My Searchings

As I was looking for a podcast to listen to I decided to choose a show that might be interesting and useful to me as an educator. Therefore I chose to listen to Show 15 from October of 2005 where Hollyi and Ray discussed their favorite web sites. They have some interesting choices although they are not all totally educationally focused. Several are game and movie related and there are a few that explore oddities. Aside from the content not being what I had hoped for, I did enjoy listening to the two of them discuss their favorites. They are very engaging and funny to listen to. This was also very interesting to listen to as you got to get a peek into their personal interests beyond education. Some that were especially interesting were The Human Clock, the National Weather Services, Chromasia and Text America. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Check out my link to my podcast.  It is a recording of my first grader soon to be second grader reading.  It was a test to see how his voince would record and work as I think that pod casting would be a great way for teachers of young children share the progress the kids have made with reading.  I hope that you enjoy it.  He was preatty jittery at the beginning about being recorded, but once he relaxed he did great.  You my have to adjust your volume once he starts reading as his voice sounds so small.

I have subscribd to the Tech Teachers pod cast becasue I remember my first year of teaching well and think it would be fun to hear about someone elses and how they apply technology to their classrooms.

I really like the concept of sites like SuperGlue, NetVibes and PageFlakes.  I like how they allow users to personalize the web so that it is more useful to them and easier to use.  I do not think I will be setting up an account at one of these yet, because I think that I have similar abilities from my ISP that provides me with a personal page when I sign up, but if I were to choose one of these to use, I would chose PageFlakes.  It seems to be the easiest to use, and I like the interface it offers.  I especially like the tabs that allow a user to create multiple pages that the users can develop themselves.  This page also has a built in dictionary, and over 78 other things to choose from to add to your page.  Things to be added can be a simple as a clock or as complex as video sharing and searching abilities.

This would be a great tool to use for a class and create a spot for one stop shopping for your students.  The linking possibilities are endless, linking to class social book marking sites, blogs, photo sharing accounts, calendars and wikis.

Box.net is another useful resource that provides on-line storage space and the ability to share files.  In fact I just used it recently to share a PowerPoint with my cataloging class.  I like the pre-named folders that the site provides me with for my pictures, video, music and documents.  I like that you can get 1 GB free and if you need more you can purchase more for a very reasonable rate.  I also like that I can easily choose if I want my documents public or private, and add and delete them so easily.  Other great features include the ability to easily download the files, the ability to add tags to my items and the ability to add friends that are able to access my files.
In the classroom this is a great way that students can work together to create assignments when they cannot physically be together.  Students can down load documents, change them and then up load them again for other collaborators to use.  This is more efficient than emailing files as attachments for editing, and makes it easier to work on large files.

I can see tons of application in my life for Google Calendar.  My husband and I are always cross checking our calendars, and solving scheduling conflicts at the last minute. To be able to keep in all in one place accessible from any computer is really exciting.  I like the fact that it says it will interface with my husband’s hand held and they we can color-code all events for each person in the family.  I also like the quick add feature so events can be added easily, the ability to interface with my Outlook and add things to my calendar from my email and that I can even create invitations, something I do on Evite now.  I also like the search options as I am constantly looking for events that are coming up and I have forgotten the date.  Finally I like that I can view the calendar by day, week or month, something that has kept me from using other electronic calendars like Palm software as with them I can only see one day at a time and that drives me nuts.
For classroom use, this calendar would be a great way to post assignments for a class I was teaching.  A team of teachers could use it to share their scheduled tests, projects and homework assignments for a year so that they can be staggered to not overwhelm students at any point in the year, or see possibility for collaboration.

Look in the side bar, I have also added a link to my account at box.net where I have stored a PowerPoint my son and I created for a library class.  The lesson was on parts of a book and my son took the pictures and then I taught him how to up load them in to a slide show he then dictated the text and I typed.  (He just finished first grade.)  This lesson is and intigration of library media skills with information technology standards.   Once you open the link, look in the “Videos” folder.  The Power Point is in there, then you can open or save it.  Enjoy!

I have added links to my Del.icio.us and Flicker pages.  Del.isio.us does not have much in it yet as I am having trouble getting thier buttons on my borwser.  My family loves to GeoCache and at Flicker are some pictures we took while on vacation in Vilas County Wisconsin.  If you do not know about GeoCashing visit this Link http://www.geocaching.com/Default.aspx  It is a great, fun way to get out side and hike and see new places with your kids or friends.  Think of it as high tech treasure hunting.  Although my 7 year old maintains that the places we see and the beauty of nature is the “true treasure.”

I just read a great article about the three main reasons to become at teacher – June, July and August.  Read it at : http://www.techlearning.com/blog/main/archives/2006/05/june_july_and_a.html

All kidding aside, this article posted on TechLearning offers great suggestions as to how to ramp up your technology skills and research how technology can impact your teaching and more importantly your students for next year.  The tips are as basic as buy and learn to use a USB flash drive to as complex as learning to use WIKI’s Google Jockeying, and blogging. 

Check out this article to really use your favorite months not only to rest and recuperate, but also to improve your self so that you and your students can have a great 2006-2007 school year.

So I guess I didn’t get back to this as soon as I had planned, it must have been the 50 materials records I had to do for cataloging.  (In card format — don’t get me started!)  Well one good thing that came from this assignment is I found some great sites to help with the daunting task of cataloging.  Check them out!

 A Cataloger’s Tool Box — This site is a list of great links to other sites.  It even offers links to blogs and wikis about cataloging.  Additionally, there are links to other national libraries and MARC help sites. Cataloging Tools on the Internet for Public and School Librarians — This is another great site with tons of links to other cataloging site.  What makes this site unique is that it also offers some suggested print materials on the subject.