Week 6 - Thing 14

Technorati and Tagging

Thoughts and reflections.

I've already brushed on this subject in previous posts but will be more specific in this one.

Technology is an excellent tool to be used in education and everyday life. However, it is a tool and should remain so imo. While I love being exposed to new technology and methods at the moment I feel that we're being exposed to too much of it. Ergo, we have to pick and choose what works for us and what doesn't.

And that is what I think this program so far does for us. It exposes us to a small percentage of what is available and allows us the option to embrace what we need and/or want. I don't think it is the intention of SLL to tell us we should use all these tools.

I've used the internet and computers for a long time and know how addictive forums, blogs, RSS feeds etc can be. One thing we all need to avoid is computer time burnout. While it's all fun and games and very interesting initially, if we're not careful, it can be detrimental as we spend too much time on the computer. We have to limit our time and balance it between what is important and what is fun. Once we can do that within the limit we set for ourselves, all these tools will be an excellent addition to our toolkits.

One of the coolest things is to get notified that someone has responded to one of your posts made on your own blog or forum or someone else's. After all, we post stuff not for ourselves but for others to read. We then want to see what they wrote and perhaps respond to it. Herein lies a problem though. I used to read many forums about all sorts of different topics. Games, politics, business, religion and other topics that peaked my interest and sometimes I replied to someone's post. Of course in the olden days before RSS feeds, I had to check back regularly and see if someone replied and if they did, I would read it, and perhaps respond to that reply. It got out of hand and soon I was spending more time replying to posts than I was reading new ones. Since blogs and forums are seldom moderated for content other than vulgar language, some people would just post stuff to cause trouble. People like this are called trolls and all they do is hang around forums to cause grief by posting inflammatory replies to your comments just to get a rise out of you. This is called flaming. I soon learned from this and limited my posting to only a few small forums with excellent moderators who actively limit trolls and flames.

This can be avoided in two ways. First you can post your comments and don't read the reply. But if you do that, why post in the first place? Or second, just resist the temptation and don't reply at all. I've learned to do the latter. It saves a lot of time and grief.

Wow, long story. But this is the reason I don't tag and I don't have a watch list. For me, RSS feeds and regular bookmarks are quite sufficient.

Week 6 - Thing 13

del.icio.us

"Delicious"

I didn't see that until I did the actual tutorial. Now it makes sense and I am thinking of all sorts of words that end in US for potential website names :)

Ok, about del.icio.us then. It's a social networking site which allows people to tag or bookmark sites they're interested in. The difference is that it keeps tabs of who tags what and as such has the ability to come up with lists like favorites etc. In addition, people can comment on the articles or websites that have been linked, much like a blog.

I kinda got lost in looking at the most popular and spent (read wasted) considerable time looking through posts of interesting but inconsequential drivel. I think the concept is great if you have the discipline to look at stuff and have the strength not to get sidetracked. I can get sidetracked easily as there is so much interesting stuff to be seen and/or read.

Social Networking. It is the number one reason why games like Everquest, World of Warcraft and other online role playing games became so incredibly popular and addictive.

Would I use delicious? While it is nice to have a computer independent bookmark spot, I think it would be too easy for me to be distracted by the additional noise around it. I'd get sucked in and before you know it, I've spent an hour of valuable time on trivial computer junk. So, no. Not at this time. I already spend more time than I would like to admit on computers :)

Week 5 - Thing 12

Rollyo: Hmmm.. interesting. How does this differ than to search the internet. Well, for educators like us it is huuuge. See, it is not that we can't handle or search the internet or inadvertently see stuff we'd rather not see but when we like our students to research the internet we don't want them to see stuff that for some reason comes up when they "google" it.

So with Rollyo, I can restrict their searches to sites I know are safe to search for. I don't have to presearch 5 or 10 different ways to make sure that the results presented are ok or if there are some unwanted sites in between the good ones.

So I created a ROLL with just math sites. It creates the code for you so you can include it on your website like you can see in this post. What is nice though is that I can include it in the same way on yourhomework.com. So when I assign some assignment where the students have to search the website, I can make a ROLL and include it on my homework website and they can then search to their hearts content. Additionally, parents can see this and will appreciate the fact that we have their kids' best interests at heart. Another + for us yay!!

P.S. I made a small change to the code and stripped out ability to search the web. Oh and the reason I chose a black roll is cause I like black licorice and it reminded me of that! :)

Math Sites

Week 5 - Thing 11

Ok so now we're getting to some serious stuff here. There was a link on the SSL 2.0 site about the Web 2.0 awards and there are some seriously cool sites out there embracing the new technology.

One of the site was a language learner site. Since I am multilingual (Dutch, English, German, French and Afrikaans) I somehow am always interested in learning other languages. While I don't want to do it right now (many other things on my plate like finishing my masters) I do want to learn Japanese and freshen up my Spanish so I can actually have a conversation in it.

I looked at the Mango web site, one of the award winners. This site offers many languages but more importantly, it gives you one free lesson. Why is this important? Well it shows me how well the program has been put together. It also shows me how well the foreign language is spoken. I tried the German first lesson, since I know German, and I was impressed with the clarity of the spoken language and also about the explanation of written language. My wife purchased a Dutch course once and to our dismay, the people on the tapes (yeah it was that long ago) sounded flemish. So being able to preview and pre-hear the language is a major plus.

And now for the coolest website (just for fun) you have to visit the hairmixer website. What a hoot. As you can see from my avatar I am follicle impaired :) but what a blessing to find this site. And now, without further ado, here's the new me! lmao!

Week 5 - Thing 10

The movie below was made through imagechef.com. There are soo many image generators online but to see one which allows text to be put in a video is really cool. I can't wait to show my kids next semester so they can show their creativity!

Week 4 - Thing 9

More on RSS feeds

Somehow I guess thing 8 and 9 are very similar.

I added a new RSS feed to my reader. I have several PC's at home and while Microsoft allows automatic updating of patches (every first tuesday of the month) I have set all my computers to not do this automatically. I've had a few updates in the past which really screwed up my computer and since then I've stopped doing them. Of course most updates are perfectly fine. So I've now added their update feed in my reader. It gives me a much more detailed explanation of what problem was fixed, what it affected and what parts of windows the change impacts. This allows me the decision to update or not.

Week 4 -Thing 8

RSS Feeds. Really Simple Syndication.

What does it mean? Quite simply, you get what you want when you want it. Gone are the times when you have to check different websites to see if there's something new.

I have 4 email accounts. Google's Reader allows me to see all.

I also subscribe to the California Mathematics Council Feed. This allows me to see anything to do with Mathematics in California.

Another feed I subscribe to is my own blog. Through the reader I can see if people responded or replied to my blog. This way I don't have to check each page.

There are times I help people out programming stuff and if they ask me a question to which I don't have the answer, I post the question on a specific forum/blog. When someone has an answer or posts a reply there, I get to see it on my reader.

Truly wonderful this RSS. I can see my self getting quite addicted to it.

One word of caution. There's so much information out there, we cannot possibly know everything. So don't subscribe to too many feeds. You don't want to get overwhelmed to the point it becomes meaningless.

Week 3-Thing 7

Ok so I found this website which lets you download a little program for free.

With it you can actually create some cool programs. http://scratch.mit.edu/

This program allows you to create games from scratch and allows students a first look at logic thinking and programming. The neat part about it is that it is presented as a game.

Week 3-Thing 6

So I looked online and found many things I could do with flickr. One neat thing was the flickr color picker. Next time I am looking for some pictures which need to be within a specific color range, this is where I am going to go!

I also liked the poster maker. I think next year, I'll have my students create one each with perhaps a picture of themselves!

Here's one I made

Week 3-Things 5

Ok so here we are in week 3. I created an account in Flickr, yahoo's feature to upload pictures. I uploaded 2 pictures from my camera. I discovered that I have 100mb of space available on my Flickr account and these two pictures are 1.3mb each. So... Don't forget to reduce the size of the pictures. Of course you're going to lose some resolution but unless you're going to print the picture, you don't need this.
	This image is a picture I took of one of the walls on which we posted students Women's History Month projects
	So this image is a picture I took of some math vocabulary projects my students did.

Week 2-Things 3 and 4

Ok so it looks like I'm doing this all fast in order to catch up.

In week 2 we were supposed to create a blog. Alas, you're reading it so we're all set for thing 3

I had previously already set up a blog for a course I had taken at CSUN last semester but decided to keep that one separate from this one.

And then we were to create an avatar for thing 4. I used yahoo's avatar creator .I was surprised to see the multitude of available options yet, was a little disappointed I could not add in multiple dogs.

Week 1-Things 1 and 2

Woohoo.

Ok, so I created my blogger. Check here regularly for updates of what's going on

Love the fact I can HTML

Ok so in week 1 I was supposed to read http://classroomlearning2.blogspot.com/ which I did and also found out the 7 1/2 habits of successful lifelong learners.

The hardest habit for me was to begin with the end in mind. I've always started things and let things go and then decide where i was going to go with it.
Even my teaching carreer started like that. I decided to go back to college for fun to get another degree. I took some general ed courses and landed up doing an Algebra course. The way the professor taught me worked so well, he inspired me to become a math teacher.

The easiest habit. I've always been a problem solver and indeed see problems as challenges to overcome, not as obstacles to hinder me.