Week 6: Thing 13

My basic instinct on programs like delicious is that the majority of my use of the internet is 1) sites I go to all the time making features like RSS helpful or 2) I need to look something up so I search for it, find it, read it, and am done with it. Rarely are there sites that I need "sporatically". However, there are some sites I use from year to year with a particular reading assignment and I save those to my favorites. However, with the fluid movement of the web, I often find that things I bookmark are gone, changed, or irrelevant by the time I need them again a year later. I can see where this could be a good way to share information; however, I think the rollyo (if it actually worked) is a better concept for use in the classroom. I did find some really interesting articles on the library website that I enjoyed reading, but beyond that, there wasn't much functionality here that I could use in a classroom. As far as personal use, I see RSS as a much more promising feature. Rather than teaching websites like this that will come and go, our real goal should be to teach students how to do searches online. Very few of them know how to look anything up. Teaching them about keywords, realiable websites, and good search techniques will prove much more useful in the real world than taking them to the "digital waters" to drink from. If we do all of the searching and organizing for them, they won't know how to do it themselves.

One last thought: I was reading the "effective habits of delicious users" and one of the suggestions was to add sites to your RSS. In essence then, isn't this just one "middle man" step in the process to RSS?

Week 5: Thing 12

This Rollyo thing has some promise if there is time to really investigate it and set it up for a particular project. I don't know how helpful it would be day in and day out, but it would be a good asset for a research project. It would be a helpful way to restrict students to certain websites when you assign them a research project. As a teacher, I could preselect reliable websites and then require students to find all of their material from the provided websites on the Rollyo. One disadvantage to this is that it won't search our subscription based databases like EBSCO or TEL. It would prove very helpful in current events classes where you could create a search engine linked to specific magazine and news articles. I believe it would make up for my criticism of the RSS when I stated that RSS is not a practical tool for finding current articles and information. This would allow the teacher to create a database specific to a grouping of websites. I could also see this as a useful resource for English while we're doing a particular novel. I could link all of the different websites about the novel to a Rollyo. It may also be a useful tool in dealing with writing techniques and online writing resources.
Here is the link to the one I created using writing resource websites:
Okay, so I thought I created one, but my chief complaint is that this website is VERY slow which means I could just search on my own in the meantime. If it ever loads and I can locate it, I'll post it here.

Here is the link (I think): http://www.rollyo.com/321321321/help_me_write_right/

Week 5: Thing 11

So the IQ quiz is cool if you want to wrack your brain for state capital and teach geography, but it's not very practical in an English classroom. I looked through the list of suggested sites they provide, and I think they've left out some of the more helpful ones. Ellen sent out an invite last year to a bookshelf website that would prove useful in an English classroom. It allows students to post books they've read, show what books they own to loan out, and even a place to post book reviews which is already an assignment I have them do on paper. Of course, to go back to my same point, this is a great website, but it's impractical because it's one more place to go. Facebook has developed nearly the same software that allows me to include the same information and then immediately share it with my facebook friends. Two benefits of this are that 1) I can share it with a pre-established group rather than having to send additional invites 2) it's housed in a website I already visit reducing the number of websites I have to go to.

Another website they've left off is called www.sporcle.com. It's a great website with a variety of quizzes that students can use to learn more about a subject or even quiz themselves on trivia. One that was recently posted is http://www.sporcle.com/games/leomontg/nineteen_eighty_four# This one is actually a very good quiz on the book 1984 that I could give my students. The quizzes are often user produced making it a great web 2.0 resource that you could use in and adapt to your classroom. It's a fun way you could create online quizzes for your kids and even your friends.

Week 5: Thing 10

I think I've finally stumbled upon something I can actually use that's fun, cool, and practical. There are many different avenues that I can use with this technology. For instance, I played around with one that allows you to create a magazine cover (seen above). It's not pretty, but it was a first attempt just to see what the program would do. Now that I see what the final product looks like, I can easily edit it with better colors and there are many more options to make it more personalized and unique. This would also be a great way for students to create book covers, design magazines for a book they've read, make comic strip versions of books, and explore the relationship between visual art and literature. I"m excited that I was introduced to this and and think I can use it in the future. It will take some time for me to explore the different websites that they present here, and I'm sure there are others.

Week 4: Thing 9

Unfortunately, this isn't a very "organic" exercise. You have to really surf and stumble across information on the web. Searching for it cold turkey rarely yields any results. I have found that most educational information on the web is either 1) for elementary education 2) out of date 3) not very helpful. I have recently done some searching for information on Beowulf to enhance my teaching of the book. I have found a few decent resources that are set up as lesson plans or links to interesting articles. However, very little of what I use day to day in the classroom would relate to what could be found on newsfeeds and blogs. Even when I have students use current events in class, that is done using research materials and search engines. Using a RSS to hope that a relevant article will appear.

In reference to these particular links, the Google engine looked to be the most helpful. The one called "Edublog" looked to be the most promising, but it turned out to be out of date by three years and consisted largely of big awards announcements, but very little in the way of actual information.

I think establishing communities of blogs for teachers would possibly be helpful if you knew that you had time and were working on similar projects as other teachers. For instance, if there was a running blog for teachers who are currently teaching Beowulf to share their ideas, that may be helpful. However, once again this doesn't seem to be an organic or realistic exercise because of our time constraints as teachers.

Week 4: Thing 8

So I think that RSS is probably going to be the most practical technology in this exercise and it's also the one I know the least about. I think there are better RSS readers than the ones they have suggested. I'll ask around and post their links here later.
The new Yahoo! homepage is operating on a similar feature where you can add links to commonly visited pages to your homepage that will then open in a scroll over/pop-up window.
I think, in actuality, that the internet is a shrinking force at this point rather than an expanding one. Just as the argument exists that the universe must reach a point at which it must contract, the same is happening to the internet. There is a centralizing of information on certain websites and rather than "surfing" the web, like in the "early days" of the internet, I find myself visiting the same 4-6 websites over and over again. Features like RSS allow us to quickly visit those websites and see what has updated. If we regularly read the same blogs or visit the same humor websites, we can use RSS to alert us to updates without having to go to the website every day. The same is true of news stories that interest us or that we regularly look at. I'm curious to see how personalized this technology becomes in order to allow it to suit our individual needs.

While the technology doesn't quite exist yet, I think that this could be a useful way to dispense information to students and allow them to read up on current events, view pictures, and even read blogs that are relevant to a particular class. I see this as being technology that could evolve or be adapted in the near future.

Week 3: Thing 7

One exciting part of technology is that it allows you to quickly locate information to save you money and time. Whether it is looking at forms about car repairs or checking out the days "online deals" at passwird.com, you can find ways to make your life easier. I have found resources like reviews of products and forums that discuss how to repair a certain car part very helpful. In the past, you had to take your car in and let the "experts" diagnose the car and fix it. Today, you can talk with online communities to explore your problems and find solutions. In the end, this saves us so much time and unnecessary expenses. I recommend to anyone that they shop for cheaper prices online and look for answers to their problems before they move forward.

Week 3: Thing 6

I was intrigued by the color wheel mashup; however, it would not apply to a classroom situation that I can tell. It is great if you're remodeling a bathroom and need a picture to match a particular color of paint or shower curtain. The one that I did think could be helpful is the map application that allows users to upload pictures of places on the globe a map. Once again, this seems like a place where dupication needs to be replaced with a monopoly. Google Earth is such an undertaking that these pictures would be better off added to the existing Google Earth/Google Maps structure rather than Flickr creating their own mapping software. It seems redundant. This would be helpful in a classroom if, say, we are reading Catcher in the Rye, and I want my students to see where a particular place is and what it looks like in NYC. Most of this is already discussed in my previous post.

Week 3: Thing 5

So I hate Walmart because it makes us a culture without culture. It robs us of the chance to shop at Borders for a book or a record store for a new CD. We can also get our hair done, buy a big mac, and put tires on our car. However, I think monopolies on information is a good thing. There is no reason that I would ever travel to Flickr to look at pictures when I can just use the photo application on Facebook. Facebook allows me to do "one stop shopping". I can "blog", comment, post pictures, look at friends pictures (which is maybe not as enlightening as looking at pictures from people I don't know) but it is surely more practical. I want to see where my friends have been and what they see, not what a random person on Flickr sees. There is value in seeing other people's art, and for that I'm thankful. Without the internet and places like Flickr, there would be no way for us to see other people's art. However, I think it's a good thing that a website like Facebook is around to provide us with "one" website we can go to for information, updates, and pictures. The one function of Flickr I do like is the mapping feature which allows us to see pictures of say, the pyramids, if we want. It should be more integrated with google earth/maps to allow us to click on any location and "see" what others have seen there. Again, they may have their own map, but to spice it with a project like google earth is even better.

NYC

The view of NYC from the roof of my school in NY the night of our engagement
Originally uploaded by jstwstngtime

This is a picture from the roof of La Salle Academy in NYC.

Week 2: Thing 3.1

I've talked with my brother who is currently in college about the functionality and practicality of blogs. His comments reaffirmed my suspicions that they are largely an "extra" requirement of the class that seems forced. The discussions are often brief and don't add as much to class discussion as one may hope. I think it's important to use them as a place for an alternate discussion and not always an addition to a discussion. It could potentially detract from some healthy classroom discussion. Of course, the opposite can be argued that students who are usually quiet in class can now have a platform for discussion or followup. I think the hard part is encouraging original thought when everyone is commenting on some common question. I think the goal is to develop discussion, not an question and answer session.

Week 2: Thing 3

So I've created my blog. I want to comment on the Avatar thing. I see the point if you're playing a video game or using your Wii, but it doesn't seem very practical for classrooms. First, I didn't like the interface on Yahoo (which I am typically a fan of Yahoo! products). It was overwhelming in the number of seemingly unimportant options like tshirt designs. However, it was very lacking when it came to actually designing my "person". The Wii offers many more options when it comes to selecting body type, hair styles, and face shape. Yahoo seems difficult to navigate and it doesn't allow for many variations, at least without spending some time figuring out where things are located. This should be more intuitive than it is.

I suppose you could use this in class to have students "create" characters from a story that they are reading. However, this seems to be a "busy" task more than one that inspires critical thinking. There may be ways to make it based on critical thinking principles, but overall, it doesn't seem practical.

Week 2: Thing 2

Looking at the 7.5 habits of highly successful people, I think the one that I am best at is taking responsibility for my own learning. I don't expect other people to do my work for me or to even help me. Often I prefer to do things on my own to ensure their success. The point that I struggle with the most is the next step, which is to see problems as challenges. I often "freak out" when I hit a roadblock. I think it would be helpful for me to see adversity as an opportunity for success, learning, and a positive outcome.