PE05_Historypin

Forward to History Pin.   I love history and I love travel.  This is an awesome place to combine the two.  It is also a collaborative project that grows exponentially.  In agreement with Clay Shirky, this site hosts our cognitive surplus of memories.  No longer do you have one old picture of grandpa at Yosemite.  You can see generations of people in the same exact location.  Upon stumbling upon the site on of the most fascinating features was the “Fade Photo” feature.  With this feature you pin your photo on the Google Earth street view, then with the glide of the button you can see the historical changes of the location.  It is kind of hard to explain, so I recorded a clip for you:

I quickly uploaded any photos that were readily available that featured historical landmarks.  I selected photos of landmarks because I figured they would have the most traffic or pins on the site.  However, I can’t wait to try my local own as well.  In the next few photos you see my family in front of some well known landmarks.   

 

As you can see in the photos, there are notification buttons where you can add the photo as your favorite, quickly post to Facebook or Twitter, and also a report or dispute option.  The last two options are for community policing of the site.  You can either report and inappropriate photo or dispute the accuracy or copyright of a posted photo.  Therefore, the story told by the website as a whole is monitored similarly to Wikipedia, by the global community.

On the down side, if you notice my photos don’t have the cool “Fade Photo” feature that I talked about earlier.  I tried the Map view, The satellite view and I zoomed.  No luck.  Maybe I should watch the tutorial and read the guide book so that I can better use the tool I want to teach.  I’ll check in later.

I thought it would be days, but the intro video is only 90 seconds.  It also explains that I would need to look at the photos via "Street View" to see the historical aging perspective.    It is amazing what a little time and education will do.  I watched my tutorial and read my guide.  I still had a bit of trouble lining up my photograph, as you can see, but I am learning.  As their slogan reads, together we will create a digital history of the world.

My next step… I noticed the area around Gridley, California is picture-less.  I plan to launch a local program, “Putting Gridley on the Map”.  Stay tuned for updates.

                  

                  Putting Gridley on the Map

PE04_Edmodo

My first stop for my RILS Project was to continue the set up of my Edmodo page.  The home page has a very clearly marked to do list for you to make sure you haven’t forgotten any key pieces.  I noticed that I still had to add links and materials to my library page and so I set out to find the most helpful materials for my students to be able to begin the history project.

In my library I included a link to the page to help them get started.  I also included the PDF of the Illustrated guide to set-up.  I created an additional library folder for videos.  I embedded three videos – Intro, How-to, and New features.  This should get the students introduced to the site without being too bogged down with information. 

The last thing on my to-do list was to connect with other teachers.  Due to my employment status, I thought this might be difficult.  However, my cohorts were there in various stages of development.  I quickly joined their connections and found some special assets.  There were professional learning communities and the live links to digital resources that I can use in my library.  Wow, what a gold mine.  I joined the tech, English, and Social Studies groups and quickly found more links to specific course content. 

I created this site to build a safe communication and collaboration spot for my students since I don’t have a physical classroom.  However, I uncovered a wealth of information and connections to real teachers using these Web 2.0 tools in the classroom.  It is a great location to find the “real” info about projects and tools.  I am so happy, I chose Edmodo for my platform.