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Truth be told...

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I've written a ton of awesome blog posts lately - in my head.  Truth be told, for one reason or another, none of these posts {that have seriously been written in my head} have made it from my brain to the keyboard.  I don't know if it's procrastination or feeling too vulnerable to share what's in my heart. This blog has been a great way to share my experiences as a birthmother, but I have to admit there are times that I envy those anonymous bloggers who are free to write about whatever the heck they want without the fear of offending someone they know personally. It's much easier to be honest when you don't have to worry about offending someone you care about.  Anyone else ever feel like this?



Also, it seems like every time I even think about posting an update, I find something else to do that's "more important."  I'll blog just as soon as I fold all of this laundry that's piled on my bed... and Clorox wipe up the kitchen... and then check out the newsfeed to make sure nothing important has escaped my eyes within the last 15 minutes.  Ha.



I was sitting in church last Sunday morning, on the very last page of our sermon notes, I saw something that caught my attention. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says "If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done."  In context, this verse is referring to a farmer who is waiting for perfect conditions to plant seeds. It made me realize that if I continue to wait for perfect conditions to write a blog post - it's probably never going to happen.



There are plenty of things to write about.  First, some updates from the past year.  I was able to attend the Birthmom Buds Annual Retreat this year in Charlotte, and it was fabulous.  Here's a nice little group pic.  We had birthmothers from all across the country, and it was so so so so so great to finally meet some of these women.  I already knew a few of them through blogging, and it was particularly special to have been assigned to sit next to sweet, little Leah from o-momma writes. {http://omommawrites.com/}, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting in Raleigh a  few years ago. If you haven't had a chance to read her blog yet, hit that up!



































In other news, I had the opportunity to participate in my first mission trip in March.  I went to Barbados with a small group from Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  We went down to "Bim" as the locals say, to encourage an existing sports ministry there.  It was an unforgettable experience, and it was amazing to see how God is working through sports ministry in that part of the world, and humbling to be a small part of that. We really bonded with our new Bajan friends. I think of our new friends often, and of course, I'd go back in a heartbeat.  I'll share more about my journey to Barbados, how I got involved, and what we specifically did there, but in the meantime, here are a few of my pictures:



























Aaaaaaaaaany whoooo.  Oh, and I recently bought a house.  A townhouse to be specific, but a big deal nonetheless!  Here's a picture of my humble abode.  She's a real gem, and these past few weeks have been filled with painting, decorating, and moving. By the way, this is the 3rd time my boyfriend has graciously helped me to move everything that I own into a new place in the past three years - that's love. He's definitely a keeper.  





Never in a coon's age could I have imagined I'd be a homeowner at 25, but here I am, planting my roots even further in a city that I {absolutely} adore. I'll save the exciting story of how I happened upon home-ownership for another post. 














Finally, my last update is something that deserves acknowledgement because it is a part this open adoption story.  Deanna's birthfather is getting married.  I'm very happy for him, and I'm thankful that his fiance is a wonderful person who also loves Deanna very much. Since our relationship ended many years ago, a huge fear of mine was that he would end up marrying someone who didn't love Deanna as much as we do.  I am so thankful that I don't have to worry about that anymore.  As De, Don and I have always said, the more people to love on Deanna the better. 





Something I've come to realize in the {nearly} 7 years since Deanna's adoption, is that God does have an amazing plan for my life. Although I must admit that I couldn't always see that plan. One of the many awesome things about God is that He will make the plans He has for us clear in His perfect timing.  His plans are to prosper us, and to give us hope and a future. Isn't that amazing? In the meantime though, there are times where we have to walk by faith and not by sight. There have been many times in the years following Deanna's adoption that I've felt completely uncertain of what God had in store for my life, and I tried really hard to make things happen in my own timing.  But I'm so thankful that God has put me exactly where I was supposed to be at each point in my life. Ever faithful, He has opened the right doors and closed the wrong ones.     





One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 55:8-9.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than you thoughts. 





Thanks for hanging in there while I took my mini-hiatus.  Looking forward to getting back to writing again. 





Love, 





Amstel





9 


How I use social media for my professional development

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This has been a common theme to many of the presentations, workshops, webinars and seminars that I have been asked to do over the last few years, but however many times I try to present on this subject I never really feel that I get the message across as clearly and persuasively as I would like.


The issue of how we use social media for our own development as teachers and as digitally skilled individuals, is one that I believe is of vital importance though, not just because it can enable us to keep developing as teachers through the content, ideas, resources and above all people it gives us access to, but also because the way use digital media for our own development should guide and influence the way we use it with our students and build their digital literacies and communication skills.

So here it is. This my own attempt to outline my digital media learning experience, or at least part of it.

I’ll split this into 3 sections which I’ll call
  • Information in - This is how and where I find information
  • Information processing - This is how I process, engage with and capture information
  • Information out - This is how I share what I’ve learned or discovered

Information in

One of my favourite and most useful sources of information is Diigo. What I particularly like about Diigo is the groups. As you can see here I’m a member of quite a few groups.
The thing that I really like about the groups is that each group is set to send me a daily digest of any links shared within that group, so looking through these email digests is usually one of the first things I do at the beginning of each working day. These groups have really provided a very rich source of professional development for me and most of the interesting articles I read originate from here.

I also have a range of RSS readers for my different devices and these keep me up to date on the blogs and journals I follow. I’ve been using Netvibes for quite some for this, but on my mobile devices I also use Flipboard for more general information and Zite for more professional things. This video shows how Zite works.


Both these are very easy to browse when I have a moment spare and have great integration with both Twitter and Facebook.
Apart from those I also use Tweet Deck to follow specific topics on Twitter. I have it set up so that I can monitor the most useful hashtag related streams when ever I have some down time.


Information processing
It’s really easy to spend a lot of time sorting through information and links to articles, only to discover a few weeks later that you can neither remember or find anything you looked at, so i use a whole range of tools to make sure I capture and attempt to digest all this information.
I’ve had a Delicious account for years now and I configured it so that anything I posted to Twitter also automatically went into that account. However after a while i found that I wasn’t really going back there and when I din’t find it a very useful place to search through, though this has changed a bit since the introduction of Stacks (collections of bookmarks that have a more visual user interface)
For a while I used a great visual bookmarking tool called SimplyBox, but unfortunately that disappeared, so I was left to resort through all my link there and find better solutions (never a bed thing). My solution has been to spread things out a little.

I’ve been collecting a lot of infographics recently and I find the Pinterest is the ideal tool for these. It’s easy to collect and save them using the browser bookmarklet and they display well when I want to search through and find the ones I need.
I’ve also found that Pinterest is great for collecting YouTube videos and this has been a great way to access the videos when I need them.


Though sadly, although Pinterest grabs YouTube videos well it struggles with other web based video embeds, so I might have to look for something better for that.
For a long time I had all my links to useful web tools and resources stored in boxes on SimplyBox and it has taken a while for me to find a replacement for this. I have tried publishing my favourite tools for learners using a Scoop.it site.
 Although this is a nice way to share the tools it isn’t so handy when I come back to find them again. The answer to my problem came a few weeks ago when I discovered Meaki.



This looks similar to Pinterest, but it grabs a visual of the entire web page instead of just one image from it and the way the stored links can be accessed is much more user friendly for me, so I’ve been busy shifting links from my old boxes into this new site. So here are some examples (more to come soon)

This process of curation (sifting and organising links to useful content) may seem a little time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Once the initial sites are set up, you can just use  any short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes either at the start or end of the day or between lesson or other tasks. Let’s face it many of us find time for facebook in those short moments so why not something more productive?

Of course the most important part of processing all this information and making use of it is to put it into practice in my teaching, training and very importantly my writing. Trying to synergise all this information, make sense of it and formulate it into a rational strategy for moving my development forward is something I couldn’t do without blogging. The act of writing something down and organising it into a rational readable text on a blog to be published for others in your profession to see can really help you to focus on and confront your own ideas and beliefs and many postings that I have started to write have ended up in the rubbish purely because the act of putting those ideas into text convinced me that was where they belonged.

So having been through this process or collection, analysis, curation and reformulation the final step is to start to share those ideas.

Information out

Sharing is a really important part of the process. It’s important because if you create  something of value that can help you develop it can probably help others develop too. It’s also important because you can get some feedback from other teachers, perhaps even a little encouragement and appreciation and start to grow your network.


My main tools for sharing are firstly Scoop.it, as I mentioned earlier, which is where I store links to any interesting articles I find, and also a few that I write. Scoop.it is a particularly useful tool because it synchronises with other services such as
The Tumblr site, is something I’ve only started using quite recently, and only really to back up all those articles, so that if Scoop.it disappears or decides to start charging large amounts of money I haven’t completely lost everything.
As I said Scoop.it posts straight through to Twitter, which I mentioned earlier is also a great source of information in. I tend not to engage with people very much through Twitter though. For me it’s a great way to share links to content and find links to content, but it’s not a great platform for communication, so I also have a Facebook page which I find much more suitable for that.


Conclusion
So that’s it. My social network for professional development. It does take time to build up something like this, but it can grow organically just by registering on a few sites and then putting in 5 or 10 mins whenever you have time. In the long run, that’s far more time economical than going to a conference and certainly much cheaper, and best of all the network you develop is one that is absolutely specific to your own needs, so what could be better.

I’ll finish with a word of advice. This process can become quite addictive, especially for the social attention it can bring to you,  as you start to accumulate hundreds or even thousands of followers, but don’t let feeding this network take over as the purpose of the process. Always try to retain your integrity and focus on quality. Have high standards - If you don’t find anything useful or interesting to share or write about, then have a day off, never share something unless you have genuinely learned something from it and feel it has value.

I hope this is useful.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey





Developing Your Digital Study Skills

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Making the move from our safe and trusted traditional literacy habits to newer digital skills can be quite a challenge, but as teachers I think we are really unlikely to be able to use technology and help our students use technology really effectively unless we are prepared to face this challenge. Technology needs to be more than part of the way we teach but it also has to be part of the way we ourselves continue to learn and part of our everyday professional practice.


Scrible is one tool that has been helping me to make this step away from my paper and pencil study habits and towards a more efficient and digital way of learning.

Scrible enables me to replace my highlighter, sticky notes and coloured pens and to work with similar tools directly on the computer screen.


As an information addict, I spend quite a lot of my time scanning through blogs and journal articles about educational technology and language learning and trying to keep track of useful quotes and information from around the web. Recently I have started using Scrible to help me do this.

Scrible is a simple browser plugin that I can activate whenever I find something interesting online. The plugin opens a toolbar which enables me to annotate and mark up webpages with different colour highlighters, sticky notes and change the colour of the text.


But is can do more than this, because it also enables me to save the articles and webpages I have commented on, along with my my annotations into a library so that I can come back and find them later.

Once I have saved the annotated pages I can also share them with others by creating a simple link. These links can be either as ‘read only’ (the students can see my annotations but not change them) or as ‘editable’ pages (students  can see my annotations and also add their own) that I can work on collaboratively.

For me this is a great study aid and really ensures that I can go back, find and review all the articles I’ve studied.

How to use Scrible EFL / ESL students
We can get our students to use Scrible in the same way that we would to study an online text, though we can also use it to focus them on language development too. Here are some suggestions.

  • Get students to identify and change the colour of all collocations. They can use different colours for different types.
  • Use the sticky notes to set up reading tasks and comprehension questions and get students to highlight the part of the text where they find the answer.
  • Get students to read a text and post sticky note questions about it for you to answer.
  • Get students to colour code different parts of speech within the text.
  • get students to colour highlight different verb structures. They could also leave sticky notes saying what the structure is or what use of the structure is being demonstrated.
  • Get students to use sticky notes to define words from the text.
What I’m not so sure about
  • The toolbar can be a little bit fiddly sometimes and it’s difficult to attach sticky notes to specific areas of images.
On the whole I really like Scrible and have found it really useful to help me move away from pen and paper in a way that makes much more sense as most of my studying is done online using digital resources.

I hope you give it a try too.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

Instant Opinion Polls in the Classroom

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For a long time now I have been looking for a tool that enables instant polling in the classroom or in the lecture room. I specifically wanted something that:
  •  doesn't require registration (especially from the people I'm polling)
  • updates very quickly
  • works on any platform from computers to mobile devices
It looks like I have finally found what I've been looking for and best of all it's free. The tool that I have found is Mentimeter and it does all of the above.

Creating the poll was really quick and easy I just went to http://mentimeter.com and typed in my question, then I clicked on 'Create Question',


I then entered my selection of answer choices, chose a theme and clicked on 'Save and Start Presenting'.




The poll is then ready to use. There are a number of ways of sharing it.

You can get a URL with a code to restrict entry or to make it quick and easy to share in presentations (Here's one on the flipped classroom. The URL is always http://vot.rs/ then you have a specific code for the poll, which in this case is 23512 ) anyone with this code can then vote. By all means give it a try.


You can click on share after you create your poll and get a direct web link which you can share through social media, such as Twitter or Facebook etc.


By clicking on 'Share' on your poll page you can also get an embed code or a link to to a public results page. I've embded the poll below to show you how it looks.


So what's so great about creating live polls?
  • Well they are great if you are lecturing or presenting at a conference with a wireless network as you can get instant feedback and responses that everyone can share in and so involve more people.
  • You can use them in class as a quick test to see if students have understood your material.
  • You can get students to create them and test each other.
  • You can use them for opinion polls in class, both before and after discussions to see if there is any shift in opinion.
  • The responses are anonymous, so it's a good tool to use to get honest feedback if you are doing action research in class, especially if it is related to a sensitive issue, such as your own teaching style or methods.
What's not to like?
  • Well there isn't much I can say that I don't like about this tool.
  • I'd like to have polls with more than one question though.
  • You have to be careful about using polls like this on mobile phones if your students are having to pay a connection charge, so it really helps to be able to get them on the wireless network if you are using it in class.
I hope you find http://mentimeter.com useful and enjoy using it with your students.


Related links:

Best


Nik Peachey

Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality

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For a while now I have been expounding the wonders of augmented reality (See: Augmented Reality and Web 3.0) , so I thought it was time at last to give some examples of how we can actually get students using this technology and to show how it can superimpose the Internet onto their physical world.

So here are some teaching suggestion which exploit two augmented reality type apps and gives students some reading, listening and speaking practice, as well as a bit of exercise.

The apps you need for this activity are both free and the first is 'Woices'.

Woices is a simple voice recording app that you can use on your mobile device to create and upload audio files to the Internet. You can also add an image to your audio recordings. The wonderful thing about Woices though is that by using GPS it understands where you were when you created the audio file and 'attaches' it to that location, so anyone who has the Woices app can go to the location and find the audio file by clicking on the 'Explore' icon on their app.

So it's a bit like leaving hidden audio notes around the world that only other Woices users can find.




Here's how it works. 
First register on the Woices website and download the app for your mobile device.
When you open the app it looks like this. You simply click on 'Record' to start speaking.

 When you have finished speaking click on 'Stop'. Then you can listen and delete the recording (recordings are called 'echoes'), or if you are happy with it, you can click on the small blue arrow on the right and add a title and description as well as a photo to your echo.

Then you click on 'Send' to publish it to the internet and this will use your phones GPS to attach it to the location where you created the echo.

To find 'echoes' which are relevant to your location, just click on the 'Explore' icon and you will get a list of 'echoes' which have been left close to your location.

The second app is called Layar and Layar enables developers to create web based multimedia information (called 'layers')which can only be accessed whenever you are close to specific locations.

Layar comes with  a number of packs of layers and the one that I want to use is the Wikipedia one. This layer enables users to find entries in Wikipedia which relate specifically to places in their environment.

So wherever the user is standing when they  activate the app they will get information which relates specifically to that place.

Here's how it works.
You need to download the Layar app for your mobile device. Make sure that when you open the app for the first time, you enable the location tracking feature so that Layar knows where you are. Then go to the layers.

You'll find the Wikipedia layer in the Education section. Click on it and then click on 'Launch'.

When you hold up your phone and move it around slowly you should start to see the Wikipedia summaries appearing at the bottom of the screen.

At the top of the screen you'll also see a kind of 'radar' screen which shows you where the interesting places are in relation to where you are standing.


If you click on the small Wikipedia summary you will get two more icons.

One of these takes you to the entry on Wikipedia for that location.

The other takes you to a map, which will show you how to get to the place from where you standing.


So here is how we can use this to create motivating out of school activities
  • Ask your students to find 5 interesting places around their town using the Wikipedia layer. They should go to each place research it on Wikipedia  using the Layar app and then record a short audio entry using Woices and add a picture to it. (You can check their entries through the Woices web based interface)
  • You could make a kind of treasure hunt and got to the places yourself and use Woices to leave audio clues about the next place to visit, so that students have to listen to your clue when they get to the location (by pressing the 'Explore' icon on the Woices app) and research the places around them on Wikipedia to find out where to go next to find the next clue. You could get them to leave an audio entry and image at each place along the trail to prove they have been there.
  • You could use Woices to leave audio notes at a set of locations and have factual errors in the notes. Then your students would have to visit the places, press 'Explore' and find the factual errors by comparing your audio with the Wikipedia entry for that place.
  • Get students to create their own audio tours or treasure hunts for each other using Woices and the Wikipedia layer.

What I like about augmented reality
  • I think it's great that we can get students learning about their environment outside of the classroom.
  • Taking learning out of the classroom like this gives students tools which they can use in their everyday life.

Things to be aware of
  • Be careful of your students e-safety and make sure they don't leave any information about their home address or where they live.
  • Make students aware of their digital 'footprint' so that they use social media responsibly.
I hope this shows at least a little of the potential of augmented reality apps on mobile devices. I think there is huge potential in these kinds of apps to develop location based experiential learning that can get our students out and about exploring their environment and interacting with the world around them through the internet. I hope you give it a try.

Lastly, I'd like to welcome Worth Ave Group as a new advertiser. 
 

Related links:
Best
Nik Peachey

BirthMom Buds Fiesta

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Okay, my fellow birthmoms. Guess what's coming up in May? Yep, you guessed it!  It's the annual BirthMom Buds Retreat!  This year, the BirthMom Buds Fiesta is being held at the Hilton Garden Inn, Uptown Charlotte. We'll have weekend of activities planned beginning on Friday, May 4th - Sunday, May 6th. Limited space is available, so if you plan to attend, be sure to email Coley at: birthmombuds@gmail.com as soon as possible.



Hoping to finally meet some of my fellow birthmom bloggers this year!



Hasta Luego!



-Amstel

Merry CHRISTmas!

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"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." - Isaiah 9:6

















































































Merry Christmas from Amstel, De, Deanna, Don, our family & friends... and the whoopee cushions!  Many blessings to you and your family this holiday season.



 -Amstel 



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الجمعة، 29 يونيو 2012

Truth be told...

I've written a ton of awesome blog posts lately - in my head.  Truth be told, for one reason or another, none of these posts {that have seriously been written in my head} have made it from my brain to the keyboard.  I don't know if it's procrastination or feeling too vulnerable to share what's in my heart. This blog has been a great way to share my experiences as a birthmother, but I have to admit there are times that I envy those anonymous bloggers who are free to write about whatever the heck they want without the fear of offending someone they know personally. It's much easier to be honest when you don't have to worry about offending someone you care about.  Anyone else ever feel like this?



Also, it seems like every time I even think about posting an update, I find something else to do that's "more important."  I'll blog just as soon as I fold all of this laundry that's piled on my bed... and Clorox wipe up the kitchen... and then check out the newsfeed to make sure nothing important has escaped my eyes within the last 15 minutes.  Ha.



I was sitting in church last Sunday morning, on the very last page of our sermon notes, I saw something that caught my attention. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says "If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done."  In context, this verse is referring to a farmer who is waiting for perfect conditions to plant seeds. It made me realize that if I continue to wait for perfect conditions to write a blog post - it's probably never going to happen.



There are plenty of things to write about.  First, some updates from the past year.  I was able to attend the Birthmom Buds Annual Retreat this year in Charlotte, and it was fabulous.  Here's a nice little group pic.  We had birthmothers from all across the country, and it was so so so so so great to finally meet some of these women.  I already knew a few of them through blogging, and it was particularly special to have been assigned to sit next to sweet, little Leah from o-momma writes. {http://omommawrites.com/}, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting in Raleigh a  few years ago. If you haven't had a chance to read her blog yet, hit that up!



































In other news, I had the opportunity to participate in my first mission trip in March.  I went to Barbados with a small group from Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  We went down to "Bim" as the locals say, to encourage an existing sports ministry there.  It was an unforgettable experience, and it was amazing to see how God is working through sports ministry in that part of the world, and humbling to be a small part of that. We really bonded with our new Bajan friends. I think of our new friends often, and of course, I'd go back in a heartbeat.  I'll share more about my journey to Barbados, how I got involved, and what we specifically did there, but in the meantime, here are a few of my pictures:



























Aaaaaaaaaany whoooo.  Oh, and I recently bought a house.  A townhouse to be specific, but a big deal nonetheless!  Here's a picture of my humble abode.  She's a real gem, and these past few weeks have been filled with painting, decorating, and moving. By the way, this is the 3rd time my boyfriend has graciously helped me to move everything that I own into a new place in the past three years - that's love. He's definitely a keeper.  





Never in a coon's age could I have imagined I'd be a homeowner at 25, but here I am, planting my roots even further in a city that I {absolutely} adore. I'll save the exciting story of how I happened upon home-ownership for another post. 














Finally, my last update is something that deserves acknowledgement because it is a part this open adoption story.  Deanna's birthfather is getting married.  I'm very happy for him, and I'm thankful that his fiance is a wonderful person who also loves Deanna very much. Since our relationship ended many years ago, a huge fear of mine was that he would end up marrying someone who didn't love Deanna as much as we do.  I am so thankful that I don't have to worry about that anymore.  As De, Don and I have always said, the more people to love on Deanna the better. 





Something I've come to realize in the {nearly} 7 years since Deanna's adoption, is that God does have an amazing plan for my life. Although I must admit that I couldn't always see that plan. One of the many awesome things about God is that He will make the plans He has for us clear in His perfect timing.  His plans are to prosper us, and to give us hope and a future. Isn't that amazing? In the meantime though, there are times where we have to walk by faith and not by sight. There have been many times in the years following Deanna's adoption that I've felt completely uncertain of what God had in store for my life, and I tried really hard to make things happen in my own timing.  But I'm so thankful that God has put me exactly where I was supposed to be at each point in my life. Ever faithful, He has opened the right doors and closed the wrong ones.     





One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 55:8-9.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than you thoughts. 





Thanks for hanging in there while I took my mini-hiatus.  Looking forward to getting back to writing again. 





Love, 





Amstel





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الأربعاء، 27 يونيو 2012

How I use social media for my professional development

This has been a common theme to many of the presentations, workshops, webinars and seminars that I have been asked to do over the last few years, but however many times I try to present on this subject I never really feel that I get the message across as clearly and persuasively as I would like.


The issue of how we use social media for our own development as teachers and as digitally skilled individuals, is one that I believe is of vital importance though, not just because it can enable us to keep developing as teachers through the content, ideas, resources and above all people it gives us access to, but also because the way use digital media for our own development should guide and influence the way we use it with our students and build their digital literacies and communication skills.

So here it is. This my own attempt to outline my digital media learning experience, or at least part of it.

I’ll split this into 3 sections which I’ll call
  • Information in - This is how and where I find information
  • Information processing - This is how I process, engage with and capture information
  • Information out - This is how I share what I’ve learned or discovered

Information in

One of my favourite and most useful sources of information is Diigo. What I particularly like about Diigo is the groups. As you can see here I’m a member of quite a few groups.
The thing that I really like about the groups is that each group is set to send me a daily digest of any links shared within that group, so looking through these email digests is usually one of the first things I do at the beginning of each working day. These groups have really provided a very rich source of professional development for me and most of the interesting articles I read originate from here.

I also have a range of RSS readers for my different devices and these keep me up to date on the blogs and journals I follow. I’ve been using Netvibes for quite some for this, but on my mobile devices I also use Flipboard for more general information and Zite for more professional things. This video shows how Zite works.


Both these are very easy to browse when I have a moment spare and have great integration with both Twitter and Facebook.
Apart from those I also use Tweet Deck to follow specific topics on Twitter. I have it set up so that I can monitor the most useful hashtag related streams when ever I have some down time.


Information processing
It’s really easy to spend a lot of time sorting through information and links to articles, only to discover a few weeks later that you can neither remember or find anything you looked at, so i use a whole range of tools to make sure I capture and attempt to digest all this information.
I’ve had a Delicious account for years now and I configured it so that anything I posted to Twitter also automatically went into that account. However after a while i found that I wasn’t really going back there and when I din’t find it a very useful place to search through, though this has changed a bit since the introduction of Stacks (collections of bookmarks that have a more visual user interface)
For a while I used a great visual bookmarking tool called SimplyBox, but unfortunately that disappeared, so I was left to resort through all my link there and find better solutions (never a bed thing). My solution has been to spread things out a little.

I’ve been collecting a lot of infographics recently and I find the Pinterest is the ideal tool for these. It’s easy to collect and save them using the browser bookmarklet and they display well when I want to search through and find the ones I need.
I’ve also found that Pinterest is great for collecting YouTube videos and this has been a great way to access the videos when I need them.


Though sadly, although Pinterest grabs YouTube videos well it struggles with other web based video embeds, so I might have to look for something better for that.
For a long time I had all my links to useful web tools and resources stored in boxes on SimplyBox and it has taken a while for me to find a replacement for this. I have tried publishing my favourite tools for learners using a Scoop.it site.
 Although this is a nice way to share the tools it isn’t so handy when I come back to find them again. The answer to my problem came a few weeks ago when I discovered Meaki.



This looks similar to Pinterest, but it grabs a visual of the entire web page instead of just one image from it and the way the stored links can be accessed is much more user friendly for me, so I’ve been busy shifting links from my old boxes into this new site. So here are some examples (more to come soon)

This process of curation (sifting and organising links to useful content) may seem a little time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Once the initial sites are set up, you can just use  any short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes either at the start or end of the day or between lesson or other tasks. Let’s face it many of us find time for facebook in those short moments so why not something more productive?

Of course the most important part of processing all this information and making use of it is to put it into practice in my teaching, training and very importantly my writing. Trying to synergise all this information, make sense of it and formulate it into a rational strategy for moving my development forward is something I couldn’t do without blogging. The act of writing something down and organising it into a rational readable text on a blog to be published for others in your profession to see can really help you to focus on and confront your own ideas and beliefs and many postings that I have started to write have ended up in the rubbish purely because the act of putting those ideas into text convinced me that was where they belonged.

So having been through this process or collection, analysis, curation and reformulation the final step is to start to share those ideas.

Information out

Sharing is a really important part of the process. It’s important because if you create  something of value that can help you develop it can probably help others develop too. It’s also important because you can get some feedback from other teachers, perhaps even a little encouragement and appreciation and start to grow your network.


My main tools for sharing are firstly Scoop.it, as I mentioned earlier, which is where I store links to any interesting articles I find, and also a few that I write. Scoop.it is a particularly useful tool because it synchronises with other services such as
The Tumblr site, is something I’ve only started using quite recently, and only really to back up all those articles, so that if Scoop.it disappears or decides to start charging large amounts of money I haven’t completely lost everything.
As I said Scoop.it posts straight through to Twitter, which I mentioned earlier is also a great source of information in. I tend not to engage with people very much through Twitter though. For me it’s a great way to share links to content and find links to content, but it’s not a great platform for communication, so I also have a Facebook page which I find much more suitable for that.


Conclusion
So that’s it. My social network for professional development. It does take time to build up something like this, but it can grow organically just by registering on a few sites and then putting in 5 or 10 mins whenever you have time. In the long run, that’s far more time economical than going to a conference and certainly much cheaper, and best of all the network you develop is one that is absolutely specific to your own needs, so what could be better.

I’ll finish with a word of advice. This process can become quite addictive, especially for the social attention it can bring to you,  as you start to accumulate hundreds or even thousands of followers, but don’t let feeding this network take over as the purpose of the process. Always try to retain your integrity and focus on quality. Have high standards - If you don’t find anything useful or interesting to share or write about, then have a day off, never share something unless you have genuinely learned something from it and feel it has value.

I hope this is useful.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey





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الخميس، 7 يونيو 2012

Developing Your Digital Study Skills

Making the move from our safe and trusted traditional literacy habits to newer digital skills can be quite a challenge, but as teachers I think we are really unlikely to be able to use technology and help our students use technology really effectively unless we are prepared to face this challenge. Technology needs to be more than part of the way we teach but it also has to be part of the way we ourselves continue to learn and part of our everyday professional practice.


Scrible is one tool that has been helping me to make this step away from my paper and pencil study habits and towards a more efficient and digital way of learning.

Scrible enables me to replace my highlighter, sticky notes and coloured pens and to work with similar tools directly on the computer screen.


As an information addict, I spend quite a lot of my time scanning through blogs and journal articles about educational technology and language learning and trying to keep track of useful quotes and information from around the web. Recently I have started using Scrible to help me do this.

Scrible is a simple browser plugin that I can activate whenever I find something interesting online. The plugin opens a toolbar which enables me to annotate and mark up webpages with different colour highlighters, sticky notes and change the colour of the text.


But is can do more than this, because it also enables me to save the articles and webpages I have commented on, along with my my annotations into a library so that I can come back and find them later.

Once I have saved the annotated pages I can also share them with others by creating a simple link. These links can be either as ‘read only’ (the students can see my annotations but not change them) or as ‘editable’ pages (students  can see my annotations and also add their own) that I can work on collaboratively.

For me this is a great study aid and really ensures that I can go back, find and review all the articles I’ve studied.

How to use Scrible EFL / ESL students
We can get our students to use Scrible in the same way that we would to study an online text, though we can also use it to focus them on language development too. Here are some suggestions.

  • Get students to identify and change the colour of all collocations. They can use different colours for different types.
  • Use the sticky notes to set up reading tasks and comprehension questions and get students to highlight the part of the text where they find the answer.
  • Get students to read a text and post sticky note questions about it for you to answer.
  • Get students to colour code different parts of speech within the text.
  • get students to colour highlight different verb structures. They could also leave sticky notes saying what the structure is or what use of the structure is being demonstrated.
  • Get students to use sticky notes to define words from the text.
What I’m not so sure about
  • The toolbar can be a little bit fiddly sometimes and it’s difficult to attach sticky notes to specific areas of images.
On the whole I really like Scrible and have found it really useful to help me move away from pen and paper in a way that makes much more sense as most of my studying is done online using digital resources.

I hope you give it a try too.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

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الثلاثاء، 22 مايو 2012

Instant Opinion Polls in the Classroom

For a long time now I have been looking for a tool that enables instant polling in the classroom or in the lecture room. I specifically wanted something that:
  •  doesn't require registration (especially from the people I'm polling)
  • updates very quickly
  • works on any platform from computers to mobile devices
It looks like I have finally found what I've been looking for and best of all it's free. The tool that I have found is Mentimeter and it does all of the above.

Creating the poll was really quick and easy I just went to http://mentimeter.com and typed in my question, then I clicked on 'Create Question',


I then entered my selection of answer choices, chose a theme and clicked on 'Save and Start Presenting'.




The poll is then ready to use. There are a number of ways of sharing it.

You can get a URL with a code to restrict entry or to make it quick and easy to share in presentations (Here's one on the flipped classroom. The URL is always http://vot.rs/ then you have a specific code for the poll, which in this case is 23512 ) anyone with this code can then vote. By all means give it a try.


You can click on share after you create your poll and get a direct web link which you can share through social media, such as Twitter or Facebook etc.


By clicking on 'Share' on your poll page you can also get an embed code or a link to to a public results page. I've embded the poll below to show you how it looks.


So what's so great about creating live polls?
  • Well they are great if you are lecturing or presenting at a conference with a wireless network as you can get instant feedback and responses that everyone can share in and so involve more people.
  • You can use them in class as a quick test to see if students have understood your material.
  • You can get students to create them and test each other.
  • You can use them for opinion polls in class, both before and after discussions to see if there is any shift in opinion.
  • The responses are anonymous, so it's a good tool to use to get honest feedback if you are doing action research in class, especially if it is related to a sensitive issue, such as your own teaching style or methods.
What's not to like?
  • Well there isn't much I can say that I don't like about this tool.
  • I'd like to have polls with more than one question though.
  • You have to be careful about using polls like this on mobile phones if your students are having to pay a connection charge, so it really helps to be able to get them on the wireless network if you are using it in class.
I hope you find http://mentimeter.com useful and enjoy using it with your students.


Related links:

Best


Nik Peachey
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الجمعة، 6 أبريل 2012

Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality

For a while now I have been expounding the wonders of augmented reality (See: Augmented Reality and Web 3.0) , so I thought it was time at last to give some examples of how we can actually get students using this technology and to show how it can superimpose the Internet onto their physical world.

So here are some teaching suggestion which exploit two augmented reality type apps and gives students some reading, listening and speaking practice, as well as a bit of exercise.

The apps you need for this activity are both free and the first is 'Woices'.

Woices is a simple voice recording app that you can use on your mobile device to create and upload audio files to the Internet. You can also add an image to your audio recordings. The wonderful thing about Woices though is that by using GPS it understands where you were when you created the audio file and 'attaches' it to that location, so anyone who has the Woices app can go to the location and find the audio file by clicking on the 'Explore' icon on their app.

So it's a bit like leaving hidden audio notes around the world that only other Woices users can find.




Here's how it works. 
First register on the Woices website and download the app for your mobile device.
When you open the app it looks like this. You simply click on 'Record' to start speaking.

 When you have finished speaking click on 'Stop'. Then you can listen and delete the recording (recordings are called 'echoes'), or if you are happy with it, you can click on the small blue arrow on the right and add a title and description as well as a photo to your echo.

Then you click on 'Send' to publish it to the internet and this will use your phones GPS to attach it to the location where you created the echo.

To find 'echoes' which are relevant to your location, just click on the 'Explore' icon and you will get a list of 'echoes' which have been left close to your location.

The second app is called Layar and Layar enables developers to create web based multimedia information (called 'layers')which can only be accessed whenever you are close to specific locations.

Layar comes with  a number of packs of layers and the one that I want to use is the Wikipedia one. This layer enables users to find entries in Wikipedia which relate specifically to places in their environment.

So wherever the user is standing when they  activate the app they will get information which relates specifically to that place.

Here's how it works.
You need to download the Layar app for your mobile device. Make sure that when you open the app for the first time, you enable the location tracking feature so that Layar knows where you are. Then go to the layers.

You'll find the Wikipedia layer in the Education section. Click on it and then click on 'Launch'.

When you hold up your phone and move it around slowly you should start to see the Wikipedia summaries appearing at the bottom of the screen.

At the top of the screen you'll also see a kind of 'radar' screen which shows you where the interesting places are in relation to where you are standing.


If you click on the small Wikipedia summary you will get two more icons.

One of these takes you to the entry on Wikipedia for that location.

The other takes you to a map, which will show you how to get to the place from where you standing.


So here is how we can use this to create motivating out of school activities
  • Ask your students to find 5 interesting places around their town using the Wikipedia layer. They should go to each place research it on Wikipedia  using the Layar app and then record a short audio entry using Woices and add a picture to it. (You can check their entries through the Woices web based interface)
  • You could make a kind of treasure hunt and got to the places yourself and use Woices to leave audio clues about the next place to visit, so that students have to listen to your clue when they get to the location (by pressing the 'Explore' icon on the Woices app) and research the places around them on Wikipedia to find out where to go next to find the next clue. You could get them to leave an audio entry and image at each place along the trail to prove they have been there.
  • You could use Woices to leave audio notes at a set of locations and have factual errors in the notes. Then your students would have to visit the places, press 'Explore' and find the factual errors by comparing your audio with the Wikipedia entry for that place.
  • Get students to create their own audio tours or treasure hunts for each other using Woices and the Wikipedia layer.

What I like about augmented reality
  • I think it's great that we can get students learning about their environment outside of the classroom.
  • Taking learning out of the classroom like this gives students tools which they can use in their everyday life.

Things to be aware of
  • Be careful of your students e-safety and make sure they don't leave any information about their home address or where they live.
  • Make students aware of their digital 'footprint' so that they use social media responsibly.
I hope this shows at least a little of the potential of augmented reality apps on mobile devices. I think there is huge potential in these kinds of apps to develop location based experiential learning that can get our students out and about exploring their environment and interacting with the world around them through the internet. I hope you give it a try.

Lastly, I'd like to welcome Worth Ave Group as a new advertiser. 
 

Related links:
Best
Nik Peachey
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الجمعة، 3 فبراير 2012

BirthMom Buds Fiesta

Okay, my fellow birthmoms. Guess what's coming up in May? Yep, you guessed it!  It's the annual BirthMom Buds Retreat!  This year, the BirthMom Buds Fiesta is being held at the Hilton Garden Inn, Uptown Charlotte. We'll have weekend of activities planned beginning on Friday, May 4th - Sunday, May 6th. Limited space is available, so if you plan to attend, be sure to email Coley at: birthmombuds@gmail.com as soon as possible.



Hoping to finally meet some of my fellow birthmom bloggers this year!



Hasta Luego!



-Amstel
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الأحد، 25 ديسمبر 2011

Merry CHRISTmas!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." - Isaiah 9:6

















































































Merry Christmas from Amstel, De, Deanna, Don, our family & friends... and the whoopee cushions!  Many blessings to you and your family this holiday season.



 -Amstel 



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