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!