Thing #12

1. The 2 things that I thought were important were posting a meaningful message and criticize kindly. I am one who would leave one liners instead of really responding to the post. I really thought about why it is important to leave a meaningful message versus a one line post and I will be more aware and post more meaningful post. I guess I am talker not a writer or typist, I would rather say it than write it.
The criticize kindly was good. Just like with words out of our mouths we need to be mindful of how we respond online. I found through emails that b/c you can't see the person's face writing your email it can be hard to determine if they are joking or being serious sometimes. If we disagree with someone in person we handle or should handle it in a non confrontational or constructive way instead of attacking the person for seeing things differently, same goes with online. We need to make sure that our children if they are blogging that they are doing it in a kind way and not being rude to others online.

3. I posted blog on the issue of white fire fighters getting passed up for promotions due to Sotomayor's ruling, which was over turned today by her future colleagues if she makes it to the Supreme Court. I choose this b/c my uncle is a fire fighter and I am tired of discrimination of any color. if you are qualified for the job great! It shouldn't matter what color you are.
I also posted on 1800Blogger about Yao Ming's possibly career ending injury. I am a big basketball fand I can't believe some one so big is always hurt. He should be plowing down others, not smaller players plowing him down.

Thing #11

I liked Library Thing. This a great way to catalog my classroom library. I my classroom library on sheets of paper. This is my kind of user friendly website, very simple to use. I looked at some of the groups and the only one that interested me was the Children's fiction group. I saw lots of Harry Potter groups, which were interesting, but not my interest. I can't wait to catalog my classroom library!

Thing #10

I really enjoyed this activity! I had a lot fun being creative and making a few things. The Comic Strip Generator was fun. I thought that there was some inappropriate comics on there so I have to say that as an elementary teacher I don't think I want them on that website unless I was able to have them search specifically for certain images. Here is my image:Next, I went to WORDLE. I realy liked this website, but unfortunately I found a posting from a teacher asking if they could censor or make a kid friendly website and the answer was no he doesn't censor his website. So this would ahve been an excellent site for the kids to write their vocabulary words for science or any subject with important vocab to remember. They could also use it to put quotes/ text that interested them. I was not able to create mine and I couldn't figure out the problem.

I played with the happy Face Generator. I made my name on it. I don't know how the kids would use it except for just creative fun. You can't tell but it is Zebra stripe.

Thing #9

1. I felt they were all about the same when searching.

This activity didn't really peak my interest too much. I did find what I think was a news worthy blog to add to my RSS was my daughter's camp blog. This is very useful for me so I can keep up with her at camp and all the activities happening throughout her week there.

Other than that I had a hard time being interested in this activity. I didn't know what to search for b/c I don't think this is anything I will or can use in my classroom.

Thing #8

1. I think this is a good idea to be able to put all your favorite websites on one page instead of going to the individual pages.
2. I would not use this in my class or in my personal life because I don't spend all that much time online unless I am shopping.
3. I honestly cannot answer this question, I guess at the middle school and high school level the teachers might use it depending on the subject they teach.

I will be happy to publicly share my reader list, but it really isn't much to look at considering I most likely will not use it.

Thing #7

1. Google Advance Search- I really like this site b/c it is user friendly. I was able to pull many different ppt for all subject areas. Sometimes we just need a visual for certain curriculum and this is a good for me to show it. I will use this a lot next year. You can find just about any topic or subject.

2. iGoogle- I really had fun with this website. It was fun to create a home page. I had fun looking at all the different gadgets that I could add to my home page. My favorite was adding the hungry turtles to my page. I fed them a bunch of food and then watched try and get it all. I am sure I could play with them for a while. Sad that I get simple pleasure out of watching 2 computerized turtles swim around for food. I also liked being able to choose what news was on the page. I spent way too much time playing with all the features.

I made a vaction photo album. but now I can't find it, but I also was having troublr putting my own pictures on it. I was able to drag pictures from Flickr on to it, but I want to figure out why my files were to big when it accepts 2MB and my pics were less than that.

Thing #6

I thought the Sunset:Get Sunrise and Sunset times along with phases of the moon activity was really great. Kids have such a hard time with concept of how the earth rotates on its axis and how the moon revolves around the earth along with its phases. This seems like the perfect website for helping the to understand this concept. I was intrigued by it b/c you just click on the map anywhere and start from the east and west to clearly see the how the sun rises in the east as the earth rotates the sun gradually begins to rise across the earth and set. Not sure how to use this in the library.

There were so many activities to choose from that it made it hard to really focus on one. I agree that the trading cards site is excellent- you could use them in so many different lessons across the curriculum. You could have the class do a research paper on a famous American, hero, or just a person and then the kiddos could trade them out with each other after each presentation. Obviously, the students would need to check out their library books/ use the web to find out info on their subject and then put their research together.



I played with just about all of them, so I had a hard time just choosing one site. I give this activity 5 start rating!

Thing #5

I found some really great pics for science and social studies for landforms. This would be a great site for them or me to use to find actual pictures to go with landform definitions. of course there are plenty of other pics you could use for 5th grade science and even social studies. There were some really good pictures of American history.

Avatar

Still can't get my avatar to show up on my page!

Thing #3 part 2

ok, where the heck did my avatar go? It was there before I posted thing #3 and then when I published thing #3 it was gone!!! UGHHHH!

Thing #3

This sucked trying to get the avatar on my blog page. The directions don't tell you to change the format to JPG. Once I did that it worked. I hope this is the hardest part b/c it was frustrating.

Thing #2 Life Long Learning Habits

easiest habit- teaching b/c it come naturally to me
hardest habit- viewing problems as a challenge instead of crisis

This video wasn't really anything new for me. It just makes you rethink my habits and if I am following through with all of them especially the play part!