Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Thing #14 Technorati Part 2
I am also gratified to see that Google also lets me do a blog search in a similar manner. Those who know me know that I do love love all things Google.
The tagging is a terrific tool to help you organize your own ___________. (Fill in the blank: blog posts, photos, stories, etc.). I can see great advantages especially when you reach the critical mass of items at which point it is no longer really realistic to just browse through looking for stuff.
I can't see any real disadvantages, other than it goes against our basic human laziness to have to consistently tag stuff. That seems like a pretty lame reason not to do it.
Now I just have to remember to tag for Technorati and figure out what tags I want to use.
Technorati Tags
MoreauLearningWeb2.0
iPhone
Monday, June 29, 2009
Technorati: Thing #14 part 1
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Lovely.
Thing # 13 Bookmarks and Tagging
I'll admit, I was a little resistant to Thing #13 as written because I had used Deli.cio.us in the past and discarded it in favor of FoxMarks (now Xmarks) as a central bookmarking solution. Now that Xmarks supports Safari as well as Firefox and also syncs your passwords, I was even more loathe to change my bookmarking. And much of what I got by tagging pages and organizing them through Deli.cio.us I found more comfortable using Evernote.
I did join Diigo, but have not been using it. I did subscribe to the Diigo in Education group and get regular email updates from the group (because you can never get enough email, after all) which are interesting and could be useful, but overall, I was not set afire by the annotation possibilities and the toolbar. The toolbar seemed just to clutter up my browsing experience and I think that I would be more appreciative of the annotation and sharing possibilities in Diigo if I were classroom teacher. Who knows, I may find a way it works for me yet.
Here's one of those things about Web 2.0. There are lots of tools and lots of possibilities and a multitude of ways to get from here to there. That's a good thing if you are looking to find just the right tool for you and your way of doing things. It can be frustrating if you want the whole world to be using the same tool you use.
Once I was driving to local hotspot with a friend who voiced her surprise at the route I was taking. I responded in all sincerity, "I'm sure there are other ways to get there." I was speaking in earnest, blissfully unaware of the arrogance of my tone until I heard it come out of my mouth. We were in a good and silly mood, so we both just started laughing about how we all think our way of "getting there" has some inherent superiority. It's good to remember as we wend our way through "the Internets" that there are almost always other ways to get where we are going.
Back to Blogging, Back to 23 Things
But I still want to finish those 23 things before all the other staff comes back and I find that I am still behind.
Mostly it is just a block. I have actually done most of these "things." I just have to blog about them. I just have to reflect.
So. Notice given. I'm back
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Thing #12 Rollyo
Monday, March 02, 2009
Thing #11 Web 2.0 Apps and Ning
One of my favorite Web 2.0 apps did not make the cut of the award winners that the library recommended, but it is a terrific hybrid tool that uses the "cloud" and also has interfaces for most of your web-able appliances (computers, phones and the like).
Evernote uses both a web interface and applications you can download to your computer (Mac and Win), iPhone or Windows Mobile device to set up notebooks that are stored on the web. You can also use their website to access your notebooks and add notes that you clip from other websites with their browser tools. You can add text, photos, web clippings, email clippings, screenshots, voice notes and attachments of all sorts and then organize them using tags and folders.
It's very cool. I use it for things like sharing grocery lists with my partner who can input items on the list online that I can access later on my iPhone at the store. At Christmas time I would take pictures with my phone and note prices of things I wanted to buy for the kids but first wanted to discuss with her. "No, don't buy that. I already found the bike for Daniel." "Oh." I say "Oh." alot in those conversations. Evernote doesn't really help with that part of the discussion.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Web 2.0 and 23 Things in Action!
Also on the Photostream was an invitation to submit your own posters. I submitted this one in which I used a photo available for non-commercial use and remix under the Creative Commons license.
Yesterday, I went to check out the site and found that my poster was one of 14 posted on a new page on MSNBC.com called Maddow Fans Get Motivated. Check it out!
Monday, February 23, 2009
You, and you, and you got to give them hope.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Thing #9, Week #4: New Found Classroom Blogs
Here's a look at some new and not so new blogs that I dug up on Technorati and a few other places.
- Throughlines -- When I first started reading this blog the author, Bruce Shauble, was chair of the English Dept. at Punahou School in Honolulu. I stopped reading for a while and when I returned I found he is now the Director of Instruction. He's a teacher, artist, photographer and an incredibly thought provoking writer. Well worth reading.
- The Thinking Stick -- This blog by Jeff Utrect from the International School in Bangkok has an abundance of great info about educational technology, curricular design and 21st Century skills.
- Education.Change.Org -- Part of the larger Change.Org site, this group blog features lead blogger Clay Burell, an Apple Distinguished Educator and humanities teacher who is passionate about 21st Century school reform.
- Practical Theory -- Chris Lehmann is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy, an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning that opened its doors in 2006 in Philadelphia. Very exciting things are happening there including the most recent EduCon Conference.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thing #8 Week #4: RSS
Thursday, February 19, 2009
BYOS and Students Authoring Their Own Learning, or what Stephen Sondheim, Joss Whedon and You have in Common
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thing #7, Week #3: The Kindness of Strangers, Community and the Internet
Monday, February 09, 2009
Change: New Technologies for Old
When Chicken Little Blogs
It punches a ticket for my mind on several trains of thought.
- It makes me think of Marek Breiger.
- It reminds me a recent post on Will Richardson's blog about how new technologies are never as good as old technologies when they start, but soon eclipse them, so if you don't take the plunge with the new at the expensive of some temporary inefficiencies you will be left behind.
- It reminds me of one of my favorite YouTube videos, Introducing the Book.
- It makes me smile.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Thing #6, Week #3: Infrastructure! and my Wii Badge
This image was made with a 3rd party app called automotivator that lets you create motivational posters, or pointed sarcastic posters, whichever you prefer.
This very cool Wii Pass was made with Badge Maker which is one of fd's Flickr Toys. There are lots of other great tools/toys you can use with Flickr on this site,, including a Warholizer, a Hockneyizer and another version of the motivational poster tool.
Even though this badge is extremely slick, it will probably be of no use whatsoever in getting my son to let me play on our Wii without him.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Thing #5, Week #3: Teaspoons, Flickr, Making Change
"Why teaspoons?," you may ask. Well, I have been keeping my eyes open for the last few days trying to find something to photograph with my iPhone that I could send directly to my blog via Flickr. Tonight while I was cleaning the kitchen, the teaspoons caught my eye and connected with a train of thought and I grabbed my phone and started snapping. Then I emailed it here via my blog link with Flickr.
I have been very frustrated with the 2 steps forward, 1 step back progress of the Obama administration and tonight I started to think about the words of another ground breaking African American, Florynce Kennedy who was a real live radical feminist back in the 70's and who said "Just by nobody doing nothing the old BS mountain just grows and grows. Chocolate-covered, of course. We must take our little teaspoons and get to work. We can't wait for shovels."
It is terribly frustrating to try to move a mountain with teaspoons (or empty an ocean with teaspoons as the feminist blogger Melissa McEwan aka Shakespeare's Sister writes about), but the work must be done and if all we have are teaspoons we can't just sit around and whine about how we don't have shovels. If the political process is impaired, it is still a way in which we can make change. Even if it is one teaspoon at a time.
Making changes in our classrooms and schools also sometimes feels like teaspoon work; it only happens little by little. But we have to keep moving the teaspoons. Some folks have voiced skepticism about how many teachers and staffers who have been enticed to try the 23 Things by the jeans incentive will fall by the wayside or will only employ skills they already have. Skeptics may be right that not all of us will exit this learning experiment with new skills in the double digits, but if some slice of our group takes just one new skill or one new classroom application away from these weeks, then we will have moved some of that school change mountain over just a little bit.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thing #4, Week #2: Look at my cool BlogRoll
Things in no particular order: Week #1 Thing #1
7 1/2 Habits: Week #1 Thing #2
Begin with the End in Mind
Take Responsibility for Your Own Learning
View Problems as Challenges
Have Confidence in Yourself as a Learner
Gather Your Toolbox
Use Technology to Your Advantage
Mentor Others
Play
At the risk of sounding immodest, most of these I do pretty well. I am, after all, a tech head who is over 50. I must have been learning something along the way. But clearly I do have favorites. And while I am sure that most people might guess that the toolbox and tech options would be easy choices for favorites, they would actually come in below most of the others. When I look with an eye to what is easiest and hardest for me, it doesn’t take long to really see this list as bracketed by my least and most favorite habits.
Let’s start with what is easy.
Play.
That’s easy and natural and it’s hard for me to think that playing isn’t the easiest most natural way for everyone to learn. When I am playing, I can learn at my own pace and I can veer off on as many tangents as I am interested in (I love the whole concept of hypertext and hyperlinks because they help speed up the way I connect things to a larger context.) I actually kind of resent that play only gets mentioned as the 1/2 of a habit. I know the author was trying to ride the coattails of Stephen Covey, but still, 8 is 8 and that habit should not have some kind of second class membership in this habit list.
What’s hard?
Begin with the end in mind.
It’s so directive. It reminds me of required reading (which I will never choose over reading whatever catches my fancy). It seems borderline fascist to me. Okay, I’m kidding. I get it that you need goals and need to make choices with the goals in mind, but still it is the hardest on this list for me. Most of my actual lifelong learning has been in areas where my goals were pretty fuzzy. Things like “I like history. I should read some popular non-fiction about history.” and “Oooo, what a cool web site with a way to edit my photos!!!” Which isn’t even really a goal at all.
My first 16 years of education were so goal directed/driven, in ways that were not necessarily positive or productive, that it has seemed like ever since then I have been extremely resistant to the “required reading” portion of my lifelong learning. So many of the best things that I learned in school during those first 16 years were incidental.
Some of what I thought was most interesting about the presentation was the list of presumptions about learning that we are being asked to let go of as life-long learners.
Look at this list. How many of us are willing to cross out all or most of these things when it comes to our students here at Moreau? How many of us fear crossing out some of these things when planning for our classrooms? We are very attached to many of the things on this list. We ARE one the things on this list. And we are supposed to be preparing our students to be life-long learners. How’s that for an ESLR coming back to bite you in the butt?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Adding an Avatar/Skipping Ahead : Week #2 Thing #3
I freshened up the avatar a bit, but am always disheartened that in the world of the internet, there are no fat avatars. You can find "plus-size" options in some programs, but the plus apparently only reflects that they are larger than size zero. It would seem that the makers of avatar authoring programs believe that they know that everyone wants to be skinnier online. And on Yahoo! at least the options outside of "plus-size" seem to be supermodel thin. *Sigh*
Connie and I searched for a long time (okay, it was only about 10 minutes) for how to add my avatar exported from Yahoo to my Google controlled blog. It's a little bit like trying to get your old country Catholic grandma to fit in at your mother-in-law's seder. But I think I finally have it figured out. The exported avatar is configured in html so I should just be able to add it here and get it to show up in the blog entry using the html coding function.
Connie says that means that it will descend out of sight as I make more entries. That's really okay with me.
...
And now I just figured out how to add it to the side with an "Add HTML/JavaScript" gadget. Ooooh so cool.