Thing 10

Here is one of my absolute favorite YouTube videos.  It's called the Mom Overture by Anita Renfroe.

I hope you enjoyed it. I saw this video long ago and just laughed out loud at all of the things that I heard growing up and the things that I already say to my daughter. It's just great.

Yes, I was able to download a video using KeepVid with no problems.

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Thing 9

I have been a fan of YouTube for awhile.  I have used it mostly to find old TV shows that I liked when I was a kid.  My favorite from the list had to be the Panda sneezing.  Although I found In My Language and Taylor Mali inspiring.  I made comments on all three of them.

Things I like about YouTube: looking up old shows, learning about things from Commoncraft and others, finding funny videos for my daughter, and being able to leave positive comments.

Things I don't like about YouTube: people who leave negative comments and some videos are inappropriate.

There are loads of videos on YouTube, TeacherTube, and SchoolTube that are educational and can be used in the classroom.  I had not heard of SchoolTube, but I have tried to post to TeacherTube.  In my district, YouTube is not blocked for teachers, but I do believe that it is blocked for students.  TeacherTube is not blocked, but I cannot upload videos because I am limited on the size that I can upload.  That can be very frustrating.  As much as I know kids would look for videos on YouTube that might not be appropriate, they would like to have the privileges and with guidelines to follow, they might actually be engaged in the learning.  At some point, we need to embrace the technology that is available for the students to use and not make them shut down when the get to school.

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Thing 8

I used Mosaic Maker at Big Huge Labs and connected to my Flickr account to make my mosaic.  The pictures are of my family enjoying an early summer day at Lake Michigan.  It was very cold, but our daughter just loved to dip her toes into the freezing water.  She took off running as soon as she took her first dip, but then she couldn't get enough.

I found using this service quite easy.  It was not time consuming to make the mosaic, but I did have to upload my pics to Flickr and label them.  That takes little time, but it wasn't bad.  I tried to use the Image Generator also, but didn't find that was as user friendly.

The other tools for work mashing were fun tools to use as well.  I played around with each one.  In fact, my daughter helped me with the Flickr memry game.  I didn't realize that Flickr had so many neat tools to use to create things.  I do plan to play around with them more for personal work.  The first thing that comes to mind is making a b-day party invitation for my daughter using photos from each year to create the cover.  

Professionally, I would like to introduce teachers to these tools for their students and I can show my upper elementary students how to use them as well.  If their parents approve, they could bring in a digital card or camera and we could create accounts to create.  Or their parents could create their accounts with them at home and we could play around with the tools during class.  So many options, so little time. :-)

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Thing 7

I posted three pictures in Flickr tonight, just random pictures of myself and my family.  Personally, I would use Flickr only for personal reasons.  I know for a fact that it is blocked at my school and many others.  This is due to the image searches that the kids can do.  I know we also run into some problems with Google Images, but there are some people who use Flickr in a negative way.  Also, if I'm going to be posting to Flickr, I'm not going to share my images with the public.  It can be a scary thing to post pictures of children only to have some creep comment on it.  I have run into that before.

If I were going to have my students use this tool, I would teach them about the rules, as I would with any online tool.  I would also make sure to have their parents involved in the photo process.  Parents need to be involved because of the naivete that goes on with our students.  They always think it will never happen to them, but things can happen.  Education on the tools is key.

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Thing 6

I did a search for cats in Flickr.  I did this search because I like cats and have two of them.  The photo I found that I really like is just funny.  My 18 lb. cat sits like this by his food dish and I couldn't resist.  I try to find funny whenever I can.

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Thing 5

For about 30 minutes or so, I thought I wasn't going to be able to subscribe to any RSS feeds.  I opened the first site, Will Richardson's, only to not have the tools at the top of the screen to subscribe.  I scrolled down, went to each tab, and nothing.  I went back to 23 Things to see what I had missed and couldn't figure it out.  I went on to the next task, coping the URL into the feed with David Warlick.  Again, no luck with that either.  I then started playing around with Bloglines to see if there was something that I was missing.  It turns out that my Internet browser doesn't show the RSS feed subscription icon because there is another way.  I am on a new MacBook and I had to drag the "Sub with Bloglines" tab to my bookmark bar.  Once I did that I was able to subscribe to the first two blogs, no problem.  Here's the funny part, the third video of the lesson was on just that feature for all Internet browsers.  I was trying to do them one at a time, when all I had to do was watch the third video and I would have been all set.  That's OK, though, I had to figure it out and I did on my own.  The video just confirmed that I wasn't losing my mind.

Now to answer the questions: RSS can be a difficult concept for some to grasp right away - what questions do you have?  What didn't work or doesn't make sense?  How might you use RSS in your personal or professional life?  Find anything in your searching that you would recommend to others?

I guess I already answered the second question with my subscription woes.  It was frustrating, but I was able to trouble shoot my way through it.  One question that I do have is: is bloglines only to subscribe to blog RSS feeds?  Can I subscribe to other sources with that as well?  I'm going to give it a try to find out.  Also, I know that bloglines will not email to say that things have been happening on my feeds, which is both good and bad.  I would like to know if it's worth my time to go there to see the feeds, but I know that I would be inundated with too many emails.  I guess that means I better subscribe to the ones that matter so I will go check on a regular basis.

Personally, I might use an RSS feed to subscribe to things about school stuff or about my hobbies, etc.  For my husband, he's more into the news features than I am, so I might sign him up as well.  Professionally, I would use it for technology and school media related topics.  Something that I would like to do with my students is to get them subscribing to the various databases and places of information for research purposes.  I know a teacher librarian who does this with her students and she just loves it.  I am hoping to steal her idea and try that out in the classroom.

I would recommend http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/ and http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com/.  Both are great resources of inspiration for educators and school media.

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Thing 4

I went to register at bloglines and I had already created an account.  I must have done that in grad school and TOTALLY forgot about it.  I knew that I meant to learn more about this and it has taken me two years to get back to it. :-)

I handle information overload by shutting down, literally.  It's hard to read everything and find out all of the information on each and every single topic.  I do find that I don't know much about things because I start to lose interest pretty quickly if the point isn't made.  I am also a visual person and when things are in audio only, I tend to block it out.  I need to see it in order to get it.  If I have to go get the information, chances are, I'm not going to.  I would rather it was delivered to me.  I liked the analogy in the video comparing RSS feeds to Netflix and the video store.  I LOVE Netflix and so I'm guessing I will love RSS.

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Thing 3

I have used a blog at work using Edublogs.  However, I couldn't get many people to follow.  I tried to get students and teachers alike to log in, both in secure blogs for teachers only and public blogs for students and teachers to comment.  It just didn't catch on in the library setting.  I do know that our computer literacy teacher at the high school level did have great luck with her classes and getting them to blog.  My hope is to keep trying to get more to blog.  It's really amazing how comfortable kids feel when they can express their thoughts in a blog.

In the fall I am going to set up a blog site for my book club for them to discuss the books online both before we meet and after we meet.  This will allow for their ideas and comments to be heard and for those who can't actually come to the meetings to speak about the books.

I truly believe that students will find blogging really fun.  They all do it now, it's just that they use My Space and Facebook more than anything else.

Some concerns that I have are: 1. students will not understand the how to respond, 2. teachers will not encourage their students to blog, and 3. once it's posted, it's posted.  All users need to remember the guidelines when posting so that their privacy is kept and so that they feel comfortable blogging.

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Thing 2

Blogging is not new for me, but I haven't been doing it as much lately. I am now a Facebook addict, more on that later.

I am participating in 23 Things because I want to enhance what I know and do more with the tools that I have not used. The opportunity to teach other teachers about these "things" is really my driving motivator. My hope is to be able to return in the fall refreshed on these topics and I will be able to teach students and other teachers why these things are so important. I want to learn how to do these things well to better enhance my teaching.

Writing on the Internet can be a bit scary at first. I do watch what I say, because once it's out there, it's out there. I teach that to my students every day. In fact, on a personal note, I have another blog for my friends to read. I post pictures of my daughter there and tell funny stories. Someone that I didn't know began to post comments to pictures. It freaked me out a bit and I changed my blog address. I didn't, however, quit blogging. It's important to be careful, but we can't live in caves and not embrace the new technology because of one person. We just need to know the rules/guidelines for posting and all is well.

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Thing 1

What is Web 2.0? This is a term that has become a part of every day language, at least for me. As a grad student when the term was coined, it was part of every class that I was in. We learned more and more as the program went on and I can honestly say that I feel very comfortable with many of the components of Web 2.0. There are many things that I have worked on and some yet to dive into. I can't wait to get started.

After reading the article and viewing the video, there are things in there that I do, there are things in there that I would LOVE to do, and things in there that I see logistically not working in my school district. As much as I would like to see the kids using their cellphones for their education, the truth of the matter is that one weak link will ruin that for everyone. It only takes one kid with their cellphone camera in the wrong place to make all cellphones banned. There must be some ideas that we can chat about here for us to combat the negative and focus on what will enhance learning. But I guess, that's what this is all about. Bring it on!!

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