Thing 13: Dumpr & BigHugeLab

I enjoyed playing with Dumpr - This is a pencil sketch of the same buggy picture as shown below.



My Dad was wonderful - he should be in a museum




I may just use this as my Christmas card next year - isn't Ruby cute?

I didn't care for BigHugeLab - I won't be using that one.

You can find Dumpr at: http://www.dumpr.net
BigHugeLab at: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/
Picnik at: http://www.picnik.com

Thing 12: Flickr _ Picnik

....................original pic .............................picnik pic

I enjoyed using Picnik.

Flickr badge added to blog.

Thing 11 _ part 2

How cool is this....I received a comment on my slide show (aside from the one Amy left, thank you Amy) the comment was "Poetico ed emozionante... Ottimo lavoro. Grazie e complimenti."

So I went to Babel Fish to translate since my Italian is a little
rusty :-) and the translation is: "Moving Poetico and… Optimal job. Thanks and compliment." Wow, how fun!

This person is listed as: Insegnante.....a teacher.

Thing 11 - Slide Share

Thing 11

I'm frustrated. I spent time making a really nice Power Point and loading it into Slide Share. When I click on it all it does is spin and say 'loading'. Does anyone have any ideas? (Monday)

(Tuesday am) About the 4th time I tried this it worked. Even though I saved my PowerPoint 2007 as a 2003 presentation it wouldn't pull up. I ended up saving it as a pdf and it finally worked. Whew.

The 5 Seasons Of Our Lives

View more presentations from Sue Foshag. (tags: spring summer)

The 5 seasons - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and our final season. The final season is depicted by my father holding my hand in his final hours. Rest in peace Daddy 1/1/08.

Beautiful Pictures, Relax and Enjoy

Images Variees

I love amazing photography and love taking pictures. I am going to post some of my photos to slide share and in my blog. This exercise was really fun.

Thing 9 & Thing 10- Google docs

I love the survey and made my own survey that we can post on our web site. I would like to get an idea of the technology the students have in their homes. It seems I am hearing more and more that people are giving up the internet because of financial constraints. We need to make sure students have access to technology at home or have the ability to get to the library before we require they use the internet for assignments.

I can see so much potential for Google docs. Emailing documents back and forth may not always work because email may have a document size limitation. Of course there is always the issue of emailing a Word document to someone who doesn't have Office on their computer. Using Google docs removes both of those limitations.

Thing 8

My del.icio.us username is sfoshag. I have to log in at work and get all my work favorites attached but I will be able to do that soon. Help yourself!

I have to admit this is pretty cool and I am sure I will be using it. In fact, I am going to send an email to my kids and have them set up accounts also. I have already helped myself to some bookmarks from Otto, Jim and Karen thank you very much.

At first I was concerned because I tend to save my bookmarks and include my user name/password in the name I give the bookmark so I don't forget that information. Obviously I didn't want anyone else to see my user name and password for some sites. I like that I can keep some things private.

Thing 7

I followed the instructions and posted several comments on classmate blogs. I also read a blog by co-instructor Karen Chichester found at: http://kchichester.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/ld-students-tech-in-the-classroom-and-the-american-dream/#comment-27 . The posting is about her special education students and how she is teaching them to utilize the computers and the internet. Not only did the student's writing improve, they were excited about writing. Kudos to Karen and her breakthrough with her students.

No Karen, I still can't swing those laptops for you this year but we can keep trying. Can you get your kids to write a grant?

Thing 6: Bloglines - who has time for this?
I am starting another blog. This one is on Bloglines the address is: http://www.bloglines.com/public/sfoshag
My original blog is at: http://remotelyconnected.blogspot.com/
I am posting this particular message to both blogs.

Who has time for this? By the time I get home from work, where by the way I work on a computer all day, I have roughly 5 hours before I have to go to bed. In that 5 hours I have to take care of any number of household chores including of course dinner. I enjoy actually interacting with my family. Now I have 'Bloglines' which enables me to instantly check on any or all of my 30 feeds. Other than for this course, who really does this?

As I mentioned before, I have read blogs that I found very informative like the blog my cousin did for my uncle's cancer battle or the blog Lin is doing for her family history. But who is really interested in these blogs unless they have a vested interest in the subject matter?

I looked at a lot of the 'top 200 feeds' and found only a handful that held my interest. I don't care for opinion, I want fact. I have trouble with blogs that contain personal opinion, like I am posting here, as opposed to sites with hard and fast facts. Seriously, am I missing the point? I feel like I must be.

Thing 5: Point/Counter Point of Web 2.0

My mind is whirling - why is it that getting a 5:30 a.m. phone call about a school delay/cancellation makes me jump out of bed? My mind spins thinking about all the things I can accomplish because fate gave me an additional two hours in my day. I lay there trying to go back to sleep and all I could think about was Web 2.0, technology, archaic teachers, economically strapped parents/schools, my brain was up for the day so my body followed.

Point: In ‘A Day in the Life of Web 2.0’ it is genius that the teachers blog/post upcoming assignments and what they will cover for the week. Staff who teach the same or similar subjects can then either discuss doing combination assignments or to connect the student’s Health class with the PE class. English teachers know what each other will be doing so they can better share resources. Staff contact through blogs that the whole staff can read and respond to are probably more efficient than email.

Counter Point: There is always a kink in the chain. Archaic staff that will not change their ways, the old way was ‘good enough for me, it’s good enough for them’ attitude. “My day ends at 2:30”, “I have the lesson plans I have been using for 30 years, I’m not changing them”, or my favorite (and someone actually said this to me) “Technology is overrated”.

Point: The bottom of page 3 of “A Day in the Life of Web 2.0” it is stated…”Student B, is keying a text message from his school desk to his social studies class team. He briefly describes an idea for putting together a video as part of their current class project on rural cultures.” Students thinking ahead and working together on projects involving technology, wouldn’t that be great!

Counter Point: Seriously. Students with texting capabilities are not texting about school work, nor are they listening to what is happening at that moment in the classroom. I think the author of this article went just a little too far with this one. Has he ever been in a high school classroom?

Point: Web 2.0 in a nut shell is the transformation of the web. Web 2.0 is where anyone can be a reader and a writer. Post your thoughts, share your knowledge, garner information from your peers.

Counter Point: You can’t believe everything you read. Use discretion in what you put on the web and what you take from it.

Thing 4 - Times they are a changing...

As an elementary parochial school student from 1964 through 1972 I was expected to participate in class, read the material, do the homework and pass the test. If your child needed the services of a special education teacher your child went to public school. Because I attended parochial school my experiences are probably different then those of my age who went to public school. I went kindergarten through 8th grade with the same 25 children. We had only one classroom for each grade level. Therefore, we had only one teacher in each grade who taught us not only the basics but also art, music and physical education. My experience with diversity was extremely limited to say the least. The closest I came to someone who was different than me were two kids in my class who I, in my child's mind, thought usually dressed themselves in the morning as opposed to their mother laying out their clothes. Their clothes never seemed to match. As I grew older it became more apparent that their families were probably struggling financially. That is where, as a child, my experience with diversity ends.

Today's students start out differently from the first day of school. Yes, even those in my old elementary school. The faces in the classroom are varying shades of tan and the names on the roster are sometimes difficult to pronounce. Students do not learn to accept people as we did, they naturally accept because they are given the opportunity at an early age to meet people from every walk of life in their classrooms. Students also have a different teacher for art, music, physical education and computers.

Students are given opportunity after opportunity to learn the material before they are pushed on to the next chapter. Outcome based is now the mantra of teachers, keep doing it until you get it right.

Schools attempt to incorporate life skills such as ethics, leadership and social responsibility into the curriculum. The closest we came to leadership skills when I attended grade school was the fact that I was always first in line because my last name started with 'A'. As the first in line, I subsequently had to hold the door for everyone else. If that's not leadership I don't know what is!

In high school I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. I was not introduced to a computer until 1982 as an employee, the thing covered my desk. Preschool students in today's classroom have access to computers and are comfortable with the operation of a mouse.

As stated in a YouTube video, "We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don't yet exist...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet." As the world changes so must we change.

Thing 3

The closest I have ever been to 'blogging' was a blog my cousins started last Spring. The purpose of their blog was to keep family up to date on their father's fight with cancer. My uncle Bob lives in northern Michigan and was diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2008. The blog helped everyone get information about the treatments without immediate family spending hours on the telephone. This blog enabled us to get information, post encouragement and ask questions. My uncle lost his battle with cancer in January but we were able to walk with him every step of the way.

This particular blog was maintained so that you had to ask permission to view it. I think this was probably a really good idea so the writers didn't feel they had to be so careful about how much information they shared. If the blog were not private, information about upcoming doctor appointments could have potentially opened the door to theft in their home. The blog contained uncle Bob's full name and city where he lived. All a thief would have to do is look him up in the phone book and know that he would be at U of M for treatment on a particular day. Privacy is key in certain situations.

As posted previously, I have encouraged my children to keep their MySpace and FaceBook private. One of the instructors pointed out that blogs that are open to everyone enable us to learn things from other people. Point taken, if all blogs were private, what a boring web it would be.

Private or Not Private, That is the Question...

Did you know according to technorati.com there are approximately 900,000 new blog entries every 24 hours? Amazing isn't it?

What I found disturbing is the fact that 2/3 of bloggers do not feel it is important to keep their identity private. Only 1/3 feel their privacy is important. I am constantly harping on my kids to keep their MySpace/FaceBook private. It alarms me that employers are checking these blogs for information on potential hires. Sadly, even though my kids have heeded my warning and keep those items set to 'private' it doesn't mean their friends can't post pictures on their blogs that show my kids in an unfavorable light.

I feel that blogs should be private. What I post here should be between myself and whomever I invite to see it. How do you feel?