Thing 15 Revisiting RSS

RSS isn't difficult to understand, but the process has not yet been internalized. I find myself subscribing five or six times to no avail before I realize that I didn't check a box and that's why it didn't work. Grrr! Of course the benefits are obvious, but honestly, I don't remember to check on a regular basis. Of all that I've subscribe to, the only one I find really useful are YALSA and ETLMS. It seems like checking a news feed would be important, but I'm really not interested, in fact, I deleted one. I'm one of the "over forty" crowd that is really upset we've lost our home delivery. I like to touch a newspaper! Warlick and Richardson are interesting, but they have sooo much to say. Ormiston is more like a regular teacher, but she's exhausting!

Thing 14 Delicious

User name:
lingarrt

I started using delicious last year and find it very useful. I particularly like the number of saves indicator for each link. One thing I find very annoying is the same link appearing multiple times in a tag list. Why is this? I also like to see the additional tags employed which gives additional search options. In libraryland we call this "pearl gathering." Delicious is a good tool to teach this skill to students. We talk about brainstorming keywords, but without a visual, it's not necessarily effective. It's also much more comprehensive than the additional search terms that appear on the bottom of google search pages.

While trying to print the directions for uploading my existing bookmarks into delicious, I found the site blocked. I thought that odd considering the source until a friend pointed out it was the word "delicious" that flagged the page. Blocked sites are so annoying!

Students experience this when they are doing legitimate research, as well. However, this gives me the opportunity to direct them to databases or the hotlists I have created and posted on my websites. The hotlists are assignment specific, annotated, student-friendly links which will allow students access to links including "hot" topics that would be blocked when googled.

We are not allowed to post links to blogs or wikis, nor can I see how giving students access to my bookmarks will be particularly useful. My delicious bookmarks with the same tag would include additional sites that are useful to me or a teacher, but not necessarily be useful to a student.

I encourage teachers to request my expertise in collecting good links and posting them rather than teaching them to do it themselves. I need to be needed! The only downside to the hotlists is the rule they be updated every twelve months. I know this and try to keep on top of it, to avoid the pages being removed. Just recently for the second time, I lost about a third of my lists and I'm in the process of recreating them. Grrr!

Thing 13 Tagging and Social Bookkmarking

Finally, something I'm familiar with and use on a daily basis. However, we can all learn something new. In reference to the article "Thirteen Tips for Effective Tagging," I learned a couple of new things:

• Co-ordinate your efforts - I can see how this will be particularly useful. but at what point are we moving away from a "folksonomy" toward a "cataloging thesaurus?"
• Tags are written in pencil - This is good to know, I've been editing on a one-by-one basis. I hope I remember and do it.

My goal is to review all my saved in folders bookmarks and slowly add them to my delicious bookmarks. Hopefully, this won't take the rest of my life!

I certainly pay attention to the number of saves for a particular site, but as of yet, have not followed any particular "tagger." I have noticed that sometimes a descriptor is evident. I don't know how these are added.

Thing 12 Widgets

I'm not getting this at all. I copied the embed code for You Tube and pasted it under the "edit html" tab, but got nothing.

I use Firefox exclusively and had no trouble opening the two widgets. The Voki was very cute, but what would I say? A message to my students? Possibly. The Polldaddy widget could be very useful. I can see this being used daily.

There was an interesting scenario on Grey's Anatomy last week. A very disfigured person was having a "face replacement." Part of the eligibility requirement was having a support group to help with the transition. Apparently, he had met people online through his interest in orchids or something. They were to be his support group and unexpectidly showed up before the surgery. His refuseing to meet them in his disfigured condition disqualified him from the surgery. Long story short, he agreed and they turned out to be real friends and very suportive. Could this happen in real life. I think yes. The statistics for online mate selection, for example, seem to bear this out.

I thought having access to e-mail would be such a boon for communicating with students. This has not turned out to be the case. Apparently, no one e-mails anymore. The students don't check their accounts unless you specifically instruct them to, thus defeating the purpose. Facebook is the way to go. Unfortunatly, Facebook, et all, is blocked in our district and suspect it is blocked in every district. What to do?

Thing 11 Connect with Comments

I'm really not comfortable leaving posts on the sites of the other participants in this class. Without knowing anything about the other members, I just chose to look at blogs that had a cool title and then looked for posts that stuck a nerve, so to speak. I agree with one I read about feeling compelled to post on The New York Times, for example, but the hoops (logging in, ets.) were too time consuming and not worth the effort. Ironically, I've asked my students to do the very same thing. I guess this is walking a mile in someone else's moccasins. However, I do appreciate the posts you (Carol and Jackie) have left on my blog. As far as using this as a classroom tool, I can see how modeling will be very important.

Thing 9 and Thing 10 Video

I love U Tube and I'm so glad it isn't blocked in our district. The students use it extensively for research and presentations, even at the middle school level. Most recently, the sixth grades were creating power points on unsolved mysteries. U Tube is absolutely perfect for that goofy topic, e.g., Bigfoot, etc. I've been meaning to share the following with the REMC group:

The Internet Overdose Song

My post suggested "password" be added as a tag, I always have such a hard time finding this video!

Since I already had a Google account, I should have been able to link the two accounts instead of creating yet another account with another password. However, that didn't work. Bummer.

I watched this very well done video that came across on my MAME listserve from a home-schooler comparing public libraries and school (libraries.) He made several valid points. I suspect, however, he had some collaboration. When I viewed his other posts, they were just rants about random things.

Here is my download:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

This didn't seem to work. I think there's a step missing. I thought it would end up on my desktop, but it didn't.
Then I tried zamzar, which I have used to convert files students create at home in, for example, "works." Now I'm waiting, waiting, waiting for the file to arrive in my e-mail. OK, it finally arrived, but I don't know how to get it into the blog. At any rate, watch the video, it's pretty powerful.

Thing 8 Mash-ups

I love the letter thing and recreated my blog title, but I can't figure out how to get it on the page. I tried the edit header page several times and I'm not getting anywhere.

The color wheel is awesome but I can't think of an application at the moment.

I'm not interested in doing sudoku (I also can never remember if the "u" is first or the "o"), let alone creating one, but it looks nice.

The montager is fascinating. One could kill an hour or two mousing over the tiles. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of time. How could I apply this to the classroom?

I really suck at the Memry game, but I will play it with my granddaughter. She likes to win! Since you can't really control the images in the game, I'm not sure how useful it would be in the classroom.

I was excited about trying trading cards in Big Huge Labs. I thought it would work for author studies, book reports, historical figures, etc. But I couldn't figure out how to apply it at no cost.
Here's the link to this card: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/viewpostcard.php?id=119769-49452

In fact, every application was cool, but apparently, cool costs! Writer is free as far as I can tell and reminded me of the "old days." I might use this if I wasn't already aware of the Google docs.
application.

Image Generator : this must be the home page for all those people that have nothing to do but create those fabulously entertaining e-mails that I keep getting.

Thing 6 and Thing 7 Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dungpow/105472699/

Virginia Beach Sunrise
I chose this photo because we vacationed here last year and I most certainly never saw a sunrise.

I can't imagine uploading any of my photos to Flickr. I have used Shutterfly for years to share and store my photos and for the most part am happy with the service. I have no desire for the world to look at my photos because I almost never take photos of scenery, etc., without "my people" in the shot. I consider it a job well done when I upload them to a folder while deleting the not so good ones. I would never take the time to tag each photo which is the point in Flicker. I think its a good idea, but for me, not so much.

After wracking my brain I remembered I had taken photos of food at my grandson's Halloween party that didn't have any "faces", and therefore no possible objections to posting. This is an issue I have run into countless times, and not just in the school setting. I know the point is being "social," but how much thought are people putting into this. Maybe the default shouldn't be "any Flickr member."
I found the process very easy except I thought I had capitalized "Halloween", yet it came up with a lower case "h." I didn't find an easy way to correct this. (I obsess over things like this.) I'm also not sure about the process of making my photos totally free, joining the Creative Commons "set," and whatever other options are available. I understand how to search in Creative Commons only, but haven't figured out how to search in LOC only. This is something I think would be useful for the classroom because searching on the LOC site is not particularly user friendly, especially for students.