Thing #19

I checked out a few sites but was most interested in the TuDiabetes. I've been looking for sites that focus on this particular health issue and have found some good ones. But this you can actually become part of a group by state - which is nice. The layout was easy for me to follow - and they actually had several topics listed that are current and active (which I've been looking for). So, I know this isn't educational for the classroom...but it will be a good move for me personally.

Thing #18

GoogleDoc is what I chose to explore. I like the fact that I can collaborate with people using this feature. Rather than going back and forth with emails, we can all access one document and make changes.

Thing #17

Rollyo....rolling away! This was a great site. I can see how using this site will save students much time and lessen confusion. It's a nice way to narrow down the sites by ensuring that students only access 'safe' sites. Bruce's video was a great tool to watch. He covered things in a way that was simple to understand and took me step by step on how to create my search roll:

http://rollyo.com/vengar/venegas_trial/

I like the fact that I can explore other rolls and edit them to fit my specific needs.

Thing #16

Amazing! Talk about making life easier. There are some times when emails really get out of control. I think that using a wiki would make it a lot easier to have an ongoing collaboration. It's really hard sometimes to set up a meeting time...I'm cc-ing everyone and they're cc-ing me....and ten of us are cc-ing each other....totally out of control.

Setting up the wiki to 'hold' these conversations makes a lot more sense. I looked at the PBwiki...which now comes up as PBworks.com . I'd really like to see how their classroom wiki works. They mention that students don't need to have an email account.

Thing #15

I remember walking downtown to the library as a young adult and spending hours there...sometimes leaving with a book, album, or sometimes with nothing at all. But it was a fun afternoon for me. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore....if I'm looking for information, I just get online and search the web for it. Music? I log on to iTunes and download what I want. So, what do school libraries have to offer today's students?

A lot. As Rick Anderson, in "Away from the Icebergs" mentions, libraries have to make the move from 'come to me' to "let me show you what I have." But, where does that start? With the teacher asking? With the campus librarian offering? What if neither of the two occur? Then what? Who gets the short end of the stick on that one?

That it needs to happen is not the question...nor do I think that anyone would disagree with that. The bigger issue is who's going to start making it happen?

Thing #14

Tag! I claimed my blog. I think that technorati can help me sift through all the info that's out there. I've done searches before and found sites that had information that I was looking for - but I never really knew whether the source was reputable. Technorati will allow me to search for entire blogs about a topic, but more importantly will let me see how much of an authority the site is.

I just hope my blog can hit the magic middle number of 20! LOL

Thing #13

Del.icio.us What a great site! How out of touch am I, really. I never knew anything like this existed. Who would have thought that I could have all of my bookmarks on any computer that I would ever use...anywhere! The entire organization of the sites is cool. I go back to an earlier post about Glogster and my conversation with B. Foye. I had thought about saving several examples to my flashdrive to share with students; now I can just save them to my del.icio.us account and tag them as 'examples' or 'projects' or whatever. I can pull them up and have them grouped by licking on the tag. I think this will save me quite a bit of time.

I'm wondering if registering as a classroom and making sure that del.icio.us is on each computer would make it easier to make sites available to students - as opposed to sitting at each computer and entering in the url.

I like the fact that I can opt to keep bookmarks private and share only those that I want to share. This would be useful if I create a classroom account.