeams assigns you to what they call a “space”, which is simply a group of other OpenTeams users. At default you may be assigned to two spaces: one being a “domain space” and another being an “invitation-only space”. When I signed up, OpenTeams created a space for every user that has solutionwatch.com in their email address. This allows me to collaborate with only users associated with Solution Watch. OpenTeams also assigned me to the space, “OpenTeams User Community,” which is an invitation-only space where every OpenTeams user can collaborate and share (or in its current state, test). I can also go ahead and create my own spaces and provide access to only the people I choose to invite.

Once you are in a space, OpenTeams allows you to collaborate with four main types of content: initiatives, cPages, briefings, and profiles. Strange naming, I know. I even ended up using the help section just to learn what each content type is for. As it turns out, they are just as they sound: initiatives are like folders used to keep groups of content related to a specific project together; a cPage is a basic collaborative page, or wiki page; briefings are groups of content similar to initiatives but organized in an outline form; and profiles are just user profiles that can be included in an initiative or outline.

To better understand how these content types come into play, let’s look over the interface. The interface is split into three panes. The first pane on the left is the OpenTeams navigator. The navigator provides a list of all initiatives and associated briefings, colleagues, and content tags. Each area of the navigator also allows you to associate documents to an initiative, colleague, or tag by simply dropping content on the respective area. The “List Viewer”, or middle pane, lists each relative content item and allows you to filter through all content on the site. The last pane, which is the content viewer, is where users can view a document, participate in threaded discussions, manage attachments, set tags, and even view the history of a document. It’s like a wiki, discussion board, and file manager in one.

OpenTeams allows you to add any of the four content types at any time and so getting started really depends on what you are wanting to accomplish. It’s flexible enough where you can just add content and later group the content into initiatives and outlines or the reverse for just about anything you want to share with your team. OpenTeams suggests you can even create internal blogs using initiatives with cPages, then using the List Viewer to sort the cPages by date. To get started, simply select a content type in the “fish-eye” menu at the top and create a new page. The content viewer will then minimize and a new window will appear that lets you fill in your page content and other metadata. You’ll notice OpenTeams also uses a rich text editor instead of the usual wiki markup making it easier for non-technical users to get in and collaborate.

One of my favorite features of OpenTeams is the briefing outline editor. If you have a group of cPages that you want to organize for your team, you can organize them in outline form with a briefing page making the content easier for everyone to grasp and view. OpenTeams explains that briefing pages can also be good for structuring content like slides in a presentations or listing sections in a table of contents. To use the briefing outline editor, just create a briefing and drag and drop pages into the content view. You can then indent each item you drop into the outline as needed. The editor also allows you to insert a “placeholder” item if you just want to add a simple one-liner. When the page is done, you can also drag it in an initiative folder and it will appear in the “Quick Nav Favorites” on the navigator pane.

Another great thing about OpenTeams is that every page you create gets its own discussion area, file manager, history overview, and tag cloud. What’s nice about this is that it lets you continue collaborating with users in a specific page without having to edit the original content of a page like you would a normal wiki. It also saves you from having to send emails to your team by instead using the discussion area. You can even add images and other files in a pages file manager keeping all information related to a page together.

The last thing I want to talk about is OpenTeams unique billing model. First off, OpenTeams is not free, but they do give you $42 dollars in credit to start out with. The way it works is simple, and at first it may sound pricey, but it really isn’t. OpenTeams charges 99 cents per user-login a day. So, if you were to login ten times in a given month, it would cost less than $10 dollars for that month. This way, you only get charged when you actually use the service. OpenTeams also caps the cost to $16/person a month. Additionally, if you were to stop paying for the service, you are still allowed to access your spaces, but you cannot add or edit the content.

OpenTeams is an impressive service, but is it better than a normal wiki? Yes and no. It really depends on what you need. OpenTeams’ high point is adding structure to a wiki. If you need to organize pages into folders, create outlines, track files, and work with a group of users, OpenTeams is definitely worth checking out. Otherwise, if you all you are looking for is a simple way to work collaboratively on documents, I’d say stick with a free service like Wikispaces or Google Docs.

Coventi also offers Page Roles, which consists of three ranks. First, there is the owner of a page, who obviously has all privileges and rights within the page. Next there are the authors, who are capable of commenting and revising the actual page document. Last are the reviewers, who can only comment on the document and not change any of the contents of the page. Once you have invited people to collaborate and share on a page you’ll see the “People” tab appears in the interface. The People tab tells you who has and who hasn’t read your page(s). Additionally, you also can view and change the rank of your users in this section. You’ll also notice that when you start sharing your pages, a count of revisions done to that pertaining document will appear. You’re able to compare revisions via drop down menus, making it easy to look back and/or find lost information.

Authors and Reviewers are able to comments on certain sections of a page by simply highlighting the desired word, phrase, even paragraph and selecting “Create Comment” from the pop-up menu that will appear once something has been highlighted. The user can then type out their comment in the panel to the right of the interface along with a subject. Each comment that is submitted to the page is logged as a separate “conversation” and becomes its own discussion area where other users can reply to comment that was created. When there are multiple users viewing the same document, this feature can prove very handy for narrowing down areas of the page where you might have had difficulty in, and receiving direct, valuable input from your invited group members. You are also able to filter through conversations to quickly find comments that might be currently in discussion. They also separate the conversation by “open” and “closed” to help organize comments that have be discussed already. Even though it is a group oriented applications, I thought it would’ve been nice to have the ability to highlight and comment on your own page, without inviting people.

You are able to download each of your writing pages as a Word document as well as, adversely, upload Word documents to be used in Coventi. They offer Review Options such as setting a review deadline, or asking for approval on a page. Setting a deadline is as simple as choosing the exact time you’d like your collaborators to have their reviews in by, attached with any necessary comments. Asking for approval of a page works similarly. Once you feel that you’ve finalized your draft, you can send out an approval notification to receive confirmation on your work by fellow collaborators. After getting the notification email, each user will then be able to view the page and then check off whether or not they believe it is ready or if it still needs further revisions. After each user submits their approval, all authors and the owner will be sent an email reporting their confirmation. Owners of a page are able to withdraw an approval request, if necessary. Owners, authors, and reviewers also are given the option to have any page updates email to them to keep them up-to-date with the progress of the page.

I enjoy Coventi and I plan on trying and use it for some of my future writing en devours. It functions very nicely and has some of the features that we all wished our Writeboards would have. The only picky thing I can say about Coventi, being that I’m a designer, is the design of the interface. While there is nothing exceedingly wrong with how it was laid out, I think they could have made the top navigation, main tabs, and button areas less busy. I like how the interface options and selections work, but spacing out some things couldn’t hurt to help clarify things. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t hinder anyone from trying out Coventi and what it has to offer. I’m always looking for new innovating ideas from writing applications and Coventi helped fulfilled some of mine.

Simply send a message to IMified to get started (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, and Jabber are all supported). An account will instantly be created for you preset with three IMified applications: Notes, Reminders, and Todos. These applications are not only helpful, but make for a great starting point as you learn how to navigate around IMified. Navigating to a service is as simple as sending the numbers associated with each menu item and sending the letter “m” brings you back to the start message. IMified also has a web-based interface where you can update your settings and add additional services (send “7″ and click the link to get there). There are currently nine services outside of IMified that you can add to your account: Google Calendar, Backpack, Basecamp, 30 Boxes, Remember the Milk, WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type and TypePad.

The beauty of IMified is that all of the applications that you use are combined into one small service accessible through an instant messenger on your computer or mobile phone. However, because of the limited functionality with instant messengers, features are minimal. With Google Calendar, you can add and remove events as well as view upcoming and past events, but you cannot assign meta data or reminders to the events like you can on the web-based solution. The WordPress service allows you to simply add a title and body for a post and publish the post to your blog. Also, the Basecamp integration allows you to add messages, manage todo lists, and add milestones to a project. It may not sound like much, but having the ability to do all of that instantly without opening a browser is very helpful.

IMified also has a very helpful feature that lets you create shortcuts for specific tasks in a service. For example, you can create a one word command that lets you add a task to your todo list, which is much simpler than going through multiple menus and then adding a task. You can also add some text after a shortcut to automatically use it with the task at hand. So I have a shortcut for adding notes where I can type: “note [text i want to add as a note]” and a shortcut for adding tasks with “todo [the task description]“. So far, adding information with shortcuts has worked out great, but I can’t say the same with shortcuts for viewing information. When I write “viewnotes” to view all of my saved notes, IMified returns nothing and seems to only work when used in the service itself. Shortcuts also don’t seem to work when a service requires multiple responses to multiple menus. For example, I can’t add an event description and the date for the event at the same time with a shortcut Google Calendar. These are only minor problems though and I’m more than satisfied with the shortcuts that add information quickly.

Granted that the services IMified connects you with can all be used regularly in a web browser, it’s nice having the ability to quickly send a message to perform a task. If I want to add an update for a projects status in Basecamp, I can simply use IMified rather than opening a browser, logging in to Basecamp, navigating to the project, and submitting the message. There’s still room for improvement though, of course. For one, it doesn’t seem to send error messages if you send something in the wrong format, like a date for an event. Also, I really enjoy Sabifoo and how it creates a public page and RSS feed for all of your notes, which is something I would love to see with IMified. Maybe a way to view your tasks from the Todo service and notes from the Notes service online. In all, I love the simplicity of IMified and how I can easily access services that I use everyday from my instant messenger.

(via GenBeta)

You begin with a parent bubble. Pressing Tab creates another bubble in the same color and level of hierarchy as the bubble you tabbed from. Pressing Enter in a bubble will create a new level of hierarchy with a different colored bubble. Naturally, levels of the bubble tree are connected with lines and are movable around the workspace while remaining connected to each other. Each bubble also has an “Unpin” function. This resets all bubbles that you might have moved back under its appropriate parent. Bubbl.us also has an amusing deletion confirmation for each bubble you wish to omit. Once you press the X in the corner of a bubble a counter will begin counting down from three to zero as the line connecting the bubble to its parent acts as a lit fuse. Once it reaches zero the bubble will blow up in a cloud of fire. Neat.

Saving and loading is simple and fast. The navigation found on the right of the website is neatly made and holds all your current projects. Multiple brainstorming projects can be saved to folders in the side bar and loaded again at any time. Of course you’re also able to rename any of your projects using the side menu. Directly above the side menu is the link to edit your account information if necessary as well. A printing function has also been implemented so that your newly mapped out ideas can be printed out whenever you wish. They have included options for printing to the minimum height and width of your bubble tree, or simply a full screen print. Simply zoom out/in to what you feel is presentable, then print. There’s no hassle.

Frankly I loved Bubbl.us. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s helpful. It’s not meant to be a complex, and it’s not looking to win the most thorough mind-mapping application of the year. It’s meant for prompt, on-the-spot organization, and in this respect it passes with flying colors. With the recent disappearance of the mind-mapping application Mayomi, Bubbl.us is a good substitute if not a primary information structuring tool to aid you in your brainstorming and planning.

On top of viewing original documents online, Footnote encourages users to share their knowledge by uploading images, annotating documents and maintaining member pages. Users can also download any image on the site and add it to their account gallery. There is a catch, however. Not all images on the site can be viewed and downloaded for free. Respectably, Footnote is a resource for those who are serious about original documents and that are willing to pay either by member subscription ($9.99/month and $99.99/year) or a per download basis ($1.99/image). But if you’re like me and just want to take a look around, you can register for a basic membership (free) and view select documents from the National Archives as well as contribute to the site by uploading images, annotating documents and creating member pages.

To start things off, let’s take a look at the Original Documents section. This is where you can find featured titles and the latest titles of documents on Footnote. It is also where you will spend most of your time searching, viewing, annotating, downloading and sharing. Now let’s say you are looking for a specific set of documents. You can either select to browse all available titles or perform a basic search. Browsing titles, as seen in the screenshot above, works much like the file panel on a Mac. You select a title from the list and then drill down into each subtitle until you find your document. It’s a nice view if you’re wanting to simply view the database of images. But if you’re looking for something specific, such as a name, you can use the document search and find matches from basic descriptions and annotations.

Selecting an image from a title will bring you to the Footnote image viewer. Powered by Adobe Flash Player, the viewer allows you to zoom in, rotate, and drag around an image so you can easily explore every last detail of a document. It also uses a similar technology to Google Maps where the image is re-buffered each time you zoom in and out to maintaining a high quality output. You will also find a bar on the right side of the viewer where you can view information about the image as well as comment and browse document annotations. Additionally, users can save an image to their account gallery, download it, and print it out all within the viewer. (Note: The document in the screenshot above is of the Declaration of Independence. Cool, huh?)

Now let’s say you were viewing an image in the viewer and found something specific that you would want to point out, like a name. Rather than simply commenting about the occurrence, Footnote allows you to annotate it so others can easily spot the name and search upon it. Just click on “Add Annotation”, drag the box to where you want, and size it to what you are annotating. Then specify whether the annotation is of a person, date, place, or text and fill in the appropriate information. That’s all to it and now other viewers can find your annotation and better understand what they are looking at.

Footnote also provides members with what they call, Member Pages. Essentially, Member Pages are small websites on a specific topic which can be created by any member for free. Members can write freely about anything they find notable and can write in sections, which holds a similar form to a blog. Member pages can also receive comments from other Footnote members and include images as reference. Footnote suggest members use pages to: publish histories of people and events; create a notebook for ongoing research; and showcase original documents that they’ve found and want to share. For example, one member has created the page “HMS Titanic Timeline” which covers the events of the “unsinkable” ocean liner.

Overall, I found Footnote to be a great resource and development. I don’t have a high interest in history, but it was entertaining to look through documents that one can’t normally view without going to a historical museum. The ability to browse through millions of documents and zoom in to every last detail of an image is quite impressive. I also felt that the social features of adding comments, annotations, and member pages to Footnote is a great addition as it allows members to get involved with our history and share their knowledge. I suspect Footnote will be big with genealogists, educational systems, libraries and anyone with high interest in history.

Update: More on the launch of Footnote can be found at the developers blog, Hypergene MediaBlog. You can also view a detailed screencast of Footnote in action on Youtube.

With the seemingly never-ending amount of social networking websites emerging online these days, it’s getting tough to distinctly categorize the good, the bad, and the ugly. So let’s begin. Urbis’ foundation and backbone is, of course, its society and users. The more users there are, the more interaction there is, the more chances there are for your pieces of writings to be found. In turn, this results in more opportunities for people to critique your writing. However, here lies the main dilemma I have with the web application.

Urbis is focused around credits. Credits are their type of currency within the network and also, coincidently, is the only way that you’re able to pursue getting any feedback on your writing from others. Basically, the method behind their madness is this: The way to help your writing become more well-known within the community is to participate. While I have no problem with openly participating, it comforts me to know that I have the choice of whether to participate or not. Participation is the golden rule to Urbis, and by rule I mean necessity. You’re dependent on credits to reveal any reviews that have been made about your work, however to gain additional credits you’ll be obligated to review other people’s writing.

Before you even enter a page containing an author’s work, a default amount of credits that can be earned is specified. This number is calculated simply by the amount of words in that particular piece of writing. The amount of words that your review consists of is also put into the equation. The sum of these two variables equal the amount of credits you’ll earn for the review you give the writer. Pretty much what I’m getting at is: the more time and effort you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. (fancy that) The only other way to gain some credits is to invite other people to join Urbis. (go figure) So the endless (and essential) cycle of: uploading your work, reviewing other people’s work, and spending credits to see what others have said about your writing will have to become somewhat of a routine for you if you plan on frequently using Urbis.

Also, the reviews that you construct have to follow a set of standards. To make it so people get the most out of Urbis, (and also so they don’t cheat the system) Urbis’ management has come up with a set of guidelines for when someone reviews someone else’s work. To summarize the rules briefly, no short: “Great post!” reviews, no bashing an author within reviews, and you’re not allowed to use exceedingly, unnecessary large quotes from the context of the author’s writing just to gain more credits.

Following in the footsteps of the plethora of social networking websites already populating the online world, you also have the ability to invite other members of Urbis to become your friends. This helps congregate people who might have similar interests in certain types of writing as you. You’re able to check up on your friends and see if they have any new pieces of writing. Also, if you prefer to keep some of your writing more private, you can specify it to only be viewable by your friends. Along with that, Urbis offers the normal features such as simple statistics which track the amount of reviews you’ve completed, comments that were made, credits earned, credits spent, etc. They have also implemented a simple goal system in which you can obviously create and keep track of goals for your writing, nothing overly extensive in this department though.

I actually enjoyed the time I spent on the network. I’m a writer myself and I believe they did a nice job thoroughly thinking out the website. So, to give my general impression on Urbis, it goes as follows: Urbis provides a great way for anyone from novice to experienced writers to share their writing while additionally helping others by criticizing their writing through reviews. The only thing is, is that it doesn’t bring anything notably new to the table. With the traffic jam of social networking websites being released all over the internet, finding new innovating features is a rare gem. However overall, yes, it’s a great network and I encourage people to sign up and at least give it a fair shot. Who knows, it may just be your cup of tea. Authors of all ages have signed up to Urbis so you will find a variety of depth and style between each author, but if you’re just there for a quick glance, I can’t promise you that you’ll come across the next James Patterson.

Unfortunately, if you use anything other than Internet Explorer, you cannot use Solodox (except for registering – of course). But, I have read there will be additional browser support once the alpha stage has passed. I also found the application to be a bit sluggish at times and sometimes taking as much as a minute to load.

The Solodox interface has a similar look and feel to Microsoft Explorer. You can find a navigation bar at the top, folders and tags on the left, and documents on the right. Each document also gets associated with an icon so you can easily tell what kind of file it is (word document, project, or template). Users will also find that they can use the application and edit documents in Engish, Japanese, and Chinese. Google Docs, Zoho Writer, and AjaxWrite have yet to accomplish this, although they do provide multilingual support when editing a document.

The word processor makes for a decent alternative to Google Docs and Zoho Writer, but still has some quirks to work out. Registered users can save and export documents online, collaborate with other users in real-time, and publish documents to the web or to their own blog. I particularly like its collaborative features where it allows users to select a pen icon (different colors) for themselves that will appear next to the paragraph they are working on. Solodox also has version control for each document, but it is poorly implemented in my opinion. Users can only select and view a past version of a document, but cannot edit or compare it to other saved versions.

Perhaps my favorite part of Solodox is working with project documents. Solodox offers users a web-based alternative to Microsoft Project, a desktop application used for task management, scheduling, and scope changes. Its interface is very similar, but lacks in functionality. On the left of a project document, users add tasks and change the formatting of a task. On the right of a project document is a calendar view that shows each task as a bar spanning its duration. In the calendar view, users can click and drag on the tasks to lengthen the duration and move the task to a different date. And if you click on the left of a bar and drag your mouse to the right, it will increase the percentage completed for that task (black bar), just like in Microsoft Project.

Solodox also allows users to work on a project documents collaboratively, though I have not had a chance to test this out myself. Project documents can be printed and saved to Excel, which comes out surprisingly well, but I do not believe you can upload or import back to Microsoft Project.

Solodox seems to be off to a good start, but until it can get past browser compatibility issues and sluggish loading times, I’ll be sticking with Google Docs. The project management was the real winner for me. Good news is that I’ve already seen changes made to the Solodox interface since first registering. It will be interesting to watch – already seems to be buzzing around Japanese sites.

Using a web browser or mobile device, head to your Glue address (you.gluenow.com) and login. The first thing you will notice is the minimal interface containing a drop down menu at the top and content right below. It is formatted in this manner so whether you are viewing Glue in a web browser or on a mobile phone, it will work just the same (note: I have tested with Windows Mobile 5.0). Once successfully logged in, you will find yourself in the overview section displaying your most recent news items and images.

Let’s get straight to adding content. Glue provides you with two options. You can use the Glue website or simply send a email to one of your Glue email addresses found in the settings. The website requires you to enter a headline and body for your news item and allows you to optionally insert an image, set the date, and choose an author. The email solution offers the same functionality where the "From:" header sets the author (connects email address to author), "Subject:" sets the news headline, and the "Body:" is the news content. You can also include images in your news item when emailing by simply placing a GIF, JPG, or PNG image where you want. However, Inserting an image in a news item through the website requires you to first go to the Image Library, upload the image, and then select the image when publishing the news item (Update: Jordan from Glue has pointed out that you can upload photos while writing a post. There is an upload option in the drop down menu where you select an image). Glue also provides you with some basic formatting and allows you to use HTML.

Once you have published some content to your Glue, it’s time to share it with the world. As described earlier, Glue does not provide you with a website address where you can view your content, though it would be nice if it did. Instead, it provides you with publishing options that let you grab your content from your Glue and use it on any website or community profile. To get started, head to the Publish section and click "Show Feeds." You will then see six publishing options including: RSS, Flash, JavaScript, PHP, ASP, and XML.

The three simplest options are RSS, Flash, and JavaScript because they are just tiny snippets that you can paste right into your site. Selecting "RSS" lets you add a link to your site so viewers can subscribe to your content; "Flash" will give you code to embed news in a scrollable area on your site; and "JavaScript", being more flexible, will load news on your site in HTML and provide CSS for customization. If you are handy with PHP or ASP, Glue lets you download full code for parsing and displaying your Glue content however you wish. This is great if you want more control with the appearance of your content or if you want to integrate your Glue content into an existing application.

Above is an example site that I have created using the JavaScript publishing option. You will notice that it will first load the sites content and then load the Glue content. Also, you will see that I was able to format the content to my liking. Because the JavaScript option dynamically writes the content to the page, I can use CSS to style the outputted HTML. It took around 10-15 minutes to get the site up and looking how I wanted. Not bad at all. You can also see that the post, "Testing Glue on WordPress.com," contains the Flash publishing option where a scrollable flash-based container displays my content.You can also see Glue in use on The Four Colour Process website (JavaScript option) and MySpace profile (Flash option). There are also some examples over at the Squad Blog.

In all, Glue offers a nice solution for publishing and sharing content on the web, but it’s no super-glue. For one, publishing to a site using the JavaScript or Flash option does not provide permanent links to posts which is important to me because it allows others to refer to specific posts. Secondly, you cannot set the amount of posts visible per page. Commenting functionality would also be a nice addition. Maybe Squad can add this functionality and more for a paid plan called "Super Glue" ;-). With all that aside, Glue makes for a nice product and I can see it being big with bands and MySpace users.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2

Educational Blogging

Blogging has quickly become one of the most effective learning tools in education today. It introduces students with new methods of communicating, improving their writing, and helps motivate them to find their voice. Dare I say it even makes learning… fun? Educators generally blog about school news, philosophies, and class activities. On the other hand, students tend to write about current events, personal beliefs, and topics related to their education.

In blogging, there are no set standards, no boundaries, no restrictions confining you to conform your thoughts to any given set of rules and regulations. You don’t have to worry about getting points taken off for not using the default: 12 point font size, Times New Roman, with 1” margins. You can write freely, and at your own pace. Also, bloggers can gain an audience from their writing. Unlike a school paper, blog posts can recieve feedback from students, teachers, parents, and ultimately, anyone in the world. (gasp)

Things I’ve noticed with student blogs

I often found, and many teachers have noted this as well, that the students would publish to their school blogs even when not instructed to. Students really enjoy reaching out to the world and they are so motivated by it that they want to write even more. They would describe how their day was, what they learned in class, or even things they learned or read on the news that day. It’s amazing.

I also found that many students became so attached to their blogs that they made it a responsibility to keep consistent. When they found they have been lacking in posts or that they haven’t been instructed to post for class in in a while, they would often apologize and feel as though they deserted their readers. It’s pretty interesting, although expected, to see that kind of connection with students and their blogs.

Also, I see that many students refer to other posts by other students in their writing, but do not appear to take advantage of trackback or pingback functionality. I personally feel it is essential that all bloggers understand the use of trackback technology, especially in this scenario, as it makes for communication outside of normal commenting. Not only that, it feels very rewarding receiving a trackback. So, I want to explain briefly how it works and what it means. In simplistic terms, you make a pingback by linking to the post that you are referring to in your post. This will notify the writer of the blog, adding a pingback “comment” to their post automatically, in turn continuing conversation. This is a great way for students to communicate back and forth rather than only commenting. If they have something to say and feel it’s worth a post rather then a comment, pingback or trackback it.

Student Testimonials and Reflections

“Blogs are revolutionizing this country, and many people are completely oblivious to even what a blog is much less what it can. So thank you Mrs. Vicki for convincing me what a viable resource a blog can be. Thank you for not letting me be ignorant to something so revolutionary.” – kyli

“At the beginning of the year when we started blogs, I didn’t really feel like doing these, and I thought that they were just a waste of time, but I was WRONG! I have loved having these blogs and I learned a lot about writing, people, things happening with my friends, I met new people, I have learned ALOT about things going on in the world, and I learned that I can be free to write what I want, and I like how people would disagree with me, becasue it just encouraged me to write more.” – Xoxo-Hillaryy-xoxo

“I love my blog so much! I like writing in it, even if there isn’t anything to write about! Haha. When i get bored, my blog says ‘Ashley, come write in me.’ I’m just joking, but it gives me something to do. I am so happy that we are doing blogs this year!” – Ashley

“I love my blog so much I can write what I want when I want except when my mom or sister is on the computer. My favorite part about having a blog is that it can be due on a Sunday and you cannot forget it at home or at school. I also like how you can write on it even if it is not for homework. The thing I worry about with blogs is that its world wide and if I say something to offend them then they will get mad at me and I wont no why. Other wise I think blogs are a great idea.” – Joey Girl

“When I wasn’t in the weblog group I would still be writing one paragraph essay. Now I’m writing a page essay.” … “Weblogs are helping me a lot.” – Jhonathan

General Testimonials

“Never in 25 years of teaching have I seen a more powerful motivator for writing than blogs.” … “And that’s because of the audience. Writing is not just taped on the refrigerator and then put in the recycle bin. It’s out there for the world to see. Kids realize other people are reading what they write” – Mark Ahlness

“Even when they’re out sick, students work on their blogs.” – Carol Barsotti

“I’ve got 6th graders coming in during their lunch and after school to add articles to their blog and to respond to their classmates’ articles.” – Al Gonzalez

“The response has been tremendous. Students seem so much more willing to blog in their own space and time. They seem less inhibited and more enthusiastic.” – Beth Lynne Ritter-Guth

Where to Start

So, where do you start? As a first stop, I highly recommend reading SupportBlogging. It will explain what educational blogging is all about, what it means for students and educators, and how you can setup a blog. I also recommend Blogs for Learning which is a new site containing in-depth articles on educational blogging and fantastic screencast tutorials showing the ins and outs of various blogging platforms (including WordPress and Blogger). Be sure to look over the article, “Student Blogging – What You Should Know,” and the case study, “Rocking the Cyber Canoe: Blogging in English.”

For teachers and students, I suggest using edublogs.org for blogging as they provide you with a free, hosted WordPress blog, a Wiki powered by Wikispaces, and Yacapaca assessment tool from the Chalkface Project. Or if you prefer, you can install a copy of WordPress manually on your own server or register for a free and hosted WordPress account at WordPress.com.

Photo Sharing with Flickr

Flickr is a free photo sharing site which has made its way into education providing teachers and students with an easy way to upload and share photos on the web. Students can search for photos to help with research and projects and educators can upload photos for classes, school events, and so on. I can also see Flickr being used in photography classes allowing students to keep an organized collection of their work, share their photos with the world, and receive commentary from viewers and classmates. And who knows? Maybe all it takes is a comment or a couple views of a students work to inspire and motivate them in continuing with photography.

One feature to take advantage of is Flickr’s photo annotation, or note functionality. In short, it allows you to add boxes around specific parts of a photo which you can add notes to. For example, if something was hard to make out in the background of a photo, one could place a note around it to explain what it is. What’s more is that other users can annotate your own photos. Say you are a teacher and you uploaded an art piece that you want your students to critique. Have them browse to the art piece and add notes around parts they want to comment on. Some great examples of this are as followed:

Beth Harris of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, has used Flickr with her art history course so students can label and discuss paintings online (example above). Similarly, Ewan McIntosh has uploaded the painting, “Ivory, Apes and Peacocks,” where users then labeled and discussed the art.

Alan Levine has also shown that you can use the notes tool to create what he calls, “hot-spot learning objects.” As an example, he created a volcano diagram with each type being a learning object on the photo. The example is a simple chart showing the explosiveness of an volcano. If you are to hover over one of the volcano’s, a Flickr note will appear containing more information about it. Alan has also annotated a photo showing some of the many uses of Flickr. Nice work!

Educational Podcasting

Podcasting is a powerful medium that many educators and students are beginning to pick up that not only delivers rich educational content, but enhances student/teacher communication. As I student, I could download educational content and take it around with me where ever I go. I could also download daily lessons and school news created by educators. Likewise, I can produce my own podcast and publish it for the teacher, classmates, and the world to hear.

Take Stanford University for example where they have created Stanford on iTunes U for their students. Students can navigate to this site to subscribe to the Stanford U podcast on iTunes and receive faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports automatically on their computer and iPod. This allows the university to easily communicate and update students on school related events and content. What’s also great is that anyone can open the page up on iTunes and listen, whether they are a student or not. Try it out and listen to some of the podcasts. There’s great content, especially in the “Technology Ventures” area of “Heard on Campus”, including speeches by Guy Kawasaki on entrepreneurship, Evan Williams of Odeo on podcasting, and more. (Note: Berkeley University also has Berkeley on iTunes U).

Apple also supports educational podcasting in multiple ways. For starters, anyone can access the Podcasts section in the iTunes Store and navigate to the educational category for free lessons and educational content. Secondly, schools interested in creating a podcast site similar to Staford University can apply for iTunes U where iTunes will work with you in making your own iTunes U (Note: I have no information regarding costs). Apple also provides a section called, Podcasting in Education, where you can learn more about podcasting, what it means for educators and students, and how you can create and manage them with Apple products.

For educators in K-12 education, I recommend looking over a great site called, “Podcasting in the Classroom”, created by Nathan Shelley. The website gives a brief introduction of podcasting and provides an overview of benefits to the students in creating podcasts. The site also provides educators with an example lesson plan where it instructs the students to get into groups to brainstorm, plan, and produce a student podcast on a specific subject.

DreamExtreme Podcast is an excellent podcast produced by, believe it or not, 6th graders! The student-produced podcast is by David Cosand’s Kennedy Elementary class of Medford, Oregon, and I must admit, it’s pretty impressive. Students plan and produce full podcasts covering class news, movie reviews, fashion, sports, and more. Another podcast that I’ve recently come across is Edupodder, produced by Steve Sloan. Edupodder has a nice mix of educational content, interviews, and student podcasts – the latest covering upcoming student podcast projects. Some of you may also be interested in an Edupodder Podcast with Robert Scoble speaking to a journalism class about the impact of blogging.

Wikipedia & Wikis

While researching about wikis in education, I came across a Wikipedia article for educators called, “Schools’ FAQ,” covering the ins and outs of Wikipedia and how schools can benefit using Wikipedia. The article led me to Wikipedia’s School and University Projects, which I found to be very interesting. In short, Wikipedia encourages teachers and professors to use Wikipedia in their classes providing students with hands on exercises involving editing and publishing content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia suggests that students participate in exercises such as working on existing or requested articles; linking orphaned articles to appropriate places; fixing spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors in articles; and even translating articles from other languages. It’s a great idea and is beneficial to both the student and Wikipedia. Students can learn about the topic as well as improve on their writing while Wikipedia gains more content. Wikipedia even provides teachers with a syllabus boilerplate to hand out to their students. If you are a teacher, think about giving it a try with your class, maybe as a project. I feel it would be a very perceptible and comprehendible variation of learning. I will also add that these projects may be more suitable for college and university students rather than K-12 students.

Perhaps one of the most impressive cases of wiki use in education is the Westwood School Wiki. Vicki Davis and her students manage the wiki and use it for just about everything. Listening to an interview with Vicki and Adam Frey, I was able to grasp exactly how she and her students use wiki technology. One scenario presented was after teaching a lesson, her students would go to the class wiki and summarize the lesson, in turn making it easier to take in the information. Vicki also explained how her students work on notes collaboratively in the wiki before an exam to study. During this process they all add their notes, correcting what’s wrong, and review the wiki. Another example she gave was with introducing concepts and exploring class projects. She has the students research, add notes, organize information, and even add videos to their wikis so they end up with a mass of information about the topic (example project: Security and Privacy). Vicki stated during the interview, “Students really become content producers and not just receivers.” She makes a great point and it shows that allowing students to work hands on with a wiki really strengthens their learning experience. Being part and contributing to what you are learning is much more effective then simply taking it in.

I also came across this great question from a Vicki’s blog about Pluto no longer being a planet: “How long will it take for the Pluto decision to filter to the average classroom?” She then continues, “With information changing at an accelerated pace, I think the case for wiki-supplementation and wiki-publication can be made. This could ensure that more accurate information is included but could also make student’s heads spin as a chapter changes while they are studying it.” It’s a very interesting question and thinking back to my High School education, textbooks were dated as much as 6-10 years. Some even having my parents signatures in them! How long will it take for school systems to replace old books with new ones containing accurate information? It’s funny. I’ve come across multiple claims online where teachers tell students not to use Wikipedia because information may not be accurate when anyone can edit the information, but at the same time, the school may not even own up to date prints.

Video Sharing

To many school systems, video sharing sites are evil. They are blocked from students in an attempt to hide non-educational material and explicit content. Well I say, big mistake! I will admit, I have seen many hilarious, pointless, painful, and explicit videos on video sharing sites, but I can also say that I have learned a whole lot from them. Google Video offers some of the best educational videos you can find on the Internet. You can pull up their educational category and search for specific topics ; watch hour long NOVA videos (highly recommend – I’ve watched many of these during my free time); and even view captioned videos. Additionaly, YouTube offers a new service called YouTube College where students can join their college and share videos only with students from their college. On the down side, YouTube does not offer an educational category making it harder to find educational content. I also recommend giving VideoJug a try as a source of how-to videos. It has a great kids category containing fun science experiments and arts and crafts.

Video also appears to be the new PowerPoint for some educators. Jeff Utecht has taught his 7th grade students of Shanghai American School to produce and publish video presentations on YouTube for a class project. You can find the presentations in Jeff Utecht’s profile. I watched a couple of them and I’m very impressed. It sounds like the students were pretty excited, especially once they learned about YouTube’s audience. You can find more about the project and student reactions on Jeff’s blog.

James Madison University has also taken advantage of video sharing by using YouTube to deliver an orientation video for faculty teaching in technology classrooms. They created a video that shows educators how to operate the technology used in the classrooms including laptop connectors, projector screens, and the control system used to operate the projectors. You can watch the video and read the article about it on their technology website.

Web 2.0… Courses?

I never really thought about the possibility of there being a Web 2.0 course in college, but apparently it’s happening. IBM and The University of Arizona are teaming up to teach about Web 2.0 and Social Networking to give students skills in creating and managing online communities. What’s interesting is that it’s not just a presentation or learning event – it’s an actual full course! From what I understand, students from The University of Arizona will learn about Web 2.0 products and social networking from a business standpoint to give leadership, communication, and community-building skills.

One UA student in a Digg comment thread provided readers with the official course description from the university website:

“Online social networking and communities have become a big role in how organizations interact within themselves as well as with external partners. Developing a healthy community can lead to new business opportunities, improved customer relations, as well as improved communications to the world. Online social network sites already claim over 300 million members worldwide in public sites that are starting to turn into a new generation of b2b and b2c business collaboration and brokerage sites. This course investigates the technologies, methods and practices towards developing online communities, and how this knowledge and these skills are applied to businesses. The course will involve lectures facilitated by the instructor and corporate representatives. Also incorporated will be experiential exercises and skill development assignments”

The press release also states, “The class will culminate in a final project where each student from the class will work with their own separate group of students from Howenstine High School in Tucson, Arizona, to organize into many micro-communities.”

Sounds like a fun and informative class. And according to Torrentfreak, The Univeristy of Arizona will be the first to offer “Web 2.0 courses”. It will certainly open up a new world of technology to students. Great going, IBM! Sign me up!

School 2.0

School 2.0 is an interesting brainstorming tool designed for schools and communities to help envision the future of education. The tool is a diagram showing various possible scenarios or visions of the future with example student, teacher, and parent conversations, class room activities and technologies, and more. The School 2.0 site states, “While School 2.0 depicts a variety of educational and management scenarios that utilize technology, the examples, information and ideas included are designed to serve as prompts for discussion and should not be construed as a recommendation of any particular technology or scenario.”

“Can you IM that to the virtual whiteboard?”, says a teacher. A parent talks to his child, “I looked at your grades online today. You really aced that test!” “There’s a virtual frog dissection going on now,” one student said to another holding a mobile device.

It’s an amazing vision. Can “School 2.0” actually happen? Maybe not all of it, but perhaps some elements. For example: viewing student progress reports online, submitting permission slips online, and receiving class documents and files from anywhere. I can’t imagine “School 2.0” happening in the next couple years, but the possibility is there and it’s nice to see a brainstorm tool such as the School 2.0 project.

More Cases of Web 2.0 in Education:

Google Docs, formerly Writely, has quickly jumped into the educational field actings as a free and collaborative alternative to Microsoft Word. Mostly used by K-12 Education (from what my research shows me), I assume it’s just not ready for college or university scenarios where page structure has stricter guidelines. However, feedback from students show that although they like Writely (now Google Docs), they find more use in Microsoft Word because they know how to use it better. They then continue by saying that in time, they will likely prefer Writely because it can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection and can be worked on collaboratively.

Feed Readers and RSS are slowly making its way into education teaching students the methods of subscription and publication. I found that most schools that take advantage of educational blogging briefly teach about RSS so students and teachers can more easily keep track of school updates and postings. It also appears that Bloglines is the feed reader of choice (PDF by Will Richardson) for many educators, mainly due to it being accessible anywhere. However, some educators are beginning to notice other options that are simpler and more useful for students, such as the personalized homepage, Netvibes. “I used to teach bloglines, however this summer, I began to use NetVibes. It is just easier for beginners to understand,” said Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

It may sound odd, but some students are now learning in their SecondLife. Harvard Law School has recently started a new course called, CyberOne, where students actually log into their SecondLife account and learn in the massively popular virtual world. The CyberOne course website states, “Enrollment to the Harvard Extension School is open to the public. Extension students will experience portions of the class through a virtual world, known as Second Life. Videos, discussions, lectures, and office hours will all take place on Berkman Island. Students from anywhere in the world will be able to interact with one another, in real time.” Sounds a little extreme to me! I will admit though, I am curious as to how it all works. For those of you interested, head over to the CyberOne website and watch this video trailer (YouTube) that can give you an idea of what to expect.

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