e-wot?

I needed a tool that could capture screencasts (video of screen activity) with audio, so that I can create training videos, without installing any software on my computer. I found a few options that can record screencasts from a web browser (java required). Here are the two that I liked best:

Screecast-o-Matic. All sizes and formats (including HD). Drag a black frame to anywhere on your screen and record anything. You can upload to YouTube, or download to your desktop. Exports in .avi, .mp4, .flv. Simply great.

ScreenJelly. Captures the whole screen. Requires you to log in with your Twitter ID (OAuth). Can share on Twitter, Facebook, or send a link to the screencast in an email. Screencasts are hosted with Screenjelly.

They’re both free.

Here’s a list of online apps (games, chat, forums, social networks, blogs) with the age restrictions as seen in the sites’ terms of service/use. I made this list because I needed a list to show some teachers what they could/could not use with their students depending on age. This list is by no means complete, just a few online apps I’ve heard about.

This is purely informational. I haven’t tried them all, so I can’t say how well they safeguard minors. It’s best to be thorough and try them out properly yourself. YMMV

Ones I’ve tried and I think are good, though not with age restrictions in mind: Wordpress, Blogger, Facebook, Ning, Club Penguin, FreeRealms, Writeboard, 21Classes, PBwiki & Delicious.

RPG = Role Playing Game

Must be at least 16

• Friendster social network

Must be at least 13 and in high school

• Facebook social network

Must be over 13

• Bebo social network
• Blogger weblog publishing tool
• Chamber of Chat Harry Potter multiplayer RPG (no private chat, moderators)
• Gaia Online community with games, message boards etc…
• Hi 5 social networking site
• IMVU chat with friends in 3D
• Jaiku microblogging
• MySpace social network
• Ning social network created around an area of interest (can be open or private)
• Runescape multiplayer game
• Tokbox video chat (works with Twitter & others)
• Twitter microblogging Twitter is now for over-18s. See comments to this post.
• Vox weblog publishing tool
• Weebly website creation tool (includes blogs, forums)
• Wetoku video interview tool (requires parents’ approval)
• Wordpress.com weblog publishing tool
• Writeboard single wiki pages for writing activities
• Xanga weblog community
• 12Seconds video microblogging
• 43 Things microblogging site based around personal goals

Download & install application required

• There virtual world
• Teen Second Life virtual world (13-17 yo)
• vSide virtual world

No Age minimum specified, but require parental approval

• Awol chat, games, diary, friends, & cribs
• Boom Bang chat, make friends and explore a virtual world (moderated)
• Club Penguin virtual world for kids populated by penguins (moderated, ’safe’ chat)
• Endless Online multiplayer RPG
• Graal Online multiplayer RPG
• Marapets virtual pet site with games and chat community
• Neopets Virtual world for pets
• Millsberry Home building community (pre-scripted chat, monitored)
• Sanriotown Hello Kitty games, blogs and forums
• Shining Stars Chatting, naming stars, star worlds (’safe’ pre-constructed chat)
• Typepad weblog publishing tool
• Webkinz virtual pet community (’safe’ chat)

Download & install application required

• Dofus multiplayer RPG
• Eternal Lands multiplayer RPG
• Furcadia multiplayer RPG
• FreeRealms multiplayer RPG (restricted chat, moderated)

I couldn’t find anything definitive about age restrictions on Wikispaces, EduBlogs or 21Classes, but considering that they’re aimed at teachers and learners, I’m guessing that they must be OK for all ages?? I couldn’t find anything in PBworks’ (PBwiki), or Delicious‘ Terms of Service mentioning age either.

As a rule of thumb, when checking out an online tool that you might want to use with younger learners, check the Terms of Service (sometimes called Terms of Use) and their privacy policy. This should be somewhere on the homepage (usually at the bottom). Then do an inline search (hit Ctrl+F) for ‘years’ or ‘guardian’ or ‘13′ or something like that to jump to the bit about age restrictions, and then read the small print.

By the way, blogging tool tumblr. requires subscribers to be over 18.

And thanks to Denis for helping me with the list.

We don’t all have great internet connections. It’s particularly embarrassing if we try to show a video on YouTube to a class and our internet connection stops the video from playing. A more reliable method would be to download the video before class, then play it from your computer. Here’s how:

The site Jamie uses in this video is http://www.savevid.com/ it works a treat.

For more fantastic tips from Jamie on using videos in EFL classes visit his awesome blog TEFL Clips.

Over the past few days I’ve been on a mission to put our teaching centres on Google Maps. Here are a few things I’ve learnt along the way. I’m a complete newbie, but I hope this’ll be useful to someone in the same position.

1. First off, create a Google account that you can hand over to your web team when you’re done. The tags you create will be linked to that account (so don’t use your personal account, m’kay?).
2. Use Google Maps’ Local Business Centre (LBC) to create the map tags.
3. Start simple, with just the basic info for each tag you create. I made the mistake of writing complex descriptions for each tag and these had words in them that Google didn’t like – they got ‘flagged’ as ‘waiting for content check’. Here’s an explanation of what to do if this happens to you. To avoid this happening at all, don’t write a description to start off with. Add it later, once the tag goes ‘Active’.
4. Add any pics and vids later too.
5. Next, Google needs to verify you are who you claim to be. To do this, you can opt for: a phone call where they ask you to key in a PIN they give you; an SMS text message PIN to a mobile phone; something that uses the postal service (I didn’t try this)
6. If you go for the phone call option, make sure that you’re near your reception/call centre switchboard to help your receptionist key in the PIN.
7. You can do the SMS thing quite easily though, with a little workaround. Here’s what I did for three out of four of our teaching centres. I used my personal mobile number. Got a text message with a PIN in it. Entered the PIN myself. Then once the tag turned to ‘Active’, I edited the tag’s info and deleted my mobile number. Ok, yeah right… Now that seems like a big hole in Google’s security, but hey, it worked for me, and it saved me a lot of time too.  [edit 6 Oct 09 - Our WebAdmin tells me that this doesn't work anymore. It appears that Google has now spotted this loophole and fixed it. ]
8. Once all your tags are ‘Active’, go back and edit them to add descriptions and stuff.
9. the first photo you add will be the one that appears in the listing, so add the best one first. See post on this.
10. If you add video, it seems to block any images from appearing in the listing. So if you want your tag to appear in the search list with a nice pic, don’t add a video to your tag. I could be very wrong here, but this is what happened to me. Any tips for fixing this, are most welcome.

In my limited experience, the whole Google Map tag creation thing seems a bit clunky. Not very slick. Too many workarounds and uncertainties. But I got it to work OK in the end.

[edit 24 March - here's an instructional video from Google, nice... but no help in avoiding the bugs. Recently 3 out of 4 of my listings on Google Maps have vanished from the Map, although they're still in the Local Business Centre lising. I'm growing to hate Google Maps. Shame really, because it's cool when it works. It's just that it doesn't seem to work very well most of the time, which is very uncool.]

Caroline Tees from the British Council Singapore gave a great account of how she’s been using wikis for the past two years. She shared examples of her success in using wikis for:

• individual writing
• collaborative writing
• peer correction
• peer policing
• exam practice
• examples of good writing for our classes
• show off your students’ work to their parents
• correct and learn from common mistakes

The tool she’d used for this was 37 Signals’ Writeboard: which is a simple one-page wiki. It allows multiple authors and editors, version comparison and commenting, all the usual wiki stuff – but on one page: “just like a Word document”, Caroline explained.

Caroline took us step-by-step through the Writeboard set-up and then went on to show how easy it is to use. She added that this wiki tool was simpler to use than other online tools like blogs or more conventional wikis, (I reckon because each Writeboard is only a single page). Writeboard’s simplicity is its strength. Because of this, she explained, any teacher or student can get to grips with it quickly.

She gave some tips on what to watch out for when running a wiki writing activity:

• students misbehaving
• comments (Mother tongue, Singlish or target language?)
• difficulties with email invitations

She also gave tips on how to make it work:

• check the Writeboard regularly
• set very clear instructions
• photocopy screenshot with password

Here’s Caroline’s presentation:

Click to download Caroline’s presentation from ICTLT

Billy Tan and Karen Yap from Innova Junior College showed us the results of some action research they’ve done into how they used the online social bookmarking tool Delicious with teachers and for students.

Billy Tan explained how he’d been testing out Delicious with his General Paper students to help them make connections between issues and motivate them to read more. He showed how students, who had set up their own Delicious accounts, had made connections between different issues within one article by assigning multiple tags to individual articles.

Their exit survey showed that 90% of students liked using it. They found that was an easy and effective way to manage and share online information – all you need is internet access, a browser and to remember your login and password.

Among teachers, their results showed that Delicious allowed colleagues to easily archive and share online resources. Karen Yap showed how tagging makes it easy for teachers to retrieve and organise online information. Their exit survey for these teachers showed that 100% agreed that Delicious is good for sharing, 75% of which strongly agreed.

I asked if they’d had any problems with people tagging this differently or mis-tagging. They said they had. To deal with this they recommended that users agree on how to name tags before setting up a Delicious project to avoid mis-tagging. They added that standardising account names is also a good idea.

Individual or Department Delicious accounts? Both speakers agreed that personal accounts were the best option.

Click to download their presentation from ICTLT.

They also handed out a DVD made by Innova JC called ‘What is New Media?’ which showcases the great stuff they’re doing.

Innova Junior College is the Centre of Excellence for New Media and New Media Arts.

Earlier today I was at a presentation by Nick Potts, from the British Council Singapore, on the lessons he’s learned from two years of using blogs with lower secondary students in Singapore. He gave an account of all the problems, lessons learned and he also shared strategies he’s worked out to overcome these challenges.

His main point was that these students tend to view (and use) blogs as a means to vent their feelings. He showed us how this manifested in free-form rants, which were far from the aims of his lessons. He confirmed this by showing us the results of survey he asked some students to complete last week.

He was quick to admit that his first attempt at using blogs with these students at integrating blogs into his classes resulted in work that (at best) lacked focus, and (at worst) had these teenagers revealing things about themselves that he was concerned might expose them to risk if the blogs had been in a public space on the web. His blogs were all closed to public access – he chose to use 21 Classes to help address these concerns by keeping the blogs closed and viewable only by his class.

His strategy for dealing with the challenge included setting clearly focused writing tasks, not calling the blog a ‘blog’ in class (instead refering to it as a portal) and starting the blog with very positive and simple writing activities.

One teacher in the audience asked if Nick had used this blogging exercise to explore issues of cyber-wellness and safe practices for minors online. Nick pointed out that he only saw them for two hours a week, so he didn’t have time to explore these issues with his class, although if he had time he would have liked to. It seemed to me that he had already helped his students toward managing these risks by getting them to apply better strategies for writing online than those they’d resorted to before.

Here’s Nick’s presentation:

I’m listening to Mitch Resnick at the ICTLT conference talk about Scratch a free tool for software creation for kids, by developers at MIT.

As Mitch Resnick explained, the aim of this tool is to get kids really creating. He made the point that kids might be able to use digital tools, but this doesn’t really mean that they’re digital natives. He added that they will not be true digital natives unless they’re able to make the tools and manipulate these themselves in a process/cycle: Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect, Imagine, and so on.

Some great examples. But one of the most impressive things about the Scratch site is that there’s a community of people who’ve made stuff using the software. The variety of uses is impressive, but the depth of communication and reflection fostered by the community is truly impressive. Gonna get my own kids using this.

Here’s video tutorial showing how easy it is to make a Scratch game/animation:

Posterous. A great tool for uploading anything (mp3s, photos, videos, files…) to a web page by e-mail. Dead easy: you email the file to post@posterous.com and the site does the rest.

Awesome.

Via the Big Picture.

Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

• authors create and collaborate
• instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
• learners find and explore content

Well, that’s what the blurb says on their site. The material in their database appears to be mostly tertiary level.

[edit - Cheryl Lemke mentioned this in her keynote at ICTLT]