Experimenting with Second Life

My latest project for my class with JoAnne Hart at Lesley University has led me to research a world called Second Life. I had never heard about it before, I knew what an Avitar was and thought that Second Life was for all these people who didn't have a Real Life. What I didn't know was that there is a huge network of learning communities that is very useful to teachers of all levels for resources as well as professional development. Last Sunday I had the pleasure to run into Kathy Shrock's Avitar while exploring her Second Life platform LIGHTHOUSE LEARNING ISLAND, a collaborative professional learning community of K-12 educators. My colleague Julie and I had an extensive chat with Kathy about the realm of possibilities for learning and teaching and also simple logistics in Second Life. Click here to get a look at what I am rambling on about. SECOND LIFE

The first thing you have to do is create an Avatar and here is how it goes: You get to pick the gender, the clothing and create your look. Don't worry, you can change all that down to the gender later. Look for more on this soon.

Create your own WIKI

Find out about what goes on inside your PC

Click on the link and download System Information for Windows to see how efficient your computer runs. You can check any computer that runs on Windows.

My Online Portfolio

I have put together an online portfilio for all my work and projects that I have created for my M. Ed. at Lesley University. This portfolio will be updated regularly and new work from upcoming classes will be added. On the left under the links category you can click on the LESLEY PORTFOLIO link to take a look at it.

Wikiversity is amazing

As I was exploring Technology Integration for my Unit Plan "Berlin 1930s to today" I developed a fascination with Wikibooks and Wikiversity .
So, I decided to do my Presentation on...

WIKIBOOKS and WIKIVERSITY

1) Highlights of interest - what makes this resource interesting?
The Introduction to Wikiboks was very helpful. It explains how one can search the entire site for an interesting Wikibook; browse the subject-oriented bookshelves; look through the list of books; or try the age-themed Wikijunior, Wikistudy, Wikiversity, and Wikiprofessional collections. I found the Guidelines for class projects very helpful in setting up my own concept and in learing about the legal aspects of Wikiversity and Wikibooks. I love the unlimited possibilities to this resource. Over time, my classes can put together a veritable wealth on the history and culture of the German-speaking world.

2) How to purchase or locate: It's available and online

3) Cost: FREE! Ain't it great? : )

4) System requirements: Internet connection and decent size hard drive and RAM

5) Target audience: I think these sites are great for anyone. In my particular case, the audience are high school students in intermediate German classes.

6) Curricular Ideas: The sky is the limit for curricluar ideas. My first unit using Wikiversity is about Berlin from the 1930s to today. As far as other foreign language ideas are concerned, structure, culture, cooking, clothing, student created stories (fiction and non-fiction), projects about famous people or places are great ideas.

Great choice for Videos

A student of mine just introduced me to a great video site that is not yet blocked at schools. Check it out at http://www.veoh.com/. Create a free account and browse away.

Final Project Reflection

After careful consideration of the purpose of this final project, I decided to design a website to complete my school blog. In the past, I have been posting all the links for student assignments on the blog and found the idea of adding the website as resource for my students and source of information as well as point of contact to my students’ parents.

I looked at different free online web design and hosting options like http://www.homestead.com/, http://geocities.yahoo.com, http://pages.google.com, and http://www.weebly.com/ and chose http://www.weebly.com/ to host my website. The site is published at http://fraubell.weebly.com/ . It consists of eight pages including a home page, one each for the three levels I teach this year, one for the parents, one for links and the last one is to publish a portfolio of work I am currently creating in my ECOMP 5106 class. Once that course work is completed, I plan to hide that page from view and will use it as an online archive of my work.

Weebly.com was easy to use and after a few hours I had the “system down”. No knowledge of ht ml codes is required to build and publish a website at weebly.com. The design, settings and layout is created with drag and drop features. There are some limitations to what one can insert on the site, but they are minimal. I enjoyed creating my site and have received approval from the school district to attach it to my blog at my high school.

Overall, I recommend weebly.com as web host. The customer service is very helpful and professional when problems arise. My problems all were related to lack of knowledge and my trying to “wing it”. : ) The only drawback of weebly.com is that occasionally the loading and publishing of pages takes a long time. I have no reference to compare to as I did not try out the other web hosts I considered in the beginning. The extended loading times might just be normal when big or numerous files are being published. I had a lot of fun finding interesting plug-ins and pictures to add to the site. My students will enjoy comparing the German and the English world clocks.