Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Week 5 Thing 12

I liked using Rollyo. It just seemed hit and miss about how long it would take. Some clicks would be quick and others I had to get my other textbook out to read while I was waiting for it to load. I saw some others in the class had noted that it was taking a long time as well.

I am so glad to know about Rollyo. This will really help guide students in searching the Internet for lessons. I wish I had known about this before. I team teach in several classes as a Learning Support teacher. Students like using the Internet for projects but have difficulty in searching to find the necessary information. I am going to pass this info on to the History teacher I team teach with when I'm not on maternity leave. I think this would help him to provide trusted sites for students to search.

I created my Rollyo based on a history lesson about the Salem Witch Trials. I put 10 sites for students and history for the students to search. They will then find information to create an interview of a person of their choice from that time period. Here is the Rollyo I created:

http://rollyo.com/alisonls589/super_easy_history_search/

Week 5 Thing 11

I looked under the category food to explore a Web 2.0 Award winner. I looked around at the website imcooked.com. I found the website pretty interesting. Users upload videos of themselves cooking recipes. It allows people to feel as if they are a food channel star at home. It allows people to share their best dishes and users to find new recipes. It is cool because you get to see a recipe being made rather than simply following one in print. I was wondering if there is anything like this in education where teachers are videotaping/ sharing great lesson ideas. There are so many creative education ideas that should be shared. I also did some other exploring to find some I might be interested in doing my presentation. I'm hoping to do my presentation on comiqs and learn more about the website.

I also joined Classroom 2.0 network group through Ning. There seems to be a network for all different interest areas. This opens up great connections through the computer to find others with similar interests or causes. I also played around with Travel IQ. I wanted to keep playing but I'm limited with time. I had a college professor make us memorize what every single country in the world was. I found this tedious but maybe it helped my score. I found I know countries but cities are weaker.

Week 5 Thing 10

I again wish I had more time to play around with these online image generators. I definitely want to use these sites in the future to send to friends. I was amazed at all you can do. I was looking at the generators where you can upload photos to movie clips. I think that would be fun to do for some friends. My friend was telling us her friend made her a movie for her birthday from one of these generators. I've known about them but didn't really explore them myself.

I ended up making a simple comic. I have been so angry at the phone company because we are still waiting for an engineer to put up a phone pole in our new house. So I have been without internet service since my move. I brought my pack and play and my baby is napping while I use my inlaws internet. I made a simple comic with the Lion King (which is one of my favorite movies). I've been so stressed about the courses with no internet at the house so Pumba is telling me Hakuna Matata to have no worries. The link is under my avatar to check out the comic.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Week 4 Thing 9

Now that I have set up my Bloglines, it was interesting to explore these suggested places to search for feeds. I thought the easiest one to use was Syndic8.com. It was user friendly to type in searches and provided relevant feeds. Google Blog search was the easiest to use to search blogs. The edublog award winning blogs was interesting to read but not too easy to sort through finding ones easily that I wanted to read. I really had never used a search tool to look for blogs. This class is the first I have really had any interest in follow others' blogs. I will continue to search out feeds that interest me and may benefit my classroom when I return.

Week 4 Thing 8

This is the first I've signed up for RSS feed. I used Bloglines and signed up for a variety of newsfeeds. I really liked this service. I like that it was so easy to sign up for the feeds. They had suggestions for users and easy clicks to the most popular feeds. I could use this service in a library or for personal use. I signed up for ones that I thought were interesting. As a librarian, I could sign up for educational ones. It makes it so easy for educators to have all that feeds in one place. It seems like it would save so much time and make easy access to information. I thought the book readers clubs would be great for teachers and libraries to check out reviews for books. News feeds could be used for current events. Teachers could look for specific feeds that support their curriculum. The best thing is to put all the information in one place to save from future searches and clicking around the web.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Week 3 Thing 7

I'm really excited about all we will do with technology in this course. It doesn't feel burdensome to fulfill requirements like some assignments in courses. I definitely will come out of this course with so much more knowledge and experience with technology. I am amazed at all that is available. I think it is so important to include technology in our lesson plans, especially with this generation of students. I am on maternity leave currently from my teaching position. Over the summer all classrooms got smartboards so I'm so excited to have this in my room. At home I'm looking forward to using Skype. For my dad's birthday I bought each of us a camera for our computers. Living apart from my family has been harder now that I have a baby. Using Skype will allow us to see each other more even if my parents can't hold my baby as much as they would like.

Week 3 Thing 6

What a fun activity! I was excited to explore all the fun things you can do with flikr. I never knew it was as easy as it is to create all these cool things with your pictures. I played around with FD toys Big Huge Labs: Jigsaw Maker. I was so excited to see that you can send away for a real puzzle. My niece loves puzzles and I think she would love one of a picture of her family. I wish I had even more time to explore all these fun picture tools. I'm moving in a couple of days and limited for time. I will revisit this activity in free time in the future.

Lake McDonald Dream, Glacier National Park

Week 3 Thing 5: I had fun searching through flickr. There are some amazing photos, and very talented photographers have shared their pictures. I chose to post a picture from Glacier National Park. This is where my husband and I went on our honeymoon two years ago. It was a beautiful place and I wanted to see what pictures others had taken. Wow. This was uploaded by username moonjazz.

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Avatar

I set up this blog account today and played with Yahoo! Avatars for the first time. I found an outfit that included a baby so I had to pick that one to represent my 4 month old. I wish I could use the same system and edit the baby's appearance to look a little cuter.