New Tek - PictureTrail.com

Tweet

I have been using numerous online photo-sharing sites based on my needs and their capabilities. I have used photobucket, dropshots, flickr, and lately picturetrail. PictureTrail seems to be my favorite lately, so I wanted to post a quick blog entry about it and what it can do for you.

Not only can you upload photos and share them with friends and family, you can create "flicks" which are animated slideshows of your albums. Their web-based software does all of the work and spits out the code for users to paste into their FaceBook, MySpace, Blogger, etc. PictureTrail flicks has a nice user interface, simple, and easy to follow directions. Here is a recent flick I made for Ethan:

Cell Phones in the Classroom?

Tweet

I came across this blog post about integrating cell phones in the classroom. Most administrators and school boards have bans that prevent students from having their phones on during school hours. However, there is a growing trend among techno-savvy districts allowing students access to their phones outside of the classroom. What about giving them strict guidelines so they can demonstrate responsible use of their phones inside the classroom?

I believe as technology continues to change, as educators, we must change as well. We should be looking for ways to harness the power of these portable devices to increase student learning. Imagine giving your students a project where they must use their camera phone to take five photos of a problem plaguing their community?

You can have students upload these photos directly to flickr and create a slideshow. This slideshow could be imported to Google Docs and your students could create an online presentation for the local City Council. How's that for harnessing the power of the cell phone? Oh, and did I mention that Google Docs Mobile can be accessed on any cell phone with a basic web browser?