A Dog Named Chicken

I reread what I wrote about PageFlakes, and I’m not sure I agree with myself about the usefulness, but I digress.

Social networking– I have my doubts about Facebook, etc. for a number of reasons, but I like that the two we looked at here had some actual content value, idea sharing, and the like. I read several posts and the most annoying thing was when the poster (?) felt the need to say “Thank you for your post” to everyone who wrote any kind of response. They’ve gotta break that nasty habit so reading their posts doesn’t take twice as long for all the good manners going on.

I didn’t get any brilliant ideas reading around, but it is useful to know that there are teachers out there trying this stuff, too, and that I can access them if/when needed.

I did spend some time on a 1st/2nd grade blog which I liked a lot. An amazingly creative teacher trying lots of cool stuff. Inspiring!

I love my Google Reader because I’ve only subscribed to things that really interest me and that I don’t feel guilty about when I read or don’t read them.  The perfect example is The Happiness Project’s guide to Getting Rid of Things You Don’t Need.  This is my favorite task, so much so that some of my friends wonder what I have left to get rid of.  But the truth is that things collect (especially with the three other humans and one dog with whom I share my home and life) and my closets, pantry, desk and drawers can always use a once over.

I am not the least bit worried that my Reader does not contain much teaching stuff, because I am much more than “just” a teacher.  Okay, obviously I’m a bit concerned or else I would not have written above justification, but I’m not concerned enough to subscribe to things I don’t want to read!  Ah, the secret to life!

I really like Pageflakes.  I think it’s easy to use and I can see a huge number of possibilities in terms of using it with my class– in fact, I think it’s the most useful so far because it combines so many of the other tools in one place.

I started my own Pageflake and added my delicious bookmarks (must edit them so students don’t see my Learning 2.0 stuff– though there is a lot they could learn!), some sticky notes and “Grammar Girl” link.  I’m wondering if I could add a link to Google docs for assignment sheets.  I tried but no dice (yet).

I think this is similar to a blog in that I can have whatever I want attached to it for people to access… this is just a start-up page version of that… though I could set my blog to be a start up page, too.  I think this is becoming a great big venn diagram where most tools are overlapping.  I will need to do some thinking about what I can actually manage to use this year without getting in over my head.

Yes, awesome and wonderful.  Almost perfect– easy to use, useful, loaded with gadgets… one flaw: can’t share with people outside of gmail.  This is a real super-bummer, especially because I spent most of the last many hours creating a document and importing my contacts (one by one… twice!) only to find out what I should have known to begin with.

How can we use this in the classroom?  No school-based folders for writing projects, taking my on-line editing to the next level, letting kids edit each other’s work from home (as part of their homework!!), allowing students to work on projects together while clearly seeing who did what.  The options are without limit.

I found a few interesting things on YouTube tonight, and I will attempt to embed one or two of them below.

These first two are about Leadership. The first is about a camp for at-risk children that created a leadership experience to help them bridge between camp-age kids and counselor-age kids. This leadership training helped the used-to-be-campers-but-not-quite-counselors gain the skills they would need to be camp leaders in the future. They also started a mentoring program and a scholarship so kids can go to college.

The second one was an ad, basically, for a guy who does outdoor trust and ropes-course stuff for kids, calling it “Leadership.” Kids reflected nicely, though… maybe leadership reflections would be a good use for podcasts. I’ll add that to my list. This video strongly reinforced the need for good audio– it has for the background sounds of sirens, which was painfully distracting, even for my hearing-impaired self.

The third one is a follow-up from one of my Google Reader subscriptions which shows how to fold a shirt in a couple of seconds. The original was so fast that I couldn’t figure out what to do, but this one slows it down. Haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll let you know.

Last, a very powerful Israeli video that I think is worth watching. I’ll leave it at that. Strangers

On TeacherTube I just clicked around a lot… nothing really stands out right now, because I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. But I can see how this media could be very useful.

I think my voice is lost somewhere is cyberspace. I do not mean this in some abstract idiomatic way, but quite literally– my Evoca recording is out there somewhere, but has not come home to roost (check out this lovely poem by our new poet laureate by a similar name). Likewise, I could not listen to anyone else’s podcasts, so I think maybe Evoca has the day off.

There will be no embedding here today, I fear.

Nonetheless, some ideas for podcasts:

1. Kids reading aloud to check for fluency.

2. Kids interviewing each other and/or a family member

3. Classroom audio newspaper

4. Kids create a “radio show” for a book report.

My husband is a podcast fanatic, so we are heavily on the podcast bandwagon here at the Newman homestead. We subscribe to about 20 or so podcasts through iTunes, all of which he listens to in the car and some of which I listen to when I’m not listening to Laurie Berkner with my children (not often). But I recently discovered that while I am paying bills online and updating Quicken (which I need to do so desperately, by the way) it is quite lovely to listen to a podcast or ten (depending on how long it’s been since I last opened Quicken). I often just listen to the most recent of whatever Jonathan has downloaded, but lately I have been listening to “Lifehacks” and organizing tips, too.

I can see myself listening to education-related podcasts now that I know where to find them, but I am not excited (yet) about having my students listen to them and/or creating them. I’m hoping that the next lesson or so will inspire me in this area.

I think that Library Thing is super-cool and very useful. I often browse Amazon recommendations to find new books and here’s another way to do it.

I have often wanted to create a binder or file of book suggestions for/by students, and this could be a really cool way to do it. Also, kids can search for great books by genre for book report ideas.

Have to explore more about groups, as privacy is an issue; and I wonder about keeping things appropriate, as I didn’t see any kind of blocking capability.

Not the first tool I’ll reach for next year, but certainly worth knowing about, especially when kids are looking for something excellent to read for their book report each month.

D.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. or wherever they put those annoying periods is not my friend. I have been at it for many hours (estimated time was 5-10 minutes) during which I created and deleted several accounts, tried, failed, tried, succeeded somewhat, tried again (another way) and ultimately succeeded in creating a personal account and a school/ teaching account and importing my bookmarks. Only when I was done with this task did I read that this particular series of steps was Shelley’s “Winter Break Challenge.” Hmmm… it’s Christmas in July here at the Newman’s.

There are endless ways of using this in school, but frankly I’m too pooped to pop. Maybe I’ll bookmark a website or two about time management or about the beauty of throwing in the towel before (another) entire summer evening is gone.

Ice cream really would be just dandy.

I do check my reader pretty regularly because I subscribed to things I’m really interested in, like this one blog by two Atlanta photographers who take some of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever seen (upcoming b’day gift to self) which seem to capture the spirit of the people in them.  I love their wedding photos, but most of all I love to see the family portraits which are stunning and interesting.

Lifehacker is another new favorite, full of useful advice for living, and I occasionally read The Simple Dollar, since I’m moderately interested in personal finance.