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So, here I am sitting on my bed in New Zealand.
Within a few clicks I can find myself in my Second Life. Last night I was shopping for bmx’s, clothes and new hair do’s. I found myself talking with educators from all over the world.
Tonight I took part by playing the bongo’s in a drum circle and busting out some dance moves on Jokaydia with Helenotway, Barbs1 and gkat! There are so many possibilities within Second Life but for now I am happy playing my bongo’s, learning the ropes, meeting other educators, people and caramel dancing the night away! 
Everyone is really friendly and there are plenty of people around that will show you the basics, not so basics and help you learn. So if you haven’t given it a go check out Second Life.
Something I have become more interested in lately is the use of images by students for their web pages, blogs and presentations and the set of skills and thoughts that they have on the use images and artwork for their needs.
As I work with more and more students and see the digital work they create either through projects or their homepages I have seen how little many know about the use of others’ images for their own work. Many students will happily discuss the need to ‘write in their own words’ information that they gather, but often you will see photos or images taken from a range of sources with no thought of taking them and no reference to the creator.
I decided to look into the term plagiarism and I found it interesting to note that many of the definitions of plagiarism related solely or heavily towards text with no or little reference to images, artwork, music or movies.
Plagiarism is defined as:
Courtesy of a google define search on plagiarism.
I then went off to Mirriam-Webster Dictionary:
transitive verb : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source
While I see Adrian Bruce tweeting about almost hitting the 15,000 mark (check out his site - awesome!) I am quietly having my own celebrations!
Today I hit 2,000 visitors on my blog! WOW! 
That’s really scary but very exciting!!
Thank you to all you who read my blog and take part in the conversations and questions. You have up-skilled me, listened to me rant, helped me solve problems and challenged me by making me think past what I can alone - so thank you for being part of this community!
P.S. Head along to Educating The Dragon, an amazing blogger who encouraged me to get into blogging!
I am really enjoying taking part in the Comment Challenge, but I have already fallen into the trap that I was worried about when I was considering taking part - I’m already behind - what with the start of the new term and all! EEK!
But this was something I really wanted to take part in and an area I feel I need to improve on. If anything already I can see a huge benefit in taking part just in the range of blogs I have read - even if I haven’t commented on them.
So here is a recap of the last 5 days or so of the 31 Day Comment Challenge..
Day 2: Comment on a blog you have never commented on
I have commented on a couple of new blogs. In particular I really enjoyed Mentor Me’s post about music and its political motivations and themes. It seems like they have been having some great conversations along with the Intrepid Classroom about this topic. This really got to me because of my passion for music and that we are celebrating NZ Music Month too!
Day 3: Sign up to a comment tracking service
Argh… Argh… and double argh! My new found excitement for Flock I’m not sure what i’m not doing right and I need to have some more time to tinker but I can’t get coComment to work. I won’t say anything more here as this will come down to something simple I am sure! So i’ll leave it with a - I’ll get back to you! 
Day 4: Ask a question
This was great as someone came along and left a comment with a question on my blog (spot the challenge goers!) which was great to get the conversation going. I then responded with another question among my comment - it’s interesting how it is growing into a worthwhile and interesting conversation. Something I haven’t really been involved in previously. The ongoing conversations and connections are proving to be powerful and engaging already!
Day 5: Comment on a post you don’t agree with.
This one seems easier to say than do. I have also heard bit of talk about that some people have found this tricky. I need to go exploring a bit more. I think possibly this may be easier to do once I step outside my normal educational based blogs into the realms of something else?! Another task for this weekend!
Day 6: Engage another commenter in discussion
See Day 4 for this one. This is a part of the challenge I am really enjoying.
Day 7: Reflect on what you’ve learnt so far
I’ve pretty much covered this part throughout the blog post. I think that the most powerful things I am taking from the challenge so far is the real big shift for me in taking part in conversations in the comment section.
Also working on developing my comments past the basic and into a bit more depth, relating posts to my experience and finding out more from the blogger after their post.
One week in and I feel like I haven’t really given the challenge my all, but am looking forward to the weekend and spending a bit of time checking out some more blogs and filling in some of the gaps in the challenge. I’m hoping as next week settles down and I get back into routine I will be able to challenge myself some more!
Technorati Tags: comment08
So I had seen the comment challenge around and knew this was something I wanted to participate in as I feel like this is an area I need to contribute and develop more within. It wasn’t until I read Barbs post about it that I decided to give it a go.
So Day 1’s Challenge is to do a comment audit so here I go with the questions…
The next part of todays challenge was to read this post at Lifehacker and think about the points brought up in this post.
Though this seems somewhat peculiar I can already begin to see areas that I really would like to work on. Perhaps in this challenge it’s the perfect time…
* Adding wealth and interest to a comment conversation
* Commenting on more blogs and more purposefully
For more information on the comment challenge check out the wiki.
Technorati: Comment08
Voki’s are a great tool for using on your blog to introduce your blog, leave information etc in an interesting way. A Voki is a talking avatar that you can program to wear and look like what you want. You choose a background, voice and what you want them to say. See one in action here - it appears in the top left corner. Just press the play button!
Often Voki’s are used to introduce a blog. Over at my class blog I have been using our class Voki to develop some geography work with my students. This arose from seeing a lack of world knowledge among my students. Often when we spoke of countries many students did not know where to locate these or that they were even countries some times!
One of the abilities with a Voki is to change the background, it gives you a series of backgrounds to choose from but you are also able to upload your own images. So I set up a Voki with a background of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and set her to speak a clue for the students and visitors.
So I introduced my class to the Voki and played them her message - automatically the kids were buzzing with where they thought she was. The kids then left comment and got really excited seeing where other people around the world thought she was. They were using the wall class map to talk about it also. See our Voki’s first trip here. The first trip looks pretty un-exciting after the next one and the next one, where we included information about the place and a map.
The voki permanently stays in our top left hand corner and each time she moves we write a new post which is where people can guess where she is on her trip. Please head along and leave a comment about where you think she is on her latest travel - the kids love discussing where our visitors are from and their guesses and it allows me to develop their World knowledge in a fun and interesting way.
At the moment there is still alot of input from me but I am looking to incorporate this into the class reading program so each week a reading group takes responsibility for choosing the location and researching the information to put up on the blog at the end of the week.
If you are using your Voki in a different or new way please share your ideas!
This week I had the new SMART Notebook 10 installed onto my computer and so far I must say I am quite impressed. There seems to be alot of changes and updates to things I used to find frustrating. There are plenty of new tools and gadgets to play around with in the new Notebook too - I am looking forward to getting my kids to play around on it the first day of term to see what they find and discover is new to Notebook.
The newest additions I like are:
Magic Pen: The magic pen serves 3 roles depending on what you do with it. Draw a rectangle and it turns into the magnifier, draw a circle and it turns into the spotlight tool. The third option, the fading tool is great - if you just want to point out something and don’t want to have to erase use the magic pen to draw. Once you write or draw the next thing the pen starts to disappear. Great when looking at images and artwork where the kids are examining parts of it but you don’t want to tonnes of lines all over it.
Object Animator: Think Powerpoint whizz and bang and you’re on your way. Notebook has a few animation functions that add a little extra pow and effect into your Notebook.
Page Recorder: There has been this function for a while but it is even easier to use with the recording embedded into your page with a remote that appears at the bottom of the page allowing your to rewind, pause, play and stop. This is a fantastic feature for re-creating artwork, maths problem solving and more. (There will be a post about this coming up)
Groups: Groups allow you to navigate your pages easier. When dealing with your pages you are now able to group them. For example with the Notebook below each new feature is grouped so that I can easily locate certain pages.
Themes: There are readymade themes that you can use as a background and set up to automatically become your new background when adding a new page. The best part of the themes feature is the ability to create your own theme. Just create your page to how you want it to look, set it up as a theme in your gallery and it’s good to go!
Active Alignment: This is a great feature and handy for adults and kids that have trouble aligning objects. Notebook now has active alignment lines that you can personalise to 4 options. It will be great for kids making Notebooks to stop continuous page aspects from jumping to different spots on each page.
Shape Recognition Pen: Draw a shape and it changes it into a lovely straight shape. Fantastic!
I have created a Notebook that looks at the toolbars and some of the main new features which you can download here: Notebook 10 Features or as a Notebook 10 Features PDF.
Here is a link to SMART’s full list of all the new features.
Check out this NZ Herald article about Lego branching out into the virtual world.
Interesting how many toy companies are bringing their products onto the internet in a Second Life kind of way!
Hmm sorry… Are you still trying to tell me the kids don’t do this? ;p
Flock is a great social web browser that I have been using for several months now but have only just started to adopt the great features that Flock incorporates into its browser.
Within flock you have the ability to track a number of sites and applications without being logged into the page:
*Facebook
*Flickr
*Twitter
*Gmail
*YouTube
*RSS feeds
It allows for updates to come automatically to your My World page (which is where all your people and rss feeds show up), the option of a sidebar through using the navigation buttons at the top of your page.
Through flock you can also upload directly to a number of sites such as flickr. The best part of flock that I am loving at the moment is the ability to blog without logging in through your blog page. Once you set up your blog within flock you are able to press the ‘Blog This’ button and it allows you to create a post via flock. You have many of the same options of uploading images (via your facebook or flickr account), creating links etc as you do in your actual blog editor and seems to be an easy process!
So I will hit the PUBLISH button and you will be reading this on my blog… fantastic!
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