Thing 16...

Wiki's are very cool. It seems to be very easy to use and for teachers that's a big plus. I like the fact that it anyone can add new content, which only encourages students to be life long learners. However, I can't help but have a bit of an uneasy feeling as well....All you need is one goofball to ruin it for everyone. So if it can be tightly monitored, or secured in some way that will make it safe for everyone, then I'm all in favor of it.

I would like to have a wiki page for grade level teachers. Maybe one page per grade level, where as teachers we can share, and post new activities and experiences. It's so hard for me to keep up with all the new changes, that I'm sure that I'm not the only one. So maybe a Wiki page for teachers would be awesome place to ease teachers in.

Thing 15...

It won't be long, till we start telling our kids how libraries actually used to have a huge amount of books for people to check out. The information age is slowly changing the way we live our lives and it's only a matter of time before the libraries will be affected as well. With that being said, I do believe that schools need to start to make the right choices about where to go to for the future. If you can have a book on-line and read it whenever you want, or drive 2 blocks away in your car during a certain time window during the week for a book that may or may not be there, is an argument that won't be too hard to answer. Having a virtual libary where you can chat with your libarian and get all the information you need when you need it, is exactly where we are heading to.
Especially now, given the price of gas is almost $4 a gallon, people are really watchful about where and how they spend their money and time. There won't be a huge demand for libraries to maintane new books, when they could easily be avaible on-line for a cheaper price. The same argument is also true for the consumer who might have to drive out and waste a bit of gas and time, when they might be able to find their books home and on-line. I don't have any problems with change, but for those of you do might, you should try adjusting now because the tide is coming.

Thing 14...

I just finished reading a blog about weblins from technorati. Think of it as another avatar only you can only see others when you have one. It's kinda cool, and I would never have know about this had I not been surfing around the teched blogs there. Earlier I was also reading about Google Earth Girl and how she is going to a conference, learning how to use more of the tools of google earth. Clearly there is sooooo much information there, that I can just spend the rest of the summer and still not get past the first page. I want to know if anyone else is interested in downloading a weblin. If you do, you can see my new avatar. I'm wondering how I'm going to use this for an education setting.....There'll be a meeting later on where others will be discusing this very topic. I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing more weblins around these pages.

Thing 13...

Del.iciou.us is an awesome site. I love being able to find something specific and just tag it, without having to worry about which folder to place it in my favorites (which now has so many pages, that it's hard to keep up with it all). This site manages all the pages that I found interesting, and then I can go and categorize it however I feel. I often find myself stuck to my home computer, mainly because of all the sites that I have saved to my favorites....Well those days are soon going to be gone, thanks to this.

By searching around through other peoples tags, I found was a very cool feature. It's like being able to search through someone's personal computer and find exactly what they like. This really brings in those hard to find sites to a much wider audience.

As far as instruction wise goes, I think this can be a great researching aid. Google and Yahoo, can only do so much, but when you start seaching through tags, and specific tags, then you'll find exactly what you're looking for.

Thing 12...

I always enjoy reading what everyone has to say. Even if we disagree, I still enjoy reading where that person is coming from. This time around, I discovered how important leaving comments are. I feel like a student who has just turned in a paper, and waiting to find out what my teacher has to say about it. Therefore, it does help to bring in others who don't normally leave comments (a.k.a YOU) by inviting them in.
I'm also going to start responding more to those who have left comments. I feel that's just like sending thank-you notes to those who have given you gifts at a party. It can be a bit of drag, but for those who gave the gifts, might find it very warming and welcoming. Those who leave comments like to also know that what they wrote has actually been read. So that's going to be keeping me busy now for the duration of the summer. Which reminds me, I need to send those thank you cards out from my wedding......5 years ago.

Thing 11....

Everytime I enter a bookstore I feel like I could stay there all day. Just picking up a good book and learning something new, is such a great feeling. Sooooo...I had a great time creating my list of books from LibraryThing. I didn't care too much for the groups. I couldn't find a group that I would be interested in, and it was a little overwhelming to have so many groups listed on one page.

What I enjoyed was finding books that I had already read, by searching through tags. This might help students understand keywords when searching for books. I also like the idea of having them create their favorite books, and also books they would like to read. They can share their reviews on what they liked or didn't like about it.

Thing 10.....

Working with these pict tools was really cool. I liked how I was able to play around and get what I wanted. However, I would like to know how to find a way to save a comic strip that I really liked (http://www.gocomics.com/reallifeadventures/) and play around with that. Regardless, I enjoyed finding new ways to play with the tons of picts that I have. It's like having a whole new set of picts all over again.

For the inspirational picts I used http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php I thought this was a very easy and friendly site. I didn't need to sign up, which I really like, (too many steps and I'm outta here). I recommend this site, if you enjoy these kinds of things.

The other site I used http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ I thought it was a bit of a hassel. One too many steps, and when I tried to upload a photo to use a comic bubble, I spent almost all afternoon trying to figure out how to place the bubble. I do like the calvin & hobbes comic, but there wasn't a big pool of stuff that I liked in their library.

I think I can use this to show the kids what makes sense in their writing. It's easy to just write about anything, but when you have to relate it to a topic or a picture, then you have to do some thinking.


































Made with free image tools @ TXT2PIC.com

Thing 9....

Now that I've taken a break from exploring all the cool blogs out there, I think I can share some of my thoughts. First, I think the only problem that I have is just having to sort and explore all the cool stuff out there. There is sooooo many cool blogs that I have to share a few that I really liked:
http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/ - This talks about a lot of cool issues that revolve around education.
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/- I really enjoyed this blog because there are lot of new education technology ideas that I know I need to know.

As far as how I got these feeds. I just copied and pasted the address bar onto the google reader. I know that there's the RSS button, but I need to install that and I'm going to have to go back and find out how to do that again.

I used a lot of the links that was provided in the playground and also just searched around websites that I visit that have blogs.

Thing 8....

The way I surf the internet has now officially changed due to the RSS feeds. I kinda knew what they were about, but I didn't know exactly where and how to get the feeds. Now all the sites that I always check up on, will all be updated on my google reader. That's pretty cool. I think this will save me a lot of time of having to go back and forth through all the pages. Now I might have time to mow the lawn......hey wait a minute!!!
I'm thinking of using this for sorts of things. The first thing that comes to mind is tracking the weather. When we study weather, we can use the rss feeds and focus on the updates and focus on real time learning. Sounds like fun already.

Thing 7...

Google has always been a page that I knew had a lot of cool tools, but just never actually gone in and used any of them. I found the photos to be a little bit of a hassle. Mainly because my photos are on another computer and I was trying to transfer the ones I have on Flickr over, without it being a big hassle. I think there's still a way, I just haven't given up yet. I do however like the google documents, and I plan on using that with my grade level team next year. I think just posting our notes or agendas on there will be helpful. Not to mention, very easy to retrieve, which for me has not been my strongest suite.


Update - Since my link to my igoogle page didn't work out that well, I took a pict of it. Here it is....