Friday, March 20, 2009

Thing 16: You Tube

I have been acquainted with YouTube for a few years and have used it to show my English students examples of ballads and sonnets. I also view Teacher Tube when I am searching for educational videos. I have posted video on both sites and at Viddler.com.





Swimming Champion
This is a Multimedia Project created in Photo Story 3 using student\'s original poetry. Created for Mrs. Lewis\'s English Honors II class at Stanton.
Tags // multimedia poetry Photo Story 3
Channels // Writing Fine Arts High School
Added: 2008-03-28 by lewismct
Runtime: 00:48 | Views: 882 | Comments: 0

Thing 15: Online Applications & Tools

I went to the Rollyo site and created a Searchroll and inserted it here. I'm still investing this tool.


Thing 14: Online Applications and Tools

I have been using Pageflakes for a few years to keep access to favorite blogs in one place. I like it because I can quickly peruse the blog headlines to see what I'm interested in reading. Here's a screen shot of my pageflakes page; click on the image to view it larger.


I decided today to add some new "flakes" to my page; so, I added ITunes and Podcasts.

I'm going to add some more flakes such as Twitter and Facebook to make my Pageflakes page more useful.

Thing 13: Library Thing

Library Thing is a useful tool for organizing the books you like to read. I could also use it for my students to review their favorite books and share; this would help other students when they are searching for a good book to read. I would put these into categories for easy searching

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Thing 12: Wikis

I have been using a wiki with my English Honors II classes for two years now. I post vocabulary words with definitions and students insert a graphic and write another sentence to go with the graphic. I developed this idea after I learned from another teacher that she had students create posters with a graphic for their vocabulary words and then present to the class. I think having a visual created for the vocabulary words helps students remember the word. We review the vocabulary wiki pages before the day of the vocabulary test and it seems to help students remember the meanings of their vocabulary words. You can view our wiki at http://lewismct.wikispaces.com/ Scroll down and click on Vocabulary 1-6, or Vocabulary 7. Since a wiki is so easy to use, I have begun posting other assignments and a calendar for my students.
I know there are many more applications for wikis in education and would like to extend my use of wikis in my classes. One idea is for students to complete research on topics such as literary periods or authors and have students submit information for the wiki so that they combine their knowledge on a literary subject.

Thing 11: Social Media

I took a look at digg and read some interesting articles; I clicked the technology tab and read about the most popular technology tools for web design. I also looked at Reddit; I clicked on the technology tab but I wasen't really interested in any of the news I saw. I also don't care for the look of the site. Finally, I viewed the Mixx site and liked it the best; I found it to have the most attractive layout and was easy to navigate. From the Mixx site I learned about Walletpop http://www.walletpop.com/ which I particularly like because it is created only for women. I will visit Mixx and Walletpop again.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Thing 10 – Learn about tagging and social bookmarking using del.icio.us.

I have been using delicious since 2007; I originally started because you can keep your bookmarks in a central location on the web at http://www.delicious.com. I use a laptop at school and a different computer at home so this is a way that I can view my bookmarks from any computer. You can also organize your bookmarks in categories which makes it easier to find your favorite and most used sites. Here are my Top 10 Tags categories from delicious.

Top 10 Tags

* blogs173
* imported99
* secondlife45
* digitalstorytelling40
* technology35
* writing34
* tech31
* paper21
* Beowulf21
* yoga17

All Tags 299 (Tags are keywords people use to describe their bookmarks.)


Another cool feature of delicious is that you can add people to your network "Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return". You can use the "Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting". Here are the most Popular Bookmarks at the time of this post.

*
I LEGO N.Y. - Abstract City Blog - NYTimes.com
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Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD
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Design Resource | 30+ Free Quality PSD Files to Download
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200+ Beautiful Seamless Patterns Perfect for Web Design
*
Make Business Cards - Free PDF Cards

How to Organize Your Bookmarks with Delicious Essential Toolbox


who says says librarians (and teachers) don't like tags

Educators and librarians have been using "Delicious both as a way to share bookmarks with each other and a way to help their students and patrons learn. This makes perfect sense to me as a college student because I bookmark and tag references for all my projects and I’d love to see similar collections from my professors and classmates."