The Google Gamut — Everything You Need to Get Started caught my attention because just yesterday I received an email from my college freshman daughter stating “Do It!!! — http://mail.google.com/videochat” and, of course, I did. And we had so much fun visiting by video. Somehow, although I had downloaded Skype long ago, she was just never interested. It was like Skype was so “last year.” And I thought about what a tremendous impact Google has had on all of our lives, including the addition to our vocabulary of the verb “google.”
So, I thought that the content of the video was pretty good. It flowed well, the instructions were clear and it held my attention thoughout the 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the picture quality was really poor and I found the words on the screen to be distracting for me, although I am sure some people would probably like these. All of the screen shots were fuzzy and just no fun to look at. I knew some of the content already (my Techno-Babe daughter insisted last year that I simply had to set up iGoogle), but there were lots of new materials, too, like Google Gears.
I think it was worthwhile, and good information.
Oh my! There is so much out there for chocolate — no wonder I am addicted!!
Because I am trying not to eat so much (which is obviously somewhere short of dieting), I seem to have food on my mind all of the time, so I searched Flickr for one of my all-time favorite topics: Chocolate. And I used the option to limit the search for CC images only. It was still amazing how many pictures my search generated and how many different Things Chocolate there are out there! Anyway, I had fun searching and here is something to whet your appetite:
Photo by: capn madd matt
I really enjoyed watching these videos; although I had heard of Creative Commons, I did not fully understand the evolution and history of the concept until tonight. Given the collaborative nature of the web, and of the world in which we live, in general, it was critical that something like this evolved. With the legalistic approach to intellectual property, everyone would be essentially stopped in their own tracks, had it not. I remember from watching the Randy Pausch lecture how often he mentioned the word “share,” describing it as one of the defining adjectives in his life. And certainly, the Alice Project, and so many other projects he championed were huge successes, in part, because of the fact that these were “shared.” Creative Commons is incredible simply because it allows everyone to decide if they want to share their “property,” and that is essential for others to be able to learn and grow from their peers/mentors/etc.
Vicki the Cool Cat Teacher’s enthusiasm for her wiki wiki teaching was hard to miss; hard to believe that all of that grew out of a simple assignment to define some terms in a computer science class. Definitely, the organization of the wiki is key, so it would be important for the teacher to structure everything very carefully before student involvement. I picked three different age-level wikis on purpose, just to see how it could be used by different age groups. I really enjoyed the kindergarten class’s counting page and the sixth graders’ wiki, Code Blue. I thought that the organization for Code Blue did not draw me into the wiki. The long listing of web links at the first was a big “yawn” for me personally. I laughed out loud at some of the middle school children’s perceptions of the medical profession, including the young man who described himself as a 28-year-old physician who had been saving lives for 12 years!
The high school AP World History wiki was downright professional looking, nicely organized and great content. It made me want to read more and seemed like it would draw the students into the project. The crisp, clean look and examples made up for some of the links that did not work.
Overwhelmed is the word that popped out from the assignment directions because that is how I have felt at times with this assignment. I truly do want to read everything — afraid that I might miss something really good by skimming. But skim, I will. And hopefully, I will get better at it.
I always enjoy reading the blogs of my classmates, especially the veterans in the department. So, of course, I added Deanie’s and MC’s immediately. Hope to have time to add others later.
I was intrigued by The Fischbowl’s article on television ads embedded in video games, but ended up only skimming it (Yea!) and actually reading the article about no more librarians because I had just recently talked with one of my media specialists about this trend and found it to be not at all what I had expected!
Still overwhelmed, but working on my skimming techniques!!
First of all, I do like RSS Feeds. I have “played” with iGoogle a little, and also set up a MySite on our school SharePoint site, and I included RSS feeds on both. But, to be honest, I found the Reader on my Google account a bit overwhelming — too busy, or something. I cannot quite decide what it is. That said, I did enjoy reading some of the “feeds” I received from the subscriptions and wanted to comment on the keyboarding practice article in techlearning blog. Last year, we purchased the software from an online keyboarding site, TyperShark, and found our students’ enthusiasm level increase dramatically about practicing on the keyboard. It was simply amazing how often they asked to “play” TyperShark. They loved the game aspect of the site, the competition, etc. It was something that they could totally identify with — no big surprise, they have all grown up with video games. But the neat thing (from the business teacher perspective) was that the site was really well done, and they were increasing their speed and accuracy all of the time they were “playing!” Much more fun than typing paragraphs out of the book!
I enjoyed learning about the Typeracer game in this educational blog, in which the students can actually compete against other students on the Internet. Many of my students would just push themselves like crazy to compete against their classmates; I can only imagine what they would do against Internet competition!
or, my thoughts on the blogs I read tonight: While I read the “required” five blogs from the assignment, and loved some of the thoughts expressed in the ones I read (in particular, Why Can’t We Do This? and the very valid concerns of an Atlanta-area student about the water crisis), I really identified with the teacher who was undertaking PowerPoint reform at her school. It truly made me want to hear more from her and other teachers and how their “experiment” had fared with their students over a longer period of time. As a former business teacher — a teacher who has been called on for advice on lots of PowerPoint presentations with tacky WordArt and way, way too much text — I applaud her efforts and hope she can rachet this new protocol into to a national campaign!
On a personal level, my initial thoughts center around the ten-hour class I took with Sandi, our Project Specialist, this summer and how totally fun the class was, so my thoughts are definitely positive! Additionally, I think how lucky I am (and our students are) to be in a school system where there is such a huge commitment to technology. I know that the exposure to many of the new technologies for our students would not be possible without a sincere dedication to enhancing their educational experience on the part of our administration and community. With all of the emerging technologies, our kids will have an opportunity to “contribute, create and collaborate” on a level unlike any previous generation. It is exciting to watch it evolving!!!
