Sunflower, Sunny, Sunday

Sunflowers, originally uploaded by Kirsten Loza.

These lovely sunflowers were from the Sunday Riverside market by Cardiff Millennium Stadium. They were absolutely gorgeous and huge and I couldn’t resist getting a few for the apartment to brighten up our living room.

[In the market, I met up with Maggie of Tech Transformation blog for coffee and a chat about PYP and ICT. I’m hopeful that we’ll get an opportunity to collaborate on something exciting!]

The image above was taken with an iPhone and edited using my favourite iPhone photo editing app called Best Camera. It comes with filters which you can choose to create different effects. You can choose single or multiple layers and you can even double up on the same filter to give you enhance effect on that filter.

If you like the holga effect, it is easily done. You can see all the filters here: http://www.thebestcamera.com/app.html

My favourites: jewel, candy, and vignette. And I like to add a frame, too. It creates a lovely frame!

Photos edited on the Best Camera app can be easily shared on facebook, flickr, twitter, attached to an email, and on the Best Camera site. My Best Camera photos are here: http://bestc.am/photographers/13392.

It’s an app that your iPhone should have.

On volcano, webinar and coffee

I don’t think I have used my desk phone as often as I have used it in the last couple of days. And it’s all because of the eruption of the volcano in Iceland which has suspended flights coming in and out of the UK.

This week, there are two important events happening which I am involved in: a symposium on the impact of emerging technology on teaching and learning, and curriculum development; and, a curriculum meeting on ICT with teachers.

The two symposium speakers are flying in from the US and Hong Kong. My 6 meeting participants are flying in from Ireland, Switzerland (x2), Thailand, China, and the US. Yesterday, we decided to just cancel the ICT meeting to avoid the risk of meeting participants being stranded here for days. Re-scheduling the meeting will be a pain but I think it is a sound decision given the volatile travel situation.

The lovely Kathy has recommended Doodle to arrange our next meeting. Great idea!

The symposium will still happen albeit with 30 less face-to-face participants and that the speakers are delivering their keynote address remotely. The quest for solutions started on Monday. I have pulled in wonderful techie colleagues from work (shout out to: Paul H, James, the other James, Craig, and Darren) for advice. And they have given me more solutions that I have not heard of – what a network at work!

We wanted to make sure that the transition from one speaker to the next (from one country to another) is seamless and that they are clearly visible by the 80+ participants in the symposium site. That sound is clear and that we can access their presentation slides without a problem is ideal, too. Desirable: to allow those who are not able to attend the symposium due to travel issues to ‘tune in’.

I’m a big fan of Elluminate and it was the first solution that I thought of but reviews of the tool tells me that the video functionality is not great. Great for voice webinar but not so great with video.

One of our speakers suggested VIA – another tool I have not heard or used before. The interface does not looks as ‘slick’ as DimDim but the functionalities are similar to webinar spaces I’ve seen.

VIA screenshot

We’re very happy to have a solution that the speakers feel confident about and we are happy to support them at our end. The great thing about this is that we can invite a limited number of people to participate virtually! The webinar will be hosted and supported by the Univeristy of Laval in Canada. We’re doing a trial run tomorrow and fingers crossed it will work and we’re all set for Thursday!

Magimix CitiZ

On other gadgety news, my Magimix CitiZ arrived today! I made a decaf espresso. It was ok. Not mind-blowing or memorable. But boy, it looks great on my kitchen top!

I am hoping the non-decaf coffee which I’ll have tomorrow is good or I’ll be really, really, really cranky.

Wordle-nators

On my RSS feed the other day, I read that there’s a new tag cloud generator called Tagxed. I’ve never heard of it! In fact if you ask me to create a tag cloud of say Tiger Wood’s apology speech, I’ll say someone has done it already. But if you insist in having another one, I’ll go to Wordle to create the tag cloud.

Really Wordle is the only tag cloud generator I know until I read about Tagxed. So I shared it on facebook (as you do) which lead to an introduction to another tag cloud generator.

tag cloud sharing on facebook

A google search gives me this list of other tag cloud generators. Have you tried any of them? Do you have a preference?

Here’s a look at the few mentioned above:

Wordle – already mentioned above. It’s the only I’ve used more than once. You have options of nearly 30 languages and fonts, various layouts, and different colour palettes. My preference is to randomize. However, if you want to take a copy of the image, you’ll have to do a screen grab. You can also send it to the gallery where you’ll get a URL address for your tag cloud. You can see a tag cloud of a recent blog post from Dan North (of Spectacular Attractions film blog) here. Note that by default, numbers and common words in the chosen language are removed. For Dan’s blog content, I allowed Wordle to use numbers. Otherwise, I would not get that big 3D in the tag cloud.

NB: I will be using the same content for other tag clouds shown below.

Tagxedo, released a few days ago, boasts of better algorithm than Wordle. According to the Washington Post, even Wordle creator (Jonathan Feinberg) regards it as next gen Worlde. A Wordle 2.0? In Tagxedo, I like that you can save the image on different resolutions from thumbnail (100×100) up to a 16mp image both on jpg and png formats. I prefer to have the list of options to be the other way around with changing shape first then colours last. There are many themes to choose from and about 35 fonts plus you can add more fonts if you wish. You can click on words on the tag cloud and change their directions. There are different shape options for your tag cloud (like a star here) and you can even use your own photo (tried this several times but it didn’t come out right) or make the tag clouds appear in a shape of a word. Pretty cool for something on beta.

Tagxedo sample

Tagul (not my favourite name for a tag cloud generator) is the creation of a guy from Russia called Alex who was inspired by Wordle to create something more functional. Each tag in the cloud are click-able and will lead to a google search of the word. I put in my sample text and when I fetched the tags, I was told that the max tag limit is 300 (see screenshot) so only the first 300 popular tags are going to be used. You can get an image by doing a screenshot but that really defeats the purpose intended by Alex in his design. At the moment you can create 20 free tag clouds. As he said on his blog, “Tagul is a startup and I am going to make a profit on this venture some day”. Good luck to him.

Let’s see if the embedding code for the tag cloud works here on WP. On the preview version, the largest word on the heart-shaped tag cloud is “that” which is probably the most important word in Dan’s blog. Heh.

<object width=”100″ height=”100″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”http://cdn.tagul.com/cloud.swf”&gt;
<param name=”movie” value=”http://cdn.tagul.com/cloud.swf”></param&gt;
<param name=”flashvars” value=”id=8684@2″>
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param>
<param name=”swfversion” value=”10″/>
<param name=”expressinstall” value=”http://cdn.tagul.com/expressInstall.swf”/&gt;
<embed src=”http://cdn.tagul.com/cloud.swf&#8221; type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”100″ height=”100″ flashvars=”id=8684@2″></embed>
</object>

(Ok, embed code does not work on WordPress but I think it might be a WP fault.)

Honestly, I find it a bit complicated. I’m not sure how I can make it ignore common English words without manually putting in words like “that”, “in, and “and”. I wonder if you can use Google Custom Search to define the search parameters so it’s not calling on the entire interweb for a word in the tag cloud like “avatar”. If Alex wants to make money out of this, a defined search parameter might be the key to the success of his innovation. It will be useful for businesses who might want to use a bit of flash and tag clouds on their homepage which clients can click to take them to product areas (and not to all of the web and other competitors!). Some of the comments to his blog post are from teachers – which shows that teachers are first in there when a new tech tools come out 😉 Tagul will look really “flashy” on an interactive whiteboard and great for looking up words. But again, for me, it’s about being able to define search parameters. If it’s for vocabulary building or information, it would be useful if the tags link to an online dictionary or to wikipedia. However, as an educator, I’m not big on paying for things when a free alternative is available.

Alexandra Pickett commented on Alex’s blog:

please consider allowing a free educator account version o this software.
here are just a few links that i pulled together quickly but there are many more and lots of educators at all levels using the tool.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/dyck/dyck030.shtml
http://www.techedknow.com/?p=56
http://blog.ecollege.com/WordPress/?p=115
http://mpondu.blogspot.com/2009/12/educational-uses-of-wordle.html
http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit/3017

I’ll explore the other tag cloud generators in the next blog posts.

SL workshop session 3

I love our Second Life sessions on Tuesdays because we get to tour different lands. As mentioned in previous blog posts, I am lucky enough to be included in a free workshop on building in Second Life. I am becoming a big fan of the platform and I just want to do more things in it!

One of the places we visited is the Genome Island (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Genome/118/145/53). It’s an interactive science lab with many objects you can touch and areas you can explore. We didn’t stay long there but I would love to go back. Read more about the Genome Island from Educause here.

kloza xootfly on a horsey

We spent a longer time in the island of Mexico which I believe was designed by the Mexico tourism board. It was good fun to ride the horse and visit the churches. I didn’t take a lot of pictures (or maybe I did but I can’t find them!) but the photos were also posted by Robin here at Koin-up.

I did a cheeky thing and used the “fly” option while on the horse! Good fun and my horsey managed it well 🙂

More about our tour from Robin in her blog post.

SL workshop session 2

Are we on the right spot?

I was so excited to go to the second SL session organised by Liz Dorland (SL= Chimera Cosmos) and Robin Heyden (Spiral Theas). After the first session, it became clear to me how powerful this platform is for network and establishing a learning community. I can’t stop talking about it at work!

I was also excited to show off my new clothes which I got for free at the SL xtreet marketplace. You can get your own FREE emerald corset gown here.

SL building session on skybox

Session 2 was a building exercise. This was the first time, I’ve built anything on SL! I’m not sure what a made exactly but it’s a spherical thing. Some of the building options are quite easy to figure out like position, rotate, stretch. If you want to be more precise about your building, you can input numbers on the xyz grid.

Participants who were present during the first session are noticeably more able to follow instructions as we have learned to control our avatars and not bump into things. But the newbies get a lot of support from Chimera and Spiral so that they are able to catch up on the lesson. Spiral and Chimera took turns “holding” the mic so to speak. While one is on audio, the other supports the local chat to help out with technical issues. It works really well and I felt very supported! It is a good strategy.

After the intro to building, we started editing our profile but didn’t really finish as we were hit by a tornado! We were thrown out to a seemingly bottomless chasm. We were so disoriented after and didn’t know where we were when we landed. It was so exciting!!

"Oooh"

Tornado

"I just killed our students!!!!" (Chimera Cosmos)

"Where did everyone go?"

Robin (Spiral) wrote about their sessions here.

Look forward to next session!

Building in SL

Do you have SecondLife? Do you use it? Or like me, did you get yourself an avatar then forgot about it? I can’t remember my first avatar. It was years ago. I remember being frustrated because I couldn’t get past the fiddly stuff of creating my avatar so I can go to the good bits which is finding out, first-hand, what it can do for me as an educator.

So the forgotten avatar probably created using a now defunct email is gone forever (or is it really? Do avatars die after not being used for years? If not, where do they go?). Late last year, I found a good reason to create a new account and patiently spent time to make sure my avatar is kitted out, ready to face the virtual world!

kloza Xootfly: my avatar wearing a new outfit

Now to the good bits! My avatar attended the SL concurrent sessions as part of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) annual meeting. What a fantastic experience! Ok, it took me awhile to figure out:

• how to sit,
• how to move without running into people and objects,
• that the closer my avatar is to the “speaker” the better I can hear them (like a shy student, I sat at the back of the amphitheatre), and,
• that I was wearing hideous clothes.

Thanks to the lovely Robin who gave me better clothes and some tips on how to use SL. It was also Robin who invited me to take part in a workshop on building in SL which started this week and will carry on for 3 more weeks.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “kloza on SL“, posted with vodpod

2010

A super belated happy new year!

It seems that I now have a habit of starting a personal web space and neglecting it for a long period of time! In the last two months, I only managed to keep my facebook and twitter active.

Checking my drafts folder, I see about 12 unfinished drafts waiting for about an hour of my time to read and re-read before I hit “publish”.  My hesitation to publish is not only due to the lack of time as I try to juggle different things in my personal and professional life. It’s also because I do feel self-conscious writing in English at times. Besides, I prefer to talk about things, than write about things.

Microblogging is heaven-sent for those who, like me, feel the need to share. When I get around to it, I’ll link my twitter to this blog so that at least it gets some regular action.

What I have not blogged about in the last month and a half:

• meeting on the role of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning
• meeting on how best to share effective practices and how can PLNs support this
• BETT show in London
• working on the Peterson Symposium event
• SL conference

Perhaps, I’ll retro-blog.

For now, I am off to rehearse my oath of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and my pledge to the United Kingdom while I wait for the next SL concurrent session from the EDUCAUSE 2010 conference in Austin, Texas. You get teleported to the session by clicking here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/PSU%20World%20Campus/145/17/27

Learning to change, changing to learn

[clearspring_widget title=”SchoolTube” wid=”4a80f777f609f059″ pid=”4b15885ec702db9a” width=”500″ height=”375″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

During a 3-day meeting on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on teaching and learning in primary education, our group watched this video as a provocation on how the changes in how students engage with information are changing and what it means for education. This video was created by the Consortium for School Networking to empower K-12 school district technology leaders (in the US) to use technology strategically to improve teaching and learning.

It’s a very powerful video that all teachers and curriculum developers should see and reflect on.

If you were to build a school today, what would it look like? What would you want students to understand about themselves? about others? about the world?

—

“The death of education but it’s the dawn of learning.” Stephen Heppell

ECIS Hamburg 2009

This year was my second time to attend and present at the European Council of International School (ECIS). Last year was in Nice, France and we experienced that glorious Mediterranean climate.

This year was in Hamburg, a lovely city in Northern Germany. Not a lot of photos from this work-related trip. My few photos were taken with a shaking (cold) hand holding an iPhone. So best kept hidden in my iPhoto events and not shared on the interweb. I didn’t really see much of Hamburg during the day except during the 5-min walk from the hotel to the conference site.

I attended a whole-day pre-conference workshop to be trained to serve as a member of the accreditation team for the Council of International Schools (CIS). This is my second accreditation training for/from two different international organizations and it was interesting to note the similarities (and differences) between the two in the approach to an accreditation visit. For me, another advantage of being in this accreditation workshop for CIS is meeting administrators and teachers from international schools that follow different curriculum models/programme. In a way, during breaks, conversations about education and the future of education is enriched by these different perspectives.

My colleague and I gave two 1-hour presentations on (1) new curriculum developments, and (2) current and future initiatives in the organization. Although we use PC at work, we now have access to a ‘floating’ macbook which can be loaned, so this time, the presentation was done on Keynote. The presentation looks so much slicker!

Apple was one of the sponsors in ECIS and they ran a few workshops. I went to one on podcasting as I have been meaning to start a project on getting Dan North to podcast his spectacular blog.

To me, one of the best things about ECIS this year is the keynote address. Wade Davis spoke about the extinction of cultures and what it means for the legacy that humanity leaves behind. In his book, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World“, he argues that “the myriad of cultures makes up an intellectual and spiritual web of life that envelops the planet and is every bit as important to the well being of the planet as is the biological web of life.”  He lamented on the lost of language and predicted that of the 7,100 languages spoken today, half will not be passed on.

This makes me think about the death of the beautiful Filipino alphabet baybayin. Our alphabet was one of the casualties of the Spanish occupation. It’s a beautiful script and to me, it looks like waves of water – how fitting for a country of more than 7,100 islands!

The quote below was attributed to the Philippine national hero, Dr Jose Rizal (1869):

This language of ours is like any other,
it once had an alphabet and its own letters
that vanished as though a tempest had set upon a boat on a lake in a time now long gone.

“To My Fellow Children”,
English translation by P. Morrow

Here is a good link, maintained by Paul Morrow, to the ancient script in the Philippines: http://www.mts.net/~pmorrow/bayeng1.htm

Wade Davi’s book is a good read and comes with an annotated bibliography. Or you can also watch him here on TED talking about endangered cultures.

Oh, and I had a tweet-up with the lovely @gravesle who went to see our presentation. We had a lovely chat about collaboration and master’s classes and, of course, time for photo ops! Look on Leigh’s flickr. And here is her awesome site that should be on your RSS reader!

tweet-up @gravesle and @kloza

Three cheers

Work with a view © kloza

I don’t know about you but when I see a rainbow and I superstitiously suspect that I’m going to have an awesome day! And today, at work, I saw 3 rainbows at different times of the day. At one point, two were even overlapping!

Indeed, there were three great things about today:

• My colleague and I are giving two presentations at ECIS in Hamburg this weekend. I’ve just downloaded a Keynote remote app which will allow me to control our presentation from my iPhone! I’m looking forward to meeting teachers during our presentations on new developments about the programme and on the different initiatives in the organization. There are some really good line up of presentations this year, too, so I’m hoping to attend a few of them. Of course, I’ll also be in our exhibition stand.

• The symposium in April 2010 is going according to plan as we might have the second speaker by next week! Being part of a team planning for this symposium on learning and technology is one of the many things that really makes me love my job. It means I work with people I don’t normally work with, plus, I get to put a little group together to start writing blog entries relating to the theme of the symposium and contribute in choosing materials for the reading groups.

• 

  RT feature on Twitter

  Twitter is really awesome for someone like me who is interested in what people like to share. It’s great for crowd-sourcing, finding out cool stuff about technology and education, and making connections with other educators. Last week a colleague asked me about how I use twitter and I thought about making a little screencast to share with people at work and other teachers. Maybe work on something using Google Wave? Any Wavers out there? Psst… leave me a comment! Anyway, today, twitter has launched another new feature on ReTweeting which twitterers know as “RT”. In the world of micro-blogging where every (140) character counts, RT is one of the best compliment you can have as it means someone is acknowledging that you have something worth repeating.

If you want to get started using Google Wave or if you are going to be on ECIS in Hamburg, leave a message or tweet me!