Final Video for ETC

This is a video about the need for more web 2.0 tools access in Chicago Public Schools. It shows how my students are engaged when interacting with these tools and how if we could have access to more sites such as YouTube, it would be a great benefit to our students. All images and video clips are taken by me (screen shots, screen recordings of YouTube and CPS policy site, pictures, and videos of my students). A special thank you to all my students and their families for allowing me to video tape them throughout my graduate program!

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The following is a one minute video that I have created for teachers. It is about the web 2.0 tool Tag Galaxy (http://taggalaxy.de/).

Image and video are screen shots/recordings that I have taken.

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Click here to see my comment that I posted on Michelle Boayke’s blog in regards to her web 2.0 tool of tizmos.com

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I learned about Animoto by reading a blog by one of my classmates, Dan Dolce. It is a web 2.0 tool that allows people to create slideshows. To learn more about it and to see my comment click here.

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I came across a very unique and fun web 2.0 tool last week while using my previous web 2.0 tool kindersite.com. I’m starting to love web 2.0 tools because there are hundreds of them out there. What’s neat is that within one web 2.0 tool, you can find another tool and another tool within that one. It’s a community of tools. The recent one I came across is called Tag Galaxy (http://taggalaxy.de/). This is such a fun site. It’s tied into Flickr. At Tag Galaxy, you can find thousands and thousands of pictures, all of which have been uploaded on Flickr. When you enter the site, you’re asked to enter a tag. The tag can be anything you want from a country to a fruit. You can even get more specific and type in a specific country or fruit such as Egypt or apple. When you click go, Tag Galaxy will search Flickr for any photos pertaining to the tag you entered. “You are whisked away to what looks to be a star, surrounded by “planets” that represent complementary tags” (Aune, 2008, para. 2). Before seeing any pictures, it will break your tag down to more specific categories. Take for example the word apple. After clicking go, you will be asked what type of apple you are looking for such as red, green, tree, etc. When you make your choice, this sphere shape is then covered in thousands of pictures. You can see a small image of each one and click on the one you like and it will become enlarged. You can even click on the enlarged picture to see more information and clicking again will take you to where it is posted on Flickr where you can see comments or if you’d like to use it, ask for permission. It’s a phenomenal site and a very interesting way of presenting pictures. Wood’s states, “Tag Galaxy is a very good flash application that uses Papervision3D with beautiful transition effects to explore Flickr photos via virtual planetary systems” (para. 1).

The best thing about this site is that anyone can use it. It can be of use to educators of all grade levels. It’s also free. Teachers can do lessons and search thousands of images pertaining to their lessons. They can also have students find images pertaining to their assignments. It’s nice to have a site that provides a wide variety of images that students can see without having to search through Google images and finding images that don’t even pertain to what they were searching for. With Tag Galaxy, it sorts through the images and finds you exactly what you’re looking for. If you want students to explore a specific category, Tag Galaxy allows them to do that while focusing on all areas addressing the tag name you have selected. I highly recommend teachers to at least check it out.

Below is a brief video that gives a glimpse of this site.

References:

Aune, S. P. (2008). Flickr visualization tag galaxy: Out of this world! Mashable The Social Media Guide. Retrieved May 19, 2010, from http://mashable.com/2008/05/25/tag-galaxy

Wood, S. (n.d.). Tag galaxy. Retrieved May 19, 2010, from http://www.koflash.com/tag-galaxy/

Image is a screen shot that I have taken and the video is of clips that I also have taken. All visuals are from http://taggalaxy.de/

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The following is a one minute video that I have created for teachers. It is about the web 2.0 tool kindersite.com.

Image of student sleeping is courtesy of http://www.dailyclipart.net/

Animated cartoon clips are clips I created in http://goanimate.com/

Copyright free image (girl at computer) from Microsoft Office

Images and video recordings of kindersite.com in the video were done by me.

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Click here if you would like to see my comment on Mollie Sterling's web 2.0 tool blog post on Wordpress.

Copyright free image from Microsoft Office