Keeping up with the state of technology is not easy. New social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Diigo, YouTube , Tumblr, Instagram, and AudioBoo continue to emerge and users sign-up and setup profiles without considering the full ramifications of sharing personal information. Practical tips for helping you and your students thoughtfully setup and maintain your online identities will be shared.
Waze provides “real-time maps and traffic information based on the wisdom of the crowd.”
Here are a few items of note from the Waze website. (Source)
At waze, our vision is to work in cooperation with drivers worldwide to create the world’s first live driving map, providing users with the real-time road intelligence they need for better everyday driving.
Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. 100% powered by users, the more you drive, the better it gets. Join the community of drivers in your area today!
Waze is a social mobile application that enables drivers to build and use real-time road intelligence. The service includes constantly-updated road maps, alerts on traffic and accidents, and data providing users with the fastest route to get to wherever they need to go.
(Hat Tip to Wes Fryer for bringing Waze to my attention.)
Educational Uses
Waze could be integrated with geography, driver’s education, and social studies.
Data generated by Waze (collected from the live maps) could be used in math and science classrooms.
Please share additional educational uses in the comments.
SimplyBox is a free service that allows you to visually capture any part of a web page. As you collect items that you captured, you organize them in boxes. You can then share these items or boxes with friends, colleagues, … the world. The result is: efficient and visual collaboration around content. They call it “content networking.” (Source)
Overview
Research
Collect only the parts from a web page that you want.
Write your notes/comments on the content you found.
Have a direct link back to the sites each of your items were collected from.
Student Collaboration
Collect into a box useful content from the web and add your comments to it.
Share the box with your students, even if they are not SimplyBox users.
The students can add their comments and content.
Connecting Beyond the Classroom
Create boxes with content related to the different topics you teach.
Exchange the boxes with other teachers (even if in different schools!.
Have them help you find more content and engage their classes in the discussion.
If you’ve been reading this blog long you’ve likely noticed that I have an interest in designing and developing more effective presentations. Nancy Duarte shares some useful advice from her book Slide:ology.
Discussion
I found this to be full of useful tips and strategies. Which of the many suggestions offered resonates the most with you? Please share your text/audio/video reply in the Comments section of this post.
Additional Resources
Here are a few more resources to help you more effectively design your presentations.