Over the river and through the woods, around the blogs we go....
WOW. The Circle of the Wise article was helpful with guiding me through the woods. While looking at blogs/sites, I kept in mind about the upbeatness of them all. I did have to chose one that I found, that while not necessarily upbeat, I could relate to the voice in which it was written, even though I don't teach older students. Mr.Teacher
I really liked Edublogs' award winners. There was a nice list of the "best", divided into categories, and from that, I added Teachers at Risk and Doug Pete. In teachers at risk, the blog writer teaches high school students, but writes about having a web2.0 classroom. The second blog contains links to all kinds of web resources. Sadly, the website that wasn't available for searching was School Library Blogs on Superglu. I'll check back on that one at a later date to see if it is back running.
A blog to go to for fun: http://icanhascheezburger.com/ This one has cute captions to go with mostly cat pictures. Good for a laugh when you are suffering from insomnia.
The search blog that raised my eyebrows was Syndic8.com. While some prefer that straightforward look, yikes! It looked non-friendly to me. I didn't stick around too long on that site.
Oh, and my pack of schnauzers were not happy with the voice on the Technorati Tutorial.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thing #8: RSS Feeds
After exploring this for an afternoon, I decided I really didn't do too much out of my little comfort zone on the WWW! I have my 2 or 3 sites that I shop from, the one local news channel website that I read from, and not a whole lot of everything else. Blame it on the Library Resources page? I use that an awful lot for lesson planning. (Not to mention, I really don't like sitting in front of the computer screen for long periods of time usually...oh, wait, I just did mention it). I liked how there is the "search" function to start getting some ideas of what I wanted to put on my Google Reader. That was a good starting point for me. Not that I needed anymore places to find recipes from, I added a couple of food feeds, and I found an interesting site for Elementary teachers. Why did that catch my attention? The article titled "Top 8 Reasons why Non-Teachers Can Never Really Understand Our Job". (There are also helpful articles, such as using Hershey Chocolate bars for fractions...apparently the person who wrote this doesn't teach in Texas with the food of minimal nutrition issues!) Google Reader even automatically put in the blogs that I follow on Blogger!
I'll have to catch my hubby at the computer sometime and see how many of his Mustang websites he visits can be added to a Google Reader account. This might be a great tool to help him keep up with all the Mustang cars and parts being sold and traded!
I can see librarians/educators/administration using this to help keep up with various classroom blogs easily. I know quite a few of the teachers on my campus are setting up wikis to use for thier classrooms this year---can you put a Wiki on an RSS feed? Or is that a completely different animal?
I'll have to catch my hubby at the computer sometime and see how many of his Mustang websites he visits can be added to a Google Reader account. This might be a great tool to help him keep up with all the Mustang cars and parts being sold and traded!
I can see librarians/educators/administration using this to help keep up with various classroom blogs easily. I know quite a few of the teachers on my campus are setting up wikis to use for thier classrooms this year---can you put a Wiki on an RSS feed? Or is that a completely different animal?
Thing #7: Google Tools
Wow! This could be a serious procrastination place to play! Since I have things tied to my email, I won't publicly publish things, but I'll see how I can share some of the things I did. I created an igoogle page with a peacful scene of a Japanese village, and discovered that my igoogle page and blogger page OUGHT to have been set up with the same email address. I can't be on both at the same time unless I open separate windows. One thing I did was make a gadget for "Pizza Group Cruise"...which countsdown the time until I go on a cruise with a group of friends in January. 3 months, 18 days to go! This could be a fun way for the kids to see countdowns for upcoming activities, or use it as a "this is how many days you have left to study for that big test", or some major project that is due (hmmmm...like 23 things needs to be done by?). I also went to check out the tool that shows the phases of the moon. I'll be teaching about the movement of Earth and objects in space soon, and thought that would be a fun addition for the kids to look at. Unfortunately, it seems to have some bugs-- complaints such as it being 2 days behind, or not showing up at all, so I'll go back and check on it when we get closer to that unit of study. I liked the idea of a todo list gadget as well. Older students working on a group project could make use of this feature, and I am guessing that the teacher could use it to keep tabs on the group's progress. I typed "learn english" in the search box, and LOTS of gadgets popped up! I'll be searching through those to see if any are 2nd grade appropriate--I seem to average 2 or 3 new students from Korea each year. :)
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Thing #6 Mashups!
Oh, this "Thing" could suck up a whole day, and then some! So many fun ways to use pictures that we all love to take.
Let me begin with the Trading Card feature. Some of my coworkers used the trading cards at the beginning of the year last school term. This was a great way to help students get to know each other in the class. Others used these cards around the time of their study of birds, and the kids loved getting "bird cards" for good behavior, and traded them at recess. Other ideas? Get students to take pictures of geometric shapes, and then add in physical attributes of the shape. Make "Space Cards" where they get a picture of each planet, and record some facts about it. Teach 4th grade? How about Texas Heroes, or landforms found around Texas?
Ah, but now let's think from a librarian point of view. This is a new way of thinking for me, so if you have additonal ideas, please contribute! What if a student could make a card for each Bluebonnet book they read? Add a short summary, and if they would reccomend it to a friend! Hm, could you put a graphic of a kid-friendly search engine, and then write descriptors of what can be found on that search site to encourge use of other spaces besides Google and Yahoo? Author studies! Who wouldn't want a trading card with Tomie DePaola on it? Or Marc Brown? What a great way to introduce your younger readers to authors!
The magazine cover is fun. I did that with my students last year. We had the priviledge of entertaining everyone with our program "Once Upon a Lily Pad", and my students played the part of snakes. I took a picture of each of them in their costume, and they used that photo to make a magazine cover. They had to think of titles that fit the play, such as "Freddy finds his place in the pond", and "Crocodiles stop the slimy snakes". They had a cute momento to keep in their portfolio!
Putting captions with the photos has endless possiblilities. This requires the skill of being able to be brief!
The biggest frustration can be the editing part. With many of these projects, if you want to edit what has been created, you have to remember to find the "EDIT" button to go back. Clicking the "back" button on your browser makes you start your whole project over from scratch!
Let me begin with the Trading Card feature. Some of my coworkers used the trading cards at the beginning of the year last school term. This was a great way to help students get to know each other in the class. Others used these cards around the time of their study of birds, and the kids loved getting "bird cards" for good behavior, and traded them at recess. Other ideas? Get students to take pictures of geometric shapes, and then add in physical attributes of the shape. Make "Space Cards" where they get a picture of each planet, and record some facts about it. Teach 4th grade? How about Texas Heroes, or landforms found around Texas?
Ah, but now let's think from a librarian point of view. This is a new way of thinking for me, so if you have additonal ideas, please contribute! What if a student could make a card for each Bluebonnet book they read? Add a short summary, and if they would reccomend it to a friend! Hm, could you put a graphic of a kid-friendly search engine, and then write descriptors of what can be found on that search site to encourge use of other spaces besides Google and Yahoo? Author studies! Who wouldn't want a trading card with Tomie DePaola on it? Or Marc Brown? What a great way to introduce your younger readers to authors!
The magazine cover is fun. I did that with my students last year. We had the priviledge of entertaining everyone with our program "Once Upon a Lily Pad", and my students played the part of snakes. I took a picture of each of them in their costume, and they used that photo to make a magazine cover. They had to think of titles that fit the play, such as "Freddy finds his place in the pond", and "Crocodiles stop the slimy snakes". They had a cute momento to keep in their portfolio!
Putting captions with the photos has endless possiblilities. This requires the skill of being able to be brief!
The biggest frustration can be the editing part. With many of these projects, if you want to edit what has been created, you have to remember to find the "EDIT" button to go back. Clicking the "back" button on your browser makes you start your whole project over from scratch!
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