Week 6 Thing #14

I have already discussed Technorati. I find it a little thick to wade through, but the information is helpful. I really enjoyed the non-Disney video on copyright! It reminded me of another video I found on the TED website. The video is entitled How Creativity is being Strangled by the Law. It's worth watching. I love the analogy of land owners owning the sky above their land!

Week 6 Thing #13

Yeah social bookmarking! I have been using social book marking since the mid 90s. I started out using Backflip.com and I love it because it put a little tool on our toolbar to help us "backflip" our favorite websites into folders. It worked pretty well. Now, I'm working on updating my del.icio.us page. It took me a little time to get used to the tagging aspect, and I still have way too many categories, but I'm gaining on it. I love that I can access those bookmarks anywhere and share links with others. Some of my classmates from SDSU have shared their links with me and I can get lost for hours browsing their favorites.

Week 5 Thing #12

Ok, so maybe I'm just tired. I can see that eventually something like Rollyo may be helpful to set up searches for teachers looking for specific topics. I prefer a simple hotlist or using backflip.com or del.icio.us. What am I missing here?

Week 5 Thing#11

The web award winners was a lot of fun! I was very excited to see many familiar faces under some of the categories i.e. Flickr, Linked-in, Etsy, Twitter, del.icio.us and Pandora to name a few. Now I've added Spanish Pod, Picnik, and yelp to my list of favorite sites. I have great delusions of learning Spanish, and I've been working (a little) using the Rosetta Stone software. I think the Spanish Pod website may be a good way to inspire my learning....besides who really needs sleep?

Week 5 Thing #10: Image Generators

This could be painfully addicting! Fortunately I'm at a computer where I have very few images to play with. I really wish I had taken this course while I was still teaching middle school computers. My kids would have loved to do projects like this!

Week 4 Thing #9

So many blogs and RSS feeds....so little time. I'm sticking with my basic headlines and technology news for now, but I did love spending (way too much) time on the Technorati website. Does anyone have an eeePC or know of someone who does? They're only $399 and they seem to be a great possibility for laptop carts for our sites? I read the reviews on BestBuy and people seem to be impressed overall.

Week 4 Thing #8

RSS feeds are very handy to keep a finger on the pulse of topics you are interested in. I set up RSS feeds on my iGoogle page to monitor major headlines from NPR, CNN, and of course People. :-) I also follow certain topics such as Technology, Education, and the California Budget...boo!

I also have a couple of friends who travel constantly and they use RSS feeds to stay in touch with what is happening back home. It's a great way to keep abreast of major topics and find more detailed information on topics of interest.

Week 3 Thing #7

I checked through the 23 Things and noticed that Twitter was not on the list. I love Twitter. Twitter is a social networking tool used by people to post short snippets of blogs. Many times a twitterer will post a tweet that includes a link to his or her blog, but it's a way to get information out there in a succinct way. You can select different people to follow and I'm always looking for people with great EdTech ideas. I follow Kathy Schrock, Bernie Dodge and Leigh Zeitz, a professor from my undergrad years, to name a few.

One of the twitterers posted this amazing lesson about creating emotion and tracking it through a song/video.

I am constantly picking out great things from the tweets. Many times people will be attending seminars and will tweet the main points back to their audience. It's a great way to connect with people with very little effort. My Twitter page.

Week 3 Thing #6

Ahhh, the joy of 3rd Party programmers. One of the amazing things about the web is that we are now surrounded by content creators. Those with the knowledge and initiative to create different and often better versions of current programs can post and share their knowledge with the world.

This is my mash-up of Riley as a pup. Terrifying huh?

Week 3 Thing #5

Floppy Disk
Originally uploaded by mahamre

The Flickr - "blog this" option is very easy to use. The hardest part was picking a picture to blog about! I love all of these tools, I can see how they could really streamline your photo sharing capabilities. I just need to figure out when I have the time and energy to front load Flickr. I, like many of you, keep my photos in albums in iPhoto. I've also set up a number of other websites to share information and pictures with friends and family. I think Flickr could play a pivotal role in my web 2.0 experience, I just need to discipline to set it up. If you get a chance check out this Flickr account. Trey Ratcliff is a computer geek who takes AMAZING HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos and even has an exhibit at the Smithsonian. Great travel photos!

Course for Credit

Ok, so I'm a little behind! I logged into the Fresno Pacific Moodle course (I'm taking this for credit, so if you're not just ignore this whole post.) The assignments seem pretty easy to do, so I'm no longer worried about them. My due date is August 1st, so I'm assuming that anyone else who signed up around the same time will have a similar due date. Let me know if anyone is interested in meeting this summer. Perhaps we could find a library where we can use wireless for free. :-)