Thing #23

Wow, what a brain stuff! I don't think i've tried to learn so much in such a short period of time. My eyes will never be the same again, but this was worth it. I can't believe all the cool things that i've been missing out on. My students won't know what hit them by the time the year is over. I hae so many plans making blogs, webquests, wikis and podcasts. My off periods are going to be well used. The best thing is that all this will actually save me time in the end, and the kids will be so much more invloved in the learning process. One of my favorite creations was my Around the world in 30 clues game, i've included the link, it's so cool. If you want to play you can use Victoriadepoaola password toby. the site is http://depaola.21classes.c0m/ Thanks for setting up this incredible learning tool, i hope to convince the rest of the teachers to take chances and get messy as Ms. Frizzle would say!

Thing #21

I love making these movies!!!! It's rather addictive once you get started, and my daughters make them all the time for their projects at school. These are really easy to make, it takes more time to play with them till they're just right then anything. I am hoping to get my students to make them this year, once again i will have to check and make sure that the computers have the programs. For some reason it wont upload my movie :( This is a drag-forgot to post this one, saved it as a draft, oops, because i was hoping the movie would work-but it never did.
I finally got it to work, Yeah!!!

Thing #22

So now there's Ning, it's getting a little confusing about all the different places now. I think that ning might be where i would set up a site for my administrators to chat with each other. There is a need for the principals to be able to talk without the lag of email. Most administrators don't have time to email and they get so many they get lost. With a ning site i could see a way for them to be able to avoid the massive amount of mail and be able to communicate real time.

Thing #20

Found some cool clips on You tube, i love the bolde @the library and the cookie monster clip. these could be cool to use when creating a presentation about the library. Then you could create your presentation tour and place it on youtube. For some reason i could not get teachertube to come up, i'll have to try again later. I liked Blinx, it had a larger collection of stuff. Word to the wise, make sure you preview everything before you show it!

Thing # 19

This is so unfair, just imagine all the time i would have saved if i had discovered Wufoo earlier! This is the coolest resource, it creates forms for you with just a few clicks. I used it to create the forms we have our new teachers fill out. I can't count all the times that i needs a form, but didn't save, or whatever and had to start over. This is great because it is web-based and once again always there. I'm not going to need to do the contiuuous check retype thing with the members in my group since we can edit it online before we print. I love technology!

Thing #18

Just when i thought it couldnt get better, it did. I have had so many computer crashes or lost flash drives that this is a godsend. I tried out Google doc and it is great. It's easy to use, and very flexible. But better than that, as long as the computer has access to the internet i can reach my documents anytime. Which means i don't have to make 5 copies of a presentation, i can just log in and go!! This has got to be one of my favorite things!

Thing # 17

Rollyo is pretty neat, i created one that deals with new teacher resources and ideas. This will be a really good way for people to create a specfic place to look for information but still make sure the sites are varied. I could see this as being useful for teachers that have specific websites they want students to use, they can create a searchroll and then the students can look at all the sites at one time. http://rollyo.com/sdepaola/

Thing # 16

Talk about an information overload. Every time i think I've found the easiest way to manage new info,more comes a long. I love all the great ideas and tech things. What i love more is the fact that i can go back to the website and refresh my memory, which is getting rather faulty, on how to do something. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to finally figure out what my 9 year old is talking about! In my classroom i plan to set up blogs for my students to talk about the books and stories that we are reading. I plan on creating a Wiki page that will act as a tutorial site so that students can get help and find resources related to what we are doing. As a master mentor i want to set up a wiki so that the new teachers and the mentors and the administrators can communicate about different topics. I just hope that the district doesn't have all this firewalled!

Thing #15

Library 2.0, it's a little scary to some of us older techers. I remember wen card catalogs had cards! But in all honest, i am really excited about the possibilities with technology and the information that i available on the web. Imagine that in the time it would take a person to find one book in the old fashion card catalog, you could google the same topic and find 1.000's of resources. The one article i really liked was Away form the "Icebergs". Anderson really gets to the point of the fact we need to come out of the stacks and rethink research and research. This is one of the best articles i've found that puts things in perspective about where the library is moving and how we need to get there. We can't stand behind counters and tell kids to hush, we need to get out there and get actively involved wiht creating learners for today and the future.

Thing #14

Technorati will be useful in finding blogs that are more recent than web pages. Blogs are updated daily while webpages less frequently. So you have a chance of getting better information, but you have to make sure that the blog page is credible. I seemed to get the same blogs when i did the searches, unless i did it wrong, which is totally possible.

Thing #13

So delicious is cool, i can organize all my bookmarks, plus all the ones my kidsw and husband put on my computer!! Not only that, but i can see how this would be really good for students since they have to look up information, they can use tags and find sites easier rather than trying to find it the hard way. A teacher or team counld create bookmarks related to their subject and then share them with others to plan cross curricular ideas, and the librarian can add more as well with the right tags to direct them to who might find them the most useful

Thing #12

Interesting information about alias vesus real name. My Avatar is rather unique with the whole farm girl thing, but i am sdepaola as a signature. There aren't too many depaolas so it limits confusion. I also go by goatshaver on by facebook accounts, so i guess i need to determine which want to use. I also found the etiquette blog interesting, i hope to start a class blog and so i like the comment by susan about her two rules, there's a person behind each blog and to keep the tone kind/polite.
I found a couple of really good blogs that deal with new teachers, i want to set up a blog for the new teachers in our district and wanted to get some ideas. I have the ideas, now i just need the time to set them up!!

Thing #10

This was way too much fun, i could have spent days doing this, and it was really easy. I comicstripgenerator, too much fun! http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ There were other ones but this one was the easiest to use for me, hope you like the comic, it seems appropriate eh?

Thing #11

Librarything, is the gratest! I have over 1500 books on this website already logged in and have 200 more to add before schools starts. The best thing is the Cuecat, it cost $15 and reds the ISBN numbers off the books. It isn't 100% for all books, but it bets typing in all the titles. I have discovered how to print off various reports and lists of the books i have, so that i can keep a record of what i have and who is borrowing it. I bought the unlimited subscription for $29 , one of the best investments i my life. The first year i had it i would say it saved me a good $200 based on the fact i didn't buy the same books again. This is one of the best thing sinvented and if you have a large library you have to do this!!!!

Thing # 9

Okay, i'm not sure if i really like any of the search engines for this, or maybe i just need to get the hang of it better. The one that was the most useful was the technorani one. It seemed pretty straight forward, and it was easy to subscribe to the things it found. The one place ha everything under reivew or awaiting repair (i think it was edublog) so that was pretty useless. I like atomic learning, i have done stuff there before as far as learning new tech, so it was neat to see what they had on this topic.

Thing #8

Okay, this could becoma a bit of an addiction. I love the idea of an RSS, now i can have the computer keep track of the new things and i don't have to hunt for information so much. This could be really neat to have students create an RSS and then they can read the latest info on what they are interested in, and blog accordingly, rather than try to find something that all the kids like to write about. It will be alot easier and faster to find things, i made a bundle about freebies for teachers that i can use to keep track of the latest stuff, rather than have to go to all the individual places. I also did a RSS for some news sites so that when i get 5 minutes to check what is going on in the world it will be more productive.

Exercise # 7

Google Scholar was neat, i loved the way it pulled up real information about certain topics, not just opinions or conjectures. Of course not all scholars know what they're talking about, but this could be a really good resource for students doing research at the higher level.
Google Earth I have used in my classroom before, when we have talked about a place in a story or when we are doing units about the environment. It is really cool in that you can actually see things like pollution of the rivers and deforestation if you know the coordinates. I have used this in conjunction with a collection of space photos that are older (15 years) so that the students can really see the changes that have taken place.

Thing # 6

K i love all the cool toys, i can't decide what i like more. The puzzle thing is awesome, but then there is the one that makes the mosaics. But i think my favorite is the trading cards. It would be so awesome to have students take and make trading cards for things like parts of speech, story elements, lit devices, etc.. Then of course you could do story characters, how awesome!!!

Thing #4

I was having so much fun playing, that i forgot to post. This will be a good way of keeping track of what i'm doing.

Thing #5

Love the photos on FLICKR, just jhave to wqatch out for the pop ups as i discovered at school one day. I didn't realize that you could get the ones on united streaming, that will be useful. Now i can plan ahead and gather my potos from FLICKR for the various stories i teach, rather than have to dig for them the day before.

Thing #3

This was fun, i loved the avatar part, but i wish they had a goat!!

Thing #2

I definately have the 1/2 habit down, i play more than anything else, or is it my kiddos play and i chase after them? Either way, it's fun.

Okay, now that i figured out how to make a blog page it's time to Blog!!!