Kim’s Ventures in Educational Technology

I recently came across a site called “Scriblink – Your Online Whiteboard“. This site allows you to invite people to participate via a long distance phone call, VOIP, or via a URL. I created a test session at http://www.scriblink.com/index.jsp?act=phome&roomid=5218&KEY=06F31C8729790 DD1CF8D347D14450E7E that you are welcome to click on to see the setup.

If you click on the ∏ (Pi) symbol you can access special math, symbols and characters. I tried to do this but could not get the special characters or symbols to embed in the whiteboard. You can upload images and have those embedded in the whiteboard as well.

The colors of the writing pen and pencil can be changed along with the thickness of each instrument. The background can also be changed and they have great choices to choose from. I couldn’t find a way to find a softer color as most of the colors for the background are very bright and wouldn’t be conducive in many collaboration sessions.

This has potential for classrooms that don’t have a whiteboard or if you wanted students to collaborate on one document/whiteboard area. You could also collaborate with colleagues online and use the URL for everyone to get together for a meeting. There are some exciting possibilities here despite the one bug that I encoutered. Overall, it is definitely worth checking out and giving it a trial run.

As I stated in the previous two parts of this four part series on instructional technology tools that can be used in the classroom to enrich learning, I actively participate in a personal professional learning network using Plurk and Twitter. Through these two web services I have learned copious amounts of information, training and resources in the past six or seven months than I have in just about all 19 years of teaching. It is amazing and I wanted to share some of the tools that I deem extremely useful to enrich learning in the classroom.

The third tool I want to share is Dabbleboard. I have written about this unique tool before but I wanted to share it again with you. At first glance, Dabbleboard looks like a limited version of Inspiration or CMAP. While that may be partially true, the biggest asset of Dabbleboard is the ability to collaborate and share a diagram with a team of students. Students can be at different computers, different locations, and work on the diagram at different times. Dabbleboard diagrams are shared by the use of an invite via email and now a URL generated by the site. Several enhancements were made with the most recent release.

Within the Dabbleboard layout, any previous diagrams created are stored in the library and can be reused and imported into new diagrams. When I logged into Dabbleboard, the diagram that I originally created back in July was automatically loaded for me. I can continue with that or begin a new diagram.

Dabbleboard is an excellent way to brainstorm story maps for digital storytelling, generate a hypothesis to test as part of the scientific process or create a flowchart depicting a process or steps of a group project. You can create a template for students to access with the capability of adding weblinks, images, and sharing with others in real time. New features have recently been added such as rotating or flipping images and auto detection of shapes drawn by hand to create resizable, neatly drawn objects.

To the right is the original diagram I created in July. If you click on the thumbnail image, it will take you to the public link of the diagram. Take a few moments and experiment with the diagram and move items, change colors, etc. to see the full capabilities of Dabbleboard. Dabble with Dabbleboard!

Looks like the time for the Teacher Trek #3 session will be changed to 7pm CST or 12am UTC. Sorry for the confusion with the time zones. Hope you can join us live and if not, watch for the posting of the recorded session.

I was recently invited to join the community at Diigo. Do you delight in using del.ic.ious (I think that is where the dots go) to share bookmarks and tag websites? Then you will love Diigo. Diigo is an evolving community site where people of like interests can collaborate and share ideas, websites, and converse with educators around the world. You can download the toolbar where you can easily share bookmarks, highlight text and share that with the community and a host of other tools that I haven’t even begun to explore yet. Join the community at Diigo and add me to your Friends. I want to expand and enrich my bookmarks and ed tech knowledge by checking out what you think is important, interesting and relevant. Join us!