Do You Know Infographic?

An infographic is an image that represents knowledge, information, or data. It is like an technical posters. Why is an infographic interesting and attracts people's attention? Well, an infographic has a good looking, and mostly the information it contains are easy to understand along with the pictures it provides, so that makes people wants to read an infographic more than a book.

Major concepts:

• Why is an infographic better than a book
• How to create an awesome infographic
• What is infographic

Research

• According to the research, publisher that use infographic are more success in the work in average of 12% than those who doesn't. 

Excellent Tips

• Choose a topic- Choose an interesting topic then think of a title that catches attention.
• Sources- Include a diversity of sources and statistics.
• Promoting- Promoting online (facebook, twitter, social media websites). And make it easy to share (best to use embed).
• Avoid- Avoid white backgrounds and don't include too much words in the infographic.
• Notify- Notify a network of websites about the infographic to promote and get more views.
• Search ranking- Pay attention to search ranking. There are about 34,000 searches conducts in google every seconds, and 75% of that people doesn't scroll past first page.

How To Measure Your Success?

• Determining the increase in inbound links using google webmaster tools.
• Accessing image file loads of the infographic in your server logs.
• Determine the amount of followers, fans, sharing on social media websites.

Potential Strength/ Advantages

• Easy to follow- The author gave clear steps to follow.
• Fits the present- The topic fits the present, because people nowadays use computers in their daily life and infographic may be helpful.
• Research- The research shows that it really works and the source is trustworthy.

Potential problems/ Limitations/ Disadvantages

• The readers who wants to follow the instruction should have basic skills of technology, because they need to make the infographic look nice and the usage of languages affect too.
• First link- The article claimed that according to the research, most people click on few first link they saw in google, that means if you are planning to make an infographic, you should make it perfect.
• Privacy- The infographic should be unique and you have to make sure that it doesn't look similar to others because when it comes to online, you might can't delete it, and if you copy other's idea, you'll be in trouble.

Questions

• How to know that the infographic is good enough?
• What do you think is better, books or infographics?

"What Is An Infographic? A Graphic to Define Infographics." Customer Magnetism. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. <http://www.customermagnetism.com/infographics/what-is-an-infographic/?asid=c228f21b>.

Fun Apps That Teaches

There are many fun apps that teaches you something but you might not notice it. Even games that you think it's non-sense and has no good might teach you something too. I have many favorite apps and I think about it, there are good things too. These are some of my favorite apps that teaches something:

• Angry Birds- This app is very popular among every ages. You might think that it is just a game, but I can tell you that it teaches several things to kids. The instruction is to estimate the distance and angles and throw the birds. See, that is one of the learning potential, kids estimate the distance and angles. The game provides more than one character, there are many kinds of birds we can use. That is another potential, kids know how to differentiate the characters and they know which one gives them more points.                            
•  Hay Day- This is a farming game. The simple target of this game is for you to be able to control and make money from the farm. It teaches players to think and plan (how will you make money?). You have to know how to manage the farm without losing benefits.
• Plant vs. Zombies - This is my favorite game. The players are predicting and estimating in this game. They have to know when will the zombies get to them. They also need to know when and where to grow materials that helps them from zombies. There are also some evolutionary and adaptations concepts in the game.

Potential strength/ advantages

• Fun- Some apps are very interesting and give us entertainment.
• Practice skills- For apps that teaches something, you might not notice when you use it but it is already like you're practicing.
• Useful - some apps helps your life easier, you can use it in classroom and etc.

Potential problems/ limitations/ disadvantages

• Using in the wrong way- First thing is most applications has their main target. What did it gives you? Example, games might give you entertainment. Sometimes it teaches something in additional but some people use it in the wrong way. Example, action games might teach you that it is bad to kill but some kids wanted to follow. 
• Parents - Like I said before, some games are violent, so it might need a parent or an adult to watch the kids carefully.

 "Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom." : Apps That Teach! (And Might Be Fun Too..). N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2012. <http://blog.web20classroom.org/2012/09/apps-that-teach-and-might-be-fun-too.html>.
http://blog.web20classroom.org/2012/09/apps-that-teach-and-might-be-fun-too.html

10 Useful Video Sites For Educators

Technologies are very helpful when we're talking about education. Internet is a huge sources of education. So I will introduce you 10 useful video sites for educators.

10 Videos Sites:

1. YouTube - This site is the most common video site. It is a big sources of all kinds of videos. Firstly, this is because the site is safety. Secondly, the site works for most countries. And lastly, the content from other sites is pretty much found in YouTube too.
2. TED-ed - TED-ed is well known too but the difference from YouTube is that mainly the content are especially for education. This is useful only for education, it contains many different lessons videos.
3. TeacherTube - This site is focused on education videos. But it is different from TED-ed because this site also allows you to share your own videos or see videos that are uploaded by other teachers too.
4. Edutopia - Edutopia is a  great source of learning. Not only you will find videos here, but also blogs, and more. The site is well-arranged and it is very easy to use because it sorts everything by grade levels.
5. YouTubeEdu - This is another YouTube channel used especially for education. You can find every levels of education here including life-long education. But the content is limited because mainly people use the main YouTube site.
6. Classroom Clips - The content in classroom clips are media in the form of videos and audios. 
7. neoK12 - Educational source of kids in K-12. All contents are sorted by subjects. The contents not just include videos but also puzzle games, quizzes, pictures, presentations, and much more.
8. OV Guide - Mainly the contents are featured by author readings and instructional videos.
9. Brightstorm - This site is a homework helper for students. It is a time-saving site. There are variety of subjects. It also include Test-prep like SAT, ACT, and PSAT. 
10. Zane Education - This site is well-known for visual education. The contents included quizzes, lesson plans, videos, and study tools.

Potential Strength/ Advantages:

1. Time-saving - It save lots of time because you can search it in your house, school, etc. Because technologies nowadays are very common. You don't have to do experiment or polls or anything because you can find it online.
2. Comfortable/Money saving - It is comfortable because you may use the internet almost anytime. It is money saving because you don't have to buy books or hire a tutor to help you on education.
3. Variety of  answers - You can search for many people's opinion and compare them.

Potential Problems/ Limitations/ Disadvantages:

1. Courses availability - There are limits of courses available online.
2. Random answers - Some websites are not trustworthy so you might get the wrong answer if you don't research well.
3. Contacting instructors- You may have problem accessing to instructors because internet is a world-wide system, the instructors may not be from your country.

I think this blog is very useful because it introduced lots of websites. The most important thing when you do searching is you need to search at least 5 sites. You cannot use only 1 site because you have to compare the contents you get.

Questions:

• How's online site useful?
• Why do people nowadays focused on mostly online education? Is it better than learning in schools?

 "15 Great Video Sites For Educators - Edgalaxy - Cool Stuff For Nerdy Teachers - Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet." 15 Great Video Sites For Educators. N.p., 3 Sept. 2012. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. <http://www.edgalaxy.com/journal/2012/9/3/15-great-video-sites-for-educators.html>.

Halloween Fun

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13 New Languages Added To Google Voice Search App

 

  As we know, google is the most famous and biggest search engine. It offers voice search for a while. They also offers voice search app for iPhone as a competitor to Siri. The 13 new languages that has added up to the application are Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, European Portuguese, Finnish, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, and Swedish. In total, google supports 42 languages in total. This application is available for 46 countries. 

New Features:

• Languages added- 13 languages are added ( which is more than Siri supported)

• Allows many countries to download- It is supports in 42 countries

• Available for many devices- Not only iPhone like Siri does but it is available for Android, tablets, iPhone, etc.

The application only support 1 language at a time. By the way, who's going to speak many different languages in 1 sentence right? The new languages will be available when you set up in language setting menu. 

 The potential strength that could make Apple upgrade Siri is that Google Voice Search supports more languages. Siri has not more than 20 languages. And the Google Voice Search is available for iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Mobile, Android Mobile, Tablets (like iPad). But Siri is only available in iPhone 4s.  

However, there's a limitation. It might be sad for some countries that the application is not available but I'm sure that Google would improve the application soon. According to this review, There's negative and positive for both application. I can't guarantee which one is the best because I haven't try Google Voice Search but I did try on Siri. Honestly, I don't feel that is is very useful for me. By the way, it is a good start.

Check out this video for more idea:   

 

"SlashGear." Google Adds 13 New Languages to Voice Search -. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2012.<http://www.slashgear.com/google-adds-13-new-languages-to-voice-search-17243165/>.

"Trending Stories." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Aug. 2012. <http://mashable.com/2012/06/29/google-voice-search-siri/>.

Kosner, Anthony Wing. "Google's New Voice-Powered Search For IOS Makes Siri Look Like She's Going Nowhere." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 Aug. 2012. Web. 22 Aug. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/08/10/googles-new-voice-powered-search-for-ios-makes-siri-look-like-shes-going-nowhere/>.