Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A Few New HISD Quick Tips

Hectic day attending in-service training at school. So, I spent the evening relaxing by adding some new HISD Quick Tips.

Tonight I made the following:

Switching between one location and another, school, home, public wi-fi

Safari, Firefox and Flock

Tab Browsing

So, I made a little progress tonight and we will see what the future will hold.

Until next time.
Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sunday, August 17, 2008

New HISD Quick Tips



I can't believe that it has been just a little short of three weeks since I updated this blog.  Well, what with getting ready for school to start, actually reporting back to school for 2 days this past week for teacher work days, it has been hectic.

Even though I have been a little preoccupied as of late and haven't recorded any tutorial videos lately I have been thinking about them and have actually launched a companion to 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials called HISD Quick Tips.

The idea HISD Quick Tips was basically to create a few short, quick screencasts or video tutorials on the fly for use by my students in The HSTE Project.  Well, after getting back to school for a few days and getting to answer a bunch of computer and technology questions from some of my fellow CT&E Teachers I decided that I would have to have find a way to answer their questions qucikly, so HISD Quick Tips is now here!

HISD Quick Tips are not meant to take the palce of 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials, but rather to make it a little easier for me to address tutorials much quicker than the way I envision 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials and try to keep that exclusively for Web 2.0 applications.

I have been using ScreenFlow from Vara Software to create the screencasts.  I liked it so much I decided to pay the $99.00 to purchase the key to unlock ScreenFlow and I think it is well worth the money.


ScreenFlow

So, I hope that when I have the time to get back on track with creating some good tutorials for 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials.  I know that once school starts, I should be able to devote some more time to do so, as well as it will be a great resource for my students this year.

Util next time...
Blogged with the Flock Browser

Thursday, July 31, 2008

101 Web 2.0 Tutorials - What is it?

Blogged with the Flock Browser


Video Blog Link

This year in my Health Science Technology Education we are launcing our first ever Project-Based Learning experience called the HSTE Project. I won't go in to that project here, you can visit the project link or the HSTE Project Blog, or the HSTE Project Ning for information about our project.

During the course of the project, my students, our project partners and others who will be participating will be using many Web 2.0 applications to post to our Wikispace and Ning sites. I anticipate that not everyone will be familiar with some of these applications, so 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials is needed to show people how to use these exciting new tools available to them. There is also a 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials Wikispace.

I created a wikispace called Web 2.0 tools for our HSTE Project some time ago. I thought that this would be a good place to list and give a short description of the Web 2.0 tools we use in our project. But then I got to thinking, just a list with a link to the application's website and a short description would not be enough and would not show people how to use those applications.

I got the idea for this by way of Alan Levine's who blogs at CogDogBlog and his wikispace 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.

Digital Storytelling will be a big component of our HSTE Project. I expect that many of my students will be submitting their stories that they create to Story Chasers an initiative started by Wes Fryer who blogs at Moving at the Speed of Creativity.

So why is the name of this blog 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials? Well, Alan Levine had 50 ways so I figured I should include a number and for some reason 101 just stuck in my mind. I don't think it has anything do to with 101 Dalmatians, however.

I would like to, by the end of the 2008 - 2009 school year have 101 video tutorials here on this blog. Is it possible to make 101 tutorials this year? I don't know but I am going to try.

Hopefully what is presented on this blog will be of some value to my students, fellow teachers at Hereford ISD and anyone else interested in learning about the exciting Web 2.0 applications.

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