Thing 23

Oh thing

How I will miss thee!
The blogging into the wee hours of the night,

Finding and tagging oh so delicious sites,
Leaving and reading my comments and questions,
Always checking my blog for your suggestions,
From screencasts to podcasts and selections galore,
A variety of 2.0 tools, but there's still so much more!

Youtube was only one of the few that I've seen,
And I've already had experience capturing things on the screen,
But the new things I learned have been oh so much fun,
I still can't believe we're just about done!
Mashups I adore and I love leaving tweets,
Voicethreads I liked and Slideshow (Prezi) was neat,
Widgets and Wikis were also fun to explore,
And I hate to admit it, but LinkedIn was a snore.
I even tried to edit our Wiki personal page,
But every edit or change was undone and not saved.
An editor named Beachdrifter undid many of our changes,
We have a better idea of what to do after a few usertalk exchanges.

This project was exciting and I liked doing it at my own pace,
My blog became my home, my thoughts and comments given a space.

It was exciting to see which Thing others were doing,
Seeing how each person did it differently; ideas started brewing.

A great time committment, but this whole experience was worthwhile,
I had fun doing each Thing, interpreting each to my own style.

I enjoyed this immensly, not only learning for me,
But also with each and every one of you. Here it comes!! The end of twenty-three.

Thing 22

WOW! Can you believe it?  The last Thing!

For this Thing, I decided to explore and teach myself some of the other Web 2.0 applications that are out there.  The first one I stumbled upon was extremely easy to use.  It's called Upcoming and you basically choose the date on the sidebar, type in your zip code or types of events you are searching for (musical, sport, etc) and it will create a list of events happening in your area.  You can sort the list based on the date, most popular, relevance, or recently added.  Lectures on health topics, Wild Safaris at the Zoo, upcoming exhibits at local museums, Red Cross Blood Drives, and comedians performing at Comedy clubs are all events that will show up - then you can add them to your personal calendar!  So next time you have company coming into town, this is a super easy tool to use to find out what kind of events to check out!

Writeboard is the second Web 2.0 application that I find intriguing.  Supposedly it's a whiteboard document that you can share with others - everyone adding their own comments and edits, but it will keep a running log of each person's draft so nothing is lost.  Here is a screenshot:

I created my own whiteboard, and edited it three times.  On the right hand side, you can see which version I am viewing and how many edits there have been.  Another neat feature is the compare button.  You can choose two different versions and click compare to see what was changed, making it easy to see each person's contributions.

The font highlighted in green has been added in this newest version while the gray crossed out font is the text from the first draft.  The editing features available leave something to be desired, but it sure is a quick and easy way to collaborate on documents together with colleagues.  I can see this tool being useful for team meeting notes, agendas, collaboration on an upcoming school event in which you need to help co-plan, peer editing work (students), planning for advisory, feedback for emails being sent out, and possibly editing each other comments for report cards (although it MAY  be a pain to have all these documents floating around...).

The last Thing I wanted to share are these creative web 2.0 games that I find addicting and so different from some of the tools we've explored so far.  You can find them here on the Cooltoolsforschools site.  

Questionaut is a fun 8 level game where you need to retrieve your friend's hat by answering questions.  The degree of difficulty is good for 5th to 6th graders.  The best (and maybe the most frustrating) is that at each level, you need to do certain things in order to get the questions.  You have no idea what you're doing and you learn by trial and error.  Such a good lesson for kids these days.  The answer is not immediately given to you!  I had a lot of fun playing it.  LOTS of good tools and applications on this site.

Thing 21

Twitter name: mlknee (Stands for My Left Knee... I would tell you the back story, but I've already reached my 140 character limit!)

When twitter first rolled out onto the tech scene, I thought really?!  A whole site dedicated to just petty and uninteresting facebook status style messages??  Seemed like another self-indulgent, look at me!!, what I'm doing is more exciting than you!, site.  But after about a week of using twitter, I'm ashamed to say that I actually like it.  Making my tweets private and choosing who to follow, limits down the number of people to those you actually want to hear from.  It's a different way to communicate and a fun way to talk/badger your friends!  I do like microblogging.  The character limit makes things short and sweet and you also get a sneak peek into the lives of your coworkers outside of the normal 9-5 window and learn more about them along the way. 

The project term trips that used twitter to post updates and the Chicago trip last year were great ways to bring the followers along on the trip.  I have been thinking of the possibilities when we travel to Toronto, but I'm not sure about the roaming and data charges.  The telephone tree just seems so outdated now!  Would twitter or text messages be a better way to communicate with parents?  We usually start the phone tree to let them know that we arrived to Toronto safely and another to let them know when we're about an hour away from school.  But sometimes it's a hassle when the first couple of people don't answer and you're left with the duty to keep calling until you reach someone.  Not to mention a rip off in roaming charges.  Any suggestions?

I think my nephew should get a twitter account (updated by his parents).  Since he's the first child/grandchild/nephew, everyone always wants to know what he's up to.  We don't care how stupid it is... what he ate, how much he slept, what he threw a tantrum over are all interesting things to us!  A twitter update from his account of "I think green beans look better on the floor than in my mouth" is always amusing!  It would save my sister more time since she won't have to email or answer our phone calls separately... she can reach us all with one update!  More convincing is needed though =).   

The #hashtag option is a great way to categorize tweets as well.  I saw this being used/abused by some people twittering their every move at a recent conference!  I'll have to spend more time with twitter to see how I can use it professionally.  From colleague to colleague, it's a great way to swap articles or posts relating to the education field, but in terms of using it with the student or parent population remains to be seen.  That's a whole other field that needs some consideration.

See you on twitter!

Thing 20

The Slideshow I found was in the Most Popular of All time category:

THIRST

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman.

I liked this presentation because it was very simple - lots of graphics to keep the reader engaged and even though it had over 60 slides, it did not feel like a long presentation due to the visuals and lack of text on the slides.

I don't see a huge need for Slideshow in the classroom since a computer and the power point program are usually available to use, but if you wanted to upload a bunch of student powerpoints to one site for easier access, this would be the tool to use.

For use out of the classroom, this would be a great use if you needed to post a presentation for your students to access at home for more review.  I've actually never needed to post a power point presentation online (I usually just emailed them) and did not know that it was difficult to post on the web. 

I spent a lot of time for this Thing exploring Prezi and made my own presentation about the first four weeks of our 23 Things journey! It was pretty easy to use, but did take awhile to get used to.  Enjoy!

23 Things on Prezi

Thing 19

Podcasting!

The podcasts I tried to listen to on the Learn Out Loud site didn't load for me and the Educational Podcast Network's podcasts had a few math ones that were a bit too cheesy.  So I went over to iTunes instead and found this one to be the easiest one to use.  iTunes has a variety of search functions that make it easy to find new and popular topics.  I've already subscribed to a few Podcasts:

• Freakonomics Radio
• The Math Dude: Quick and Easy Tips
• Mugglecast
• Stuff You Missed in History Class (from HowStuffWorks.com)
• Stuff You Should Know
• BrainStuff
• Twilight Saga
• A Video podcast of a comedy duo (uploads pretty frequently and about 3 minutes max)

I'm finding that I have the attention span of a fly (at least right now).  I prefer the podcasts that last about three minutes long rather than some of these podcasts that are over an hour long!  I am also enjoying the podcasts from the people of howstuffworks.com because of the variety they offer on all sorts of random topics.  Another podcast I looked into was the Colbert Report, but it costs $1.99 for each upload.  Pass...

I also looked into some podcasts on iTunesU.  Lots of Screencast type math tutorials on here which may be helpful for students to use as a resource.  I may look into doing some podcasting.  I'm wondering if it's easier to podcast or screencast....it seems that podcasting would be more mobile than a screencast.

Thing 18

Wiki what wiki what wiki wiki what what?!  (Surely there is a song out there that starts like this....)

I started off doing the easy assignment - it was super easy and fun to read since the pages were already set up.  Some of the empty sites were still Protected/Locked but once I signed up for an account, I was able to access and edit those pages. 

I looked into editing Wikipedia - I was trying to start off small to see if I could just upload a picture of my guinea pigs/rabbits in the wikipedia entry about guinea pigs and rabbits, but it turns out you have to be an Auto Confirmed User before you are allowed to upload photos.  Being auto confirmed means your account is at least 4 days old and you make 10 edits.  Hmmm... I'll pass on this one for now.  It is a little intimidating because I'm by no means a rabbit/guinea pig expert so I don't feel qualified to write/edit/add my experiences with these animals. 

I did look at the Wiki entry on our school - it does need a lot more information!  There was a blank section on the Mission, and I noticed our webpage has this information.  I was tempted to just cut and paste the Mission section off our webpage and put it on the Wikipedia entry... but I didn't know if that violated any copyright issues.  Just heard back and turns out we can just repost it!  So here I go....

Okay I just added the Mission part to our Wikipedia entry.  I did NOT like the editing page/box to edit this entry.  I prefer the WYSIWYG pages (what you see is what you get).  For example in the wikipedia editing box, it listed each goal on its own line but then when you went to view it, it was one continuous sentence!!  So I had to add a space in between each one in order for it to be separate.   Maybe someone can figure out how to clean it up.  Also - no options for bullets in this entry? 

I also clicked on the edit button on the Mission Page and when I went to save my changes to see the actual entry, my missions entry was now part of the background section - it deleted the Mission section entirely!  So then I had to go back to edit this page and add the Mission page back in there... it wasn't as straight forward as I would have liked.  But at least our wikipedia entry is growing slowly but surely!

Thing 17

When I hear the word "Wiki" I think of Sam Witwicky from Transformers.... moving on...

Of course, the majority of my experience with Wikis have been with Wikipedia and Wikihow - it's a fascinating concept... instead of one company or one person trying to put together all of the data, it's a collaboration with pretty much anyone who has the time and access to the internet.  It's a never-ending encyclopedia built on the honor system (for open forums).

The education wikis that I looked at were very interesting.  The Holocaust Wiki Project was a bit hard to follow as an outsider, but after some clicking around, it read just like one of those choose your own adventure books.  After reading the explanation and purpose of the Wiki, that was precisely the point.  Each group needed to create at least 10-12 branching simulations based on real life decisions people in the Holocaust were faced with.  Depending on which route you took determined if you survived or were killed. The site explained that about 30 different groups were collaborating and making this site work.  Wondered how the logistics worked on this project! 

This choose your adventure idea is a bit intriguing.  I wonder if it would work with story problems in math.  For example, a student is assigned a word problem and has to make a branching simulation based on the different operations.  If you choose the wrong operation, what the answer would be and then why the answer wouldn't make sense!  Hmm... things to ponder....

The Kindergarten Counting Book is a cute idea, a little more straightforward and not really any branching pages off of it.  I'm going to argue that the picture of 100 was a bit of a cop out.  Would you accept the number 17 written with marker on paper as 17 items (as the other 99 were depicted)?  Sorry.. I know.. it's like kicking a puppy.. it's a kindergarten book!  But that math part of me just wished they actually showed 100 items in the picture.  I did find this link off of this page of another Kindergarten teacher whose class is using technology in very creative ways! 

The Wikis up front just look like any other page, but it's the actual editing, adding, and updating of information behind the scenes that make it unique.  The Simpson's page is hilarious... and a nice outlet for die-hard fans of the show to teach and learn from other die-hard fans.  I'm not a huge Simpsons fan, but found a Harry Potter wiki that I can see myself getting into!

Wiki vs. Blog
A useful avenue for a Wiki is maybe a family Wiki, where all members of the family can contribute to funny stories, memories, pictures, and events about their family.  A family tree on the main page, and branches (other pages) coming off for each member of the family.

As a creator of a blog... let's say I'm a huge Olympics fan and decided to blog all about the winter events.  Just being one person, I am going to have limited information - but if I created a Wiki and asked people who witnessed that event or were actually there at the event to edit or contribute, it changes the dynamic and power of the page.  

 Power to the People!



 

Thing 16

Widgets Galore!

As you can see above, I added some playful fish to my site! It was super easy to do and even let me change the colors of my fish.  You can feed them by clicking in the bottom right hand corner on the little scoop picture and then click all over the water to watch the fish swim for the food.  When browsing the different gadgets, I noticed that a lot of them looked like ads... so I have seen these on other sites, but just disregarded them.  For example, the popular items on amazon, or click on target and win!... all bars on sites that I usually avoid.  Those are distracting and I just see them as scams. 

Here is a Google Gadget.. one of my favorite games (Eat your heart out Peters!)



I also created another avatar... Here I am plotting my next winter activity...

Thing 15

Screencasting is an extremely useful tool. We have a student who is out of school for 6 weeks and we have basically been treating her absence as a form of distance learning. At least for math, I have been treating it as an "online class" so she can keep up with her work at school. I have used a program called Camtasia to record myself teaching the lesson (audio only) and she can see the notes being written out on Windows Journal. This way, she can hear and "see" the lesson. It's been great so far - she has been able to keep up quite nicely and is able to progress without too many questions (meaning the video lessons seem to be clear enough for her to follow). I really liked Camtasia, but it was only a free 30 day download. Boo.... otherwise it costs $300 to purchase it. I'm excited to try out a couple of these other free programs.


Here is my screencast for this Thing! I don't know what's up with the audio. I sound like I had a mouth guard in while recording this! Oh well....

Thing 14

Say what?!  Say it with Voicethread!

I really like the visual aspect of this tool.  It's super easy to record and does not take a long time to record/upload your comment to the site.  And for people like me who have reservations about being recorded, it provides a text option so you can still contribute without cringing at the sound of your voice being played back for all to hear!    

There are so many options to this tool...

• Reactions to a question/picture (obvious way to use this tool)
• You could create a story with each comment creating the next line of the story
• I can post math problems and ask students to post their version of how they solved it (they have to do it a different way than one that was already posted - maybe more points/value to each comment added to get the students thinking of different possibilities)
• Playing games! For example, say a title of a song and the next person who comments has to use the last word you said as the first word of their song title
• Brainstorming/planning
• Collaborating on a date/issue (picture of a month and possible dates for conferences)
• Voting and give reasoning
• Group birthday wishes
• Favorite part of the trip (reflections)
• Observations about something going on in class or between students or something as simple as "How is ______ doing in your class?" (security settings need to be set so it's only accessible to certain groups) 
• Creating a group poem

 





http://voicethread.com/share/966477/

Thing 13

Youtube is my GO TO site for videos over United Streaming or other video sites.  There's such a wealth of information and you can pretty much find anything on there.  Videos on youtube make it onto the actual news stations as Viral Videos and people talk about videos that they saw like they do with movies and tv shows.  You know you've seen them.... the dancing baby, charlie bit my finger, the keyboard cat, Numa Numa, and the evolution of dance.  The whole premise of Youtube is great (when used wisely).  EVERYDAY people can upload videos of themselves doing whatever (illustrated by the hundreds if not thousands of coke and mentos rocket videos).  You never know when an instant Youtube celebrity will be born.

I prefer Youtube over United Streaming for a couple of reasons.  United Streaming is definitely more educational - many of the math videos that I find on there are instructional videos - a person with some kids, teaching some concept.  Youtube will also pull up those kinds of videos, but I can also find music/songs/rap videos on the topic as well.  The feedback and rating system  as well as the number of views on Youtube also help me find good videos to use.  UnitedStreaming's rating system still leaves something to be desired and it's not as popular as Youtube.  However, I do like how UnitedStreaming breaks up their video and how they are able to pull out a specific 2 minute clip in a video that is 25 minutes long so I don't have to watch the entire video to find a specific clip.

Here's a hilarious math video titled Mathmaticious that's gained over 2 million views.  It's catchy and appropriate to show to students.  Very clever in the way he presents the different math topics in a popular song that the kids would enjoy.



This is one of my favorite Youtube videos - It's a guy playing Canon in D on his electric guitar. It is incredible!  I love the traditional and classical version of Canon in D, but this version is awesome.  A real talented musician.  With over 70 million views, here it is!

Thing 12

I could play with some of these sites ALLLL day.  I tried to use Xtranormal to make a video, but the server kept timing out.  Moving on..... The next one I tried was BeFunky that allows you to add effects to your photos.   I liked the second one and the last picture made (the last one needs an upgraded subscription - hence the big fat logo in the middle of the picture).  Not sure of the social aspect of this tool, but it is fun to see the different effects you can do for just one picture.  Photofun anyone?

Another popular tool I've seen used already is Wordle.  You type/paste in a bunch of text and it creates a picture of the commonly used words.  The bigger the word, the higher the frequency that word appeared in your text.  The Ning I joined was discussing the use of Wordle in a math class.  It's a nice visual when you discuss the frequency of things occurring.  You can discuss words that have similar frequencies, greater or less, and I wonder if the actual measurement of the word (a word being 6 cm and another 12 cm) - does the longer word in fact show up twice as much?

Here is a project I made in Blabberize that makes your photos talk!

Now I don't speak Snowman but I think he's saying "RAARRR Saylor! I will avenge my snowman brother!"

The back story to this appeared in last week's edition of Snowman Chronicles:

Thing 11

Anti-Social Bookmarking!  I've signed up for a Del.iciou.us account and have tagged a few of the math websites I found through searching.  So far, I haven't shared with anyone since I'm still figuring out how the sharing aspect works (hence the anti-social aspect).  The idea is good and I like the fact that I can access my bookmarks from ANY computer as opposed to them just being tied to just my home or school computer.  BIG advantage here.  The social aspect is what will be fun to play around with.  Right now - besides keeping a running list for you, you could really just use Google to find the site for you again, but I'm interested to use the sharing aspect.  Hmm... when you share, do you have to enter in the person's Delicious account name or can you enter in the email?  EDIT: Okay, you can put either an email address or the person's Delicious account name to share sites. 

I also like how the site will tell you how many others have tagged/saved the site - to me, the more popular the site is, the better resource it is (in theory).  So that in itself should save me some time.  However, I'm finding that I need to refine my searches.  Searching for "algebra" comes back with many hits - and some of the popular tags are ones that I don't personally find useful as a teacher.

When I send people links to sites, it's mostly a solitary news article, not really an entire site.  For this purpose, I don't really see an advantage of doing this through Delicious.  When I see an article about a baby stroller recall - I can immediately send it to my sister and brother in law and I don't necessarily want to bookmark/archive this site or tag it.  The list of tag words also can be overwhelming too - as I was adding sites, when I had 3 bookmarked I had a list of 13 tag words.  Imagine if I had 100 sites with 3 tag words (minimum) - that's a list of at least 300 tags!  Yikes...  Also when I save a site, I wish the tags the tag words other people used to tag the site would come up automatically!

Another disadvantage is that I really don't know many people that use Delicious yet! And I have to search for them by the name they used to sign up... not by email.  That might make it hard to look for the right people.  My Delicious name is "J"... yes I know.. so creative and specific!

I don't even know what I was searching for on the site, but I found a REALLY fun site to play around with called Build Your Wild Self where you can create an avatar of yourself made up of different animal parts.

Here is me as "normal"

 

Here is me as my wild self!

NO Comments on how this second picture is my normal one please! 

Create your wild self! Would love to see it.

Thing 10

I've originally heard this term used in music where someone has mashed together songs by different artists.  The first music mashup I heard was made by someone who goes by Norwegian Recycling.  Click on the name to see a Youtube video of one of my favorite mashups done by him called 8 become 1 (mixed 8 songs into 1 song).  The one posted on our site with the Mashup of the top 25 billboard hits is ridiculous! I love it!

I enjoy the Flickr color picker.  It's just so aesthetically soothing to look at similar hues in different pictures.  I could use this to get some artwork up on my bare walls and easily match it to various colors of the room!  Here's a collage made using Flickr color picker!

One other web maship that I read about is called Twittervision.  It mashes together Twitter and Google Maps.  You basically get to see a flat world map and then Tweets will pop up from the map in real time.  Even cooler is Twittervision in 3D  which is the same concept but in 3D using a spinning globe!  This is more for entertainment though, but it is fascinating to get a glimpse of what other people are saying all over the world.  Especially when the Olympics are going on, it's neat to see what people in other countries say about the results!  Here's an example of what Twittervision in 3D looks like.  It's mesmerizing if you leave it on and just watch it spin.  While watching the tweets pop up, I found out that it's officially fish face week on Facebook!  So if your friends start changing their pictures - now you know why!

 

Let's Go Team!

IMG_3659
Originally uploaded by jjlzASH23

Go ASH! Only 14 more THINGS to go!

Yummy

IMG_3526
Originally uploaded by jjlzASH23

A taste of spring! Hurry up and get here!

Splash!

IMG_0999
Originally uploaded by jjlzASH23

Splash of color in this otherwise dreary month

Sleeping Giant

IMG_1470
Originally uploaded by jjlzASH23

A closeup shot of a Hippo from the Detroit Zoo

Peek a boo!

IMG_1441
Originally uploaded by jjlzASH23

Got any food for me?

Thing 9

I've been a Picasa fan, but am enjoying Flickr so far.  I generally enjoy uploading my pictures to the internet as a safety net in case something happens to my computer.  When my last laptop gave me the blue screen of death and I wasn't sure if it would recover, I was kicking myself for not backing up my photos.  Well, my computer did recover and the first thing I did was upload my photos to a photo storage site and backed it up with an external hard drive.  However, the external hard drives have a shelf life too... so it seems the safest place is online!  Without the rolls of films to develop, my digital photos hardly get developed or shared as much as the hard copies did.  With sites like Picasa and Flickr, it's easy to share albums with others - I'm interested to see and explore the sharing aspect of Flickr.  

Thing 8

I see what's going on here.... the startup pages are like the SuperWalmarts trying to take over the world - turning into one stop places for your internet needs. Whatever happened to "Surfing the Web"? Is that out like school on a snow day? It's not like we have to drive around or expend energy to go from one site to another. Sometimes the journey from one site to another allows you to find other treasured troves on the net. If you only go to one customized place all the time, you'll miss out on the other things that are out there!

Oh Sam-I-Am, why don't you go and see
What's waiting for you and me
Not on NetVibes or a one stop site
Surf around from noon 'til night!
Don't give in to Pageflakes either
Take a seat, take a breather
The whole world you have access to
But your start page will limit you!

(Inspired by Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham)


Alright - I know what you're thinking. I could be the Sam-I-Am by not taking advantage of the Web 2.0 way of doing things. So I chose to do a Netvibe page instead of Pageflakes. Pageflakes reminds me too much of snowflakes and the bitter cold! I loaded it with the following widgets: Web Note (things to do list/post it feature), Word of the Day (Math teachers use words too Thing 2!, CNN news, New York Times, local news from the Freep, a cool Widget called Bordelize that just has thumbnails of cool pictures that were recently posted up such as this one and this one, the local weather, a game called 3 foot Ninja that doesn't seem to work, and finally an education blog called Weblogg-ed.

Sam-I-Am, it's alright, it's okay
Where widgets and content come to play
In one place, saving energy and time
Your carpal tunnel syndrome will be benign
From less surfing and typing in
Let the chapter of start up pages begin.

Thing 7

RSS is appropriately named as Real Simple Syndication and it's true! It does make web surfing Real Simple. I set up my Google Reader and started subscribing to the sites that I usually visit when I go online. It's a bit overwhelming at first because I usually go to sites such as cnn and yahoo to read the news and since they constantly have updates, those appear first in my reader before the blog posts. Since I'm reading updated news stories, there are usually many of them as well.

The reader does provide a way for me to just see stories from each subscription site but I have to admit, I miss the friendly layout and links to related stories on each of the independent news sites.

However, using Google Reader makes it easy to see updates on everyone's blog since you don't have to keep rechecking each blog separately to see if someone has updated it, but I may undo my subscriptions to the news sites since these sites are constantly updated and the chances of me going to the site with nothing new posted is very rare.

I agree with Carolyn's post about not really having many sites to follow or read right now. Since I am following mostly blogs on here, I find the blogger dashboard being able to do the same job as google reader.

Time to find some of those orange symbols on pages to make Google Reader more worthwhile!

Thing 6

Facebook is like being able to invite your own friends to a party, while Ning is like walking into a room full of strangers. That's how I felt when I explored or joined a few Nings. In order to join each network, you have to submit a series of answers that the moderator has put in place. It's like seeing if you pass the bouncer test while you wait to see if your name is on the list at the door. Some are pretty exclusive, like the 6, 7, 8 Independent School Math Teachers Ning where you need to put in information in order to verify that you are in fact a teacher at an Independent School. I passed on joining this one because it seemed a little less private - I didn't necessarily want a bunch of strangers to know my exact location of employment.

The one that I have spent most of my time exploring is the Mathematics 24x7 Ning. It seems that a fair amount of members are math teachers and I have found some very enlightening posts on this site. This site currently has 378 members and is fairly active. The last 12 posts/activities were within the past 24 hours.

Blogging in Ning seems more appropriate if I have a math specific question. I have 377 people who are interested in the same field and my post would probably receive more feedback than if I posted on Blogger. In Blogger, if I had 377 followers, maybe only 5-10 of them may be able to relate to a math teacher related post.

Would creating a Ning for students seem like the same thing as a class Moodle? What do you think?

Thing 5

I've received LinkedIn invites in the past, but have always just ignored them since I have not really found a use for this in any way in my personal or professional life. It's just never come up over any type of conversation I've had. Even when I would reject LinkedIn invites from my friends, they never badgered me about it or claimed that this is a must have site to belong to. To me, it just seems like a 'facebook' for resumes and professional networking or a match.com for jobs. I have yet to meet one person to claim that they have found their job or boyfriend/girlfriend through LinkedIn as the video claims it can be used for.

One thing I like about the site is that it lists the titles of the people that I know so I can direct jobless friends to contacts that may know of an opening. If only LinkedIn had been around during Monica and Rachel's bet with Chandler and Joey....maybe then they would have remembered Chandler's title and would NOT have lost their apartment!(on "Friends")

A reason why the field of education may be underrepresented is due to logistics of how how individual districts may make their hires; mostly through job fairs or other face to face meetings. On "paper" anyone can look good and you're going to only write yourself in a way to make yourself attractive to others, but with the nature of education, face to face time should trump anything on paper to make sure that their personality and professionalism is as stellar as their what their resume claims.

Thing 4

Remember the part in the film Julie & Julia, when Julie is so excited about the first comment on her blog only to find out that its her mother? Who then said she seemed to be her only fan? But then, as her blog takes off, she gains many random readers who start to send her letters and ingredients for upcoming recipes. This motivates Julie Powell and renews her sense of purpose through her blog. When confronted with difficult recipes, her husband says something to the effect that she doesn't really have to cook it because no one would ever know! However, Julie responds, "But my readers would know!" She felt she owed it to her readers to be accountable and follow through on her original goal.

I can see how thoughtful and encouraging comments can continue to refresh and energize the author to continue writing or to continue with their goal. Even though commenting on each others posts is early in this list of Things, I hope we can still comment on each others blogs during the long stretch (Thing 17ish?) to pick each other up and motivate each other to finish!

This will especially be helpful for students because they LIVE for feedback! I can see students coming back to their blog/post multiple times in the day to check if anyone has posted a comment on their blog. Hopefully they will put more time and effort into their posts because it's being read by a larger audience.

As adults, we've anguished over our blog identities, templates, colors, fonts, etc... and I bet we smile when we get that email notification that someone has just commented on our blog (or maybe that's just me?). Imagine how our students will feel!

Thing 3

When I was in school, I never saw the word Blog/Blogging on my list of verbs to know. Today, this word is a permanent fixture in our daily culture. In fact, it was voted as the top word of 2004 by Merriam-Webster. The premise of blogging made its way to the big screen in the Julie/Julia project, a character in a Twix commercial uses blogging to impress a date, and common ways to end an advertisement or tv show is "Catch more information on our blog at...."

Blog writing is the casual to semi-formal dress that appears to the Writing party. It's not the one decked out in formal wear with hard to understand jargon and a train of sources following close behind and it's not the "I just rolled out of bed" outfit that arrives with serious rips and holes in the meaning and spelling. One nice thing about blogging is that the invitation to this writing party seems to be extended to anyone who can provide their own transportation to the party via the internet.

Reading a blog almost seems like eavesdropping on a private conversation, until you realize that others are waiting for you to put in your two cents! I find the comments to be just as worthwhile and even more interesting than the original piece as I did in the Great Homework Debate that Mr. Meyer posted in his approach to math homework. I was shocked to find that the blog centered around the subject of math - a subject where I would think homework would have a permanent presence. When you read Mr. Meyer's points, you aren't quite sure what to think but then you gradually form your opinion as you read all the different comments and chisel your position as you agree or disagree with those who posted. Upon further blog reading, I wonder if homework assignments are the rabbit ears drawn on top of my math box..... is it even a box anymore??

So much to think about!

Thing 2

T - To Learn
W - Web 2.0?
E - Explore online
N - New experience
T - Tools to use!
Y - Youtube videos

T - Twitter and Tweets
H - Hours of fun ahead
R - RSS?!
E - Embedding videos
E - Everyone post/comment

T - Tag - you're it!
H - How do you do that...
I - iTunes University??
N - Nings?
G - Golb is blog backwards!
S - START!

Thing 1

There once was a Web called 1.0
Who was overpowered by his twice as big foe
Information was distributed
Many others contributed
And the legacy of 2.0 did grow.

What can we make of this new thing
Incorporating Flickr, Wikis, and Ning
My eyes on the prize
A 4.0 gigabyte drive
9 Weeks to wrap up by Spring!