http://help.edmodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/UserGuide_Sep11.pdf

http://www.edmodo.com/

http://blog.edmodo.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmodo

A FREE global community where students, experts, and educators can collaborate on projects as well as find a library of new ideas.

Skype for Education

TRIO students must learn 21st Century technology and collaboration skills. With Skype for Education they can connect globally to different cultures, languages, and ideas. They can attend a virtual field trip, or talk with scientists…the possibilities are endless.

At this time there are 1873 Projects listed and each one is asking for outside participation – why not list your own project to collaborate with other TRIO students and experts? Check out the Collections page to view amazing projects from around the globe! And get TRIO students involved.

http://education.skype.com/

http://blogs.skype.com/en/education/

http://blogs.skype.com/en/whitepaper/skype-in-the-classroom.pdf

http://education.skype.com/collections

Google Voice also has powerful features for managing your voice mail and text messages. It allows you to access and manage your voice mail from the web and share voice mails by email. You can compose text messages on your computer and have your text messages sent to your email. It also makes it easy to host conference calls simply by having callers dial your Google Voice number.  Of course there is a mobile app for iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries. Best of all, it’s FREE.

• To learn more, watch the videos at:
  http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice
• To see some of the features available go to:
  http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html
• Suggested topics below. To find out how to ___________ go to :
  http://support.google.com/voice/?hl=en

• Recording calls
• Sending Text Messages
• Setting which phones will ring
• Text message to email
• Call Screening
• Conference calling on the fly
• Recording calls
• Checking messages
• Contacts, Groups, Greetings

With Poll Everywhere you can create free polls for up to 40 people in just a couple of minutes. Premium plans are available with additional features and for polling more users.

Below is an example of the a free poll that was created in just a few seconds. The first 40 people can vote via the Web or by texting or Tweeting their answer as shown below. You can also view the PowerPoint slides and instructions for this poll.

When people vote via the web, this is what they see:

The image to the right shows the results for this poll and how people responded. If you are teaching a small class where each student has free access to texting, a smart phone, or a computer, then the free version of Poll Everywhere might be all you need!

The Google URL Shortener takes long web addresses and generates a shorter version that is easier share via email, twitter or on the Web. It also generates a QR (Quick Response Code) for your web page that can be read by most smart phones and reports statistics on visitors to your site.

To use it, just go to http://goo.gl, enter the full URL and click on the Shorten URL button. The short URL will be created instantly. Note that all these short web addresses are publicly accessible. You (or anyone else) can also view the traffic to the shortened URL by adding “.info” to the end of the address.

Below is an example of a short URL (goo.gl/rLft1) generated this way for the home page of this blog (http://depts.washington.edu/triolive/wordpress/ttt/) .

 A QR (Quick Response) code image is also generated along with the shortened URL. If you have a smartphone, try downloading a QR Reader and scanning the image to the right with your phone to go directly to the web page.

There are other services that produce shortened URLs, but goo.gl adds your new URLs to your Google account. Just be sure you’re logged in first. Another advantage of goo.gl is that also includes the world’s easiest web stats. Just add a”.info” to the end of the shortened URL to produce stats and graphs like the ones below. Note that this only includes visitors that reach your page via the shortened URL and not those who type out the whole address.

• Provide basic editing tools
• Apply effects to an image or photograph
• Provide basic capabilities similar to Adobe Photoshop Elements

The top three graphics application programs with the most features that were found to be of particular interest were:

Aviary (http://advanced.aviary.com/)

Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that are available just by using your Web browser. This includes:

•  Phoenix, an image editor that utilizes layers, masks, effects, undo history, and other desirable functionality.
• Peacock, a powerful effects editor
• Talon, a screen capture application
• Raven, a vector editor
• Roc, a music creator
• Myna, an audio editor
• Falcon, an image markup application
• Toucan, a swatch color editor

In addition, Aviary has a fantastic set of tutorials and supports education by providing classroom accounts for educators.

Pixlr (http://pixlr.com)

Pixlr is cited as being one of the most popular online graphics applications in the world. It provides three choices for working on images and photos: Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Express, and Pixlr-o-matic. Each application has different capabilities as described below.

• Pixlr Editor – provides many of the tools you would see if you were using Photoshop Elements with layer, adjustment, and filter controls that allow you to do almost anything you can think of to your images or photos. It also provides Navigator, Layer, and History panels to assist with tracking and making changes to images and photos.
• Pixlr Express has a much simpler interface with icons for adjustments, effects, overlays, borders, stickers, and text. Clicking on any choice brings up other icons and sliders for further refinement of the changes to the image or photo.
• Pixlr-o-matic, the third application and simplest of all, lets you upload a photo and apply an effect, overlay, and frame to an image but doesn’t have the detailed control provided with Pixlr Editor or Pixlr Express.

Phixr http://www.phixr.com

Phixr is another powerful Web-based photo editor for quickly fixing photos in three steps:

•  Step 1: Upload a photo from your computer or transfer one from your Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Webshots, Photobucket or SmugMug account.
• Step 2: Edit your photo.
• Step 3: Save it on your computer, e-mail it to a friend to share or directly upload the photo to Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Picasa, Photobucket, ImageShack, SmugMug and others.

Phixr includes a lot of basic and advanced features. For example: crop photo, resize photo, rotate photo, remove red eye, flip or “mirror” photo or convert a picture to a charcoal drawing, oil painting, pop-art poster or matrix-printout. It can also create a comic from a photo and insert text into the photo using speech bubbles.

Color tools – Phixr Online Photo Editor can change a photo’s colors in many ways. Starting with the basics, there is, of course, a color balance and histogram-based levels tool, and a tool to correct brightness, exposure, contrast, temperature, saturation and hue. Phixr can also auto-correct contrast, white-balance and color balance. Phixr’s has a broad range of color filters that can convert a photo to sepia tone to make a photo look old, make a picture black and white or invert the colors to create a photo negative. It can also make a photo black and white, except for certain colors (e.g. imagine red lips on an otherwise greyscale photo).

Camera & lens tools – Phixr online photo editor also has some camera and lens related tools. These can create a tilt-shift effect, lomography (lomo) effect, or imitate a Holga or night vision camera. Furthermore, it can add a vignette effect or put the photo behind a bunch of shaped masks such as putting a photo inside a crystal ball.

Blur/soften tools – Phixr can blur and soften photos in a number of sophisticated ways. It can motion-blur, radial blur (rotation-blur) and zoom-blur your photos. It can also pixelize (pixelate) or glass-tile photos, or build them from small toy bricks.

Other tools – Phixr can sharpen photos; imitate HDR images (using unsharp mask algorithms); remove noise; convert photos to charcoal drawings, oil paintings, or spray paintings; and add special effects such as a carving effect, matrix printer effect, or comic-book effect.

It also allows for the ability to geotag photos which provides the ability to save the location at which the photo was shot into the photo file. Phixr can read and write geotags, and allows you to upload/share geotagged photos with all third party services supporting geotagging.

Photos can be saved as jpg (jpeg), pdf, gif or png, directly out of the Phixr online photo editor. You can also print the photo or upload it to the photo sharing site of your choice. With Phixr, you can create stationery, greeting cards or invitations. Phixr has a broad range of special holiday effects and decorations.

So if your TRIO program has a need for photo or image editing, consider using one of these applications to meet your needs.

Source: Hoerger, D. “Digital·Image Manipulation Using FREE Web 2.0 Tools”, 2012 CUE Conference, Session 2083, Palm Springs, CA.

Hotmail:

After logging into Hotmail, you will see a headline near the top of the page that says: “Hotmail highlights“.  In the small print under that is a link called “Options“.  This will take you to a page called “Windows Live Options” and you will find on the left of that page a selection under “Show options for” that says “Hotmail“.  Click on the “Hotmail” link.  This will take you to a page called “Hotmail Options“. Look for the section entitled “Managing your account” and click on the link called “Account details (password, aliases, time zone“. You will be redirected to a page called “Account overview“.  At the bottom of that page click on the link called “Connect with HTTPS” that will redirect you to a page of the same name.  On this last page, look for a radio button towards the bottom in front of a statement that says “Use HTTPS automatically“. Kind of a long journey but that’s it.

GMail:

If you want to do this for a GMail account, it’s a lot shorter journey to get to where you need to be.  Starting from your GMail account, click on the arrow next to your account name on the top right side of your web browse and select the “Account settings” option. This will take you to a general “Google accounts” page.  Find the link called “Settings” next to the GMail icon on the right hand side of the page. Clicking on that link will result in you being taken to a page called “GMail – Settings” with lots of options. One of the options is called “Browser connection“. Make sure the radio button in front of “Always use https” is the option that is selected.  Finally at the bottom of that page, make sure you click on the “Save Changes” button.

That’s it, hope this was helpful.

• Dropbox – http://www.dropbox.com
• Microsoft Mesh – http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh
• Box.net – http://www.box.com/
• iCloud – https://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html

Google used to use Box.net for synchronization but has just now released their new relationship with Insync.

Like other cloud based file synchronization and file backup solutions, Insync has different plans depending on the number of users and how much space you might want or need.  This includes:

• Cheapskate -1GB syncing limit for unlimited computers – Cost: Free
• Pro -16TB syncing limit for single user and unlimited computers – Cost: $25/year  (introductory offer)
• Business -16TB syncing limit for unlimited computers with centralized billing and user administration for 5 users minimum – Cost: $3/user/month  (introductory offer)

So, if you have a Google account and files in Google Docs, you can now collaborate and share those files with others with greater ease using this new Google service.

Important Update (12/12/11): Just got word from Insync that they are reworking their pricing. Now if you have a Google account, Insync is now free with no limits on storage.

GMail and Google Apps – Sign up for a free GMail account and get access to Google Apps for free. Google Apps includes online wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics manipulation applications that are easy to use.

Hotmail and SkyDrive – With a free Hotmail account you also get Microsoft Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for free.  In addition you get 25GB of free online storage.  These Microsoft Web Apps look just like the regular Microsoft Office applications but with a slightly limited set of options.

If you don’t have a GMail account or a Hotmail account, sign up for one and take a tour of the free cloud applications that can help you to create and share information with your program staff and students.

This blog will explore a broad range of applications and resources that can help manage programs and provide resources for instruction and learning.  Most of these discussions will focus on applications that run on computer servers at some other organization’s or company’s data center and not at your school or institution. That means you have access to these applications without having to pay the price for the computer servers, storage, licensing, bandwidth or support personnel.  In essence, when a lot of people share the resources required, it becomes inexpensive for the end user to have access.  In fact one of the main driving forces for using applications that are set up like this is that it makes them affordable.  In that sense, the applications are said to be Cloud applications and are what is known as “Software as a Service” or SaaS.

In the next few posts, we’ll look at some of the types of applications that are available in the Cloud and some of the issues you might want to consider if using these with your staff or students in your program.  Feel free to suggest topics or applications for this discussion and we’ll explore them together.