I’ve made three animation projects with 6 years old kids for the last two years. MEDEA Awards awarded “Daisy and Drago“ cartoon that was animated and dubbed by 6 year old non-native students with “Creativity and Innovation” award in Online-Educa conference last year. I had written a guest blog on Ken Wilson’s blog about this project. If you are interested more, you can also watch my interview about it and watch the film here. The kids also animated the second story of Daisy and Drago. You can watch it here.

This year, we’ve been working on a new animation story with new and very cute characters “Bubble and Pebble”. The aim is to teach colours to the kids. The recordings haven’t been completed yet so I’ll share it later on a different blog post. By the way, you can have a look at the short summary of the story below:

At school, we’ve collaborated with the IT department to create digital games for kindergarten students to reinforce what they learn in English lessons. This year, we’ve decided to create digital games using our new characters to teach different topics to the kids. For this project, children have drawn the pictures for the game. I’ve recorded their voices and IT teacher  has put the drawings and the recordings together using Flash. You can play the demo of one of the games below:

Children do love playing with Bubble and Pebble games!! and it’s amazing to see how much they enjoy the material they have created to learn English. Let’s give them all a big hand!!

“No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock

“The 21st century collaboration” moves us from its traditional definition towards a new one with the developing web technologies.

Here is the second part of my collaboration tools list for techie collaborators.

Voxopop is a message board system which lets you create talk groups that you can talk, discuss and collaborate using your own voice. Some of you may remember  Voxopop as Chinswing in the past. You can listen to public discussions though you need to join to create yours.You can easily send group invitations, keep your discussion private, open or restricted.You can delete it whenever you want. You can explore public talk groups on Education, Learning and Language here.

EtherPad is a web based word processor that lets you work with others at the same time. When multiple users work on the same documents , you can get feedback immediately. You know who contributed to the text, also all changes are saved on the server in case you need to undo.

Mindmeister is an online collaborative mind mapping tool that you can brainstorm with others real-time. You can create your own mind maps on an award winning interface or share  them with your friends or collaborate with others to create a collaborative map.

Survs lets you create your online surveys collaborating with others in multi user accounts. You can collect responses and analyze the results in real time with others.

I’m sure many of us are familiar with VoiceThread. It’s a tool to have conversation around different kinds of media. It’s one of the best ways to talk and share about your images,documents or videos. You create your Voicethread and others can leave comments by telephone, text, web cam, microphone or file upload. Learn more about it by watching this Voicethread.

Tgether allows you to communicate in small groups by emails. You can share files, track conversation and manage your group. You can share codes or use 3rd party applications that Tgther provides.

StoryBirds are short and simple stories that connect you with others. Two or more people can create a Storybird story by writing their own texts and inserting pictures by taking turns. You can create your story with the person sitting next to you or someone who is far away from you.

WebCanvas is a collaborative painting project. You can paint using different basic tools, upload or post professionally drawn images or you can watch others paint live. This is an interesting project for artists though we can still give a try.

AwesomeHighlighter is the easiest way to highlight texts on web pages. When you finish highlighting, you get a link and share it with others. If you like this, you should also try Markkit.

Protagonize is a community that writes collaborative, interactive fiction. One person starts the story, the others post chapters to your story that will lead it to different directions. At the end, it becomes an evolving story which everyone can participate.

Mixbook is a site that lets you create picture books with others. You start creating your own book with pictures, invite a few friends to build the rest of the book together.

Thinkature places an instant message inside a visual workspace with voice chat. You can use it as a collaboration environment, a meeting room or a personal whiteboard.

TextFlow is a way to review document versions instantly to produce a final draft. It matches all the different versions of the text to show you all the suggestion in one single view.

LucidChart is another way to collaborate on a document simultaneously. Everyone can see the changes that have been made on the document .The difference between the other word processors is that it has an built-in group chat that makes it easier for you to collaborate.

Wikispaces is the best way to create collaborative web pages that you can edit and share together. You can watch Wikis in Plain English by Common Craft or visit the world’s largest collaborative online encyclopedia,Wikipedia! Wikispaces are my favourite wikis, you can have a look at my wikispace though I’ve been using it as an e-portfolio.

Senduit lets you upload your files and share them with private links with your team.

With Stintio, you can create your own chat in seconds. You can invite people to join by simply sending a link. You don’t download or install anything. You chat will be deleted if it is not active for a while.

Yuuguu is an instant screen sharing and video conferencing too that lets you work together quickly and easily.

Voxli allows you to hold voice conferences online. You can have a voice chat up to 200 people. You can invite your teammates by only sending a link, and you don’t have to upload anything. You can use push to talk to control your speaking even you are out of your browser.

Wridea is an online idea management service and a collection of brainstorming tools. You store, manage,organize and share your ideas to improve them with others. You use the web interface or you write an email to your wridea address to keep your ideas organized. You have pages and categories that lets you improve your ideas easily and collaboratively.

Enjoy collaboration!

If you like reading this, you may consider reading 100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 1).

Cross posted on TechLearning!

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton

“Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together.” Vesta M. Kelly

It is easy to collaborate with your colleagues around you. What about other people in your PLN? Can you collaborate with 50, 100, 1000 people?

“Collaborate”, “Collaborative”, “Collaboration” were the most frequent words I heard last year and I believe it will be more important and popular in this new decade.

Here is my first 20 web tools to enhance collaboration among us!

DabbleBoard is a whiteboard that enables you to visualize, explore and collaborate. You draw as you are drawing on a whiteboard and you can easily share your ideas. It also lets you conduct presentation and chat though you can not share files. You can read 10 reasons why to use Dabbleboard.

CoSketch is another whiteboard that you can collaborate to visualize your ideas and share them as images. The good thing is that, you don’t have to register or install anything. It works in all browsers, it’s real time and you can get an embed code for your drawing after you finish.

Stixy lets you create online bulletin board to collaborate with family, friends, colleagues. You can share pictures, files, reminders, notes  using different widgets that you can change size and colours.  It’s fun, free,easy and colourful. Stixy deserves a try!!

Grou.ps lets you create your own social network. There are different modules to be used as many as you want. You can create your forum, mailing list, share documents,files and your agenda to organize events, have your own YouTube, share links, bookmarks, photos. You can have real time chat and you can let the users have subgroups and it’s free.

I’m sure many of us are a member of a Ning group and Ning is the one of the best sites to create and join new social networks that interest us. You can upload pictures,photos, feeds, bookmarks and many more.

ImaginationCubed is a multi user drawing tool. You can use a pen, stamp,shapes, line or you can type. You can also change the color of the background. I loved this one, it’s cool!

If you are using Twitter, you may want to try GroupTweet. It lets you create your Twitter account into a group communication tool where everyone in the group uses direct messages. When a member gets a DM, GroupTweet turns it into a new tweet that all followers in the group can see.

Wallwisher is an online notice board maker. You can use this tool to make announcements, keep notes. You can use links, pictures, music, video and pages. You don’t have to register. You can have a look at Nik Peachey’s Wallwisher as a great example.

PageFlakesis a social personalized homepage that you can customize Internet using flakes which are small, movable of all your web favourites. You can add Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, photos, music, videos, calendar, to-do list, message board, RSS feed.

WriteBoard is a-web based text documents that you can track every edit and change that are made by other users. You can role back to any version and compare different versions.

Wiggio is an online toolkit that lets you work in groups easily. You can send emails, text messages,voice mails. It makes it easy to share files and polls. You can set video conferences and also keep shared calendar, keep track of group’s tasks and resources.

WeToku is an interview tool that automatically records it to play it back. You can embed it and share it with others. You can watch  my WeToku interview with Ana Maria Menesez.

Webnote is a tool for taking notes on your computer and you can share your notes with others giving the workspace name or the URL.

PalBee is a free online service that allows you to set up online video meetings with your friends or colleagues. You also have a whiteboard and it lets you draw, write texts, highlight or erase using different tools.

Phuser is a tool for groups to discuss or work together and privately. You can share photos, files, choose who joins, create and track discussions.

WikiDot is wiki builder to share content, documents and collaborate with your students, colleagues, friends. You can create pages, forums,separate wikis for groups or students, discuss topics, upload files, documents,notes, images and share them with others.

Creately lets you create professional looking online diagrams with your colleagues.

DoingText is a web based text editor for collaborative writing. You tell others the URL and they write comments, make changes without signing up. It lets you track changes and comments by RSS feed, export text by embedding in other pages. You can go back to the previous version of every line or you can see an overview of the discussion history.

SpringNote is an online notebook for collaboration. You can write down your ideas, create to-do lists, do scheduling and work together for projects. It also has an iphone application.

MeBeam is a place where you can create your chat room. You just type the name of the room and tell the people to meet you there.

I hope you like the first part of the series. Create, collaborate and enjoy!!

Cross posted on TechLearning !

”The network is opening up some amazing possibilities for us to reinvent content, reinvent collaboration.” (Tim O’Reilly)

”Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” (Mattie Stepanek)

I look for projects that I thrive on where I can learn from people that I collaborate. I do enjoy collaboration and every collaboration has helped me to grow and become a better teacher!

I’ve recently become a member of two great social networks. The first one is BeltFree which stands for Bloggers in ELT, Freelancer. This group has been created by Karenne Sylvester (@kalinagoenglish) on Ning. The aim of this community is to share and exchange ideas, collaborate and inspire!! I am happy and honored to be a part of this group because all the members are great teachers, trainers, bloggers and tweeters. They all have a lot to share and can easily inspire, motivate and enrich you with their ideas even we are all from different parts of the world. This is what I call a real ‘collaboration’.

As Karenne mentioned on her post previously, to be a part of this community, you should meet the following criteria :

-You are (or have been) an English Language Teacher
-Your blog is over 3 months old
-Your last post was less than 3weeks ago
-You have written at least 10+ articles
-You post more than once a month
-Your blog(s) belongs to you and not a corporation!

Hope to meet you on BeltFree …

Te second project is the One Comment a Day which has been created by Andrew Marcinek (@andicinek) on Ning. (Read his blog post about this project.) The aim of this project is to leave a positive comment on other bloggers ‘ blogs at least once a day!!  The universe is full of great ideas and certainly this project is one of them!!

Whenever I get a new comment on one of my posts, I think that I’m writing and some other people are really reading it and even bothering to reply for it!  Every comment is a smile on my  face and putting this smile on other people’s faces and doing it every day is awesome. It’s friendly , motivating, inspiring and encouraging!! Please join this project and leave a comment for some one!!

Thanks to all bloggers+tweeters from whom I ‘m learning new things every single day… Today my PLN is more crowded than my face to face friends list and I’m proud of it !!

]]> http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/2009/07/31/two-gr8-projects-to-collaborate/feed/ 8 http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/2009/07/23/collaboration-20-do-we-really-educate-better-2gether/ http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/2009/07/23/collaboration-20-do-we-really-educate-better-2gether/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:02:24 +0000 ozge http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/?p=51 As teachers and lifelong learners of the 21st century, we are all aware of the importance of meaningful teacher collaboration. It’s essential for us to work together to improve the curriculum, make connections between the subjects and the world, deepen the understanding of being a teacher, share knowledge and experience and also; learn and grow together.

There are a lot to benefit from the teacher collaboration. It helps to incorporate new teaching strategies, improve and spread  teaching skills, team-work abilities, gain confidence in your knowledge, skills and abilities; respect for others, have the opportunity to share ideas, valuable resources and get feedback, increase enthusiasm and it can even bring career rewards and I think the most importantly, there is a positive relationship between the teacher collaboration and student success.

With all the growing technology, new tools have arrived. It has changed the way we collaborate and made collaboration speed up and simple. Today; most of us agree that  digital collaboration  among  teachers is becoming increasingly important. Blogs, wikis, twitter, ning, Second Life, conferencing & chat tools and all other social networking sites now successfully can bring teachers 2gether to share knowledge and learn from each other. It has become very easy to collaborate  with educators all around the world. Having a blog, writing on forums, taking online courses, becoming a member of a social network such as Twitter, Ning or a wiki have created new platforms to collaborate, generate awareness on different methods of teaching and share knowledge with other teachers from all over the world.

But; do we collaborate the same way with our colleagues as we collaborate with other networked educators from different countries?

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to answer this question with a ‘Yes!!’ Still, there are a lot of teachers around me who don’t believe the importance and the benefits of using technology and Web 2.0 tools and for worse, thinking that technology is just a waste of time and a threat.

To be able to change it, schools and the principles should provide teachers with TIME, training, technical and follow up assistance  and the access to technology;  to use and integrate existing technologies into their teaching and as a part of their collaboration with their colleagues and life-long learning. Teachers should be motivated and encouraged to use IT skills and create their own PLN, e-portfolios and experience becoming a member of a social network and see the benefits of using 21st century skills.

Till I see my colleagues tweeting, blogging, exchanging information and teaching each other online, I don’t think we are really educating better 2gether. I hope these days are very close.