Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Embedding bits and pieces


Task 3: Embedding bits and pieces

I just love embedding bits and pieces. My difficulty in this blog post will be deciding what to embed and knowing when to stop.

Most of my embedding in the past 12 months has been directed at a student audience in OzProjects.

Here is an embedded game. It is made using an online quiz/game making site called What2learn. On this site you can make games without registering or logging in. Each game generates an embed code which you can use in Moodle or in a blog like this.



Play this game on the what2learn site


You can see how this game is used in a learning context for students in Activity 3 of the Celebrate Astronomy OzProject. It is the Alien Abduction Word Game. All of the answers are astronomy words.

Another example of embedding in OzProjects is the map I have included in the December Celebrations around the World project. As people joined the project and introduced themselves I added their location to the Google map below.


View Larger Map

Google maps are so much fun to play around with. Another map idea I have been experimenting with is to display links to Australian Aid case studies from the Global Education website as links on a Google map. Here's an example.


View Australian Aid Case Studies in a larger map


Embedded widgets also liven up blogs and web pages.
Vokis are one example. They can be freely made at http://www.voki.com/ . This is the Voki from the OzProjects home page


Press the play button to listen.
Adobe Flash Player is required to view this content.

This is an Asian languages widget included in the Explore Asia Online OzProject.


The Encyclopedia Britannica is a good source of educational widgets on a range of topics. Instructions re embedding a Britannica widget in your blog are also available.

Flickr allows uses to create a photo badge to display photos in a widget. Each photo in the badge links to Flickr where users can find out more information, see more photos and check the licensing to determine how the photo can be used.

I have included two photo badges in the Explore Asia Online project which link to my Flickr photos of Vietnam and Japan which are licenced Creative Commons Attribution so that teachers and students can use the photos in their work. Here is the Vietnam photo badge.









I could keep embedding bits and pieces but this blog post is already getting very long. Here's some other sites which generate embed codes. I will be interested to hear which ones other people are using and how they are being used in an educational context.

Timetoast gives you an embed code so that you can embed the timeline in a web page. You can also get the url of the timeline you create so that you can link to it directly.

Bubbl.us is an online brainstorming tool. You can freely create mind maps and save them as images. You can also embed them in a blog or website.

You can embed a Glogster digital poster in a blog or web page. Jessica's ePortfolio is a good example of this.

Mixbook is a site for creating digital stories, online scrapbooks, and storyboards which can be embedded.

Vocaroo is an online voice recording service. Voice messages can be recorded and then sent by email or embedded in a blog or web page using the html code provided. Alternatively, a link to the recording can be included in a web page or blog.

Toon Doo allows students to create their own embeddable comic strips.

Slide allows users to create Guestbooks.
Jessica has embedded a Guestbook on her ePortfoilo at http://jesseportfolio.wikispaces.com/Guestbook

VoiceThread is a powerful way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos. It creates embeddable files.

There are hundreds more just waiting to be discovered.

6 comments:

  1. What a wealth of suggestions here Cecily. There is certainly a lot to choose from isn't there? I love the Grandma abduction game!

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  2. Certainly a very comprehensive contribution here with a wealth of useful links. I quite like the Flickr badges and how trhey can be used by students participating in OzProject.
    Well done.

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  3. Thanks for all of the great suggestions Cecily. It is great to see examples of these widgets being used in real online situations.
    I am looking forward to seeing what new tools come along in 2010. I learnt such a lot and saw so many innovative things that I really can't image what else there is to discover!

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  4. Thanks for taking the time to comment on my blog Kerrie, Nick and Alison. I am sure we will all make some interesting discoveries in 2010.

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  5. Thank you so much for the link to William's blog Cecily. I just have to look at those beautiful smiling faces and feel joyful. I am also experimenting with posting this comment through OpenID to see if my avatar will accompany this post. When I post via my Google account My avatar doesn't appear.

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  6. Wow, thanks Cecily, I'll have to try some of these.

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