Thing #12

I love manners! As I tell me students, "Manners are magical!" I find it so interesting that as we develop new ways of communicating, we have to learn new types of etiquette! After reading several of the posts on commenting, these two stick out in my mind. #1 - contribute to the conversation vs. just making a random "right on!" type comment. We are always trying to be specific in our praise to children and I think that this is just good practice anywhere. It also raises the level of communication. The second point was in being respectful (or not being a Darth Commenter). Blogging, email and texting can be so quick that we sometimes write things without taking a second to reread our words before hitting send. I've done this in my own blog posts and had to go back and rewrite once I see how it looks on the blog page!
For my 2 outside comments, I have been commenting this summer on several blogs that I have found listed on friend's blogs. One is by a mom who does these great story time activities with her kids and the other is an old colleague that I had lost touch with over the years. It certainly can be a small cyber world sometimes!

Thing #11

This is by far my favorite thing of all of things thus far!!! This is just too cool! I've noticed those neat lists of book covers on some of my friends blogs and never knew what they were all about. I will use this ALL THE TIME. First of all, I have been trying to record all the books that I have read for the last few years - but I sometimes forget authors or what the books were even about as many of them I borrowed from friends or libraries. This is much better and I love that they show you the books with the covers. I also love that you can see how many other people have read the same book and see what they think about it...now I do that by just reading reviews on Amazon, but this is much better. I also love that you can get suggestions for other books you might like! This is the best!

Thing #10

Hmmm...it seems I totally forgot how to add a picture to a blog posting!!! Oh well - I guess messing things up and learning how to fix them is all part of this process. These are really cute...I can see kids LOVING these cartoons as well as making their own magazine covers, signs, etc. I used www.comicstripgenerator.com and it was fairly simple, even for me!

Thing #9

WOW - Today was a little overwhelming. I THOUGHT I understood how to import RSS feeds, but I am still having difficulty unless it has one of those big RSS buttons on the site!
In any case, I did find some challenging and interesting information on today's treasure hunt!
* The easiest ways to find feeds was through using the easiest search tools! For me this was Google Blog search. I think it was easy for me because the format was familiar. Once I found a blog I liked, I would search all fo the blogs that were linked to that site and so on...that can keep you busy for quite some time!
* The School Library Blogs by Superglu was a little confusing for me...I wasn't sure if this was just a list of blogs or if there was a search option available that I was just not seeing. I really liked the edublog award winners, but again, I couldn't figure out how to search for other blogs from there. Obviously, I am missing something here! I will check with my school librarian! She knows all of this good stuff!
*I did find some blogs that I absolutely loved, and that I believe will be useful including:"Mr. Kindergarten", "Kindergarten Tales" and my favorite name for a blog, "Kindergarten Chaos: because blogging is cheaper than therapy". I love these sites because the teachers have great ideas but also are very real in their approaches. They are also just hilarious!
*Another search tool/site that I really liked was called "clairvoy". It had all kinds of teacher blogs including one called "Teacher Questions and Answers" in which teachers can write in questions for answers from other teachers. A little teacher "Dear Abby" interactive sort of thing. I love this!!!
One news feed that really challenged me was the edublog's winner for most influential post titled, "Is it okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher?" This was a very challenging and thought provoking article! It certainly challenged me in a new way!

Thing # 8 - Readers

I love Google Reader!!! I love it for the same reason I love my DVR - I can skip through things quickly and avoid all the advertisements! I appreciated the "Discover" section on Google Reader as it allowed me to search blogs and websites and subscribe to them quickly. It was also nice to learn that you could subscribe to certain sections on websites, versus the entire website. For instance, on most of the news websites you could subsribe to just the articles on politics, or sports, or whatever interests you.

Personally, I love the reader as it allows me to skim things quickly. It will also help me to stay focused on what is important to me versus searching a site at random. Which leads me to question #3!

I can see libraries and classrooms using readers for all sorts of things! One of the greatest challenges for students (myself included) is learning how to search effectively for information and knowing what information is true, accurate and useful. I can envision setting up a reader based on a certain topic or subject area (i.e. information on the upcoming election) that students and teachers could use to scan through the latest information from a variety of quality sites that are preselected by a librarian or media expert. I also think readers would be especially helpful for those students that are easily distracted. I know that pop-ups and advertisements drive me bananas (and are often a little dodgy) and I can imagine them being a serious distraction for some students.

By the way - I never knew that these things were out there in cyberland! How do you find about all of these savvy things???

Thing #7 - Google

I thought I was fairly Google savvy, but I had no idea that Google had all of this cool stuff! I spent most of my time with Google calendar, Google docs and Google notebook. I LOVE the calendar!!! I am not making it public as it is not very exciting but I am planning on using it! It would be great for older students to map out assignments and all of their various activities. I can see myself using Google notebook as a place to record and organize all of the various bits of cool things I find on the internet in the summer, but can never relocate once I am back at school and actually need it. I always find fun games, pictures and songs but ususally I just keep surfing and forget to print them out or bookmark them. Good stuff.

Thing #6 - Mash ups

These things are really neat! At first all I could think about were the many and varied opportunities to make silly gifts for my friends! Especially the "make your own motivational poster" website! That being said, all of the different ways to play with media would be a virtual dreamland for some students! Forget the old school dioramas - kids could make their own magazine covers, puzzles and virtual trips as culminating activities to showcase their new learning. For those students that struggle with writing, I love the idea of making a mosaic of pictures to express their ideas and to compliment oral presentations. Too cool! I also loved the Yahoo! Trips website in which you can use pictures of locations from Flickr to create a trip journal. My student teacher from this past year is going to study abroad and I can see this as a great tool for her to communicate with our class and her family about her adventures. Mashups are smashing!

Thing #5 - Flickr

Once again, I must say that I am so very happy that this course is being offered in the summer! As was true with the Avatars, I have spent entirely too much time looking at pictures on Flickr. One thing is for sure, I am going to need lots of more time learning how to refine my searches! I began looking for pictures of different types of homes and shelters, as we do a big unit on "wants and needs" and "homes". It is difficult for the kids to imagine different forms of shelter and having pictures of various types of structures would be great! I found some cool igloos that the kids would love! However, searching did take me a good deal of time, and I still need some practice on how to access different groups and use tabs. I ended up with this picture as I have the 4th of the July in my mind and we do a study on American symbols at the beginning of the school year. After learning about the flag, the kids seem to find it EVERYWHERE! I also thought this little pup was too cute not to post. By the way, it drives me nuts that Flickr is not spelled "Flicker". Oh well.

Thing #4

My blog is officially registered and I am ready to play! Yippee! I am amazed at how organized all of this is! You go kickball captains! :)

Thing #3

Well, I did it! This is certainly the most productive thing I have done this summer! Plus, my avatar is much cuter than me! I am glad that I am doing this in the summer - which allowed me to change my avatar clothing and backgrounds 6000 times. If I had attempted this in the school year I would certainly not have discovered all the cute accessories! :)

Thing #2

For me, the easiset Lifelong Learning Habit is "play". I love to play, read and be with friends! THe most difficult is "view problems as challenges". For instance, when I get a flat tire, I could care less about being a lifelong learner and learning how to change a tire in the rain on the interstate. All I care about is how fast AAA can get to me!