Thing #18 Explore Social Networking

As I was browsing through Facebook and MySpace I realized that these social networking sites are for everyone, including our students. For that fact alone, we as educators should know the basics of how they work? I set up a site on Facebook and joined a group for teachers. Social networking is not just for making personal connections, but also professional. I really liked how Facebook pages I visited were clean and easy to load, MySpace pages were very unique to the creator and often tended to be chaotic and difficult to read and load. I can see how MySpace appeals to younger web users.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1344744497

Thing #17 Tagging and Social Bookmarking with del.icio.us

After browsing the three social bookmarking sites I really got a better idea of what the "hype" is. Del.icoi.us is a really cool Web 2.0 tool that will change the way I keep track of sites that interest me. The only challenge I really find with del.icio.us is the pink highlighted "savedby" text. It's hard to read, I wish they would make the text black within the pink. I enjoyed seeing what tags others used for the different sites. 

These social bookmarking tools are very beneficial for personal or professional research. I went ahead and created my own account, I think now I will migrate my Safari bookmarks from previous research projects to del.icio.us.

Classroom teachers can take advantage of del.icio.us as they point their students toward quality websites. 

What a cool tool that makes a lot more sense to me now that I've had time to learn more about it.

Thing #16 Get Organized with Web 2.0 Tools

Overall, I'm really impressed with the Google suite of Web 2.0 tools. It seems like they have a solution for all productivity and communication needs. I just got the new iPhone, with "push" technology. My mail, calendar, contacts and photos all sync between my iPhone, MacBook, and Safari. This is all great for my personal needs, but Google really addresses the collaborative needs as well.

Stickies

These little reminders are great. I use them alot and they really help me keep on top of things. Here's a picture of my current desktop.

Online To Do Lists

Backpack is pretty neat, I like its clean appearance. I think I will give it a try for a couple of months and see if it helps me get things done.

Online Calendars

My first attempt at working with an online calendar was a no go. Unfortunately the link to Kiko didn't work. So then I tried working with Spongecell. Creating the calendar was pretty easy. I like how I could select a color scheme. I noticed at the bottom of the calendar there was an iCal link so I clicked it, and sure enough, the event I created was sent to my iCal. Strangely though, instead of the start being at 8:00 am, it imported at 10:00 am.... hmmmmm.

Currently I really don't have a need to publish a collaborative calendar. But if the time comes that I do, I certainly know where to find one. I really like Google Calendars.

Customized Start Pages

I customized my iGoogle page, I had already worked with it quite a bit prior to #16, so I redesigned the header.

Thing #15 Wikis

The more I work with wikis the more I like them and the more I regret all the past time spent building a classroom website from scratch.  I created a wiki for a church project this morning using PBWiki. It took a couple of hours, and even though it isn't anything flashy, it does have a lot information. I had problems inserting images, but I'll work on that some tomorrow. I ran into a couple other problems, that I need to figure out, but overall it was pretty easy and some of the members of my church group have already emailed me to let me know that they have made changes.  I was so impressed with that. 

I love that wikis allow the author to open up the site for editing and revision to readers. How cool would it be to post a passage on your wiki site and have students login in and revise and edit it? Or set up a page of math problems for students to solve using the "edit" button. I wonder if there is a way to force the wiki to revert to an original page once the student logs out?

One thing is for sure though, once you open up your publications for revision by the masses, you have to relinquish a lot of control. What a great step towards "Guide on the Side".

Here's the link to the church wiki I created this morning:

http://sherriguerra.pbwiki.com/St%20Martin%27s%20Heavenly%20Dishes%20II

Thing #14 Go with the Flow

I created a Gliffy flowchart and a  bubbl.us mind map to plan for an upcoming trip. The biggest advantages to these two services is that they are online and therefore you can access your charts from virtually anywhere. I liked how user friendly they both are and if I needed to, they both have a collaboration feature which allows for others to work on the charts as well. This could be very handy for group projects.

Overall, I liked these tools, but I don't know how often I would really use them with elementary students or for myself for that matter. Very handy if the need arose, however:)

GiGi - a Zoho Writer Document

Meet GiGi

GiGi is a dog. She would be quite offended if she knew this little detail about her existence, so we'll go on referring to her and treating her as a person. Specifically, she is a Lhasa Apso. If you were to see the breeders' pics of their Lhasas you wouldn't think GiGi is one of them, I can't keep her coat long and flowing like they do, it gets too tangled and when it gets real long she starts to shed. So, she gets her hair cut but she doesn't mind, in fact she seems to strut after her visits to the groomers.

When GiGi was born in 2005 she was tiny, and just the cutest little fur ball. We drove all the way to Amarillo to pick her up. What a long drive that was, but worth the effort. She is very loving and you know she is happy to see you when her tail starts wagging and she jumps up in your lap and starts licking your face. You also know when she is not happy by the way she puts her nose up in the air and refuses to make eye contact with you.

All of my nieces and nephews just love GiGi. She plays with them and lets them chase her around the yard. She has never bitten any of them, even the babies when they have pulled her hair. That is quite impressive given the reputation Lhasa Apsos have for being impatient and stubborn.

Our family would not be complete without our little GiGi.

Thing #13 Web-based Applications

Zoho Writer is so easy to use. It's just like creating a word document. I tinkered with the text editor tools and found them all just super easy. Publishing to my blog should have been super easy too, right? NOT!! Ugh, super easy turned to super frustrating when it came time to enter a username and password. I've created so many usernames and account names and passwords recently and even though I've tried to simplify and keep them all the same, somewhere I did something wrong. Anyway, after resetting passwords and and republishing things finally worked out. You can read my Zoho Writer document right here on my blog! The box you see with a question mark in it is a smiley face I inserted in Zoho Writer. Not sure why the formatting didn't carry over......

This tool would be great for students creating documents at school that they need to edit at home. I wish I had Zoho Writer when I was working on my master's degree. How convenient to have working documents online that you can access from almost anwhere!