PLACE - C-TOOLS GALVIS 2009

TOOLS FOR MULTIMEDIA DATA PROCESSING 10 

Tools for Processing Video and Digital Sound 10 
Tools for Sharing digital products on Internet 11 
Tools for threading voice comments on digital objects 13 
Tools for Building web pages 13 
TOOLS FOR TIME AND ACTIVITY MANAGEMENT 14 
L  for Learning Environments 15 
CONSTRUCTION OF CONCEPTUAL AND MIND MAPS 15 
CONSTRUCTION OF CAUSE-EFFECT MAPS 17 
MATHEMATIC MODELS: CONSTRUCTION AND EXPLORATION 17 
SIMULATIONS AND GAMES: CONSTRUCTION AND EXPLORATION 18 
LECTURE NOTES AND FLASH CARDS: BUILDING AND USE 18 
CREATION OF DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS 19 
CREATION AND USE OF RUBRICS 19 
A  for Access to cultural, and intellectual capital 21 
SEARCH ENGINES AND DIGITAL TAGGING 22 
ELECTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIAS 23 
SUBSCRIPTION TO ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICES 24 
List Serves 24 
RSS Channels 25 
DICTIONARIES, TRANSLATORS AND THESAURUSES 25 
EDUCATIONAL PORTALS 26 
DIGITAL TOURS THROUGH MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS 28 
C  for Communication 31 
TOOLS FOR INTERACTING ASYNCHRONOUSLY 31 
Email (electronic mail) 32 
Text messaging and chat rooms 33 
Social messaging via Twitter 33 
Social/virtual networking in education 34 
Digital Diaries, also called, Blogs 35 
The Wiki and collaborative knowledge building 36 
Collaborative productivity tools 38 
Network Forums 38 
Video lecture capturing 39 
TOOLS FOR SYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION 40 
Chat rooms 41 
Multimedia Instant Messaging Systems 41 
Video Conferencing Systems 42 
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TOOLS FOR HYBRID SYNCHRONOUS / ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION43 

Course delivery systems 44 
Community management systems 44 
E  for Exploration of learning objects 47 
DIGITAL MANIPULATIVES THAT SUPPORT CONJECTURAL
EXPLORATION 48 
Some Resources for Manipulating Scientific Digital Objects 48 
Some Resources for Digitally Manipulating Mathematical Objects 50 
LEARNING THROUGH EXPLORATION AND CONJECTURE 51 
Web Explorations 51 
Digital Exploration of Our Planet 52 
Using ICTE to improve teaching 55 
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WITH ICTE 55 
Personal growth with ICTE 56 
Career advancement with ICTE 58 
COURSE ENHANCEMENT WITH ICTE 59 
ICTEs embedded in course requirements 60 
ICTEs to enhance teaching strategies 61 
About the author 65 
Acknowledgements 67 
Glossary 69 
Works Cited 73 
Reference List for ICTE in footnotes 76 
 

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C for Communication

Type-C information and communication technologies almost do not

require presentation here, since a great majority of people, young and
older people are currently using these tools with proficiency on a daily
basis. The common denominator is “people interaction mediated by
digital systems.” The differences between the types of C tools have to do
with whether (1) the interaction happens asynchronously (data streaming
in one direction at a time) or synchronously(data streaming in both
directions at the same time); (2) communication uses textual, oral or
multiple media; (3) the dialogue is moderated or not.

Tools for Interacting Asynchronously

Asynchronous interactions have helped to overcome space and time

communication barriers in order to achieve dynamic dialogues. There is
a growing number of tools to support asynchronous interaction. In the
following paragraphs we will discuss the educational uses for some of
these.

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Email (electronic mail)

Electronic mail systems allow receiving, sending and storing digital

messages in electronic mailboxes. Digital messages can include different
types of content via texts, images, photos, sounds, videos, or website
links. A digital mailbox also associates an identifier to be shared with
others and a password that only the proprietor knows.

In addition to email for private communication with others, email also

makes possible deferred electronic interaction between members of an
educational community. Nevertheless, it can be very wasteful and
ineffective when it is used to support the educational processes of
groups. Interacting in this individual way with many people requires
hours of reading and answering messages. Imagine receiving 40 messages
from students and trying to correspond with each one of them. In this
case, other approaches would be more effective (for example forums or
list serves) that address common shared interests leaving personal issues
to be discussed in private chat rooms or by email.

In order to take advantage of email it is necessary to develop:

 The habit of downloading and reading the mail periodically

 The capacity to process legible written messages.
 The ability to identify legitimate messages (many are junk mail) and
create user lists (to simplify interactions).
 The criteria for opening or discarding attached files (many viruses
arrive this way).
 The strategy for organizing information that has been sent or received
(otherwise email would be unmanageable).
 The ability to respond to one or several users (streamlining the effort).

Many Internet Service Providers (ISP) offer free email with abundant
storage capacity (about 6 gigabytes), virus protection, text or
hypertext messaging. For example, Google’s GMAIL [86], Yahoo’s
YAHOOMAIL [87], and Microsoft’s HOTMAIL [88].

86 http://gmail.com
87 http://yahoo.com
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Text messaging and chat rooms

The idea of digital communication via text has been expanded to the
world of cell phones and chat rooms. While text messaging via cell
phones can be considered asynchronous communication—sender and
receiver do not need to interact at the same time—conversations using
text-based chat rooms are typically a synchronous process—participants
need to be in the same chat room at the same time.

There are those who are fully against the use of text messaging via cell
phones in educational environments because they believe that dialogues
are imminently social and that texting does not favor the use of good
language. However, these systems reach audiences in a very effective way.
This can be considered an alternative way to reach students who do not
read email, informing them about events, requirements and important
opportunities. At the same time, this type of use can be disturbing when
students do not follow rules of engagement for the use of these devices
in educational settings.

Text-based chat rooms are now used less frequently because multimedia-
based group instant messaging systems are easier to use. When
bandwidth is limited, this type of synchronous text messaging can be very
useful. It can also be utilized as a complement to voice or video-based
messaging systems since text chat rooms allow documenting important
ideas that emerge from oral conversation via voice-on-Internet.

Social messaging via Twitter

Twitter [89] is a free social messaging utility for staying connected

in real time through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one
simple question: What are you doing?. Twitter limits you to 140
characters and spaces per post (or per "tweet"). You can follow
others Twitter uses on your home page.

Doug Belshaw's teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk blog says “I think Twitter

could be ideal for reminding students about homework, trips and such
things, especially as they can enter their mobile phone number to be

88 http://hotmail.com
89 http://twitter.com/
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alerted when one of their ‘friends’ updates their account. The advantage
is that you don’t need to know the phone numbers of students to get
messages onto their device: they are the ones who authorize their mobile
phone from the website and they subscribe to your Twitter feed” (cited
in http://web20teach.blogspot.com/2007/08/twitter-tweets-for-higher-
education.html Available the 20th of June, 2009).

Social/virtual networking in education

There is no doubt that social networking is a powerful way to get and

keep in touch with friends, colleagues, and people who share a common
cause or interest. Many of us have re-initiated relationships with friends
by using social/viral networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace, or
LinkedIn. All of them have the ability to put together people who have
an affinity (family, hobbies, work, school, etc.) and who decide to get in
touch as virtual friends. This role lets you share, from your profile,
information resources such as messages, pictures, videos, and other
virtual components. Your contacts (virtual friends) share their contacts,
which fortifies the network.

However it is not so clear how social networking can be used in support

of academic initiatives. An Inside Higher Ed blog available Jun 30th, 2009 at
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/19/facebook mentions
that “As colleges have worked over the years to solidify their Web 2.0
presence and reach out to students where they're most likely to
congregate online, there's often a glaring omission from their overall
Internet strategies: social networks. That's not so much an oversight as a
hesitation, with many institutions still debating whether to adopt social
networking capabilities of their own or grit their teeth and take the
plunge into Facebook, with all the messiness and potential privacy
concerns that would imply”.

FACEBOOK [90] is a social utility that helps people communicate

more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. (Facebook
Corporate page, available at http://campus-
firewatch.com/reprints/web2glossary.html on June 30, 2009).

90 http://www.facebook.com/
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LINKEDIN [91] is a social networking website geared towards

companies and industry professionals looking to make new business
contacts or keep in touch with previous co-workers, affiliates, and
clients. (Definition available June 30, 2009, at
http://www.hudsonhorizons.com/Our-Company/Internet-
Glossary/LinkedIn.htm)

MYSPACE [92] is an online community that allows friends to keep

in touch and meet new people as well. Anyone who is at least 14
years old can sign up for a MySpace account at no cost. Once you
sign up, you can customize your profile by adding information about
yourself, listing your interests, hobbies, and educational background,
and uploading photos of yourself and your friends. You can also
create your own blog for others to read. (Definition available June
30, 2009, at http://www.techterms.com/definition/myspace).

Digital Diaries, also called, Blogs

Physically, the closest thing to a blog (Binary Logs, also called Web
Logs) is a web page; that is, an Internet space where information is
published and shared using hypertext that allows the use of colors,
different sizes and types of fonts as well as links, graphics, sounds and
animations that may or may not be controlled by the user. The big
difference with a web page is that the blogs are time-sensitive organized
contributions. Another important difference concerning blogs is that
they allow for feedback which gives readers the opportunity to comment
in public (post). Many blogs have tagging systems that allow labels “to
follow” the contributions being posted. This is accomplished by surfing
the descriptors on the tags.

Some contentions exist, regarding truth, privacy and security vs respect

for the first amendment. Every time a blog is used the creators and
those who are making the commentary can say what they want without
the scrutiny of editors or those responsible for the website. Students are
exposed to many points of view, or commentary, which are not always
desirable for a formative scholarly process. So while there are temporary
solutions such as requiring students not to use complete names, or not to
include photos in public blogs in order to protect their identity, there is

91 http://www.linkedin.com/
92 http://www.myspace.com/
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still the issue of intellectual property rights that support one’s sharing
ideas or feelings in public.

There are also those who think that the solution is having an educational
intranet that will have blog systems that can only be consulted by
authorized users, or having limited domains defined by a certain type of
user subject to restricted access based on their profile (blogs for students,
teachers, director, etc.).

The most known open access blog system is BLOGGER [93]. This is
a free service that is a part of the resources offered by Google to its
users. It allows the user to create a blog account in the language
that s/he prefers and to share authorship with friends.

WORDPRESS [94] is one of the best known tools for integrating blog
services, that is, placing contributions of distinct blogs together. It is
an open source content management system distributed under GPL
(General Public License); it uses a friendly WYSIWYG interface (What
you see is what you get).

The Wiki and collaborative knowledge building

Wikipedia (2007) says a wiki is a collection of Web pages designed to

enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content, using a
simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative
websites and to power community websites. Wikis are used in business to
provide intranet and knowledge management systems.

At first glance, a wiki is very much like a blog which allows the individual
user to create, not just browse or read. Nevertheless, blogs and wikis are
very distinct interactive tools.

 A big difference is that every page of a blog is individually

authored, while each wiki page is collectively authored. In a blog it
is easy to identify who wrote what and when because each
contribution has author identification, date and time of the last
modification. In a wiki, the history keeps record of who
contributed what and when, but the final version is a collective

93 https://www.blogger.com/start
94 http://wordpress.org/
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product and the end user does not keep abreast of the ideas
presented by each contributor.
 Wikis’ history preserves the contributions to each page making it
possible to find previous versions, using them as the actual page
if necessary. Blogs do not preserve previous versions of a page;
the author can edit them whenever he desires; however, when
they are saved, the page is changed forever.
 Blogs publish pages in chronological order, while a wiki publishes
pages as they are being constructed, always presenting the current
version.

According to Pearce (2005) the wiki is gaining traction in education, as an

ideal tool for the increasing amount of collaborative work done by both
students and teachers. Students might use a wiki to collaborate on a
group report, compile data or share the results of their research, while
faculty might use the wiki to collaboratively author the structure and
curriculum of a course, and the wiki can then serve as part of each
person's course web site.

A report on Wikis from Educause Learning Initiative (2005) highlights pros

and cons about wikis in education:

Wikis allow faculty and students to engage in collaborative

activities that might not be possible in a classroom. Their
flexibility will encourage broader adoption [of wikis]—by both
students and faculty. A wiki’s versioning capability can show the
evolution of thought processes as students interact with the site
and its content and allows for teachers to assess an ongoing
project in ways not previously possible.

Because users can modify the content of a wiki (add to, edit,
delete materials), allowing such manipulation of the site’s
information carries some risks. Thus, wikis are often monitored
to ensure that inappropriate language, spam, and incorrect or
inappropriate content are not allowed. This can be both time-
consuming and personnel-intensive. As a result, many wikis
require authorization so only group members can modify
content.

In order to diminish the risk of using open access wiki tools for
collaborative knowledge construction, wiki spaces ought to have
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membership and accepted rules. In this way, what is published is

supported by a known author, and vandalism (e.g., leaving undesired
footprints) is minimized.

Some of the most famous wiki engines are found at MEDIAHAWK

[95], WIKIDOT [96], WIKISPACES [97], WETPAINT [98], all of them
open access wiki systems that control who contributes through
membership. It is possible to create web pages for each one of the
tasks to be done, or for each group of collaborators.

Collaborative productivity tools

The wiki philosophy has been implemented with productivity tools (see P
based ICTE), both for open access and commercial tools.

GOOGLE DOCS [99] is an open access application that supports the

wiki philosophy in regard to word processing, spreadsheet or
presentations building. It allows the collaborative work of creating,
editing, and publishing text documents and/or doing digital
spreadsheets on the web. The final work can be exported to
different formats.

People who want to collaboratively create and professionally edit

documents may consider using OFFICE LIFE workspace [100] from
Microsoft, provided that all collaborators make use of Microsoft’s
Office. It is announced [ibid] that in a few steps you can organize,
manage and share documents, notes, spreadsheets, presentations,
contacts, to-do lists, and more. You can add one or more documents
including Microsoft Office Excel worksheets, Office Word documents,
and Office PowerPoint presentations.

Network Forums

Network forums are systems which allow discussions in virtual spaces.

Topics are debated using digital tools that allow one to take an active part
in the collective analysis and construction of knowledge. A network

95 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
96 http://www.wikidot.com/
97 http://wikispaces.com
98 http://www.wetpaint.com/
99 http://docs.google
100 http://ask.officelive.com/workspace/
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forum has one or more discussion seeds, planted by the forum facilitator.
Participants can respond to single postings by replying to them, or can
thread ideas by using illation strategies that lead to creation of collective
knowledge.

The scope of the forums is bound to the communities that they serve;
this is to say, the forums are conducted among people who belong to a
certain group or virtual community, people who share certain interests or
objectives and who feel comfortable exchanging ideas with other
participants (Collison, Elbaum, Haavind, & Tinker, 2000).

Management Systems for Group of Interests like those offered by

YAHOO GROUPS [101] or GOOGLE GROUPS [102] have made it
possible for many educators and students to participate in web
communities united by common interests. In order to belong to a
group it is necessary to enroll by invitation or by application (some
communities are restricted, others have free enrollment; some have
one moderator or several moderators who control the information
and others do not have any). In order to participate, it is necessary
to register using a key and to follow web etiquette. To track the
activity of the group or virtual community, email can be used to
update any developments and report frequency of use and other
issues. Systems for administering interest groups not only offer the
possibility of doing forums, but allow information to be shared
directly (organized files in folders) or by links to web sites where the
information is available.

Video lecture capturing

There are different occasions in which faculty need to present content

using digital video. Depending on the need, various tools are available.

Short video episodes capturing the presenter and materials that s/he is
using, can be prepared with Tools for processing video and digital sound and
shared on the internet using Tools for sharing digital products on Internet., both
discussed in this book, under the topic, Productivity However, when it is
convenient to upload a lecture longer than 10 minutes, the above
solution might not work because of the restricted size of videos that can
be uploaded to free servers. At this point, access to streaming video

101 http://es.groups.yahoo.com/
102 http://groups.google.es/
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servers (also called digital repositories) where large size videos can be
uploaded and accessed if needed.

Regardless of the lecture size, there may be a need to give students direct
access to content embedded in video lectures. This may be the case of
remedial course units where students need to review concepts as they use
them; that is, without having to review all the tapes; only those episodes
where each concept is mentioned. Students may also not have good
learning skills and may need to refine concepts by reviewing explanations
or segments of a video that deal with hard-to-learn topics. Video lecture
capturing systems help solve this problem.

Commercial systems such as TEGRITY CAMPUS 2.0 [103] and open

access systems such as PANOPTO [104] allow faculty to record their
presentations and to share them online via streaming video. In
addition, they allow viewers to search for keywords through
metadata embedded in power point presentations, and to surf
through the thumbnails of the slides. These features have
positioned these products as resources that can help students
selectively review explanations about topics hard to understand
without listening to the whole tape. Faculty can create collections of
video recordings that are available to complement classroom
sessions and that they can link from online course shells at the
learning management system in use. Also, faculty can follow
students’ activity online and do research on learning and teaching
supported with multiple media.

Tools for Synchronous Interaction

Synchronous interactions on the web that permit live dialog (chat) using
text, voice or video through the Internet are becoming increasingly
important to individuals who must agree on a single digital space.

103 http://www.tegrity.com/
104 http://www.panopto.com/
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Chat rooms

Chat rooms were mentioned before as allowing synchronous text

conferencing between people that agree to meet at a given time in a given
virtual space to talk about something of shared interest. Their great virtue
is that there is practically no limit to the number of participants who can
simultaneously follow or actively participate in the conversation; this may
be, at the same time, their major weakness, since depending on the
number of postings per minute, the complexity and speed of the
interaction can become an issue.

Another issue in these rooms is the type of conversations that can

emerge. There is social dialogue and then there is pragmatic dialogue.
Moderators typically promote social dialogue in private text interactions
among participants, while pragmatic dialogue is fostered via interventions
that either help focus or deepen the dialogue.

Since chat rooms can remain open during long periods of time and their
content can be saved as long as needed, the scope of text-based chat
rooms is wide and asynchronous interaction may happen.

Multimedia Instant Messaging Systems

Multimedia instant messaging systems are well known synchronous

interaction devices. They permit sending and receiving messages between
users who have previously agreed to establish communication using voice
or video on the Internet, with the possibility of chatting via text and of
sharing digital files as needed. These systems are deployed in a virtual
space that the instant messaging system creates for each group.

Multimedia Instant Messaging Systems such as SKYPE [105], MSN

Messenger [106], AIM [107] and ICQ [108] are very popular not
just for being free but also for allowing effective multimedia online
interaction with others; they are easily available, expansive and very
powerful. These systems allow a user to know which of his contacts
are online and their level of readiness (available, busy, out -to-

105 http://skype.com
106 http://www.msn.com/
107 http://dashboard.aim.com/aim
108 http://www.icq.com/
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lunch). They also allow for the blocking or enabling of individuals on

the contact list, the saving of textual conversations, knowing if your
partner is typing a message in the dialog window, and expressing
feelings and sensations through icons or animations. On the other
hand, it is possible to dialog with groups, each with its own identifier
(photo, drawing, font), and one or more parallel conversations using
digital cameras, microphones and speakers.

A variant of these systems is Internet Telephony. This feature is

available in SKYPE and other voice-on-internet providers, where in
addition to providing a system of voice and text interaction on
Internet, it is possible to rent phone lines that are handled by the
network at a reduced price.

Educationally, multimedia instant messaging has garnered a lot of

strength among the members of learning communities. Free tools
like PRONTO [109] that run on multiple LMS platforms make it
possible for members of each virtual classroom to interact by voice
or text so that the members of the educational community may be
active. Personal experiences using this system in faculty
development and graduate courses show that it is an effective way
to contact students (who often do not read their email) when you
make the tool available to them. It also builds community with and
among them by holding voice dialogs and text chatting.

Video Conferencing Systems

Video Conferencing (VC) is becoming an increasingly important way to

engage in educational or organizational activities that require direct
multimedia interaction among participants who are physically distributed.
Each of them needs to have access to an internet connection with high
bandwidth, use of a headset to be able to listen and talk without echo,
and install those tools required by the VC System that make multimedia
interaction viable. The number of participants, the need to record the
interaction or not, and the security policies and licenses available all
impact the selection of best VC systems to use.

Some instant messaging systems—such as SKYPE and MSN—offer

users the possibility of videoconferencing between two people; each
member should have a web cam and headset, and be connected to

109 http://www.wimba.com/products/wimba_pronto/
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a high band width Internet service. Extensions of these systems—

like FESTOON [110]—allow the grouping of up to six users limited by
the communication channel that is available (the frequency of
images can limit and reduce the sound when there is narrow
bandwidth).

Integrated platforms for videoconferencing also exist for large

numbers of users such as iLINC [111], WIMBA [112] and
ELLUMINATE [113], from the commercial side. DIM DIM [114] and
WizIQ [115] have won good reputation as reliable and expandable
open access systems. In these platforms there are virtual
classrooms in which the instructors have privileges and can deploy
electronic presentations, present websites, share resources with
participants, like managing oral dialog with icons that ask for the
floor, applaud, ask a question, etc. The participants must have
headsets and microphones, but when the quality of the Internet
communication is unknown the telephone may also be used. It is
always possible to use text and voice chat. For those who do not
attend the session, it can be taped and posted on the Internet as a
streaming video.

It is also possible to use ICTE that allow video and high quality
sound, that use sufficient bandwidth and that demand investment in
equipment and communication services at each communication
point. This is the case of videoconference rooms with POLYCOM
[116] equipment which makes dialogs possible among groups in
different places who can see and hear one another.

Tools for hybrid synchronous / asynchronous interaction

Learning communities such as courses and study groups usually need to

combine different types of resources and interaction spaces. In support
of this there are course/learning management systems and community
management systems that let faculty and students benefit from a variety
of opportunities.

110 http://festoon.softonic.com/
111 http://www.ilinc.com/
112 http://Wimba.com
113 http://www.elluminate.com/
114 http://www.dimdim.com/
115 http://www.wiziq.com/home/
116 http://www.polycom.com/index2.html
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Course delivery systems

Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Content Management Systems

(CMS) are used to support course activities (e.g., instruction delivery,
students’ interaction, knowledge building, testing) and to simplify
administrative tasks such as grade management.

Each of these systems include forum management utilities. Discussions

are conducted in global forums (involving all community members) or
group forums (involving only select members from the community of
learners). Some of these forums are moderated (a facilitator helps to
maintain the focus and deepen the discussion) and others are open, un-
moderated (e.g., social or technical ) forums. Most of LMS and CMS also
allow blogs and wikis to be included to support reflection on learning
objects with blogs and/or collaborative creation of knowledge with wikis.

MOODLE [117], acronym for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic

Learning Environment”, is an open source solution that has garnered
wide popularity within the community of users who utilize, maintain
and improve it. The same situation exists with SAKAI [118], an open
source environment used to foster collaboration and learning in
education.

Commercial LMS, such as BLACKBOARD [119] and WEBCT [120] are

strongly supported due to their high quality applications and support
services. Recently, these two companies merged in order to make
their LMS capabilities even stronger.

Community management systems

Professional development does not always occur in terms of courses but through
voluntary participation in learning communities, in particular, communities of practice.
Social networking can be a solution particularly when it is driven by the participants;
that is, when they have the opportunity to co-lead the effort by having full control of
technologies in use.

117 http://moodle.org
118 http://sakaiproject.org/portal
119 http://blackboard.com/
120 http://www.webct.com/
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Open access solutions such as NING [121] can be useful. The

creator defines what resources s/he wants to encourage participants
to use (e.g., forums, blogs, pictures, videos), and invites initial
members. Each person can invite other people and the network
grows as the voice of its relevance is spread.

SECOND LIFE [122] is a free online virtual world imagined and

created by its Residents. It is Internet’s largest user-created, 3D
virtual world community. From the moment you enter Second Life,
you'll discover a fast-growing digital world filled with people,
entertainment, experiences and opportunity.

121 http://www.ning.com/
122 http://secondlife.com/showcase/education/
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