Week 4, Thing # 's 8 & 9

Since my last post, I have been playing around with RSS feeds. I already had an iGoogle page made so I have been adding feed to that since this is the home page on my computer. I have added a number of feeds: Joyce Valenza's Never Ending Search blog, David Warlick's 2 cents blog, Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog and School Library Journal's Pocasts. Having these feeds on my home page is very convenient. The drawback is that titles of the blog posts are given so you have to go into the blog and read for the content - there is no clip that you can read to get a sense of the post.
That's where Bloglines come in. I set up an account and have a list of feeds that are different from those on my iGoogle homepage. These are the blogs and sites that I just want to skim through quickly. I have some books review sites, health sites, etc. I also added a few sites that were recommended in the lesson.
I can't though figure out how to share this. What I get on my screen at Bloglines doesn't look like what is posted on the lesson tips. I have been trying to add my feed list to my blog but haven't had much luck. I'll keep trying.
I quickly played with Technorati and Google Blog Search. When I need something specific, I'll spend more time there. Now I know that they exist, I'll use them when I need them.
I think that setting up a Bloglines or Google Reader account for students would be a neat way for them to keep current on info for research projects.

Week 3, Thing #7: Technology

Technology - when I look back at the beginning of my teaching career, the Commodore 64 was a new technology! Look how far we have come in 20 years! Now I can't conceive of teaching or living without technology.

What to write about?

Well I do love my digital camera - even though I really need to get better at understanding all the features. I really just like to be able to point and shoot. I also love that I can store these pictures on CDs instead of big bulky books.

I also found Skype to be a real money saver. My daughter spent 2 years in the Caribbean going to school and we used Skype to communicate. My son who lives in another city uses Skype to call us. Can you imagine the phone bills if we used the regular phones?

She also posted a weekly blog. This gave me a real insight into her experiences and it helped her connect when she was far from home , family and friends.

I find that I am beginning to take these technologies for granted; maybe taking them for granted is not what I mean, but this blog thing, Skype, etc have made communication so much easier. It is overwhelming at times because technology is advancing so quickly. I just wish things would slow down for a bit so I can take the time to really get good at using them!

Addendum to Previous Post

I got the card to show! Apparently, I didn't get the full html code the first time.

Don't you just love it when you persevere and then it WORKS!!!

Week 3 Thing #5 and #6 : Flickr

Beam Me Up!

Flickr is really overwhelming! I can see that in some ways it can be a big time waster. However, I can also see that it can be an efficient way of sharing photos with family. After having a recent experience in trying to share about 25 photos with my cousin and niece via email ( it didn't work because the file was too big - I ended up burning a CD) I can see that this would be an easier way of sharing once you have set up the account.

I liked the trading card site. I was able to create a card fairly quickly using one of the pictures already on my computer. Off the top of my head, I can see this being used for a unit on Endangered Species - student could create cards based on their research and then create a game of some sort using the cards. I've added another section to my page layout: I will post any creations that I made by working through this tutorial.

OK, here's a photo I found in Flickr. It's a picture of the Mackinaw Bridge in Michigan. I've activated a link (I hope) to it.

I was in Joyce Valenza's Edublog and she had a link called 11Craziest Ways to Browse Flickr
I included it here because it's the topic of the week.

Bottom line: right now this Flickr is a bit overwhelming.

P.S. For some reason the trading card I made didn't come up on my blog. I'll have to try again. Also, I created links to a picture that I found on Flickr and tried to insert it directly to the text area of the blog but that didn't work either.

School Library Learning 2.0 #3(Week 2)

Well that was fun! I was able to create my own avatar using Yahoo's avatar creating site and I posted it to my blog which was also cool!
I wasn't sure where I was supposed to paste the html code but put it into the text box with a title and it worked! How neat is that!
So how would I use this with teachers? I think that for other newbies like me, just showing them how easy it was to set up a blog and to use the tools that are on the 'net will give them an idea of what their students are doing now and help teachers to catch up with their students.
I've been sold on the idea of students and teacher blogging as a way of developing literacy, but I probably wouldn't use this site to do it. We have a site called Ontario Blogs which is an educational blog site that has teacher controls built in. Students' posts aren't published until they have been vetted by the teacher. They even include an extensive help and teaching tips section that includes assessment and evaluation of blogs as part of the curriculum.
I have added the Ontario Blogs link to my List of Favorite Sites - did this on my own! I just followed the same instructions as posting my avatar and found the section for adding links.
So far so easy!

Jumping In with Both Feet

After visiting Joyce Valenza's Edublog, I clicked on one of the links that she posted for the California Library Association's free Web 2.0 tutorials. Well after reading the About section, I decided to wade right in and begin the tutorials, even though this thing started at the beginning of June and it is now August! I'm going to commit to working through as many of the tutorials as I can - with the goal of being able to share what I have learned with the teacher librarians in my district.
So this is the first 'Thing' - creating a blog! I've always wanted to start one but I had no purpose really until now.
Right now I need to create and avatar (whatever that is).