Thing 22

Can Thing 22 be the reflection spot? Whew!

Having this intro to so many tools has been a wonderful overview. I'm super linear so I feel like making note of the things I plan to continue using at this point. Then I can check back here as a way to keep tabs on myself. Many of the tools seemed easier to use than they were to represent well in the Blog.

Shelfari

iGoogle

Facebook

Flickr, Picasa, and iStockphotography

Spell with Flickr

Wordle

Google Docs

TED

YouTube

Common Craft videos

Thing 21 - Other Social Networks

I didn't play around too much on the Ning site. It seems pretty focused on Library 2.0 info. So I checked out Gather a bit. The article was interesting in terms of the way Gather is trying to carve out a niche for writers/publishers.

Carving out a niche is an interesting concept. One one hand it makes sense for social networks to be specific to interest. However, if everyone's joining different social networks, how will we all find each other??!! :)

As I've mentioned a few times before, I am a member of Shelari. I love it and use it often and as a way of connecting with a pretty wide range of friends.

Thing 20 - Facebook

I got rolling on Facebook this winter. When my brother and law went to the middle east, it was the easiest/fastest way for him to share pictures with family. I must admit it was a little addicting at first, but I'm glad it wore off for me.

The upside is hearing news from friends and family. The downside is wading through all the the status updates from people who jot down what's for supper, the time of their run, etc.

I'd love to know a way to quickly sort out news once or twice a week. I still haven't figured that out yet.

I am a member the Basilica Block Party group. A parent of one of my students started a group for our CP family. It's Pekarek/Wallace CP family. It'll be interesting to see if it takes off and what people us it for.

Since I'm fairly familiar with Facebook, I took a few minutes to look at My Space. It seems a bit "looser." I ran across 3 pictures that were less than tasteful on my first screen.

My oldest child is only 9, so I'm not dealing with screen time/monitoring issues yet; which are sure to be even more complicated in a few years. I'd love to hear thoughts from parents on this issue.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

I really enjoyed working on this Thing. The explanation of podcasts was short and to the point. I was not aware that there were some sites that make it easy to search podcasts. I think all of the podcasts I've watched before today have been linked or forwarded by someone. So I'm glad to know about search options. I used podcast.com to find the TED site. I've heard several of these and they are fabulous. TED stands for Technology, Education, Design.

TED

I also searched NPR and quickly found what I was looking for there, too.

Thing 18 - You Tube

So how is it that I figured out how to embed this You Tube video, but I can't figure out how to get the text to wrap or to move around the video image so I can type easily. I did it. I'm outta here.

Thing 17 - ELM

Wow! What a resource. The piece I find so interesting is that this tool is available to everyone! This has amazing implications for education, obviously, but I'm thinking a little more big picture and feeling so grateful that any body in our state can walk into a public library and have access to anything from consumer info to geneology and can research any topic they can think of.

Today I was working with my daughter and her friends on a Fermi math problem. We were looking for info about Bastille Day. Here's the link. I did have to make quite a few clicks and enter my bar code to get here. For young kids researching something in the classroom, I'd get as far in as I could, then bookmark the site and let them make the last couple clicks according to their subject, otherwise it might be too complicated.

Bastille

Thing 16 - Student Research and Assignment tools

Wow! If someone wanted to succeed at a particular assignment the resources shown in this Thing are nearly endless. The tools clearly lay out the steps and offer a huge variety of supports. Using the links would clearly pump up basic research skills that would be transferable to other assignments or papers.

I wonder how students are encouraged to use these tools. I certainly hope many take advantage of this service.

Thing 15 - Online Gaming

The Ohio University Second Life promo is a bit intriguing. It sounds like there are many possibilities for learning, connecting and collaborating.

During this Thing I was also reminded of a positive connection to video gaming that I had while reading Daniel Pink's book: A Whole New Mind. He give a specific example about a video game simulation used to train military personnel on maneuvers with great success.

Personally, I'm more of an outdoor, face-to-face kind of gal. This Thing gave me a chance to rethink and reaffirm my values. I am grateful for the efficiency that technology brings to my everyday life, but I don't use it much at all for entertainment purposes.

Thing 14 - Shelfari

I read the info and checked out the links for Library Thing. It seems very similar to Shelfari, which I've been using for about a year now.

Since I'm a list maker, my favorite part of Shelfari is the simple fact that it's a place to record books I've read and books I want to read in one spot instead of a million post its sticking out of my planner.

Shelfari's social networking feature is super fun. I'm friends with a range of people from my daughter, to kids in my class, and also some Highlands parents and women in my book group. It's fun to see what friends are reading and read their reviews of books.

I have my Shelfari linked to my school web page. Parents can use it to get ideas for books on parenting and school philosophy as well as recommendations for their children.

It's easy to friend people if you just know their e-mail address.

My Shelf on Shelfari

Thing 13 - Online Productivity

I got totally lost in this thing. It was fun to set up an iGoogle homepage. Mine is very simple with a garden theme, NPR, weather, and gmail. I may add a few other things things as time goes by, but I'm going to be cautious about getting my start page too cluttered up, because I know I'll be tempted to tend to everything that pops up, so I only want the necessities.

I don't use a lot of goals, stickies, calendars, to-do's etc. online. I really, really love my paper Franklin Planner. I still like having it right in my purse at all times and not being dependent a connection to get at my stuff.

Thing 12 - I don't really Digg

I'm not really a pop culture kind of gal, so this thing isn't something I would get into very much. I was pleased to see the tabs as a way to narrow, but even then I still ran across lots of random, off-beat articles.

I understand the whole idea is to side step editors and conventional journalism. Still, I'd like a little quality filer. Who's quality you say?? Good question....

I can't help but wonder about an edu-digg site that contains the most pop articles from education journals. Or how about one for progressive Christians or parents of elementary age girls. The possibilities are endless. What a time saver that would be.