Thoughts on the January 6th Class

After looking at the music sites I feel most comfortable with Pandora. I like clean website design and it is a simple interface. I also got the music I was looking for. I think Slacker.com would appeal more to high school students. It has a jazzier look to it. MeeMix couldn't find Jack Johnson or Norah Jones so it is off my list. I have used Pandora with classes. I found that middle schoolers worked harder on a work day if we had music on. It was a reward for them. I can't write with music on, but they can. We are having a staff inservice next week and I will share some of the music sites with our teachers.

I am taking this class with a colleague and we are already planning to use iGoogle with our 5th graders. They love being given choices and are looking for some independence. I'm guessing we'll have to limit the number of apps they can choose, but they'll have fun looking. I am a little ashamed to admit that I put Puppy of the Day on my iGoogle page. I also like the Quote of the Day feature. We do a live newscast every morning and now I have the weather up on my page as soon as I log in.

A blog I found that works well with this class is called The Shifted Librarian at http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/. The author is blogging about many of the applications we will be learning about in this class. In the first post I read I found this quote. "There are a lot of conversations right now about the ROI of blogging versus Twitter versus FriendFeed, but it’s important to examine what you want to get from these tools in order to evaluate which one(s) are best for you at any given time, remembering that it’s all cyclical and is likely to change just when you get comfortable with your routine. Of course that can be a good thing." The syllabus for this class has so many tools that it can be overwhelming, but I think the author makes a good point that you need to choose the ones that will work best for you and be ready to move on when the next great thing comes along.