Thing Sixteen

I am working on a WIKI for my classroom where I would post all the homework assignments. The goal would be to create paperless homework!! (I only have so many numbers on that copy machine!) Each subject would have a page with internet connections for assignments. Let's face it-- sending home a math worksheet every night is not helping my students learn their math facts! Now that I found out about the Sandbox, I can use that too as a way to communicate about the assignments. My only glich would be a student who does not have internet access. Do you have any ideas how to take care of that problem?

Thing Fifteen

After reading all the postings, I was reminded of a video I saw on YouTube. The video showed in numbers where we have been and where we are going in technology. It drives home the idea that we(libraries, educators, administrators, board members) need to be thinking about where we are going in education. The video is a little long, but well worth watching.

Thing Fourteen

I am not too impressed with Technorati... it does not seem to meet my needs. Everything I was searching for came up zero or articles geared more to the public versus teaching. The most interesting section was popular tags. I looked through the list and realized I am not using a single one of those tags! Also, interesting was the number of articles for each tag. You could spend all day on this webpage!!
However, I switched to Google search (because another Library2Play participant blogged about it)and found an interesting third grade blog that offers two new ways to narrow the search on Google. Great information - http://totally3rdgrade.com/wordpress/
Tagging is certainly serving a purpose for me in my de.licio.us account. I have found it to be very practical in my two weeks of using it! I just added the aforementioned blog to de.licio.us and to my Google Reader.

Thing Thirteen

At first, I was a little leery with delicious... what was the purpose? Once I started exploring and creating my own delicious account I started to see multiple uses! Number one - it will certainly save me time transferring favorite websites from home to school. (school computers are way to slow to consider surfing the web) Usually, I would email them to my school email, open and save in favorites. Now I don't have to. Number two - I am visualizing a delicious page for my classroom to list the sites that I would like the students to go to. They always seem to find the sites where people are shooting each other!!

Thing Twelve

I assumed (shame on me) that individuals would know how to write appropriate comments on blogs. I did not know that there were so many blogs blogging about the ways to do it. Interesting. I guess I would have to consider how meaningful it is for me to comment. I definitely comment on friends blogs, but have never bothered on others. For Library2Play purposes I have been viewing and attempting comments- always positive. I would never consider leaving a critical comment. I liked the idea of hyperlinking my blog to the comment... I never thought of that before. Good idea! I will have to say that an author commented on one of my classroom postings and it was very powerful for my students to see the impact of their writing.

Five Blogs I have commented on: http://secondtimer2.blogspot.com/
http://mrsphillipsatmarktwain.blogspot.com/ http://www.babyseberger.blogspot.com/
http://camillem23things.blogspot.com/ http://michelerawson.blogspot.com/

New blogs that I recently discovered: http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/
http://katenarita.blogspot.com/2010/06/place-for-frogs.html (Reviews and lesson plans for classroom books) http://www.kerismith.com/blog (author and illustrator)

Thing Eleven

While I love to keep lists of what books I have read (seems to be a family tradition) I do not care to much for Library Thing. I am not one to read the reviews of others before choosing books. It seems like this is something for when you have absolutely nothing else to do! I usually do not have that problem. I have to admit I am a paper and pen kinda of girl and I still enjoy the old fashioned way of cataloging the books I have read. However, I am open to giving it a go. I did sign up and choose a few favorites both classroom and personal.

Thing Ten

Love Love Love the image generators!! Found some amazing stuff on several sites... Jellymuffin was great for creating signs, but I am having difficulty transferring to the header. I tried to delete current header, but I couldn't make it happen. My new favorite is GLOGSTER!! This site is amazing. You can put videos and hotlink connections and make the collage come to life. I will definitely be using this in the classroom. My students will be making Glogsters about themselves and then presenting to the class. So excited about this new find!