Thing #19

Voice threads are very cool and have immense potential. I have seen them used in some trainings such as the Sexual Harassment Video at TAMU-C and their other trainings that they require all professors to partake in. Voice threads do allow you to present your powerpoint or other video with a voice and that in itself is very cool. However, I am a little too impatient for some of the videos - I can read it faster than the narrator speaks it and therefore, I rush through. Could be a pitfal if the information were super critical! I'm going to keep searching for some voice threads that I could use in my position - perhaps "how to" voice threads on presenting certain concepts in science or math that teachers could view BEFORE teaching it... possibilities are endless!

Thing #18

YouTube is an amazing resource! It is incredible what you can find on there! I took the challenge to find the four videos that our 23 Things coaches encouraged us to find.
The first two videos that I searched for were searching the WhyTry? Program that the district has just recently introduced us to. I am going to have the creator of WhyTry?, Christian Moore come and speak to my staff in July. However, I wanted to give them a tease of what might be coming, so I searched for Christian Moore and the WhyTry? Program! I found several videos that took snipits of Christian Moore's life story and explained the history behind the WhyTry? program. I am sending the link to my teachers. (although they can't watch it at school!)
Next, I found a video on how to blow dry your hair! Did you know there are so many ways to blow dry your hair? Who knew... but according to this young lady, there is one RIGHT way to do it! Maybe I'll try it tomorrow.
Lastly, I searched for the Miracle on Ice live call. You know, the video from the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics when the US beat Russia defying all the odds! It is such an awesome story! I was able to find the actual footage of the hockey game! Amazing!
YouTube can be so powerful for teachers and students. Scary sometimes, but powerful! I wish there were a better way to filter it so that our teachers could access it in the classrooms! TeacherTube was good as well, but certainly missed out on some of the more frivolous searches like the Miracle on Ice.

Thing #17

PodCasting - I learned alot and even found some of my misunderstandings to be straightened out. I don't have an Ipod, so I just assumed that podcasting was something that I really could not do. While I found out that I could do podcasting without an Ipod, I don't really like the idea of being tied to my computer for hours on end listening to the various downloads. Maybe for Mother's Day - hmmm.... Okay so to address your questions:

• Which podcasts did you preview? I had been following a blog feed for Practical Prinicipals and noticed they had a weekly podcast, I decided to subscribe to it through Itunes to see what podcasting was all about.
  
• What did you think? I was surprised at how much the podcast was really just a conversation or discussion between the presenters. I guess I still had the old school idea of "shows" as being scripted or prepared ahead of time, maybe some of them are, but the several that I found were more like discussions - but they were useful and had some interesting and thought provoking discussions.
  
• Which directories did you search and were you able to find podcasts of value? I used Itunes and found several of the same podcasts that were suggested for us. I'll keep looking.
  
• Do you have any ideas about incorporating existing podcasts into your classroom or professional learning? Of course, I don't know how to make a podcast yet, I'm sure that I'll learn in a thing or two, but seeing how students can use this in their learning excites me. I envision that students could reflect on their learning, "teach" others what they've learned, participate in active discussions, the possibilities are endless. I'm pretty sure that one of my teachers has students creating podcasts, but I haven't actually watched them in action! I'll have to ask him where to find them out there in the great big www!
  

Thing 16

This is a pretty neat website. While I do not classify myself as a "reader", I'm trying to work on that! I took the challenge from some dear friends to actually read one whole novel, front to back, in it's entirety this summer! I did it! Woohoo! Not only did I read one, I read 7 novels all by the same author. I've put those books in my LibraryThing library. You can view them to see what you think! In addition, I read the eighth novel this past November while second honeymooning in Cancun. My husband was a little frustrated because all I wanted to do was go to the beach, lay in the sun and read this eighth novel!
As for classroom applications, I can see endless possibilities - especially if you can hook your students into the love of reading. While younger grades probably couldn't build great libraries right away - imagine the power if they kept their accounts over several school years! What a great "scrapbook" of learning. The teacher could have students form groups, make comments, summaries, character analysis all on this one site! Pretty cool. Maybe when I become a reader, I can fill up my library! :-)

Thing #15

Social Bookmarking - not at all what I thought it would be! I thought this was going to be a social activity like Facebook or MySpace! I'm so glad to learn it isn't! I'm happy to have found a very powerful tool! I don't feel super proficient at it, yet, I'm sure I'll get there the more I use it. I can not find where to do the last part of the activity where we are supposed to find our shared tags on our wiki! I'll keep looking! Anyway - thought this was very cool. I can see using this as a classroom teacher like the example by Lee LeFever (BTW - those videos are so cool). Is there a way to hide the tool bar on the top of Mozilla? I don't like having all of these random bookmarks showing - I would rather them be a drop down box if we have to have it at all! Seems like we don't need it if we have a link to Delicious showing!

Thing #7a

I have enjoyed following my RSS reader! Today, my uncle sent me an unusual blog that I have now added to my reader. It is blog written from the point of view of President Obama's teleprompter. While I don't really pride myself on following the political jockeying or even politics in general, the creativity caught my attention, so I thought I would share. I don't understand half of what is written, because I don't keep up with it all, but it is a unique idea!
On a more serious note, one of the feeds that I have starred is from a LeaderTalk blog. It is a blog designed for those in school leadership. It is very interesting and thought provoking. One of my favorite entries is called Leadership Flavor of the Week. Check it out for those of you in educational leadership... makes you stop and think!

Thing # 14

What fun and more fun! This "focused play" was really cool. I tried out several things. First I tried the Letterpop and made my weekly memo using this tool. It was okay, I guess. With some gettting used to, it might be more fun! It seemed a bit constricting with sizes of boxes that I could write in, limited fonts and few pictures/themes to choose from. I think that if you pay for a subscription, you can add more of your own pictures etc...
After that, I went tried making a mixbook. This was a fun site. I started working on a book of our spring break pictures, but didn't finish. One cool thing I saw was that others can add to your book. So my sister or friends that accompanied us on all of the outings, could add their pictures! That is kinda cool. I prefer to use Snapfish or Smilebox for this same type of thing. Smilebox is my favorite because it has tons of themes and allows you to print your books, purchase them or just send them via email for free! It is one place I would highly recommend trying! I'll add a Smilebox Creation to the bottom of the post! Enjoy!
Lastly, I tried Wordle. I made one with each of my kids' names.




It was kind of fun! I can see adding this to presentations and other forms of publications that I have to use!
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to explore some new things! It was fun!

Here is the Smilebox I created! Follow the narration on the bottom left as you click on each egg! Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox greeting