I previously thought that I was pretty knowledgeable of the computer world and knew a little bit about web 2.o but after reading many of your posts I feel like I know nothing...wow there is a lot out there! Thanks for all of your ideas.
After looking through the music sites pandora and blip.fm are my favorites. They are both easy to use and there isn't a lot of other 'stuff' going on on the page. I am a bit of an organization freak! I play music when I need the kids to relax and previously used pandora but now am grateful for all of the other options.
I am excited to use the world cloud. I plan to use it as Deb suggested, have the students create one without their name and then they will have to guess who eachother is.
I look forward to learning more. See you next week!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Web 2.0 response
Well, this is the first time that I blogged. I feel like my 18 year old daughter. After viewing some of the music sites, I think that I like Pandora the best. It was very user friendly and I was able to find exactly the genre of music that I like and music that my class will appreciate. I intend to use some of the music sites as incentive for my class. What I think is great about this class is that I can take new information and use it immediately. I have a new student and I had the class make word clouds to introduce themselves to our new student. They thought this was great, however, I wish the program had spell check. Next time I use it, I will have them type in work, check their spelling and past it in the text box.
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.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
I live in Web 2.0 and Never Knew It!
I am by nature a cheap skate. I love free stuff.
I've had my Google account for at least 3 years now, and have used many apps. My personal calendar texts my phone with each entry so I never "accidentally" miss appointments or events anymore. At school, we keep all events on multiple Google calendars, including the schedule to our most popular "multipurpose" room which is used by several different groups all the time. Embedding Google calendars into your web pages is remarkably easy. Click here to see our results. This fall I set up a Blogger blog for each of our classroom teachers to use as parent newsletters in an effort to keep parents better informed, as well as save precious resources. Five of us are blogging notes primarily to our parents several times each week, but what a great way for students' grandparents or other family members to stay involved! Here's my sample. We feed our blog summaries directly to our web site as well as our PowerSchool Daily Announcement site. Picasa is my all time favorite web app. I use it to organize my digital pix which now number somewhere near 13,500. I've been using it since April, and when they rolled out Picasa 3 a few weeks ago, I was just ecstatic! Red eye...no problem. Click one button, and Picasa is usually intelligent enough to find the eyes and correct the problem! Now it even recognizes faces! I add an email address to a face, and I can share pix with that person with one or two clicks. I have three Picasa accounts so I can post lots of pix publicly or privately for personal or school use. Take a look at some of my school pix here. Google's Webmaster Tools are a great help to me in determining what Google's webcrawlers see when they crawl my sites. These tools also provide me with diagnostic information about my sites so I can update my metatags, directing people to my sites when they search.
Two other Google apps I find quite useful are Google Gadgets and the Google AJAX Feed API. These are not part of the Google Suite, but are well worth the time to explore if you design web sites.
I've been using both Pandora and Slacker at different times throughout today. I'm not liking Slacker. I set some stations and was playing it in the background as I was working, and all at once heard an ad for TurboTax. Slacker is out. I know that these Web 2.0 sites need revenue from somewhere, but I don't tolerate ads very well. Pandora sounds much more promising right now, but I'm going to need to listen for a couple more days before I can be sure.
That reminds me, someone in class asked about how these 2.0 sites operate. "There's no free lunch" was the expression. I think I hit on the way it works. From what I've learned at http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/andy-grove-on-web-20-and-the-valley-slackers, many of the Web 2.0 "corporations" develop a site, try to get lots of traffic, and then market themselves to the big boys like Google in hopes of selling their apps for a huge bundle. It seems that some consider this tactic short sighted, even unAmerican. I get somewhat soured as I learn more. See for yourself. It just proves that there really is no free lunch.
I've had my Google account for at least 3 years now, and have used many apps. My personal calendar texts my phone with each entry so I never "accidentally" miss appointments or events anymore. At school, we keep all events on multiple Google calendars, including the schedule to our most popular "multipurpose" room which is used by several different groups all the time. Embedding Google calendars into your web pages is remarkably easy. Click here to see our results. This fall I set up a Blogger blog for each of our classroom teachers to use as parent newsletters in an effort to keep parents better informed, as well as save precious resources. Five of us are blogging notes primarily to our parents several times each week, but what a great way for students' grandparents or other family members to stay involved! Here's my sample. We feed our blog summaries directly to our web site as well as our PowerSchool Daily Announcement site. Picasa is my all time favorite web app. I use it to organize my digital pix which now number somewhere near 13,500. I've been using it since April, and when they rolled out Picasa 3 a few weeks ago, I was just ecstatic! Red eye...no problem. Click one button, and Picasa is usually intelligent enough to find the eyes and correct the problem! Now it even recognizes faces! I add an email address to a face, and I can share pix with that person with one or two clicks. I have three Picasa accounts so I can post lots of pix publicly or privately for personal or school use. Take a look at some of my school pix here. Google's Webmaster Tools are a great help to me in determining what Google's webcrawlers see when they crawl my sites. These tools also provide me with diagnostic information about my sites so I can update my metatags, directing people to my sites when they search.
Two other Google apps I find quite useful are Google Gadgets and the Google AJAX Feed API. These are not part of the Google Suite, but are well worth the time to explore if you design web sites.
I've been using both Pandora and Slacker at different times throughout today. I'm not liking Slacker. I set some stations and was playing it in the background as I was working, and all at once heard an ad for TurboTax. Slacker is out. I know that these Web 2.0 sites need revenue from somewhere, but I don't tolerate ads very well. Pandora sounds much more promising right now, but I'm going to need to listen for a couple more days before I can be sure.
That reminds me, someone in class asked about how these 2.0 sites operate. "There's no free lunch" was the expression. I think I hit on the way it works. From what I've learned at http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/andy-grove-on-web-20-and-the-valley-slackers, many of the Web 2.0 "corporations" develop a site, try to get lots of traffic, and then market themselves to the big boys like Google in hopes of selling their apps for a huge bundle. It seems that some consider this tactic short sighted, even unAmerican. I get somewhat soured as I learn more. See for yourself. It just proves that there really is no free lunch.
Smilebox
Two seventh graders helped put up a library display today and to thank them I made a Smilebox slideshow with pictures I took. Smilebox allows posting to Blogger. So here is my show:
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| Make a Smilebox slideshow |
Cool
Not knowing what Web 2.0 was before I took the class it's nice to know that I have been using some of the tools already. It will be great to get to know how to use them better and see how they can be applied in the classroom. I really like the pandora music site, especially because I can download the application to my phone and listen to it on the go.
It seems as though anytime I feel lost, if I just play and click around on the different sites I can eventually figure things out.
It seems as though anytime I feel lost, if I just play and click around on the different sites I can eventually figure things out.
It's coming.........
Even though I took the digital streaming class with Deb and Chris in December, and they assured me that the Web 2.0 class would be easily understood, I had misgivings, me being the one who is a step above computer idiot. At 4:45 yesterday I felt like I was in panic mode, but by the end of class, I felt much more comfortable with everything. As a building sub, I don't have my own classroom, but just gaining the knowledge and "playing" with some of these tools will strengthen my skills, and who knows where that could lead?
I like the two music sites I looked at yesterday, but I'm not quite sure how to manipulate them to do what I want, so I'm hoping practice will make the difference. It would be cool even to have my computer at home playing tunes I like, since I don't have the digital TV package with all the music channels............
I like the two music sites I looked at yesterday, but I'm not quite sure how to manipulate them to do what I want, so I'm hoping practice will make the difference. It would be cool even to have my computer at home playing tunes I like, since I don't have the digital TV package with all the music channels............
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