Post XXII. Makerbase

Have you ever wondered who made a particular web application (for example, Google Reader or the What IS Code? - the manual I referred to in my previous blog post)? 

If yes, check out the Makerbase website. The website was launched recently, so there is little information there yet. However, the Makerbase team declared they are going to create a database that will be similar to IMDb; that is to say, the database will be as informative and searchable as that 100-million-data movie portal.

Makerbase contains information about the creators of applications, websites, podcasts, etc. The website allows you to get to know people who made the tools you are using and appreciate their work. It could also be used to find out the projects your favorite developers are working on or have been worked on in the past.

Post XIX. Memrise

Memrise is a beautifully designed web-based technology for memorizing things. It allows you to create your own sets of flashcards to be remembered or use the sets developed by other users.

What differs Memrise from services like Quizlet is that the study and self-assessment processes happen simultaneously. For example, you created a list of 10 new words to remember in the word-and-its-definition format. When you start a learning session, the software introduces you to the words from the list and then alternate the blocks containing the assessment items about the words you study with the blocks stating the words and their definitions. The idea behind Memrise technology is you better remember new words when you continuously repeat those words and solve problems related to them. The assessment items include matching a word with the correct definition option, typing in the word appropriate to the displayed definition, and answering multiple-choice questions.

At the end of the session, you get statistics demonstrating your progress through the session and the amount of points received for correct and quick answers. You can see the words you mastered and the words you need to work on more. 

I am learning HTML 5 vocabulary now via the flashcard set somebody developed. The results of one of my learning sessions are showed in the picture below. The flower image means I have mastered the word.

I really like Memrise for its pretty design. In addition, the software developers assure it is research-based. So, I believe Memrise deserves a tryout.

Do you use any memorization apps to enhance your learning activities?

Post XVII. SimilarWeb

Data is my passion, and I prefer to have a lot of different statistics available to form my opinion about a certain subject.

Since I started blogging, I was wondering what blog platform is more successful: Blogger or WordPress? Do the platforms have the same amount of users? What countries are the primary source of the traffic for the platforms?

If you are interested in answers to similar questions about any website, there is a cool web-analytics software called SimilarWeb. It utilizes big data technologies to collect, measure, analyze, and provide user-engagement statistics for websites and mobile applications.

On SimilarWeb, you can receive lots of data related to the specific website of interest for free. For example, for Blogger.com I got global, country, and category ranks; traffic sources; referrals; organic key words; traffic from social media; audience interests, and many other interesting facts.

Unfortunately, the free websites’ comparison service SimilarWeb offers is limited to ranks and traffic overview only (everything else you can get by paying the subscription fee). Still, I know now that WordPress is quite more popular than Blogger (see the picture below for some graphs; Blogger is orange, and wordPress is blue).

So, those of the Blogger users who plan to continue blogging for professional purposes might considering moving to WordPress.

Post XVI. PowToon

Nowadays, there are a lot of tools that aim to make content presentations not only informative, but also engaging.

PowToon is a web-based software of that kind. It is a constructor that allows you to create animated videos and presentations by using a set of predesigned templates. The process of the creation of a video is very simple. When you are in the construction mode of the PowToon software, you generate a group of slides just like you usually do while working on a presentation. Then, PowToon combines this collection of slides into a video so that each slide represents one video scene. PowToon has a drag-and-drop interface, which enables the creation process to be very fast. The software is integrated with GoogleDrive.

PowToon offers free and paid usage plans. The produced video presentation can be shared on YouTube and Facebook freely, but to download the video to your computer, you should pay for subscription. Unsurprisingly, paid versions of the software have more animated and still templates to choose from.

Watch a short video about the history of presentation software created using PowToon.

Do you like the idea of such entertaining presentations? As students, would you like your professors to invest their time, money, and effort in this software? As teaching personnel, would you try it on your lessons?

Post XI. Twine

This week readings inspired me to search for a writing tool that is free to use following the idea of open-source software. I found a lovely tool that would be of use for anyone who needs to keep track on how story goes when writing something. If you are one of those people, check out Twine.

Twine is an easy-to-use tool that allows users to publish directly to HTML with no coding involved. The tool is widely used for story structuring. Also, Twine is popular among the game designers who develop interactive web-based games due its simplicity and ability to adjust to the specific needs of the user (e.g., you can insert conditional logic, images, or JavaScript into text).

As with any popular Web 2.0 tool, there exist Twine community that provides newbies with advice and support.

Here is the link to the game made with Twine - Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet, - and the picture below shows the title page of this game.

Post VII. Poll Everywhere

There are lots of wonderful business tools on the Internet, and some of them may be easily adapted for the needs of a teacher or a learning technologist. Poll Everywhere exemplifies such a tool. The idea behind it is quite simple: To provide a speaker with an opportunity to receive immediate feedback from his/her audience. The realization of that idea is even simpler. To start, the speaker creates an account on the PollEverywhere website; next step is to post the question the speaker would like to ask and (optionally) possible answers to this question. After that, those people whom the speaker plans to survey go to the speaker’s account, read the posted question, and click on the answer variant they perceive to be true. What is great is that Poll Everywhere plots real-time graphs, so the speaker has an opportunity to assess the collected data and decide on his/her further actions immediately. It should be also noted that the only resource the speaker needs is the Internet connection. The limited version of the tool (for 25 respondents) is free.

The short video below demonstrates how Poll Everywhere works.

I see several ways of applying Poll Everywhere to learning enhancement. First, it can be used for quizzes in the same manner as the clicker technology is utilized at FSU. Second, the tool is great for collecting feedback from students and adjusting instruction in accordance with their learning needs. Finally, Poll Everywhere enables a teacher to monitor some teamwork activities, such as brainstorming or problem solving. 

Do you have any other ideas on how Poll Everywhere and similar services can be utilized in education?

Post IV. Wix

As you may know, this semester is my last, and similarly to all ISLT program’s graduates, I was required to submit a portfolio to my adviser. I am writing in the past tense because the due date for portfolio submission was July 1^st, so I have already done that. A quick note for those of you who haven’t read the portfolio guidelines yet: It should be a collection of your best works demonstrating that you possess the ISLT competencies needed for being a professional.

My main problem with planning the arrangement of the portfolio was how to organize all those long documents in one structure so that it was not just a 300-pages stack of paper. In addition, the projects that I’ve developed with other students had various designs that were not compatible with each other. Thus, to address those problems, I decided to create an online portfolio.

I found an incredible website constructor that is called Wix. You may see its promo video on Facebook recently, and the tool is really as great as the video advertises.

The main argument for using Wix for my purposes was that no coding was involved. During my bachelor’s studies, I gained some experience in writing computer programs, but I wanted to avoid any coding since my knowledge in this area became outdated. Plus, it was way faster to develop a website by “drag-and-drop” tools that Wix provides. The constructor contains enough variants on website’s adjustment for your particular needs, so I would say there is an obvious contrast between Wix and tools like Blogger. The latter offers only several templates to choose from; I think it is boring.

If interested, you can check out my portfolio here. I would like to emphasize that it took me only 2 days to develop that portfolio via Wix (not including the time I spent on writing the text part).

Post I. Pocket

Hello everyone,

Thank you for joining me in my blog!

I have no experience of being a blogger, similarly to some of you. A quick research on this topic has showed that there are trillions of blogs on the Internet, and many of them are not very informative. The proportion of helpful suggestions to the blog posts that I would call vacuous is approximately 1:4 (of course, this conclusion only relates to those blogs that I saw).

With this in mind, I would like to contribute to the “bright side” and, therefore, will do my best to make this blog helpful rather than, hmm, entertaining. I plan to post about the technologies that can be of use for an instructional designer, learning professional, or performance improvement practitioner. I also intend to expand my knowledge of the Web 2.0 topic via library search and will share my findings here.

To start, I recommend you to become familiar with a wonderful tool for organizing web pages that you would like to read off-line or to save forever in one accessible place. The tool is called Pocket. What I like most about it is that it is highly intuitive; it will take you several minutes to figure out how the tool works. As a Pocket user, you have an opportunity to save web pages by directly inserting links in the list under your account or there is a more convenient way of saving via the Pocket button that you can insert in any web browser. I use the second way majorly. Another great feature is that you are able to tag all the web pages you save. My list of “pocketed” web pages is very long, but tags enable me to find the needed information immediately. Finally, I would like to emphasize that the Pocket application for cell phones is even better than the website. And you can use Pocket for free, although they have a paid version.

The majority of the web pages saved to my Pocket list are educational resources and the articles I researched for my master’s studies. It is very convenient to have them tagged so that I can find any of them in seconds. 

This is a screenshot from my tablet demonstrating the design of the Pocket application. Sorry for the name of the categories being in Russian. They are saying "My List" and "Archive". 

As you see, the application design is minimalistic, and I really like that.