Thing Fifteen

Google Docs, the word processor on the Cloud? This is a great tool and one which I have seen our students making great use of. Think back through our recent history of file sharing and mobility - 5.25" floppies, 3.5" floppies, portable hard disks, flash drives, quite a list and not all are very reliable. Remember those 5.25" floppies?
Go on, be brave - date yourselves!! They all could fail, they all had to be carried around, they all got lost, and they mostly only worked on the platform they were created for. Flash drives are the best we have had for carrying files around with us, but I really like this Google Docs solution.
Students working on projects should take advantage of this system and I can certainly use it when putting together a VANTAGE.
So let's hang around awhile longer and see what comes next. Isn't that the exciting part of technology - it just keeps on changing!

Thing Fourteen

Social Networking! Huge topic and certainly a timely one for educators to be familiar and comfortable with. I believe that teachers should be able to make use of Facebook. They should just be wise enough to not write anything there that they wouldn't want their students' parents or school officials to overhear in a public place. Simple.
I first joined Facebook to share pictures with family around the country. A nice simple way to share. Since then, I have found friends I graduated from high school with and have enjoyed catching up on their lives. We also use it to keep in touch with some former students from Newington.
My only problem with Facebook, is that it can really, if you let it, take up too much time. I occasionally find myself working on my Farmville farm instead of starting dinner on time. I guess that isn't the worst thing that could happen!
We need to talk to people - we need to see people - we are very social people - so GO FACEBOOK!

Thing Thirteen

OK, back from a nice day in New York, saw The Mikado and now back to my "Things". Delicious and Diigo both have nice features. I set up a Delicious account since I had used that a bit before and set up some bookmarks. I really like the simplicity of the system. Tagging is a great feature in both programs, but of the two, I settled on Delicious. Having said that, could I be convinced that Diigo is better? Probably. As I said in Thing 12, when we get back to school, I will discussed this topic with my colleagues and settle on one or the other for us to share information. An simple system for us to use.
Oh, the bookmarks that I set up initially were purely selfish, I created tags to follow our daughter's career with links to the theaters she has worked in so far, and the one she is heading to in June. Fun and beneficial. I will share them with family members who are following her career.

Thing Twelve

This one is pretty straight forward! Anything that can make sense from chaos is my friend. Tagging is a nice system for keeping items easy to find and shortening the response time to a query. I can totally see me making good use of this concept and sharing it with colleagues so that we can all put sites in a common place for all to make use of. Think I'll add it to the agenda for our next department meeting. Reading for Information - PhotoShop Tutorials - Color concept lessons - you name it, we can gather the sites and make the best possible use of them. Terrific!

Thing Eleven

I am a big fan of widgets. There are so many on our computers at home - but all very useful and a great way to get to the 'stuff' you need often in a hurry. They are cute - not sure how I would work them into my classes though.

Thing Ten

Well, I finally made it to double digit "Things." Twitter is another nice way to stay in touch with friends and family, but really, how many of these nice ways can we handle and still get the dishes washed and the ironing done? I set up my account, added a picture for good measure and sent tweets a couple of folks I know. I don't think I'll use this one with my students. They have plenty of other ways to get in touch with me, and I need some down time! Happened to catch a friend in Maine who sent me a fast smart-mouth reply and I told him to be kind, I'm new to twitter. Is that the way of the world?
I did enjoy the WebAwards part of this task. I happened upon a site, Threadless, that will great to share with my Graphics students when we get to our silk screen project this spring. Onward to Thing Eleven!

Thing Nine

Copyright and Creative Commons. Educators have always known about Copyright and the limits it places on them in collecting information for their students. Some totally respect it, others take what they want and justify it by saying, "I needed it." No justification, but we have all heard it. Others take the stance that whatever someone else has created they should be able to create on their own - but time gets in the way. There are not enough hours in the day.
People donating their works and making it available to many through Creative Commons is a wonderful solution to this issue. When many contribute work to be used or modified the process of original work becomes much more manageable. I would love to see some of my students share their work with others and to provide lessons we have created for them shared with other teachers. It broadens the concept of sharing with our colleagues to a whole new level.

Thing Eight

The challenge here was to find a video that wasn't too long! I wanted to show a piece of our favorite place, so here it is!!

Thing Seven

YouTube. It is huge! There, so much for the obvious. I watched many videos, moved easily from one place to another, found some things to use with my students and found many to not use with my students. Then I checked out TeacherTube and SchoolTube. Of the two, I liked SchoolTube better, because TeacherTube was really slow and had content I would not dare use in my classroom.
Then I moved back to YouTube and started searching for a video to leave a comment. Luckily, USM Music Theater has many videos out there, and I found many with Kim and her friends performing! What a treat! So I poked through 5 years worth of videos and put a comment on a review they did two years ago in honor of the School of Music's 50th Anniversary. One of the students composed a song which they performed called "On Broadway." It was great, so that is where I left my comment.
Once again, this task took hours simply because there is so much out there to look at. We certainly are a sharing community!

Thing Six

This one looked easy on the surface, but because of all the options available, became much more! The possibilities are endless! Actually, many of the options available are the same or similar to projects our Graphics students at NHS complete. The missing element is individual creativity. But for someone without the benefit of great graphics software what a wonderful opportunity. Calendars, pop art, books, special effects, the list goes on and on.
Downloading pictures from our trip this past summer is something that I have been wanting to do, so that is where I started. I liked using our own images, because then I didn't have to worry about copyright issues. Besides, we were lucky to see some wonderful things, and I'm happy to share the results. Then I started experimenting with the options available and the walk I had planned to take this morning was really delayed. Great that this item is included on the list. This is a place I will return to frequently. I will also discuss the options with students to make sure they know what is available. I'm sure that I will be able to work this into a lesson this year.

Thing Five

I kind of knew about Flickr, because we look at friends pictures there from time to time and we put a few pictures out there years ago, but I had no idea how many things you can do with it besides just keep photos in a safe place. This next Thing is going to be great because I will have a reason to go through years of great photos and send some to Flickr. Should be a lot of fun. The other thing I noticed while poking through the site is how many wonderful photographers there are who send their work to Flickr. The Interesting photos they post are incredible. Makes me wonder who has the enviable task of looking through all the pictures they have and pick the Interesting ones!
The picture I selected to add to this entry is one I took this summer in Seattle. We were there on the hottest day in Seattle's history. It was 103 degrees and the natives were melting. So we hopped on a local ferry to Bainbridge Island and cooled off very nicely out on Puget Sound.

Thing Four

Custom homepages are not new. We have had a very functional one at the high school for years and we have set my Dad up with one which has simplified his use of the Internet nicely. They are a great way to narrow the scope of what is available into usable pieces. I experimented with Google and Yahoo, since I use them most often. The tools they have for customizing a homepage for personal use are easy to follow and easy to customize.

Thing Three

Blogs! Educational blogs! They are growing in number, quality and variety in a staggering fashion. It would be easy to get lost in them, but with some restraint, they can be extremely valuable. Need to find out how to integrate an iPad into a classroom setting - it's out there. Need to figure out a way to meet the needs of students with multiple disabilities - it's out there. Need to understand the reasons to allow students to text within a school - it must be out there, too.
Blogs are the newest form for research we have available to us today. Twenty years ago if you wanted to find information related to teaching you asked friends, went to conferences, or visited a library and delved into books and journals. Ten years ago, you could try your luck with the internet and use resources at regional learning centers and national education organizations. Today, the blogsphere is the best and fastest source for immediate, hopefully accurate answers. It is just a matter of being aware of a wide variety of blogs and going to the right blog for the needed information.
It will be so much easier for our students to gather information for classes if they are provided with the links on our blogs. Then, with the motivation to make good use of them, they can fill in the missing pieces needed to succeed. If they share information with others and get a good dialogue going, all the better. Blogs are the next step in the evolution of research - let's try to make the best use possible of them.