Wordle and Web 2.0

This is the Wordle that I created at wordle.net.  My daughter has been a fan of this site and Tagxedo, also, since she used them in a class last year.  It is a very neat tool.  I know lots of teachers use them as a product students can create to show their understanding of something they have read.  

As a part of the work for this class, I have learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes working of the Internet in general and of Web 2.0 in particular.  I feel much more comfortable now with many of the tools that we have used in this class.  I have used Facebook and YouTube for many years, but I am now addicted to Twitter both personally and professionally.  I am using Delicious constantly at home and at school to keep up with websites I want to remember and return to.  At the same time that we learned about Delicious, I was introduced to Symbaloo which I have actually in my classroom along with the blog that I created for one of my classes.  The blog-Symbaloo combo came in especially handy when I had to be out of my classroom for two days this semester.  I am still slow in using my RSS aggregator to keep up with feeds, but I am still working to figure out ways to make it more user friendly for me.  With the recent iOS update on my iPhone, there have been changes in where different applications are located.  Some of these changes have to do with the inter-connectivity of some Web 2.0 applications and platforms.  As I notice these and other changes, they make more sense to me know that I understand the whole system much better than before.

I have found that most of the tools that we have learned about are proving useful for me professionally and personally.  I am working on integrating them into my classroom, and doing that always takes more time for me.  My students always respond positively to things that I try if I am thoroughly familiar with them myself and know exactly what I want the students to do.  That level of preparation takes time, and I am working on it now.  I find myself thinking more and more about how I could improve my lessons by incorporating more Web 2.0 technologies.  

Google v. Delicious

I am doing an experiment comparing the results from a Google search and a Delicious search for the same term, “common core standards”.  The results from the two searches were much more similar than I thought they would be.  Here are the screen shots from each search, cropped but not very professionally (Incidentally, this was the hardest part of this post!):

I couldn’t fit all the Delicious results onto one page without making the text microscopic, so I took two screenshots.  My laptop does not like the light blue text on the Delicious page.  I hope you can read them, and I've summarized the results below just in case you can't.

I noticed that there are three states whose Common Core websites appear on the first page of Google results. They are Illinois, Washington, and New York. There is also an article from the Washington Post, a Wikipedia article, and a website for a company that produces Common Core curriculum for purchase.  The Delicious results have four listings that are basically all from the Common Core website itself.  Some reference specific parts of the site or pdf files on the parent site.  There is also a blog listing news about resources being developed for the Common Core, a website for a company that specializes in leadership through change, the Lexile website, a site sponsored by the New York State Education Department, and another that is designed especially for New York state teachers.  A final listing is for the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum website through the state of Wisconsin’s education department.    

It seems that the Delicious results might contain more practical, hands-on results that would lead to resources for actually implementing the Common Core State Standards in the classroom.  That is what I would have expected since Delicious results are created by users who care enough about the sites to list them on their own Delicious registry.  I like that I can see how many people have listed a resource previously because it gives me an idea about how relevant that site might be.  Tags are also helpful as a preview of what topics will be addressed on the listed sites.  Neither site provides much information about the dates on which information was posted on the sites in its results other than for news articles in which the publication date usually appears in the Google results.

I think that my use of these two search tools in the future will depend on what I am looking for. If I want to access a specific site but don’t know the URL or just want general information on a topic, Google will probably still be my choice.  If I want to know what teachers are bookmarking on a particular curriculum subject, for example, I would go to Delicious.  Delicious seems to me to be a kind of review service for websites.  I wouldn’t necessarily assume that a posting on Delicious is an endorsement of a site, but it would indicate to me that someone thought the site was worthy of a look.  

Thoughts on Flickr and Creative Commons

I don't know if I really feel qualified to say whether Flickr does "enough" to promote the use of Creative Commons licensing.  I found it very easy to use the licensing feature when I uploaded my first photos.  I did follow the getting started steps pretty closely both in Flickr and in our class materials.  I had read the information in our textbooks about Creative Commons licensing, and seeing the choices on Flickr made it seem much more comprehensible to me.  I am sure that many people don't pay attention to the licensing options, but that is a "buyer beware" situation in my opinion.  If you are going to post pictures to a site like Flickr, you need to be completely aware and informed about what might happen to those pictures and how you can control that.  I think that some people genuinely want to contribute to the Web 2.0 atmosphere of Flickr by sharing their images in various settings.  I have decided that pictures of scenery, buildings, etc. can be shared, but I won't make public images of family and friends.  I would not want to find out that someone had used a picture of a friend, student, or family member for a purpose of which I would not approve.  Now that my photos are also appearing on my blog through the gadgets I've used recently, I am going to be even more vigilant about the settings I apply to the pictures I upload to Flickr.  Caveat emptor....let the buyer (user, in this case) beware.

Snow Day Fun 2011

Snow Day Fun 2011, a set on Flickr.

Embedding a Flickr photo

I just keep feeling like I need to yell, "I did it!" every time I manage to complete a task for this class.  I am not a tech newbie, but I am learning so many new things.  I embedded this photo of Gwendolyn's square snowman by copying and pasting the HTML code from the "Share" section of this photo's page from my Flickr photostream.  It was easy to do now that I am so much more comfortable with the language on sites like Flickr and what all that HTML business means.

The advantage I can see for posting from Flickr to my blog is that clicking on the picture in the blog post takes me back to my Flickr photostream.  I could go on to view my other photos, add tags, etc.  I'm not sure if someone else could do that or not, but it is handy for me.  I will try accessing my blog as someone else and see what happens.

When I post a picture to my blog by uploading it directly, the picture stands alone.  Clicking on the image gives me a few choices about size, etc. but it doesn't link to anything else.  This could be good if I don't want to be able to navigate to my Flickr account through the image.

Podcasting

This week our lessons have been about podcasting.  I have been using Audacity in my AP classroom, but I learned a lot more about it this week.  I feel much more confident about my ability to produce something that I can really use with it in the future.  I can also direct my students to use it correctly to get the result I have been wanting.  I'm now thinking about how I can combine blogging and podcasting to have the students review each other's speaking samples as well as writing.

I am also finding new uses for other tools that we are learning about such as wikis.  I just hope I can find the time and energy to actually utilize everything I'm learning!  I want to set up collaborative spaces for teachers throughout our district and within my department for sharing lesson plans and resources.

I am not happy with the fact that it feels like I am often doing my Tech homework at the last minute.  I haven't really come down to the wire with anything this semester, but it just seems that the weekends are my best times to really concentrate on the work for this class.  I think that I work better when I know I will have a "chunk" of time to devote to something rather than just a few minutes here or there.  I AM getting everything finished, and more importantly, I am learning so much and actually using what I am learning.  This is exactly how I hoped I would feel about graduate school when I decided to begin my master's after almost 20 years of teaching.

Finally....RSS and feeds and technology troubles!

This is the post that I wrote yesterday and tried to post here for about two hours:

Today is probably not the best time for me to be making this entry. Before I sat down to do this, I was feeling really great about the progress I've made in being a Web 2.0 citizen. I've created this blog for class purposes and can see many ways that I might use it in the future for both personal and professional purposes. I have even added a blog for my AP Spanish Language class with pages for each student where they have posted their own writing and commented on each other's posts. I love all the possibilities for using a wiki, also. I think that if my students had daily access to computers in my classroom, I would feel more comfortable having them create vocabulary wikis and wikis devoted to books we are reading and even helpful tips for the AP exam. I'm still working on how much I can give them to do outside of class without it being too much for those who might not have Internet access at home.

I set up my RSS feed earlier this week using Google Reader. I chose some professional blogs and sites that I discovered by searching and from our assignment last week (http://blog.kathyschrock.net/ ,http://glieux.wordpress.com/); several news sites since I talk about current events around the world in my classroom (www.cnn.com ,

http://5newsonline.com/feed/ , www.france24.com); and, some of our classmates' blogs just to keep up with what is going on with them. I am still overwhelmed by the amount of news and updates that are available, and I'm not sure that I will even be able to process all that I have subscribed to, but I think that once I make looking at the reader a habit, I will be glad that I am making use of this aggregator technology. I'm certainly not getting even a quarter of this information now, so anything I see will be an improvement for me personally and professionally. I have already unsubscribed from one site that did not have the kind of content that its title indicated. I don't need any extra "junk mail" to weed through every day. As I teach my students, just because it is out there does not mean that it is worth our time.

I took some time this week to clean out my personal email account, also. I am looking forward to the time when I will have fewer emails to delete every day.

Finally, I came here to add this post to my blog about RSS feeds and my experience. I have had no end of trouble just creating this post!!! I am so frustrated right now that I have yelled at my husband, threatened to throw the computer out the window, and almost literally pulled my hair out! There is some problem with the way that I have set up my Google accounts, with Google Chrome, with Blogger, or all of the above. Right now, as I'm typing this, the screen has a haze over it, and there is a box that says, "You have logged out from another location. Do you want to log in again?" The only choices are, "Yes, I want to log in again." and "Close." I have tried both multiple times, but I get nowhere. I have logged out and in on both of the email accounts that are linked to this blog with no luck. Finally, by some hook or crook, I was able to access the new post button AND the new post page so that I can make this entry now. However, the "log out/log in" box keeps popping up. And, I can't publish!!

If anyone has any suggestions (other than those mentioned above, i.e. throwing the computer out the window, etc.), I would be open to reading them. I want to call Google and yell at someone, but I doubt that would be effective in solving the problem.

I'm still in love with technology, but today we are definitely involved in a "lovers' quarrel".

Tonight, Monday, I am having no problems at all with this post.  I did finally get to a place where I could access a Help forum for Blogger.  Others were reporting the same problem, and someone who seemed to know what was going on was reporting to Google Engineering.  I made my plea for the problem to be fixed soon.  After posting to the discussion help forum for this class, I gave up.  Today, everything is working like a charm!  I am so glad.

Also, I realized that I might not have been clear enough about the advantages/disadvantages of RSS and feeds.  If anyone is still reading this monster post, I think that the advantages are having all the news that I am truly interested in located in one place and that I can read headlines quickly and go to the full article directly if I want to read more.  I tend to scan a lot and only read details of a few items, so this works for me.  Disadvantages would be the sheer massive numbers of articles that can accumulate in my feed and the fact that I might get too overwhelmed to read anything at all.  I am definitely going to need  to set up some folders and try to read professional materials, general news, and personal blogs and sites separately.  I am very pleased so far with the full-site Google Reader, but the mobile version seems a bit more clumsy, at least for me.

Enough for now...hopefully things will smooth out for this week's assignments.