Another Discovery exercise. It's all about having FUN!

Find a few fun image or text generators to play around with and write a post in your blog about one of your favorites and display the result.
Often adding the image you mocked up to your blog is as simple as copying and pasting the code that the page provides.
If not, you may just need to right click on the image and then save it to your hard drive before using Blogger’s image button to add it to your post.
If you’re having difficulty getting your image added to a post in your blog, ask for help.
In looking at several blogs, it’s easy to see that we have lots of people in the system who have figured out how easy it is to add images to their blogs.


Discovery Resources:

The Generator Blog

Letter James

FD Toys

Also try searching for online generators, text generators or image generators!


Discovery Exercise:

1. Play around with some image generators and find one that you like.


2. Post the result of your discovery process in your blog.

Note: Be sure to include a link to the image generator itself, so other participants can discover it too.So take some time and have fun with this exercise.

....discovering web 2.0 technologies through PLAY!

Boardmaker Resources

http://www.region2library.org/DATA/Boardmaker/EZRA_AAC_resources_May_2007_FINAL4.pdf
Thanks to Gemma for adding some Boardmaker resources to her blog.
This one is a sample

Check out her blog 'espeechie' in the Blogroll

Live Classroom Link up

Hello everyone
Congratulations!!
And a very big thank-you to everyone who joined us in the live linkup today.
I think everyone did extremely well. (and, there doesn't appear to be too many bugs to sort out). Leah, I will look into the connection at Omeo Library and get back to you.
I haven't forgotten that our visits to your sites are still to be organised - I will get back to you all asap to set a date. We have a very busy week at the library next week - with Library week events and celebrations. So it will probably be the week after.
The State library are bringing their Travelling Treasures into Bairnsdale on Tuesday, there is an Australia wide simultaneous storytime on Wednesday morning, and we are launching online public access to InterLibrary Loan reservations on Thursday.

Once again, thanks for joining us today, I think its great to explore the opportunities this technology provides.

Before I go can I remind you about the Forum on Talking Visuals Online http://talkingvisuals.edublogs.org/
Another exciting opportunity to try out the new technology..
Talk again soon
Denece

P.S. Did you know you can subscribe to this blog by clicking on the subscribe link in the right hand panel?
Read how in the RSS and Newsreader exercise below. It's really simple.

Welcome to our speechies

Hello everyone,
We had another enjoyable session yesterday when we introduced our local speech pathologists to the world of Web 2.0 tools.
It was pleasing to hear some enthusiastic comments about opportunities for using these tools in their work.
I've added a forum to our Talking Visuals Online blog, seeking discussion on the content and information you would like included. Please feel free to contribute your thoughts.
There is a Talking Visuals Online link in the blogroll.
Regards
Denece

Are you ready for RSS & Newsreaders? It's 'really simple'

In the information world, RSS is revolutionalizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web.

Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit regularly. It takes time to visit those sites and scour the pages for just the text you want to read. Now imagine if you could visit all those information sources and web pages in just one place and all at the same time … without being bombarded with advertising… without having to search for new information on the page you’d already seen or read before… and without having to consume a lot of time visiting each site individually. Would that be valuable to you?
Well, it’s available through a newsreader and RSS. These self-discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and setting up a Bloglines account (a free online newsreader) for yourself to bring your feeds together.

What will you do in this discovery session.
Discover RSS feeds and setup your own Bloglines newsreader account.
Locate a few useful related blogs and/or news feeds.

Learning Resources:

CNET Video: RSS – Feel the Need for Feeds
(3:32) – a good over view of what RSS is and the benefits to users.

Feed Me: A gentle introduction to Internet feeds
A good tutorial from Palinet, a library cooperative

Using Bloglines Tutorial (how to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday)
This online tutorial walks you through how to setup a Bloglines account and add newsfeeds.Follow Steps 1 to 3 to set up your Bloglines account. Steps 4 – 9 are optional and cover how to subscribe to different types of feeds (podcasts, Flickr albums, etc)

Adding RSS Feeds to Bloglines
A short YouTube video showing how to add feeds.

RSS in Plain English:
A simple and user friendly overview of RSS created by Commoncraft Video on Youtube.


Discovery Exercise:

Follow the discovery resources above to learn more about RSS and newsreaders.

Create a free online Bloglines account for yourself. See Using Bloglines Tutorial steps 1-3 for instructions.

Newsfeeds:
Subscribe to several feeds. This is as easy as typing the blog URL into the subscribe field in Bloglines. Or go to your friends' blogs, click on the 'subscribe' or 'atom' button at the bottom of the page. Try it, it's easy!

Then try adding a few other types of news feeds from news sources (you may like to select a couple from the list below)
http://www.assistivetechnology.vcu.edu/2006/10/monthly_ideas_from_boardmaker.html

http://nolimitstolearning.blogspot.com/2008/02/boardmaker-plus-makes-great-interactive.html

http://managingautism.com/uncategorized/schedules-task-boards

http://teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com/

http://specialneedsparenting.suite101.com/blogs.cfm

When you've done all this:
Create a post in your blog about this exercise.
If you're up to the challenge, you can provide the URL address to your public bloglines account (find where to find this below).

P>S> Don't forget to subscribe to this blog, too!!

Don’t know what to blog about? Think about these questions:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

How to find your public Bloglines URL:
1. Click on the Share tab within your Bloglines account:

2. Scroll down the right screen pane and locate the public URL (see screenshot)

3. Be sure to add this as part of your post to demonstrate your completion of this activity.

Why make your RSS feeds public?

Try to think where a public account may be useful. ie: sharing with a group of people with the same interest, sending information to specific types of clients, etc...

PS: Once you tackle this discovery exercise, you've tackled the most difficult one of the whole program.