Digg and Yahoo Buzz

I really liked Digg better. It was easy to browse different categories by interest. Yahoo Buzz kept freezing up my computer! Yes, I know we need a new desktop, but it makes me wonder why it only happens with certain sites. I have no clue. No, I won’t continue to use Digg, although it was fun searching for items of interest. Like other assignments in this class, using that whittles away a LOT of time!

This might be good for older students. Some of the comments were interesting to read, which could lead to good discussions. Social implications? Maybe just seeing what is of interest to others.

Twitter

Sheesh! A while ago I set up a Twitter account, and the only way to "find" people was to invite them by email, or to search for people through email accounts of which I do not have. I invited some of my family. Thank you Jo and Kay for responding!

Earlier today I tried it again, and I was easily able to find people, so I added on from my instructor's site that he gave us. I'm not going to play around any more. I simply do not see a purpose for this in an educational setting.

Also, I heard from one of my sisters that our nephew was on Twitter. I found him today, but would not add it to my following list. Yes, he's certainly more than legal age, but his comments posted were not something that I would add for this class. That also makes me wonder about what students would be finding on this site. Yes, I have a problem with this site now for educational purposes.

I did explain this site to family members, when the finding function was wacky. They signed up and wrote initial posts. I'm sure that none of us will keep going here...we'll email our thoughts instead.

Skype

My test call from the Skype's website did not work, so I ended up calling DH on our landline to see if it worked. Yep. It was sort of fun hearing his voice on our computer speakers.

I can see use for this in my personal life. All of my family lives in the midwest, so we do rely on phone communication. All of my siblings are older, and I know that they really aren't concerned about their cell phone minutes when we talk. But, this might be a way to have some of those marathon conversations. I'm curious of how this works with an incoming call. I'll have to have my sisters set up a Skype account to test it out.

I honestly can't see a use for this in the classroom...therefore...I don't have any concerns.

Stat Counter

I registered with statcounter.com and placed the counter at the bottom of my blog. The site's instructions were very clear and it was easy to do. Or was it easy because of all of the other things I've done for this class?!

Time to quote my instructor for this class: "Personally, I see no value in these stats to education other than showing or proving there are readers all over the world." This time I totally disagree! With my 3rd grade kiddos, I actually have a very good use that would be fun for them and reinforcing math vocabulary and skills at the same time. If I had a classroom computer to devote to a website, each kid could each take a couple of minutes every day to go and check the counter on the site and determine HOW MANY MORE visitors were on here today than yesterday. That would be a fun motivational way for them to be practicing subtraction facts daily. With the information they gathered, we could also do graphing, such as which day of the week has the most visitors to the site.

That also takes me back now to the cluster map and what the kids could do with that data. They would be interested since it would be theirs, and we could do more graphing of visitors from different locales. The kids could determine the categories, which would be a great source of authentic data for them.

Cluster Map

This was fairly easy to do, once I understood the end results from the various programs that I tried. I agree that the use of these maps is only to show where visitors come from. But, especially for younger students, it could spark interest in learning about the places where visitors are coming from.

Slideshare

Ugh. I really do not like Slideshare. First, my browser kept freezing up on me and that's the only site it has done it with today. (That tells me that I've been on the computer too much today, but I really need to finish this class.) I also did not like the vague instructions of posting/embedding the PowerPoint on Blogger. But, I do like the idea of sharing PowerPoints, since they can be great educational tools to use in the classroom...find an appropriate PowerPoint to integrate into lessons. This just makes me think of the other PowerPoints I have spent the time creating and don't use, because I don't have easy access in my classroom.

I think this would be better with audio. After a while searching and not finding any way to do that, I gave up.

I don't really see using this with my 3rd graders. LOL Some still struggle with logging in the sites that they need to now in a timely manner. My concern with this site is about the same as other sites. The students need to be able to evaluate the validity of information that they are accessing.

Coronado Island

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Slide

I made a quick little slide show. This was fun! Oh yeah, and I think students would really have fun using it. I'd need to play with it more to see what other capabilities it has for application in the classroom. Because I've used Flickr more and need it for one of my own personal applications, I'd have to pick that as my favorite due to familiarity. Same goes for image storage.

Hey Kay! Are you reading this?!