Image generators- belated!!

While I remember, I will write about the image generators and then try and put one up. The one I found most useful was the trading cards: my book club students are going to make their own cards after we discuss Satch and Me, a Golden Sower nominee about time travel and baseball. 

My personal favorite is the keyboard; it's a great place to take out my tech frustrations. I have created keys that say things like sell or I quit.  Pictured here is one of my husband's idea : oops!!

Anyone can have fun  like this by going to the following site:

http://www.glassgiant.com/custom_keyboard/?l1=Game&size=large

More Flickr Fun- an oversight

Wow, I think I had so much fun playing the extras on Flickr that I forgot to write about it. I made a READING sign for my book club at school and I loved the color pickr  (and are we going to learn to drop the "er" in the future thanks to these sites??)

I honestly have not thought of a use for the color match - but it was so much fun to look through that I really didn't care.

Some of the Flickr stuff is blocked at my school which is really too bad as I think the kids would love to use it.  I know it is the price we pay to keep kids safe but I would rather we teach kids to be responsible rather than be the police for them.

Twitter

I have been on Twitter numerous times just to give it a chance and I really am not that fond of it. I enjoyed reading the 6 word stories and actually liked two of them - kind of a haiku format!!!  

But to keep track of others and to keep up with info....Twitter is not the answer for me. The other day, an email informed me I could Twitter the Village Pointe plaza and so I have signed up to be a follower of the shopping center - and now that shopping center is following me. Seems a bit existential. 

I also heard about the man who has his washing machine twitter him when the wash is done - now that is PRACTICAL!! 

I don't feel like I have that much to share with anyone. I will keep going back as something may finally catch me about Twitter's use - but for now, I give it a thumbs down.

the 23 things

This was a great way to learn, use and practice at my own rate; my biggest concern is that the NLC blog will disappear and I will lose its resources and directions. If this is learning in the 21st century, I am all for it.

It is hard to say what I liked the best; there's just too much. I am already using some of the skills such as blogging (who would have thought I would), wikis and the 2.0 tools. 

Thank you so much for developing the lessons, giving the extra tutorials and just the right moments, and answering questions along the way.

Podcasting and podcasts

I always like seeing a topic in the 23 things that has some familiarity to it!! Then I feel I do a better job in my explorations. I decided to try the directories and found I liked Podcast.com and  PodcastDirectory.com  because they were laid out in a way that was easy for me to use - I could definitely get to things I wanted to quickly. I plan to use some of the online story podcasts I found- my teachers have been asking for books on tape and while we have some, these podcasts may fill the gap. 

I have made digital "podcasts" with my students using Garage band and found them to be a fantastic way to engage students.  If I had more time, we would do ongoing podcasts but because they were "one-time" projects that I wanted parents to be able to see and hear, I played with the software so that all of our podcasts ended up on one page as entries and I blew away the "subscribe now" buttons before I posted them. The kids did an awesome job with their research and project creation.

I think it would be great to use podcasts so that students could review books for others; I may try to find a way to do that soon. Before I launch something like that, I want to make sure I have more ideas about management and time commitment in place.

Personally, I have found that podcasts are great for me when I miss an episode of a radio show I listen to, but I find that subscribing, unless it is for a show that is  5 minutes or less in length, is not  worth it for me as I rarely go back and listen to missed episodes. Great for road trips though!!

YOU Tube

I have been on You Tube before and have not been that excited about it. I just felt it was too overwhelming and I did not want to spend time looking at it. Today I looked at it as to what it could teach me and found this great video about crochet; okay, this is not the most intense learning experience but since I continue to fail at it, I am thrilled that I found something like this. That made me think of other ways I could use you tube for skills needed to uncover information, use computers, etc. It's something to keep in mind for my visual learners.






Another good site for movies for little kids is http://www.totlol.com/video.php

WEB 2.0 for Nebraska Learns

I liked the way this site was set up by categories: it made it a little easier to use than the go to web 2.0 site I have used before.

I spent way too much time in the craft session and in Zillow, it was a trip down memory lane looking at old houses around the country. It's a bit spooky seeing all the web cam shots from Google - somebody is always taking our picture!

Practice 1-1-09

Zoho and Google Docs

♥♥♥♥  I love Google docs and zoho looks good, too. Google docs has been a great place for me to save those one or two files that I have needed countless times and did not want to plug in my flash drive to access them.  I use them for reminders and for when I have a list of info I want to remember all in one place. I think the hardest part for me to wrap my head around is the fact that they all link together. When I master that, I think I will be more efficient.

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Wikis

I love the idea of wikis: this summer I created one for my school and have 3 or 4 people on my staff using it. Until now, I have been the webmaster which works fine for school and community information. But now we wanted a place to post our documents and sites for a literacy program and that  meant all of the info people wanted on the web  also HAD to come through me - ugh!! I am too democratic and can get too busy for that. The wiki was the answer. I hope to continue to introduce more of my staff to the wiki and make it a truly dynamic and user-driven product.