Furl

What is it? What does it do?

Furl is a social bookmarking tool. It allows you to store and access your favorite web sites from any computer. It also associates keywords from your search with each bookmark.

What are the infrastructure and technical requirements for this tool?

You only need a web browser to use furl. It is a free tool

How can you use it effectively in instruction?

Furl can be used to share websites with students for assignments.

What are the limitations and cautions related to use of this tool?

A caution for this tool is the possibility that it will not survive as an internet business and could disappear. It is hosted on another server so it is not secure. Furl is not filtered so it is not recommended for k-12 users.

What are other education applications for this tool?

Each bookmark can be tagged with keywords. The keywords are then available to be shared with those that share their bookmarks. The result is that you can share search results using the tagged keywords as well as the bookmarks. This will help people expand research they are doing.

What are the management considerations for this tool?

Sharing bookmarks may not be the way to go at the elementary level. So many sites are blocked by BCPS, creating this at home may be worthless at school, because of the sites being blocked.

My Opinion of Furl

I have set up a Furl account. While I like the idea of it I have not had an easy time figuring out how to use and access the saved bookmarks. For example, after spending literally hours trying to figure it all out, I save sites one evening and in the morning they were gone. I found my Firefox settings needed to be changed but found out after the fact. Also the fact that so much is blocked at school, I don’t see where it really would be worthwhile to bookmark sites on my home computer and not be able to get to them at school.

Web Resizer

http://www.webresizer.com/

• What is it? What does it do?

Web Resizer is an easy to use, free online image resizer that helps you optimize photos for web or email. Web Resizer was made to convert and downscale common graphic format such as JPEG, PNG, WMF, TGA and so on… to standard web graphic formats i.e. JPEG and PNG for browsing friendly size. You can resize, add borders, add text, overlay images, crop, rotate, flip and convert photos to black and white. Web Resizer allows you to resize your digital images without the need to install any software on your computer. There is no registration and no fee.

• What are the infrastructure and technical requirements for this tool?

Web Resizer recommends Firefox instead of Internet Explorer for faster surfing and better surfing experience. They have lots of extensions and plug-ins which can make your browsing a lot more productive.

• How can you use it effectively in instruction?

Web Resizer is a tool that can be used to add photographs to projects( i.e., Science Fair Projects, Research projects, invitations to Back-to-School night, Invitations to American Education week, etc.). It can additionally be used to add photos to journal writing activities, produce picture/word vocabulary booklets, construct learning centers using photographs, craft a collage, generate Every-Pupil-Response cards, create visuals to support lesson content, etc.

• What are the limitations and cautions related to use of this tool?

-When trying to save an image you get a .BMP file extension option. This is a small bug in Internet Explorer. It happens when your “Temporary Internet Folder” is full. Emptying it should fix the problem.

-If cropping does not work, you will need a DHTML enabled browser to make it work.

-Linking the resized image from a server to a website is not possible. As soon as the resizing is done and the image is shown to you the image gets deleted.

-Web Resizer cannot resize more than one image at a time.

• What are other education applications for this tool?

Web Resizer is a great tool for adding photographs to teacher created websites and resizing photographs to add to emails. It can additionally be used to crop photographs for school or class newsletters. Web Resizer would also be beneficial in creating activities that identify classmates, school staff members or as a picture schedule. At Summit Park we create a “Welcome to Summit Park” display for new students. Web Resizer could aid in making this display more appealing by cropping each student’s photograph and adding border to give it flair.

• What are the management considerations for this tool?

Because the main venue for downloading your photographs will be from a digital camera, during a class lesson it may be time consuming and hectic to quickly download the photos to the appropriate computer for student use. However, having students save their photos on a thumb drive may be helpful with time management.

NetVibes

NetVibes is a page much like Page Flakes, which was the last Web 2.0 tool I researched.

NetVibes is a personlized homepage. It allows users to design the page to include many different key websites or email. The website information describes it as a way for users to “assemble their favorite widgets, websites, blogs, email accounts, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and everything else they enjoy on the web – in one place!” This truly sums up everything you can do on NetVibes. Users are able to organize their information using tabs, icons, and more. You are able to pick a theme and name your page. It’s truly your space! This application seems to offer a bit more variety than PageFlakes as far as the widgets that you can add to your page. For example, I was able to click news, then technology and find many links strictly pertaining to technology. I could really pick from a vast selection of information to include on my homepage.

It offers the social network aspect much like that of myspace or facebook by allowing you to set your page to private or public, allows you to connect with friends, and subscribe to other user pages.

Obviously the user would have sign up to design their own webpage and use this page. It would certainly make a great homepage with quick and easy access to the things we look at daily.

Again, just as with page flakes I am having a difficult time considering how you could use this in professional development. I think it would be a great place to get those who are hesistant involved with using Web 2.0 tools and features. It makes more sense to me that NetVibes and Page Flakes be used for teachers personal use rather than use in the classroom.

Teachers could potentially use this to design a class homepage that students could browse but it would take some time to find which tools and applications are allowed in school. I think it’s important that students view information from the web because it is where many adult rely upon for information. I rarely pick up a news paper but always check the headlines on the internet! Using this type of homepage could also help a teacher when designing their own page that can be viewed in school if this one is not available.

Does anyone else have any suggestions of how this could be used in professional development?

Chatmaker

· What is it? What does it do?

o Chatmaker is a site that allows you to make your own chat rooms and easily invite others.

o Chatmaker’s chatroom is extremely easy and instantaneous, which means that people might use it for quick and private communications.

o Plus I really liked that it doesn’t require registration.

o Just type the title of your chatroom in the box on the homepage, and then send the link that is provided in the lower box to the people you want to join. My title was “JHU Cohort.” I then instant messaged my colleagues who looked like they were logged on to elc, but no one got back to me…So needless to say at that time of night, I was the only one in my chatroom, chatting to myself…so sad.

· What are the infrastructure and technical requirements for this tool?

o As long as the site Chatmaker isn’t blocked and you can copy and paste a link, you can chat with anyone!

· How can you use it effectively in instruction?

o This could be so fun for the students to have mystery chatpals either in our own school, another local school, or a school in another state or country!

o I could see a chatroom for students who are all trying to perform the same type of science experiment for the bcps science fair. They could chat about failure, success, and etc.

· What are other education applications for this tool?

o Teachers could create a chatroom with parents, collegues from other schools in the same content area, or even cohort members to discuss numerous topics, concerns, etc.

· What are the limitations and cautions related to use of this tool?

o Not sure if this is blocked on bcps.

o Can’t find any cautions, since one has to be invited to come into the chatroom.

· What are the management considerations for this tool?

o Making sure all invitees can be online at a certain specific time.

o Teaching students proper language and manners when in a chatroom.