Week Fifteen: Wikis

I created an account so that I could create and edit a wiki. For this activity, I edited a page on the "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki." I like the idea of wikis for creating a webpage that can be done collaboratively. I do think wikis can be a bit dangerous since anyone can post anything to a wiki. People need to understand that and use them correctly and not as a factual database.

Week Fourteen: Library Thing, etc.

For this week's activity I joined shelfari. I had never heard of shelfari and I'm not a huge reader so I was a bit skeptical about how or if I would use this site. As it turns out the virtual book shelf it kind of useful. I can group together all the books I have read, or want to read so they are in one convenient place. You can also read and write reviews about books which could help me decide what book to read. I can also see what books people with similar interests are reading. I don't know that this will give me any additional time to read, but it might help me be more strategic about what I decide to read.

Week Thirteen: Slide Sharing

Student Leaders

View more presentations from jshawonw.

Week Twelve: Screencasting

I decided to use screencast-o-matic for this activity. I made a screencast of myself making a smiley face in paint (http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cXlIFtvpw).

I also decide to download Jing! and I am going to use that for my final project.

Week Eleven: Break

Take a break - I am particularly good at this particular activity! :-)

Week Ten: Viedo on the Web

Who doesn't love dancing monkeys?!?!?

Week Nine: Instant Messaging

For this activity I went with Google TALK. It was very quick and easy to use, plus it's free, which is always a plus! If you want to invite someone all you have to do is know their email address and you click invite, then type in their email address. If you have a gmail account it will also give you access to you contacts list so you don't have to remember them or type them in. I decided to look into the difference between the regular Google TALK and the Labs Edition for the purpose of this assignment since I was already using Google TALK on a regular basis. The Labs Edition had way more features that I like, for example you could do a conference chat and they had cute little emoticons that you could add. Unfortunately, it was never up and running very consistantly. I even tried emailing google about it, but I have not heard back from them yet. Ultimately I decided to stick it out witht the regular Google TALK and just IM one person at a time.

Week Eight: Cloud Computing

In the past, we have always had access to our files at school through "My Files." This year that has gone away because we have switched over to Windows 7. As a result, all teachers were encouraged to use "Cloud Computing" as a replacement to "My Files." For this projcet I used something I was already working on. There are 5 teachers in the math department that teach Geometry and we were all working together to create a final review sheet since we were all giving the same final exam. Cloud Computing allowed us to do it over the weekend at our individual houses instead of having to all drive back to the school to meet. Some of us live 30-45 minutes from the school so it wouldn't ahve been a very good use of our time.

Week Seven: Microblogging

For this activity I decided to joing twitter. I am much more of a reader than a poster. I myself do not see myself "tweeting" a lot in the future, but I do enjoy reading the tweets of others. I think twitter is very user friendly and it has been very easy to find people to follow. I even like that if you are wanting to follow some type of famous person they let you know which one is verified to be that person. The most useful person I am currently following is our school athletic director. I enjoy following him because he attends all of our school sporting events and tweets updates. It's too difficult for me to attend everything but I still like to be involved. I also follow a few teachers at school that are in my department. I am a KU graduate so I also decided to follow KU because it helps me feel connected and up to date on what's going on. For me, microblogging will help me stay connected and current on the things that are important to me. I love that it's a very flexible way of doing that.

Week Six: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I went ahead and created a "Delicious" account. I wasn't too sure about whether or not I would use a social bookmarking site, but after digging deeper I did find value in it. As a traveling teacher, I have three different classrooms that I teach in and I use 5-6 computers at school on a regular basis. I also work from home quite a bit. I've always been a big "favorites" user. but that only works if you use the same computer every time. With Delicious, I don't have to worry about it. It's like having an internet based favorites list that goes with me anywhere I have internet access. I has been pretty easy to use and I think it could come in handy in the future.

Week Five: RSS and Feed Readers

Acticity #1 -
I chose the google reader because I am in LOVE with all of the other google apps that I currently use. I love that I don't have to go out and find information, it comes and finds me. My only concern is that it can suck you in. I was subscribed to about 30 different feeds and I would get hundreds of new posts to read each day. That was WAY too many for me to keep up with. I now have a much better system that works for me. I have folders to organize where they go and that helps me tremendously. I have an Architecture folder with 5 subsriptions and a Geometry folder with another 8 subsrciptions. Even those can get a little overwhelming if I don't stay with it frequently. You just need to train yourself that not everything is going to be worth reading and you have to pick and choose.

Week Four: Photo Sharing

This photo was taken by Marco Barbieri and it belongs to the Lights and Lines photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsandlines/5315246823/in/photostream). As an Architecture teacher I really enjoy this particular collections.

Before this semester, I had never used Flickr. I have found how useful Flickr can be through a number of assignments and project that I have worked on throughout the semester. It has really made my presentations look much more professional by including interesting photos from Flickr istead of clip art, which is what I had typically used. It takes a little more work on my end, but the results are totally worth it.