Flickr.com

Last summer my sister Kay introduced me to Ravelry, a knitting community online where both she and her daughter were registered. I played around on it some, mostly using it to find patterns and get ideas. After a few months, I decided that it would be good to use some of the functions available, especially as I modified patterns that I was working on and needed to make the matching item. I liked that I could add the notes to my project to add in my changes…no more lost sticky notes! I think it was in October when I finally decided to join the crafting community and set up a Flickr account so that I could add pictures to my projects. I found Flickr relatively straight forward to use, although it did take me a few minutes to go back in and find out exactly where I needed to be to add my tags. I had left those blank when I originally uploaded the photos. I will continue to use Flickr in my personal life, but I’m not sure that I will take the time to upload all of my photos. That will probably be done on as as-needed basis.

Flickr would be a great way to set up files for various writing prompts.

• Select photos to write about cause and effect. That’s difficult for my 3rd graders, so related sets could be added with increasing degrees of difficulty.
• Series of photos to aid in logical sequencing. This could be used for a variety of writing…narrative, informative, directions, etc.
• Fun, offbeat photos for students to write a narrative.
• Select photos to use when teaching the 6 traits.

I really don’t see a problem with using Flickr as mentioned above, but there would have to be limits set if it were to be used in different ways, which could include the students setting up their own accounts.

Wiki Webpages

Wow. I can think of many uses for Wiki in the classroom: simple editing practice, data collection, end of unit review, story writing, etc. The only real concern that I can see is that the teacher would need to monitor the content, but as long as the students know that is happening, I really don’t see much of a problem with that. The History page could also be a great learning tool as well, by showing the students what has been added/edited. The Weblogged Wiki Links was a great resource!

Keeping Blogger

I chose to keep Blogger for the ease of use. Since it’s easier for me, I’m also assuming that it would be easier for the kiddos, so yes, I would use it with my students.

Tagging

As I’m spending my Saturday working on this class, I find myself thinking about all the other things that need to get done, like…

laundry

which was mentioned in the reading on tagging…”For years, we have been matching and or categorizing items within our lives. Think about some of the items we match in our lives.
Doing your laundry: match your socks” Thanks for the reminder, Shawn.

Christmas gifts to finish making

Why, oh why, didn’t I do more last summer?!?! Oh yeah, I was taking classes.

other interests

like sitting on my butt on the couch watching mindless TV knitting the afternoon away, or figuring out how to create something new. Those photos are both from Flickr. The first one is mine, of a baby gift that I made last summer for a friend’s baby. The second one is of just the cutest pair of baby booties that I’ve ever seen! My attempts at creating anything remotely similar, to date, have been feeble, at best.

Technorati also brought me back to personal interests as I typed in “flat classroom,” as opposed to “flatclassroom.” Here was the FIRST blog that popped up. Sheesh! More time was spent looking at that site and others from the blogroll. (I’m using my newly acquired vocabulary from this class!) Of course, I did go back and search “flatclassroom,” but by that time I had already brought out the yarn that I bought in Oregon a couple of weekends ago while visiting friends…

And then I had to give Tonia a call to see how HER knitting was going, since I taught her to knit while we were there.

And then I had to look at the pictures taken on vacation.

One of the covered bridges from the self-guided tour Tonia and Michael took us on.

We didn't actually drive across these, but drove over the "top-less" bridges.

A view from one of the bridges.

Saturday Market in downtown Eugene.


Go Ducks!
Since this is turning into a personal blog,
come back later to read about the story behind these ducks!

In the mean time, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how I would be able to add tags to my posts, how long that would take me, and if I will be able to figure that out…as well as dreaming of the next assignment of deleting two of the blogs, so that in the future I would only need to post ONCE!

Plus, I already had forgotten about what I first thought of del.ico.us as a novice, so I had to go back and play some more. Believe it or not, my mind actually went back to the classroom and what I could do to use these new resources for my students. At this point, I have NO clue as to what I searched for, but I did come across this site with plenty of potential. Here is an example of a student project that was highlighted on the site. Imagine how much fun the kids could have putting together reports in this way!

By this point in typing this up, my grocery list is complete so that I can make some yummy turkey/noodle/vegetable soup from the stock that I made and froze after Thanksgiving. Soup will be good today…it’s only 63 degrees.

Blog Searching

Blog Search Engines, in order of preference:
IceRocket I liked this search engine for educational topics searched. It was easy to see which blogs I wanted to read, and which ones probably wouldn’t be as relevant.
BlogSearch I liked this one the best for personal topics that I searched. With some of the key words that I used, some of the blogs that I do follow showed up. I needed to leave, because that could have wasted my entire evening last night!
BlogScope Not bad for both professional and personal searching.
Technorati Not thrilled at all.
Bloglines Very commercial.
Sphere (Website) Yuk
For students, I would have them use IceRocket. They would have to first learn that the key words searched need to be as specific as they can make them for the best results. As they search various topics of interest, it would be a good lesson about overall validity of information found on the Web and how to critically evaluate information from factual, to opinions. I could see doing compare and contrast activities with my 3rd graders…research a topic of interest and find factual information in legitimate sources, as well as information presented in blogs.

Edited 12-7: Got a comment on one of the blogs that I will be deleting.
"Thanks for using!! and thanks for the awesome post about us!
Blake Rhodes IceRocket.com CEO"
Guess he was searching his search engine to see what showed up.

Blogrolls

Oh, my! I tried setting up a blogrolls about a month, and nothing went right on Blogger. I spent a lot of time for nothing, then decided tonight that I needed to try and get things done…OR send an email plea to my instructor for this class begging for help. AND…needed to get things rolling on this class. Well, last night it took me less than 2 minutes to set up the blogroll on Blogger. Word Press and 21Classes were also easy. Word Press was the most tedious, because I could only add one at a time and then had to go back to the add link page.

Since I’ve looked ahead, I already know that I will end up deleting two of the blogs. I’ve already decided that I like Blogger the best, so even though 21Classes was probably the easiest of the three, I wouldn’t factor in my original difficulty with setting up a Blogger blogroll in my choice.

Blogrolls could be very useful on a classroom blog. The students would have easy access to sites they needed. Also, links to students’ blogs could be added. Although I haven’t set up different categories on a blog yet, that would make for a nicely organized classroom blog page.

RSS Aggrigators

I’ve set up and used both a web-based RSS aggregator and a browser-based RSS aggregator. Oh, my. No comparison on using the browser-based RSS aggregator and the web-based one. Using MSN, it was extremely simple to set it up. I was easily able to see what sites had the logo to click on, then it was one button. After that, I just need to go to that symbol, which is next to my favorite places to view the feeds. Easy! Sites also easily showed which ones were not available for that function.

It was much more difficult to navigate around the online aggregator, as well as more difficult to view the information. I won’t spend the time to log on to do that, after finding out that I can easily view the feeds with MSN.

Right now, I’m not seeing any use with my 3rd grade students. Only about ½ of my students have internet access at home, and when the students are in computer lab, they have limited time to complete their assignments, let alone do anything else. If there were to be a value, it would only be for those students who could access the internet at home.

In a perfect world, I’d have my students subscribe to my classroom site. I see the RSS feed as a much more useful tool for older students at this time.

Communications with students would be useful via a blog, but again I do not see the utility since about half of my students do not have internet access at home, and there is no time for them to do that when we are in computer lab.

I LOVED setting this up for my personal use, though, and will use it.