I think we can use Flickr anywhere visual images are required, such as presentation, etc:

• For single image analysis.
• For single image writing prompt, where an individual will post an image and a person will start a story as a comment, with the story continued by multiple viewers adding more to the story through comments.
• For multiple image digital storytelling projects.
• For creating slides shows within Flickr.
• For virtual Field Trips in order to see the best images.
• For the creation of visual arguments, e.g. In a biology classroom- such as The Case for Genetic Engineering.
• For illustrating poetry with Flickr with tags as well as single images.
• For geotagging images and then using Google Earth to teach Geography.
• For the visual documentation of school events.
• For the visual documentation of student artwork and other school learning products.
• For the creation of digital visual portfolios, using the photoset function of Flickr.
• To teach about social software: how to tag, how to make comments, etc. (where are we teaching kids how to constructively comment on the work of others?).
• For the delivery of school/classroom visual information via RSS.

I hope it can help them to understand their meaning as it help me, too. The words I added are:

twitter:

Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Join today to start receiving dictionary’s updates.

–verb (used without object)

1. to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.

2. to talk lightly and rapidly, esp. of trivial matters; chatter.

3. to titter; giggle.

4. to tremble with excitement or the like; be in a flutter.

–verb (used with object)

5. to express or utter by twittering.

–noun

6. an act of twittering.

7. a twittering sound.

8. a state of tremulous excitement.

Origin:
1325–75; ME twiteren (v.); akin to G zwitschern

Wiki:

(n.) A collaborative Web site comprises the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface, including the work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog, typically authored by an individual, does not allow visitors to change the original posted material, only add comments to the original content.

The term wiki refers to either the Web site or the software used to create the site.

Wiki wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian. The first wiki was created by Ward Cunnigham in 1995.

You told your story on our Voicethread. Now, let’s reflect a bit on it.

How was the process of telling your story?

In the presentation, we are supposed to:

1.   Write

2.   Select images.

3.   Narrate.

4.   Apply Motion.

Did you write it down?

The process of creating a digital story requires from us, as teachers, to:

1.   Plan: Storyboard and Write

2.   Produce: Record the pieces

3.   Chop: Edit the pieces

4.   Publish: Share our creation

 Did you just jot down some ideas you wanted to mention?

In oder to support student learning and retention of content-area knowledge, it is better to:

1.   Select images and write.

2.   “Loop” step 1 with teacher input and feedback. (in the form of guided questions)

3.   Narrate.

4.   Apply Motion.

What did you think about when you were preparing to record it?

As a teacher, we are always looking for perfection. I think time will teach me how to deal with this web tool in a spontaneous way.

Of course it is. Flickr is all about sharing. It gives me quite a few sharing options, but maybe the handiest is the embed option, which lets me paste thumbnail previews into forums, blogs, and social networking profiles such as MySpace. For shots that aren’t mine, I can copy and paste the URL from my address bar and put it in an e-mail or instant-messaging conversation.

Sharing photos is neat, but half of the fun of these photo-hosting services is seeing what other people are taking pictures of and interacting with them. The reason it has tagging and notating features is so other people can find and make sense of your photos. The biggest draws to Flickr’s community are groups, which let users create and contribute to themed groups.

Each group has a shared pool of pictures that any of its members can contribute to. There could be a theme, or maybe no theme at all; it’s up to the user. Each group gets its own forum for chatting about topics or individual pictures. It’s almost like book club, but for pictures.

This week, write a 100-word reflection about your views on RSS, your understanding, or what it is still blurred for you.

I recognize the universal feed icon or these “chicklets” from my favorite Web sites, blogs and podcasts. These icons represent content in any format — text, audio or video — to which I can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader. If I want to browse and subscribe to feeds, I have many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications, also known as “news aggregators” (for text, mostly) or “podcatchers” (for podcasts). There are even readers that work exclusively on mobile devices.

A typical interface for a feed reader displays my feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. I can also organize my feeds into categories and even clip and save my favorite entries (with certain applications). If I prefer, I can use an online, web-based service to track and manage feeds. Online services like Diigo, Feevy, Google Reader and Pageflakes give me the advantage of being able to access my feed updates anywhere I can find a web browser. Also, upgrades and new features are added automatically.

If I have a Web site, blog, audio/video content or even photos, I can offer a feed of your content as an option. If I am using a popular blogging platform or publishing tool like TypePad, WordPress or Blogger, I likely publish a feed automatically. Even other, non-blogging sites like social photo-sharing service Flickr offer feeds of content I produce that others can retrieve. There are also tools on the market that can help transform traditional web content into the right format for distribution.

• Choose a photo from your computer, one that, in some way, represents the tasks and learning you went through this week. If you don’t have the image you want on your computer, grab a camera and take a photo!

• Write an email to post on your Posterous Blog reflecting on your discoveries, impressions, concerns and ideas about blogging.

• Attach the photo you’ve chosen to your email.

• Send the email to your Posterous (post@posterous.com).

The photo I have chosen for today is at:

http://thaiswebtools.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/dscn3305.jpg

It is about a special environmental project I aim to develop next year. This photo was taken during our visit at Parque Nacional de Brasília. I already have a home page where I aim to discuss more about this project. It is at:

http://thaislobojunqueira.googlepages.com/clubedeingles

I think a blog is an exciting tool for publishing and sharing freely our own ideas and projects. The only problem is how to make it part of my teaching activity because I do not have enough time to blog everyday nor everyweek.

You should consider the following reflection questions to write about this week’s activities:

- How can online social bookmarking help you?

They are engines absolutely free to use that help me to:

• Bookmark Web Pages Quickly and Easily;
• Organize and Manage Bookmarks Easily;
• Share my Bookmarks as Bunches;
• Discover Web’s Popular Bookmarks;
• Import and Export Bookmarks;
• Open Set of Bookmarks in One Click;
• Browser Tools to Bookmark Web Pages.

- What are the advantages of having bookmarking as a social activity?

• First social bookmarking sites are attracting a lot of regular users and high traffic which means that information on them tends to get better positioning on web sites.
• Furthermore links to your own web site or blog when posted to a social bookmarking site create back links to your site. Search engines value inbound links to your site because they are an indication of the popularity of a site increasing your own search engine positioning.
• Search engines loves to crawl social bookmarking sites because humans are involved and the humans involved are organizing their favorite web pages, search engines say that this provides a very strong indication that the ‘vote’ cast for the web page is extremely relevant. So these sites are regularly crawled by search engines.
• The bookmarks can be accessed from anywhere with a connection to internet.
• If you see that one or two users are regularly saving the same bookmarks as you then you can make contact with them or add them to your ‘friends’ list to follow their bookmarking progress. This is an excellent way of benchmarking your bookmarking to ensure that it’s as relevant as possible to your industry.

- How could Diigo be used in your classroom?

In many ways, if I:

• Tag my web site, blog, squidoo lenses, social networking sites and any other web presence I have on as many social bookmark sites as you can.
• Encourage students to your sites to add them to their social bookmarks.
• Network with other social bookmarkers and collaborate with each other to promote my sites.
• Provide great content that students will want to come back to over time.
• Make it very easy for students to bookmark my pages.

- What were your main difficulties to get started with social bookmarking?

I think I am not able to get it updated all the time.The idea of marketing my website through social bookmarking is also called Social Book Marketing or Social Media Optimization. It refers to web based applications that enable us to store bookmarks online instead of in our favorites or bookmarks on our computers. The immediate advantage of this is that we can access our bookmarked sites from any computer. In short we can say each “bookmark” of a specific webpage is seen as a vote of confidence. The more people who bookmark a specific web page, the more credible the webpage is viewed as.

- Did you find any interesting resources shared by your peers? Please, add the link to it.

Yes, I have shared them at Diigo. Some of them are:

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/

http://www.classtools.net/

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/my-best-of-series/

http://lifefeast.blogspot.com/

Week 1

• How do your students learn?

It is a good question. Although we still teach in a traditional way at public schools, they are really learning in a digital way. I aim to teach more effectively, but not all my students have a personal computer at home. Their parents think that LAN houses are evil, so they have got scared about the idea of letting their children at such a place alone, and my students still think that schoolwork is not meaningful as they would like to.

• How much tech-richness does your curriculum provide?

I followed some online courses in order to provide more tech-richness to my students, but their access to these tools is not equal. Some of them can use an IPOD and a sophisticated cell phone with internet etc.

• How are you using the WWW to teach your students?

I research some WWW English material to them. They answer the exercices I downloaded for them. I do not have a digital lab where they can do the online tasks I have learnt during the courses I have attended. I think our government is a step backwards in database access at the classroom.

• How do we turn our 21st century classrooms into learning engines?

I think the only way is collaborating with them during their learning process. I agree that I have to pay attention to our children’s intensively rich information experiences, but I also agree that teachers need to learn more about technology engines etc.

• Are you engaging your students?

I ask that everytime I finish my classes. Not everyday this answer is an easy one. I agree that students will use engaging technologies in collaborative, inquiry-based learning environments, with teachers who are willing and able to use technology’s power to assist them in transforming knowledge and skills into products, solutions and new information.

• What are your main barriers to incorporating technology into your classroom?

I work for a public school. The only way to do it is sharing my laptop with my students. I can ask to some of them how use a blog, a wiki, a podcast at home or at a LAN House, but I still need to share with them how to use those engines using my laptop at the classroom.