Thing #17 Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I set up a del.icio.us account for another staff development this summer.  It was interesting learning about social bookmarking and tagging.  I like the prospect of being able to share sites with others and being able to access my account from school.  Think of the possibilities of group research projects in class.  I looked at the 23 things account and saved some of the bookmarks to mine.

Thing #16 Get Organized with Web 2.0 tools

I really liked making a new home page.  I used iGoogle.  I chose a beach theme picture and added sports and entertainment sites.   This will be the home page for my mac and att.yahoo is the home page for my PC.

I like the Google Calendar that I made for one of the other "things."  I also set one up on Yahoo to see what it is like.  Google integtrated with the Remember the Milk to do list program.  I would recommend the Google Calendar to others.

I signed up for the My Stickies site to see what it is like.

I like the idea of keeping organized.  It is so hard for me to find time though to get on the computer a lot.  During the school year I am lucky if I have time to check e-mail and do lesson plans, gradebook, etc.  Having a calendar will be easy to do and not time consuming.

Thing #15 Wikis

It was interesting learning about Wikis.  I just thought that there was the Wikipedia and I did not know much about it.  I did not know that anyone can edit and add information.  I visited the Book Lovers wiki, the TeacherLibrarian wiki, and the MISD Library Policy and Procedures wiki.  Wikis could be used in group projects in the classroom, faculties could have one to add and edit, your own family could have one to add information to about family history, etc.

Thing #14 Go with the Flow

I signed up for Bubbl.us and flowchart.com.   I can see many ways that these could be used in the classroom.  Any topic in Social Studies could be put on a flowchart. Students could work together on a mind map.  These could be put to a lot of use with the election coming up. These could also be used for characters, plot, setting, etc.  for novels and stories in reading. I want to explre both ofthese programs more this summer.

Thing #13 Web Applications

I really liked the Zoho Writer. I did not know there was something like this. I am excited that I can type something up at home and open it up at school or vice versa without having to save on my flachdrive or e-mailing it to myself. This program was very easy to use.

Thing #12 Google Tools

I really liked the Google Calendar. I set mine up with everything I have going on in July. Wow, I am going to be very busy at the end of this month when drill team and softball start for my daughter. This will be helpful to send to my mom so she can see what our plans are for the month. A calendar for my classroom will also be helpful for students and parents to see events and due dates.
michelle's calendar
I also signed up for Google Alerts. I added notifications for the Texas Rangers and also Jenny the Elephant fromthe Dallas Zoo. Google Alert could be used in the classroom to alert me on topics that we are studying for Social Studies. Will it be hard to use at school since Google is blocked?

Thing # 11 Finding Good Feeds

Google Blog Search is easy to use. I put in the topic Shi Tzu (the kind of dog I have) and all kinds of blogs and sites came up. I alos looked up Mesquite ISD. Feedster would not open. I like Topix because like all kinds of news--local news, national news, celebrity, etc. Syndic was doing a data back up process. I will check it again later.