The Shortened Translation of My Second Podcast

I'm working on a wonderful project! It includes podcast and the power point presentation. I made it in Russian. So here I give the short review of what I'm going to be talking about. Hope it works.
It would be much better if I knew how to place the power point presentation in my blog.

http://koreshky.podbean.com/2007/10/30/take-a-look-around/

1. Hello! Today we are going to learn a bit of the history of St. Petersburg. Podcast and Power point Presentation will be helpful. To change the slide, click on the picture after you hear a special sound. Let’s try!
2. We are going to talk about the birth of the city and start talking about its first building - The Peter and Paul Fortress.
3. Ioann Bridge leads us to the Fortress.
4. The city is built on 42 islands.
5. There was a village here. The land lord named it the devil’s place after the flood that ruined everything.
6. The Finnish name of the island is the Hare’s island. Here comes the small monument to the hare at the entrance.
7. As you look around you, you'll see The Trinity Cathedral.
8. It was in fire in 2006.
9. The Trinity Bridge.
10. The Summer Gardens.
11. The Michailovsky castle.
12. The Marble Palace.
13. And The Church on the Spilled Blood going along the embankment of the Neva River.
14. The Northern War in 1700 for the outlet to the Northern Sea.
15. Several Fortresses were captured by Peter the Great.
16. Peter the Great chooses the place to build his own fortress to protect the city.
17. The sculptures on the Ioann Gates remind of the Northern War battles and the date 1740 is the date when the Fortress was completed.
18. Let's stop at the map of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
19. Next time we'll talk about the buildings of the Fortress. Stay with me!
20. It was Julia Koreshkova, UNI's graduate student. Bye!

Flickr

Last class I was trying to organize all the new things I learned during this class. I checked if I had accounts in GMail, google.docs.com, podbean.com, twitter, flickr, yahoo.com, My Space, Facebook, blogger.com, and SL. I also know how notebook, zoho.com, del.icio.us, you tube, wiki, and skype work.
I downladed pictures from my SL to flickr. You can see them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15228300@N04/show/
or just click on the picture.

Picture retrieved from: http://dfckr.com/archives/img/featured/flickr-insp.jpg

NSTE Hometask

1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
Students:
A. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.
B. create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
C. use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues.
D. identify trends and forecast possibilities.

Blogging was a new knowledge for me in terms of using ET. Pages of all students in our class are different, showing their individual creative way of thinking. I made a podcast before, so I was able to apply the knowledge I had in a new situation (the project about St. Petersburg).

2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
Students:
A. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
B. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
C. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
D. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

ET give a lot of instruments for communication and collaboration. The ones we use in our class are WebCT, Twitter, and SL. This is how we learn about the latest news, new assignments, and activities. SL gave us a wonderful chance to have an on-line class that turned to be very engaging and interactive.

3. Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
Students:
A. plan strategies to guide inquiry.
B. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
C. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
D. process data and report results.

In this case You Tube, Google Search, Wikipedia and the use of the Bullean Search are very helpful to me.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Decision-Making
Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.
Students:
A. identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation.
B. plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project.
C. collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.
D. use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions.

I think my blog where I can put all exciting for me information and use it later for my projects is what I want to talk about here. I choose the information to put on my blog and figure out how to use it later, and to what extend it can be helpful to me and my classmates in our work.

5. Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
Students:
A. advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.
B. exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.
C. demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning.
D. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.

We did it at Dr. D’s class: we rea the Netiquette rules, and made our own group rules that made our group work and the work with the other groups later easier.

6. Technology Operations and Concepts
Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.
Students:
A. understand and use technology systems.
B. select and use applications effectively and productively.
C. troubleshoot systems and applications.
D. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

Now I know pretty much about ET and can use them for my various purposes. I think it’s not about knowing or not knowing about certain technologies. My attitude changed: I accept new for me things as a challenge, and I’m not afraid of not knowing about them any more. I know that I can find out how it works, and use it.

New Developments

Vkontakte (Russian version of the Facebook) is constantly developing. Recently they put the announcement that you can put as many videos on your page as you want (not just 5 as it was earlier). Then the graffiti thing appeared. You can draw a graffiti on the wall, and it's cool! I don't know now how to put pictures on people's walls yet. I asked one of my friends about it and was shoked to learn that the picture that I thought she copied somewhere, was her creation! It took me hours to draw something very simple using just 2 colors! Amazing, isn't it?!

Publishing first podcast

Today we worked on uploading our podcasts to podbean.com. My first Introduction podcast is right there!

Leveraging Web 2.0 in the Redesign of a Graduate-Level Technology Integration Course

Dr. Zeitz gave me an interesting article to read about how web 2.0 tools were tested in schools and what the teachers' opinion is about that experience. 5 assignments are described in the article. They are: Blogging Assignment, Google Docs & Spreadsheets Assignment, Multimedia Presentation Assignment, Trailfire Assignment, del.icio.us Social Bookmarking Assignment, and Cmap Tools Assignment. The article also gives considerations for using web 2.0 tools in the coursework.
This article brings theory close to life and gives some information about the possible ways of using web 2.0 tools in the classroom or when working with groups of people.

WOW!

How much do you know about The Warld of Warcraft? Patrik Leerman is an expert in this sphere. If you go to his page, you can find links that will provide you with the useful information. I just add some more links that I found on this topic:

Wikipedia explains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_warcraft
A video that can give a general idea about this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z72_-yAPhlc&mode=related&search=

These are the links that show how WOW is seen in American and Russian cartoons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAJYQOANDCk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0te6-wJqYU

In Plain English

While looking for different articles (and videos as well) on Web 2.0 and Social Networking, I found a series of short videos explaining such things as Social networking, RSS, Wikis, and Travel Blogging in a very understandable, "plain" way. Later I found that Lois put the link about Wikis on "The Official Emerging Instructional Technologies Wikispace" page. So I'm happy that I'm not the only one who met these videos in You Tube. I hope they'll be helpful for every one.

Social Networking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc&mode=related&search=
RSS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&NR=1
Wikis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY&mode=user&search=
Travel Blogging: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoQOUiJpvw4&mode=user&search=

Google Docs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA

Podcast

We already made podcasts at Dr. D's class, and it was great! The following link will provide you with the 5 steps of making podcast.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ec2podcastinstructions

The article about the structure of the podcast broadened my knowledge about it. The Willowcast is an amazing example of what creative work students can do under the guidance of their teachers. That gave me some nice ideas of using web 2.0 tools in my project.
The video podcast looks fascinating to me, and I want to figure out how it works and how much it differs from the podcast.
TED TALKS turned to be really addictive because the videomoments are professionally made and well prepared. They are full of interesting, exciting information and humor.
I watched the episode with John Maeda talking about simplicity and complexity of the things around us. John Maeda is a graphic designer and computer scientist as well. He spreads his philosophy of "elegant simplicity".
This vodcast also made me think of not overwhelming my project with things. All genious things are very simple ones.

Picture retrieved from: http://docinthemachine.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/podcast.jpg

Earn Money in SL

There are many unusual and funny ways to earn easy money in SL. You can dance, paint, just sit on a bench, or even hang and play scrubbles at the same time. I did it in Odessa.

Of course, making chairs is more entertaining and... creative!