Emergent Technologies 3: Mixbook

For the final emergent technology I choose to look into Mixbook. At first I thought it was going to be just like some of the photoshare technologies we looked at in out last emergent technology but two things really stood out to me and made Mixbook relavant to the Education setting. The two things were the collaboration technolgy and the fact that their is MixBook for Educators.
First to get into the technology, the site was created on the idea that people should be able to create books as a group. Like in google docs you create your own book and then invite friends to participate in the development of the book. They can create their own pages with their pictures and text.The creator has total control of the book so anything added that isnt wanted can be edited or deleted.  The collaboration technology allows the same event to be shown from different peoples point of view making the book more appealing.
As in Roxio you can edit photos, add background and layouts, and you can customize frames and text. Here are some other features Mixbook offers.

• Photo Zoom - zoom in on any photo and move it to place the photo within the frame



• Photo Rotation - rotate your photos in the photo slots


• Custom Frames - choose from our selection, or make your own frame by editing the thickness, color, and fill


• Custom Color Matching - when selecting background colors and text colors, you can drag the tiny eyedropper tool anywhere on the page to match the colors


• Transparent Text Boxes and Backgrounds - Change the transparency of backgrounds and the color of text boxes


• Photo Integration - take photos from sites like Flickr, Facebook, and Yahoo! Photo search to use in your Mixbook

When a their is a finished project you can then chose to simple share you book online or order your own hardback copy to keep for yourself.

There are many options when choosing to share your book online.

Now on to what made me really consider this site for the future. It is called Mixbook for educators and is a a program that allows educators even easier access to the most powerful suite of digital storytelling tools on the web.
The following example really won me over Kids for Kenya.
This is a book created by a class and gave me many ideas on things I could do with my class.

Here is another example of a school project that I found on the site.

This is

Roxio PhotoShow: Emergent Technolgy 2

I choose to research this technology and use it as my second emergent technology after looking through at least 100 pages of other photo sharing sites. I feel like PhotoShow is one of the most user friendly photo sharing sites that I found. It also has many useful and relevant features, including easy photo uploads from social networking sites or straight from mobile devices like Blackberry with mobile uploader.


PhotoShows are multimedia presentations that allow you to combine photos and or video clips with broadcasting capabilities and the ability to edit these photos and videos with captions, musical soundtracks, borders and backgrounds. There are several tabs that include many tools that will aid you in this editing process.

Other tools include text bubbles, animated stickers and title pages.

I decided after looking through all of the PhotoShows features and abilities to try it out myself and to my surprise it was just as easy as they said it was. They allow you multiple ways of uploading pictures including facebook, MySpace, Flickr, your personal pictures from your computer, or from other web albums. They also allow you to upload multiple files at once. I uploaded a Christmas album from my facebook account and within 20 seconds or less my photos were waiting in a slideshow for me to edit The one issue I had while uploading was the fact that under the basic free membership they only allow you to upload 24 photos for a show, but I moved on anyway. Next came editing. There were so many editing tools and all made the slideshow more fun and entertaining. I made funny bubble captions over my kid’s heads and made the show style winter based to match the Christmas theme. Here came my next issue and again it was because I did not have the premium membership. There were limited choices in the editing process. To get full access there was a $39.99/year fee. So maybe next time I’ll get the membership and create a full PhotoShow with music ad all the goodies.

Top 10 reasons to upgrade to Premium Service for just $39.99/yr.



Unlimited PhotoShow creation and sharing


PhotoShow 6 desktop software for Windows - $30 value


Burn PhotoShows to DVD at home


Hundreds of one-click styles, songs, and stickers


Beautiful PhotoShow gallery themes


Allow friends to download your photos


Add your own MP3 and iTunes music


Add video clips


Use up to 400 photos and videos per show


Add multiple songs to your shows
 
Sharing and viewing your PhotoShow are the next steps and as many options as they rest of the process has these steps have more. Like I said before you can share and view from mobile devices like the Blackberry, Macs or PCs, the online gallery page, hand held devices like PDA’s and other medial players. Also you can burn DVD’s of the PhotoShow and view them on your TV.

RSS feeds-Saving me some time

After creating my Google Reader I was a little worried about finding websites to subscribe to. Ones that I would actually keep and check, but while I was checking out the reader I found in the browse for stuff section an option that allows you to subcribe to popular sites that are bundled under a main topic. I found this very useful because there were many interesting sites in the bundles and made subcribing to all of these bundles very easy. Also the main topics seemes to include everything. From news to sites about popular video games and coupons.  On top of the articles I had to subcribe to for my class assignment I found many more interesting sites that feel like I will check often and keep up to date on.  I also realized how much time I will save going from one news website to the next. Having all of the sites send their updates to me makes it so much easier and faster then going on to every website to see if or what the new information is. So if anything this Google Reader saved so much time in my day!
I was completly surprised that the reader made it so easy to find and subcribe to sites. I also was surprised at how many sites actually had links to subscribe to them through RSS feeds.

Delicious Bookmarks

delicious.com/kfisher24

Emergent Technology:Podcasting

Podcasting, as defined by Wikipedia, is a series of digital media files, audio or video, which are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication. An easier definition may be that podcasting is a media file that is distributed over the internet and allows followers to play the file back on an mp3 player or computer.


In the educational field, podcasting can be used in many useful, relevant, and effective ways. Podcasting can allow administration to get school news to all staff and students on a regular basis or get updates out in case of special circumstances. Listeners are notified of new programs by their podcast creator, which then download the programs and then transfer them to the listener's MP3 audio player, such as an iPod.  It gives teachers the ability to stay up to date on teaching strategies or allows professors to broadcast entire classes for those who may not be able to attend an in class setting. Podcasting gives students a sense of relevance that may help open their minds to new information. Giving students the ability to learn with new technology and to use multiple senses while leaning (visual and audible) in my opinion could greatly improve all educational settings.

I was very impressed when I began to read into podcasting. I felt that this kind of technology could really help students and teachers, especially in a college setting. The ability to broadcast an entire class not only helps with students who can not make it to class but also allows for the possibility of rewatching a class to help with note taking or to make sure nothing was missed. Also giving students the ability to watch or listen whenever or wherever they may be. The next thing I needed to find out was how user friendly using and creating podcasts could be. I feel like finding and listening to podcasts is very easy. I found and listened to many different types of podcasts while doing my power point project. There were so many to choose from and most seemed relevant and useful so finding them was a breeze. Subscribing and listening to them was even easier. Most of them had “subscribe to podcast” options and would prompt you to iTunes to download the broadcast.

I used a site called http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm.This to help me learn more about creating editing and exporting podcasts. This site was very useful due to the fact that it has tutorial videos that you can follow very easily. I feel that I learn and catch on to things better when I can see them happening instead of just reading them.

Audacity tutorial:recording set up
Audacity tutorial:editing 2
Audacity tutorial:editing
Audacity tutorial:importing audio/adding music
Audacity tutorial:saving/exporting

This site also had great information on planning your podcast, all equipment needed to start your podcast, ID3 tags, hosting you podcast, and posting show notes. Although I did not create my own podcast I feel that after going through this site I could start and promote a podcast in the future.

 YouTube:how to podcast

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