Thing #11 - Finding good Feeds

I have spent parts of the last 2 days (Sat. & Sun.) surfing through the RSS search tools that were provided for this exercise. I thought each one was pretty simple to find feeds and I really didn't find any difficulties with any searches. I actually subscribed to Bloglines and Technorati but I really did like Topix.net. Topix was very easy and as soon as I opened this feed I had the options of local news, top stories, forums, popular, US, World, Sports, and Entertainment. I could have selected any of these feeds and saved them on my RSS feeds.

On Bloglines I actually saved 2 feeds; Quotes of the day and Sub with Bloglines. As a coach I am always looking for famous quotes to use with my players. This feed had unlimited quotes from humor, to inspirational, to motivational, etc. Sub with Bloglines had a Feed tab and the feature that I really liked the most was a feed labeled Bloglines Top 1000. WOW!! Information overload. I guess you could spend all day reading these informative feeds. On the Technorati feed I actually saved a sports feed to my bookmark bar, but when you open the Technorati site you find tabs for the following subjects: Business, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Politics, Sports, Technology, Blogs, Photos, & Videos.

These RSS feeds are so extensive that it is overwhelming, almost information overload for a simple guy like me. Great information and great learning/education tools!!

Eric Clapton hits

Thing # 10 - RSS feeds

I have successfully opened an RSS feed account with Google Reader. I have set up accounts with YouTube, ESPN.com, DallasNews.com, USATODAY.com, and SI.com.

I'm sortof a sports freak so I have set up accounts with these sources so that I can check quick updated information as it occurs either in the news or in the world of sports. I read another blog from one of our other bloggers in "Thing 23" (Mandy's Mailbag) and she said she copied and pasted everyones blog sites onto her RSS account so that she could access their blogs much quicker. That is an intriguing possibility and I fully intend to explore that concept to see if I can do the same thing.

Very interesting! This is another great lesson in our 23 class and I am excited with this new knowledge that I have acquired today!

Thing #9 - Image generator

http://www.imagechef.com -Since I am a basketball Coach, I thought I would make my own customized basketball jersey. I see this as a tool to use when messaging within your network of friends whether it is emails, myspace, facebook, etc. Looks to me like you could implement the image generator in classroom power point presentations but I would need further experimentation with that idea.

This morning I was playing around with this assignment and I've added a little smiley face sign to my image generator post. That was a fun little image to create from www.signgenerator.org.; or www.happyfacegenerator.com

How do you like my little one eyed monster? That's just a disparaging comment that I've always wanted to say to a basketball referee, but I think it would get me ejected.

Pretty cool stuff, this is pretty fun!

Thing #8 - Flickr Masher

Fickr Masher - spell with flickr: What a unique tool! Some of this stuff is somewhat difficult for me to do but I chose to use spell with flickr b/c of its' simplicity. It seemed fairly easy and quick, however, I couldn't figure out how to downsize the letters so that they could fit in my blog correctly. It is supposed to read "U Need 2 Know . . .". Some of the other options like mosaic maker for instance, seemed very difficult for this assignment.

I can see how I can use this type of masher to develop headers for vocabulary assignments or quick fact or statistical readings in my Health class. For example, I use an information sheet on suicide warning signs and this will be a perfect way to create a header for my students to get this information into their hands.

I'm not at all opposed to sharing pictures through flickr online, especially for educational purposes! It's fun to see photo's from other people's photo libraries about their family, friends, vacations, travel experiences, museums, art work, hobbies & interests, etc.

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Thing # 7 - Flickr/photo sharing

YooHoo!! What a great deal Flickr is! It's great to have a wife that can show you how to do this stuff. By the way . . . I had to open my own Yahoo acct. and break away from the acct. that my wife and I share together. My flickr photo on the "23 Thingster" site will be under the username of plb1751.

This is a great photo that is in our family photo collection. This is "Hell's Gate" on Lake Possum Kingdom which is due west of Jacksboro, TX., just south of Graham, TX. This is where we have our family reunion every summer. The point of the cliff on the left is about 100' high and the water inside Hell's Gate is 95-100' deep. The water is very cool and fun to swim in but you'd better have your life jacket on because of the depth of the water. Possum Kingdom is well known for scuba diver's. They say there are catfish down by the dam that are as big as I am, and I'm a pretty big fella.

This is a piece of technology that I can see will require some practice and attention on my part but it looks like such a great tool to share your photo's with other people. I can see where photographers would have a field day with this system, or people who just use photography as a hobby would have a blast with Flickr. I know that young kids (teenagers) already use this technology and are very comfortable with it. They share photo's all the time.

Apparently you can tag photo's by labeling them with a key word which helps you file and organize your photo's for easy access or future reference. I also like the idea of creating group pools which enable you to select groups of people that you can send your photo's to. It is also quite unique that you have the option of keeping some pictures private as well as the ability of opening certain pictures for group or public consumption.

Thing #6 - Web 2.0 Awards List

In this Web 2.0 awards assignment I discovered a massive number of awards sites and readings to browse through and choose from. I chose to review a site in the Category of Health since I am a Health teacher and because I am in a constant war with weight loss and weight management. I chose the 2nd place award winning site called PEERtrainer. I thought this was an incredible site regarding the war on weight loss. I think this site could have wonderful benefits for people that are trying to lose weight and has endless potential to support a weight loss unit in the classroom as well.

Basically this is a peerhelpers buddy system which is a powerful tool for weight loss, fitness, and training support. It allows you to hold yourself accountable with the support of a small online group or team of others who have the exact same goals that you have. This program is free and with the help of daily logs, journals, community posts (threads), and individual blogs about nutrition, workouts, weight loss strategies, and calorie counting, etc., you can maintain your personal motivation with the encouragement and help of others. I found this to be an extremely functional and useful site for people to collaberate and share information about their fitness goals and weight loss ambitions. I really didn't find any dislikes about this site. I discovered that this can be applied or implemented by individuals, teams (groups) of people, or has definite useful features to reinforce a teaching unit within a Health classroom.

The success of this site was supported with many testimonials. For instance, jess5ash has been a member of PEERtrainer since May 2006. In that time she has lost 77 lbs., 22 inches, and 12 dress sizes; fleur 83 has been logging and blogging into this site for about a year now and she has lost approximately 35 lbs. There were many other testimonials but the proof is in the pudding. This site appears to be a very successful tool for fitness and weight loss goals and I see nothing but benefit by using this source.

Thing #5 - Web 2.0/School 2.0/Library 2.0

WOW! ATOMIC LEARNING! It appears that we are heading towards an explosion of technology in the classrooms and on school campuses. To me School 2.0 means that we are going to have a collaboration of learning going on between teacher's, students, and even parents. We now have 21st Century learning. Web 2.0 learning is based more on read-write learning. Students now have blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking (myspace, facebook, etc.) to engage each other in an information gathering/sharing world.

School 2.0 simply means that the days of students simply regurgitating information back to a teacher on a sheet of paper are over. Teachers will engage learning and the learners will turn around and become teachers through a sharing process. Learning will take place at home, at school, within the whole community. Students will be able to become more self paced whether they are slow learners, with learning disabilities, or gifted and talented learners. Technology has changed education drastically. When the internet was first invented it was a "read" only tool, but now students, teachers, and parents have so many new tools to share information with each other. We have become a "read & write", or read & share" society. School 2.0 gives us all of these tools to share our learning experiences with others.

Library 2.0 means that libraries have to adapt to all of this technology and maintain the services that kids need today. I don't think the Library is a complete dinosaur but they will really have to stay updated and maintain current technology for the type of learning that kids will be doing in the 21st Century.

Thing #4 - Commenting

After reading some of the blogs about the etiquette of commenting, I have discovered some information which I naturally took for granted. It is obvious that commenting on a particular blog creates an interaction with others. It allows you to communicate with a single person or perhaps a group of people and establish some rapport while you are discussing certain topics. Commenting gives you needed feedback, opinions, or ideas from someone that is neutral and willing to tell you what they might think about your blog. It's an information gathering process.

I think it's quite natural to understand while commenting that there is a real person on the other end that deserves your respect, and that you should communicate with a gracious, polite tone. The 10 commandments of commenting was quite interesting. I particularly like the idea of making a contribution, don't just make a comment simply to be commenting. We should really try to contribute to the conversation with a pertinent feedback. I also like the advice to stay open-minded, respect others opinions and ideas. Thirdly, I really like the advice to "never flame". In other words do not start a war of words by being argumentative in a blog/comment forum.

Names of 7 Blogs: I'm not sure I'm answering this part of the assignment correctly, but here goes!

(5) from our group
a. lifelong learning
b. how blogging can be used within my school
c. the importance of commenting
d. web based applications
e. explore filckr

(2) others
a. 10 commandments of commenting
b. top 10 techniques to get more comments
c. TBC.com This is a website, Texas Basketball Coaches.com, that I blog on every day. It's a msg board for high school basketball coaches to exchange thoughts, philosophies, and ideas.

My commenting will be a work in progress over the next few weeks:

I just posted a comment to Learning Something New. Apparently she has a real love for technology and I told her that I envy her because of this. I'm very uncomfortable with technology and learning new things. I feel like a dinosaur. As a matter of fact I told Ms. Learning Something New that I feel like I just invented the wheel but now I really don't know what to do with it! She seems excited about this class and technology doesn't worry or scare her at all!

I just sent a comment to 23 things regarding her comments on thing #5 about perspectives on web 2.0 and how it will affect schools, libraries, and student learning in the future of education. She had some interesting observations about how technology is changing schools, use of libraries, and student learning. She made a comment about how we've become so dependent on the technology that is at our fingertips in todays society. I enjoyed her thoughts and comments about the articles on school 2.0 and library 2.0.

I just posted a comment on Mandy's Mailbag about her assignment on flickr masher. She did an amazing job creating 3-4 items. I was really impressed with the collage of pictures of she and her sister, and I really loved how she downloaded the list of songs that actually play as soon as you open her mailbag. Very interesting and very impressive!

Thing #3 - Using Blogs at School

There are multitudes of ways and opportunities to use blogs within a school setting. Teachers can communicate with blog journals to reflect on a teaching unit to describe to other teacher's what was successful and what really didn't work too well; to share ideas for similar teaching activities; or to perhaps keep a log of teacher training or staff development activities that are common within your curriculum department.

You can set up class blogs to communicate important dates, deadlines, special events, project due dates, etc.; small student group work which would require communication between students; for students to voice comments about things they enjoy or don't enjoy about a particular activity or unit of study; to blog with other classes of similar interests whether in the same school bldg or even some other part of the country, or maybe even another country. Blogs can be used so that students can express their own ideas or opinions about subject content or class discussions.

Teachers can use blogs to communicate effectively with parents about assignments, projects, test scores or grade averages; to post pictures of class activities or to showcase student work such as poetry or art projects, writings done in class. I like the idea of creating a student newsletter using articles written by students with graphic art or pictures posted within the newsletter.

There seems to be unlimited uses for blogs within a school community. I think that with the technology that kids have at their fingertips today, blogging is a natural concept for them and they would love doing something like this!

Thing #2 - Selecting an Avatar Pic

In thing #2, I'm having a problem posting my Avatar picture for some reason. My wife and I are working on the same laptop and we're both using Yahoo. I keep getting her Avatar picture on my blog site. I selected a male figure with a Hawaiian shirt with a Luau (sp) background. When I select the male Avatar it also shows up as a male figure on my wifes blog site as well.

We're both confused and have tried to fix it but neither of us knows how to keep mine as a male and hers' as a female.

Anyway, for thing #2 we both successfully downloaded an Avatar picture on our blog site, we just can't get the male-female picture figured out. Help anyone????

My wife and I have just discovered that our Avatar pic's are backwards. The picture that I selected is on her blog site and her picture is on my blog site. We think it's because we're both using the same laptop with Yahoo as I stated previously. Neither of us knows how to correct this problem.

Thing#1

7 and a half habits of learning: I've always believed in the importance of life-long learning and have taken responsibility for my own learning experiences. My biggest downfall is that I do not stay up to date with technology and how to implement it in my classroom teaching. Therefore, in this class, 23 things, my goal is to become more accomplished in internet technology and how I can possibly use this information more efficiently as a classroom teacher. I am ready to learn and explore at my own pace by playing with the various "things" that we will be studying. I need to be more informed and up to date on various teaching tools that will enable me to be a more efficient classroom teacher, however, I always lack confidence when I'm trying to maneuver around the internet. Blogging is new to me and I'm not very comfortable doing this. It will take a few "thing" lessons to get me into a comfort zone.