Thing- I just Can't Help It - This is Funny

Thing 9

I love the idea of Google Docs. I plan to utilize them with the upper grades. The format is simple and straight forward. Teachers and students could collaborate from home on projects. At first, I thought that Zoho was easier to use and seem to have more features but I kept getting error messages. Must be an ID ten T problem. I went back to Google Doc and I think that is the one I will use with students.

: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfrmx8rb_8dvq92gfb

Thing 8 Shared Slide Show

I can see the benefits of having access to a presentation tool on the internet. The Zoho was easy to use but a bit limiting as far as features. I would like to explore the other tools, but this took a lot of time and I have to catch up with the over-achievers. I plan on revisiting many of the tools that I have looked at this summer when I have more time to explore. I had trouble placing the slide show on my blog, it didn't seem to fit well. It is on the very bottom of the blog, oh well. I would recommend Zoho for web sites and blogs. I plan to embed the slide show on the media center web site.

Thing 7 Communication Tools

It seems to me that many of these tools i.e. email can be a blessing and a curse. I started email 12 years ago to keep in contact with my daughter in college. Now I use it to communicate with colleagues, parents and the outside world several times a day. I do not sit at my computer for any length of time so IM is less handy. In fact, I had to ask my daughter to join so I would have a partner. We used it once to test it and I have not used it since. I am intrigued with the idea of IM reference desk and I could see it would be great with tech support. I viewed a webinar on creating a customized google search engine. And I was excited to learn how to make one and I plan to use the tool with the sixth grade. It was through MINITEX. I have viewed webinars before and I think they are great since I live in a small town. Of course, all of these require more than just a few moments on the computer.

Thing 6- More fun

Thing 6 - Image Generator

My creation
Originally uploaded by mkeifenheim

I used Big Huge Labs for this trading card. This was fun. I should have thought more about what pictures to use first. I can see using this often. I just created some bookmarks for I Love to Read Month in the old fashion way. This is easier and more fun. I will use this. I am going to explore Image Chef also. Can it be that I love this because I have a picture of my granddaughter?

Thing 5 More Fun?

Spell with Flickr Created by kastner (Erik Kastner) with PHP and javascript

I did enjoy playing with the mashups, although the purpose for some of them eluded me. I can think of some fun activities for the students. Family photos illustrating ABC books or number books. Posters and puzzles showing the Dewey Decimal System. I worry about the pictures online. The ability to make some photos private and some public even in the same grouping is a great advantage.

Thing 4 -Continues

IMG_1401
Originally uploaded by mkeifenheim

Uploading pictures to Flickr was very easy. I can see using this in the computer lab to organize photos for the students to use in their projects. I have not been able to use Picnik. It failed to open, maybe I did not wait long enough.

Thing 4 - Flickr

Uploaded on December 28, 2007
by suprdaveg

suprdaveg's photostream

It is a cold day, a perfect time to spend an afternoon inside working on 23 Things on a Stick. I like the idea of Flickr. Again, I could see spending a lot of time searching for and viewing photos. Just the few tags that I explored led to hundreds of photos. I can see the value personally, to share photos of family online instead of emailing new pictures again and again.

Thing 3- RSS

I found RSS easy to set up and it was easy to add blogs. I am not sure how useful this will be but I am glad to learn about it. I do search online for reviews of books and there are reviewers that I return to often, but I do not spend a lot of time on the web. When I returned to the Google Reader I was surprised at the number of posts. This definitely takes more than fifteen minutes a day.