Thing 13

A tagging we will go, hi ho the dairy-o..... Well I see this Thing to really be useful in my life. First just as a teacher, I can select and tag all those site that I use for just one lesson and all those I think are interesting and want to go back to. I usually save the sites I use in my browser and I loose the others or have to search anew each time. As a grad student I can't even believe I haven't used this before. I actually did have a diigo account that I did not utilize. I just peeked in at other's tags occasionally without realizing the potential of sharing and building an awesome network.

Thing 12:

I thought that cool cat teacher had such a good point about teaching kids to comment. We teach so many things, but taking the time to validate someone else's ideas or thoughts is such an important skill to teach. I have success reaching and connecting to "tough" high school kids by using this method. I have to be genuine, but really it is not hard to find something good to say about students. Another great post today on a blog I am following called Learning is Messy talks about making someone's day with a positive post. I branched out and actually commented on his sight. I was nervous and accidentally posted twice. But as I am learning, it is not the mistakes you make that matters, but that you are learning from them. The blog on edublogger's etiquitte makes the point that if you do not reply or comment you are not giving the blogger any verification that someone is out there and he is being heard. In other words lurking is only half of the experience. Don't cheat yourself and others from your ideas.

Thing 11:

I have already set up an account on Shelfari but I went ahead and looked at LibraryThing. I set up an account and added 5 books for the experience. I found a group on historical fiction which had some very interesting opinions and posts about this genre. I think that Shelfari is easier to use and has a nicer look to the book collection with the bookcase where the book covers are displayed. I am currently in a book club and I am pretty sure the other members do not know about this technology. When the semester ends, I plan on adding lots of books to my shelf and sharing with them. It will be nice to have a place to share my reviews and show what I have read. I hope to entice them all to do the same with me.

Thing 10:

The image maker is a lot of fun and I can see adding these into power points, on quizzes, and really anyplace a bit of humor or fun is called for. This sunny picture was created with the Happy Face Generator. I found it fairly easy to produce the image and easy to insert as a picture. I played around with Wordle but did not save it on the gallery. I made an image with paint of my Reader subscription list that I hope to figure out how to insert it in my blog. I used the directions that I found on google under "how to copy part of a webpage". I am already using Glogster with my students. This is a very creative virtual poster website that banishes last minute runs to the store for poster board for that project that your kids don't remember having until you are already in your jammies.

Thing 9:

I was able to find very interesting blogs using several of the search tools. Google search was easy enough, but edublog's award winners was very nice. Being a science teacher, I found a blog called Using Blogs in Science Education that shouted for me to subscribe. It was nice that each blog was nominated for an award so my confidence in finding interesting, pertinent posts was very high. I did find several there to add to my Reader and also tried School Library Blogs on Suprglu. I found the "pipes" idea was a bit confusing, but I added yet another blog from this site about Young Adult Library Information. My favorite way to find blogs is through a trusted blogger's blogroll. I figured that Cool Cat Teacher's Blog is used to teach this Thing and I loved the idea of a circle of the wise, so borrowing blogs from Cool Cat's blogroll was honoring her wisdom.

Thing 8:

Rss feeds are very useful. I can now get the updated news from all my favorite sites. It really saves time by getting the update and not having to open each site individually. As a teacher and librarian I would have feeds from several sites about books, best practices, and new ideas about lessons. There is only so much time to research and this brings it to you.

EDIT: Two blogs that I am following are The Weather Channel and Science News.

Thing 7

Google aps have certainly changed my mind forever about Google. I have always enjoyed the simplicity and accessibility of the search engine, but I had no idea of the many applications that were available. Two of my favorites are Google Calendar and Google Scholar. I have 3 very involved teens, a husband, and now my own schedule includes work and grad school. My calendar was challenging to say the least. I just started adding events and asked my 10th grade son to send me his Google Calendar to merge with mine. I have grandiose plans of having all 5 family members' commitments in one place. The best part is having it available on the web to the family. I plan on adding my wall calendar events to this new Google Calendar and having each family member create a calendar to share with mine. Right now I have made this public in order to share it for this post. After the grades are in, I will go back and make it private. This picture shows a sample of the great beginnings. The educational uses of this application might be to have a class calendar that is available to students and parents. I would also encourage students to set up a calendar among classmates to coordinate time available to work on projects or have a study group. My Destination Imagination team could certainly have benefited from a merged Google calendar to set up practice times.
Google Scholar has already helped me out with research for reliable articles for some of our discussions in this class. This would be a preference in research over students using just plain Google which responds too broadly for most students who need help in narrowing their focus.
Just an aside, I have started using Google Chrome as my web browser. I am amazed at its speed compared to Internet Explorer. I am learning more benefits of this browser every week or so, but it is not allowed by the Katy ISD web application for lesson plans.