Thing 18

I love podcasts! I've enjoyed NPR podcasts for some time now...I download them onto my ipod and listen while I'm on the treadmill. I especially like Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, which is LOTS of fun to listen to. I love music, but I also really enjoy talk radio. Grammar Girl had some neat podcasts, for people (like me) who like to write and are a bit goofy about grammar. I thought they were pretty clever. I wanted The Math Factor to be cool...but it had too many words. A real turn-off. The math podcasts all seemed a bit too upper-level for my students, but the potential is there for something helpful. I know some students have successfully made their own podcasts, and that would be ideal. I can see it being a neat tool for getting kids to develop their own 'lectures' or lessons to teach via podcast...if they can explain a concept, they'd have to know it pretty well. Good food for thought!

Thing 16

I like this Library Thing. I really like the idea of the 50 Book Club...setting it as a challenge at the beginning of a school year and encouraging kids to post their titles and reviews. I suppose each kid would have to come to school with a workable email address?? I don't know if I like the idea of setting everyone up with a 'ghost' account...would rather parents spearhead getting their children their own email addresses and having them use them for educational purposes only. Goodness knows they'll be using that more and more as we progress through the future technologically, right? The students have enjoyed blogging so much...it might turn out to be great incentive for them to read more independently.

Thing 15

Delicious..I guess it could be cool, like if I had a reason to give a group of students a specific list of websites they could (or were required to) visit for a set purpose. I don't, however, have much of a need to see my bookmarked pages when I'm away from my home computer. It's so easy to do a search and find what it is you're looking for on google. I don't have much opportunity to piddle around on my computer while I'm at school...I pretty much save the "piddling" until I get home, where I can't seem to go more than 30 minutes without 'checking in'! I think I can live with or without Delicious.

7b

In my 'quick-scan' of my G-Reader, I found an interesting article called Time to Read written by a Scottish teacher...lamenting the same things we lament here in the good ol' USofA...'magine that! He talked about 'teaching to the test'...over-assessing every little thing kids do in the classroom...taking a lot of the fun out of the classroom and replacing it with over-emphasis on number grades, essays, examination. He wants to read some novels in the classroom, just for the fun of reading them and not following them up with essays and assignments. He wants to jump into poetry and not ask kids to analyze every one of them...just to show them that they can be simply enjoyed. It was interesting to read the comments, obviously from fellow Scottish-ites using terminology that was pretty foreign to me, but no doubt common educator-lingo in Scotland. It was a good read, and one I think I'll go back and comment on, now that I think of it!

Thing 14

Wordle was a cool site that I think kids would like. I used it a little bit myself and had a lot of fun. Can't figure out how to embed my creation, but I'm going to keep playing with it to figure it out. Using Wordle could be a neat way to replace the 'all about me' activities we use in the beginning of a school year to learn more about our students. It would be neat, too, to let them create a 'wordle' describing their feelings about a particular subject (like math) in the beginning of a year, and again at the end of a year...maybe they'd feel more competent??? I like the power of the written word, anyway, and think this is a creative site to get kids thinking about themselves. I also found some neat vocab activities on Quizlet...good review of basic concepts from a variety of subjects.

Thing 13

I made a trading card which was a lot of fun. I had made one with a family member, but felt a little weird posting it on flickr for the world to see without his permission, so instead I made one with that relative's horse. Surely he won't mind that! Also went to Image Chef, which was loads of fun as well. Very addictive!

Thing 12

Okay...this was FUN!!!!!!!!!!! I really liked RockYou and when I'm done posting I'm going to some of the other sites to explore.

My youngest is off to the movies, my house is clean, my laundry is complete (thanks to the best husband ever) so I have computer time that is full of NO GUILT!!! I used the photos I downloaded from flickr to create my slideshow, but would have much rathered used my own collection of beach photos. They're on my other computer, which I didn't put Firefox on, so it's all well and good, but I plan on doing this for family ASAP! For the classroom, I see lots of possibilities...it's so user-friendly that kids could accomplish the tasks themselves. They could take a historical concept...like the Civil War...and make a slideshow representing the terms or character traits of the soldiers or a sequence of events retold with modern pictures. My, there's a lot at our fingertips! Photos links and credits:
palmtree by janusz l
seagull by Chris Seufert
dressing rooms by Parksy1964
pier by WisDoc
view from above by Adamos Maximus