Thing # 16

Library Thing is amazing! It is definitely a book lover's dream. I'm already thinking about the friends of mine I will be introducing this to. I searched by author, book title and even the local tab to check out some venues in the area. I have not joined yet, although I think I will. I like that it let me search without joining. I tried to read some of the reviews of a particular book by Heather B. Armstrong, but they wouldn't pull up. I can think of numerous educational and collaborative uses for Library Thing. Especially if you can catalog all your picks to refer to at later times for various topics. Of course, the fact that this site has social aspects is also very helpful. I'm always checking ratings and reviews as a consumer and this site is no different from ones I find useful. It has so many great things to offer and it is extremely easy to use-which I appreciate!

Thing # 15

My sandbox page is http://misd23things.wikispaces.com/Starfish. I really enjoyed this once I got going. The only hang up was the table of contents. I found a code tool, but it wasn't creating the box I wanted, where I wanted so I deleted it. Oh well, I'm sure with some navigating I will figure it out. The discovery exercise was overwhelming and took a couple of hours for me to even get started. I'm hoping I did every task that was expected the correct way. This was yet another part of the learning curve I've been experience on this journey. After each task I do feel victorious, yet tired. Playing in the sandbox was fun once I figured out the tools. When I was embedding a YouTube video, I wasn't sure it was working until I took a chance and saved a blurry pic and it worked! Much about learning 2.0 is about taking chances and risks. Once I accepted that, things have gone a little more smoothly.

p.s.- I just figured out the Table of Contents!!

Thing 14 -Stretch

Being the coffee addict that I am, I thought I would search to find Starbucks on Wikipedia. The content did seem valid and complete, but I know otherwise. I know enough to know that the source may not be valid. I'm wary about uses of Wikipedia for that reason. I guess it's like reading any other report in that it is only as good as it's source. Even a story in a newspaper may not be completely valid. Anyway, I read about the origin of the company, marketing strategies and controversy surrounding it's fair trade policies. Under the discussion tab there were several comments and suggestions for changes. I think some people have a lot of time on their hands! There was more than I care to know about Starbucks! There were several revisions, too. I wonder why these people choose to spend their time on this one little area of Wikipedia? I guess the word is passionate.

Thing #14

The video of Wikis in Plain English was really helpful because I didn't quite have a grasp on wikis until now. I've heard about them and have visited Wikipedia, but that was the extent of my experience. After reading Wiki Wiki Teaching, I do think there will be wikis in my future. I'm already thinking of a way I could use one for my fall masters class. We will be doing a leadership task, so a wiki would be a great way to communicate with the team with which I'll be working. Ms. Davis' experience with wikis was amazing. The way she incorporated one to get two of her classes to collaborate on an assignment was remarkable. The study guides were really resourceful. After reading her comments, I realized it was from 2005! I'm so behind the times!
I explored several of the suggested wikis because I just couldn't stop. Some were pretty complicated, but one of my favorite was Salute to Seuss. I love the idea of the students book sharing, read alouds, and highlights from the Seuss books. I will share this idea with my 4th grade colleague who is also working towards her library certification. The Code Blue wiki was so innovative and fun! I'm amazed at what kids can do when given high expectations to run with. What kid wouldn't want to learn anatomy this way! Go West was also neat and simple enough to follow. I like how it was set up for navigation and the web created by Janie was really cool and I could see the uses easily applied to many subject areas.

Thing #13

Delicious is really helpful and I've never heard of such a thing! My Delicious already houses several URLs that I love and used in the classroom at http://delicious.com/hrenemc. I think this site has many beneficial aspects such as someone already doing the searching for you! The categorizing is helpful and the number of visits gives you a clue on the popularity of the sites. This would be a great resource during team planning. Someone could jump on Delicious and pull up a skill site or URL pertaining to a subject area in which you are planning and ta da-instant resources without all the surfing! I intend on importing the sites I've already bookmarked on my browser. I've just got to figure out how to import mine, not my husbands since his are used for work. It's really fun to think of search topics and get so many helpful sites. I just searched for educational sites, but I plan on checking out ones for gardening, photography, house projects and more!

Thing 7a

Infinite Thinking Machine had a article about some new Google Search Lessons for teachers to use with students making a large amount of info available quickly. It makes skillful searching a lesson to help students with all kinds of projects or papers. Every topic has three lessons that build on one another. I like this because it is readily accessible to us as teachers. I'm always looking for direction on lessons when I take my kids to the lab and these are set up and ready to go.
On the blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity, Fryer writes about his kid trying to get on the Internet during a rode trip. She realizes they don't have Internet access. This makes him view his daughter's perception of the Internet. He realizes she thinks it's an invisible resource that is accessible from anywhere or anytime all over the world. Which, it almost is! Anyway, he just thought that her reaction was funny.

Thing # 12

I went to each one of these tools and had a blast! I can totally lose track of time when I'm navigating around these sites. A use of 30 Boxes could be to house my students' birthdays and notify me of upcoming ARD's or conferences. This way my calendar would not get covered up on my desk! Gliffy would be a fantastic tool for students to input information into flow charts or outlines. Fourth graders could use it for their pre-writing for writers' workshop. Blabberize is too funny! What a great way for kids to create a pic to review another student on concepts for a test. I could engage my tutoring students with this tool. I also found timeglider to be unique. I haven't seen anything like this before, but the kids would love to make their time lines on this site verses my sentence strips that I usually give them for social studies. Pikistrips and toondoo would also be great assets to our writers' workshop. We could really have fun creating, working on characters and practicing quotation marks with this tool. Wordle is a cool, easy site to create word webs, picture words and much more that could be used for vocabulary review. I have already used the write board, but will continue to use it to store information I will need in the future. Most of these tools have significant social interactive properties that would engage students and provide high motivation during learning.