New beginning, New place

Hey everyone,

So in case you have noticed, this place hasn’t been really active lately… The reason for this is that I have my very own new place where I write about my very own things You can still find there many of the topics discussed in this blog and also many other more.

Please feel free to drop by and check for yourself.

My new blog

Sivan.

Desktop wallpaper – June 2010

Summer is here! World Cup in South Africa is also coming real soon – It’s time to decorate your desktop with the finest wallpapers!

A great collection of summery, colorful and joyful wallpapers for the month of June by Smashing Magazine.

Have an amazing month, can’t wait for World Cup

Here are some cool examples.

WebQuests as a learning tool

Today I want to tell you about something that as for 2-3 months ago, was new to me, it’s called WebQuests.

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learner work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego state university in 1995.

As a part of Computer based Inquiry learning course, we learned about WebQuests and were asked to make an assignment about it. The assignment was to develop a WebQuest for students in which they have to learn and investigate the subject of the Kibbutz in Israel and its special characteristics. At the beginning it seemed to me like a real burden, As a city girl, I knew nothing about the Kibbutz and had no idea how to start this assignment.

I first started reading and exploring about the Kibbutz & collectivism, then I tried to find the most interesting aspects of this subject, and started looking for possible links for the WebQuests.

There are many WebQuests design patterns, it’s important to choose one, or even a combination of a few, the reason for that is that there are so many options, and if you don’t want to”drown in”, you better focus on one and start developing your WebQuest.

Next step was to start gathering good, useful links that I wanted the students to use. I chose a design pattern called On trial - Students prepare for and perform a mock trial live or on video based on current events, literature, history, or any other conflicted situation. This Design Pattern lies in the intersection of the Venn diagram between judgment and persuasion.

My WebQuest was adressed to 4-5 students in working groups – each will choose one of these roles: defendant, prosecutor, judge, psychologist and lawyer. I gave each student suitable links to the role they were playing, For example, the psychologist was given links about the effect of living in the Kibbutz had on people, and especially about the rather strange phenomenon that used to be back then, where all the children of the Kibbutz were sleeping togethr in a special house, away from their parents.

The next step is of course to develope the WebQuest, it can be developed in a powerpoint presentation or as a website in html.

I was really pleased with the result, I created an activity for students that just like me, were really distant from this topic, and this topic may actually sound boring to them at the beginning, However, the activity is fun, not too hard, demands on high-level of thinking, creativity and collaborative work.

I really recommend this kind of activity, not only that it helps to teach a certain subject, but during the process students learn so much more – they learn how to use the resources that we give them wisely, they develop a better thinking about how to look for information online, they learn to play certain roles and to participate in a collaborative experience.

Here are some useful resources:

WebQuest design process

WebQuest design patterns

A rubric for evaluating WebQuests

An example of a WebQuest

Social Media in classroom? Not in my school (come on…)

Social media is all around us lately.

We share everything, know everything about people around us, we learn online, work online and shop online, it only seemes natural that social media will also be a part of our educational life.

I find it rather strange that many schools discourage the use of it. I find it even more strange that in my degree – Instructional Design degree, lecturers still fight student about the use of laptops in classrooms, it’s absolutely absurd!

What are they so afraid of?

This post tries to help educators in overcoming this fear and also giving some excellent tips for integrating social media in classroom.

Another great post gives examples of possible use of social media for different types of learning – this is actually a very useful tool.

Via Mashable and C4LPT

Enjoy!

Social Media & Learning – So Natural

This semester we started working on our seminar project.  As a really enthusiastic Twitter user and an Instructional Design student, it only seemed natural for me to check the great potential of using Twitter for Learning.

This idea actually came to me when I first started to notice that I use Twitter for learning. I used HootSuite to track keywords on subjects that I care about such as web design, instructional design, UI, e-learning and many more. This helped me meet people from these areas and learn much more about these subjects from reading their Tweets. Then I started creating  lists for each subject, and the knowledge came flowing in.

I guess the more you learn to use Twitter and its many applications and advantages, the more it gets clear that there’s a big potential for using it for learning.

This week we received a green light from our lecturer, so now there’s a lot of reading to do. I found this nice post with 100 inspiring ways to use social media in the classroom – some really good ideas.

We have a few ideas in mind for our research, but we still have some time until we actually set the research. So if you have any ideas or stories about using social media for learning, I would really love to hear them!

Wedding Invitations – A very unique collection

A wedding invitation is usually a big deal. Couples want their invitation to say something about them, and also of course to be memorable. Certain places actually offer invitation of their own, but those are usually pretty boring…

If you’re a bit more creative and actually care about design, you should really check out this great post to get inspired!

A collection of 100 unique wedding invitations – some amazing stuff there, it makes you want to…

Via freelancereview

Here are my favorites!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Social Media Buttons – Make a set of your own!

We all love to add social media buttons, whether it’s to our Facebook page, Twitter, website, blog and so on.

We want people to know us and also know where they can find us, we also use it as a tool to promote ourselves – our companies, blogs and websites.

Most of us simply choose one of many great beautiful sets of buttons that are offered in the net – there are so many possibilities and all are nice and attractive, but what about some creativity and uniqeness?

Here is a great well-detailed tutorial to help you create your very own stylish set!

Good Luck

Via raster rebels

5 min. break

take a short break from design and just spend some time looking on cute,little newly born animals.

all the pics are from Zooborns (follow them on twitter)

Enjoy

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

HootSuite vs TweetDeck – My point of view

Okay, Ive been using HootSuite for a while now, however recently I’ve been experiencing some technical problems with it, and that made me give TweeDeck a try. I still haven’t decided which one is better for my needs, but here are some thoughts…

Design

I definitely prefer the dark background in TweetDeck, I think it gives a more clear, organized look, also, I think HootSuite’s design looks a little out-of-date.

Logo

That’s an easy one… HootSuite definitely wins here! I just LOVE the owl logo, so cute and smart.

User Interface

In HootSuite there are tabs and columns for different topics, lists, users and so on, while in TweetDeck you only add columns. At first this seemed like a disadvantage, but after I’ve been using it for a while I can say that I really prefer to see all of my information in one place, where all I have to do as a user is scroll right or left between the columns, as opposed to HootSuite where you first have to enter some tabs, then scroll inside columns and so on. Also, in HooutSuite the numbet of columns you can add for one tab is limited to 4. No Limitation in the deck.

In HootSuite, a big part of the user screen is the writing bar, where users write their tweets, in TweetDeck you can make this bar hide by pressing one tiny button, that’s great because it gives you much more space to see all the tweets of the people you follow.

As for the options buttons (RT, Reply, DM) I think both apps are lacking in this area. The navigation in these buttons is pretty difficuly and very unfriendly. I also don’t like the fack that in TweetDeck links are automatically  underlined… that adds some cognitive load which is really unnecessary.

Functionality

Both offer pretty much the same functionality. In TweetDeck you can’t add a column of your own tweets, you have to first make a special search and then add this as a column – that’s pretty annoying, it definitely should be one of the core columns.

Language

A big minus goes here to TweetDeck – no support in Hebrew, it simply doesn’t display tweets that are written in Hebrew.

To sum up… Both apps are pretty cool and useful, they offer pretty much the same functionality, but each one gives something a bit different.

So what’s your opinion?

OR

Chrome for designers

What if i told you that the Google chrome browser has a special extensions for web design?

well check out these 32 cool google chrome extension that will make your life easier.

[Via 1stwebdesigner]