That's It!!

I have finished the web2.0 class! And boy am I happy. And maybe a little sad at the same time. What am I going to do with my time now? I have learned so many things from this class. Who knew there was so much free stuff out there! And I am so glad that I took this class now.

I will be interested to see what happens with the school district and how it stays with the movement of technology. As an educational body I am thinking that they should keep up with what is going on. I also know that we must keep the students safe from anything "bad" out there. It is a catch 22.

Who knows maybe I will even keep up the blog and really use some of the things that have learned. In fact I used something, Furl, the other day. What a great thing that was.

Well, that's it. Happy New Year!

Digg and Yahoo Buzz

Well, I am not sure I have a preference for either of these two sites Digg or Yahoo Buzz. They both kind of do the same thing, one has the “number” thing, one has many videos. Maybe it was just the topics I chose but probably three out of five links I clicked on in Yahoo Buzz were just links to YouTube. Guess I could just go to YouTube for that. But I think I like Yahoo Buzz better. Not sure why though. I liked Digg ok too. I read some pretty opinionated comments about Digg and maybe that is what influenced my opinion.

I probably won’t continue on with either of these two sites once this assignment is complete. Maybe every once in awhile I will take a look at them because now I know they are there. I am just not to into this kind of internet stuff.

I am sure these tools could be used in a classroom. I am just not sure how at this time. Research is always the first thought that comes to mind, but who knows what would come up with that generic topic. Also, my concern is what pops up sometimes when you type in your ideas. I would have to go with no right now with using this in a classroom setting.

I guess I just don’t see any social implications, good or bad, here. I guess leaving comments could be good and bad depending on what you say. I didn’t leave any comments because it just isn’t that big of a deal for me. But hey if you like to chat with people all over the place here is a way to do it.

Discussion Forums

I actually discovered that it was kind of fun searching the discussion forums. At first I thought what a non useful thing for me because I just don’t spend a lot of time reading stuff on the internet. However, when I started searching for things that I was kind of interested in I found some interesting things. I found discussions on my breed of dog, the Chihuahua, my vehicle, Chevy 2500 HD Duramax, guns, and my cell phone, the LG Voyager. All very entertaining. I did discover that the narrower the topic the better off I was. But the general search proved pretty useful too.

Wow! These discussion forums could prove disastrous in a classroom. I only say that because there is always the possibility that that one “special” student decides to look for something that is not school appropriate. And now there is tons of explaining to do on everyone’s part. May not be a road I would want to travel down.

However, I really see the upside to these forums. What a great way to find information at your fingertips. The searching would have to be highly monitored by the teacher, maybe searching ahead of time and then doing the search as a whole class and not going where a search has not been done. It is just a fabulous tool to find information.

I would have to say that I am on the fence on positive aspects outweighing the negative aspects. There is just too much liability in an educational setting but having all that educational information readily available is certainly a draw.

Twitter

Hmmmmm……Twitter. Not sure really how I feel about it. I guess if I just sat around with nothing else to do in a day I could follow the Twitter site and zillions of people. I could probably learn a lot. So for this assignment it started out as kind of annoying that I had to go log in and write what I was doing, mainly because I would forget to go in and do it. But now more than five days after I have started I think it is kind of entertaining. It has been fun seeing what other people are doing.

I guess I don’t see a real value in the educational setting. It is a nice way to communicate though. I am sure there are ways to make it useful in a classroom. If you could find a “tweet” from someone in a different state or country and follow them you could learn things about their life style and or customs.

I guess I have no more concern about students using Twitter from their computer or cell phone than I do right now about them using those same devices for email and text. It can be annoying and a battle that is rarely won. But technology is moving forward. I say let’s learn how to make it an educational thing.

Truthfully I would probably bag on Twitter to my family just because “why?” We have cell phones and email. But I would also tell them it can be kind of fun in an annoying sort of way. Basically I would tell them that I would be sending them information about what I was doing all through the day and it could be on their cell phone or their computer.

Online Productivity Tools

I was pretty much impressed by all three of the productivity tools, Google Docs, ZohoWrite, and Think Free, that I perused. I tried word processing and the spreadsheet tools. They seemed pretty much like Office to me. Now granted I just do the basics each time I use them so I guess I can’t say for sure one is better than the other. I tried the presentation one but just had a lot of trouble loading it so I am not sure about that one.

As far as I could tell there was nothing superior about the online productivity tools but nothing bad either.

If I had to give up Microsoft Office I believe that these tools would do the trick for me. I am amazed that they are free and pretty much worked just like Office. I also kind of liked the fact that I could share my docs. if I wanted to. How great that would be instead of emailing everything. I think I made mention of this before in another blog. Right now that is the biggest plus of all.

I guess schools and businesses could switch over to these tools if the tools would do what the company needed it to do. In the schools I would definitely test drive it first just because change is a big thing. And wow freeing up space is always a good thing. But having limited storage space online is also a killer. Free is not always free so you will have to deal with ads on these sites because they have to get their money from somewhere.

I guess paying $100-150 is not bad considering Office is probably more than that. And you have the convenience of having access all the time, unless you can’t get online. And who knows maybe giving a little now could mean more later.

Skype

Skype was really cool. It was very simple to download and install. The test call worked the first time and then I said “Hey guess I will use the free 10 minutes for my first call just to see if it works.” And it did!! What a fabulous thing to have.
I really don’t have a need to use Skype in my personal life because of the cell phone but it is kind of cool just to say you have used it. I have a webcam and mic so I am thinking just for fun I will have to get my nieces one so we can chat and see each other. I think they would love that!
I think Skype could be used in a classroom. I see the possibility especially if you do the “pen pal” thing. What a great use of technology to talk to a whole class, student by student and then the teachers. What about calling a classmate that has been out of school due to illness or something to that effect? Video talking would even be better. Same thing with the pen pal thing. Seeing the whole class and what the classrooms are like would be great. What if you were working on a project and wanted to show your “pal class” and you could!
I really don’t know of any real concerns about using Skype in the classroom. It just seems to me that it would be closely monitored by the teacher so that the problems would be very minimal. However, I do know there is always the possibility of something going wrong and somebody doing what they shouldn’t be doing. I also see very real consequences for doing that. I say make it available to classrooms using it for a very real educational purpose.

Online Storage

Both of the storage sites, Skydrive and Yahoo Briefcase, were pretty easy to navigate through. Again follow the directions they give you. I can definitely see value in using both of these sites. How wonderful it would be to have your documents available to you wherever you go. That would have been good for me for this class as I was doing assignments at three different computers and emailing the documents to all my email addresses and hoping they went through. I guess this was save the best for one of the last items to do. I would definitely use them. And wow I could have someone else look at them too!

Ah the thumb drive….. could not give that up. Just got to have it right there in case of……I don’t know what. Internet failure? I just like to have things all over the place that way they are not lost to me.

Well, the next topic is a tough one. I think there is too much that I don’t know to say yes or no to having teachers and/or students use the online storage systems. Those of us who took this class could easily spread the word and see what happens. There could also be a test site. Seems like it would save the districts space but I don’t know all the implications of saving stuff on the web.

I really don’t see any problems with students posting their things to these sites. They can be private. The only thing once again is it is just another opportunity for them to go places they shouldn’t . However, as technology evolves so do people. And probably less and less of them go to where they shouldn’t be. Oh, I know there are still the yayhoos who will do anything just to see how far they can push the envelope.

Stat Counter

Setting up the stat counter was pretty easy. Again, just follow their directions. It will be kind of fun to see if anyone visits my blog, highly unlikely but the thought is there. I have always wanted to do this to any website that I have created, I just didn’t know how or have the tools to do it.

Again, no real value in stats. Just a nice feature to show students, parents, or administrators. And still you could use geography when you find someone who is far away from your site. It is a good thing to include in a blog or website.

Social Maps

This really caused me no pain, which I am very grateful for. It was pretty simple on both sites to add the maps. Basically I am finding if I follow the directions they give then I can do what I am supposed to. Look for ‘add to website or blog’ and then look for blogger on the page and do what it says.

I pretty much agree that there is not much value in the two map sites. It would be kind of fun to have kids find out if anyone from farther away than Arizona was reading a class blog or the teacher’s blog if that was the assignment. It might be a good geography lesson. And maybe a contest between two people to see who gets the furthest away reader.

Animoto

Aaaahhh…………….. using Animoto in my personal life seems like the thing to do. I was like “Wow! This is cool.” What a great way to make movies. It was pretty quick and easy. This is a great way to show off all those vacation pictures no one wants to see. This way you can just put the really good ones in and everyone gets the idea. Impressive!

Using this in the classroom seems like a good idea. I like the part where they can provide the music. This cuts way down on copyright violations. Although this is just another movie making tool it is pretty simple and I would like to recommend it to teachers.

My only concern would be the same as always……… can I get to it at school and then again you are working through a public place and there are things out there that are not appropriate for school

SlideShare.net

Favorite Vacation Spot

From: michellie31,
35 minutes ago

Favorite Vacation Spot

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wheelerweb2 lake)

SlideShare Link

This seems like a good site. I kind of like the fact that all I had to do was upload the powerpoint and it made the show for me. I can see this being used in a classroom very easily. It is like movie maker and photostory but just a little different. It would just depend on the teacher on which he/she likes best. Oh, and the fact that slideshare.net is on the web and available for all to see if so desired. But if you only want your students to view certain shows then you would just make them available for them. The problem would be getting to that show because of the free access to other shows. Again probably to be done in a classroom setting with supervision.
Audio is up to the publisher and his audience. It just depends on what is being shown. Music in the background is always a nice touch and sometimes describing what is on the show is good. However, I kind of like the letting the viewer just look.
There are probably many uses for slideshare. History classes could benefit tremendously from this site as could science classes. I have even had an English teacher use movies in her class so this would be good too.
I believe I will be visiting slideshare in my personal life a little bit. It was kind of fun.

Slide.com

I liked slide.com. It was easy to upload and choose what you wanted to do. And I kind of like the fact that I didn’t have to join to create something on the site. However, if you were going to keep your pictures there then you had better join. I guess I do not prefer one over the other right now. Slide.com I think was easier to use, specially loading to my blog, but might not have the same or as much stuff that flickr has. I probably would have to use both a little more before I could say for sure which one I would prefer to use.

You Tube, Google Video, Teacher Tube

These are some of the videos that I watched on You Tube, Google Video and Teacher Tube- 707 barrel roll, Abbott and Costello- Who’s On First, Library Orientations, Top Gun- volleyball and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ , Val Kilmer as Ice Man, many TV intros including the ones Shawn listed. I made myself stop after one hour. I suppose I could have kept going. Teacher Tube had a pretty funny one on rules that I thought I should share with some of my teacher friends.

I have actually seen the Did You Know videos a few times before and am awed by it each time. I definitely see value in remixing and/or remaking content on video. I think the second one Shawn showed would keep the attention more because it was more than just words on the screen. There were pictures and the music was much quieter. But maybe that wouldn’t appeal to today’s generation.

There are concerns with You Tube and such. As normal, kids think that most everything they read on the internet is true and the fact there are some pretty bad things out there. Parents have a real right to be concerned about what their children are doing. I feel it is a parent’s rights to say if their children can go on You Tube or not.

I love Teacher Tube. I think there is so much out there that should be shared because it is good. And if you do a lesson and students need to see it, there it is. It could be like they didn’t miss that great lesson and there is no excuse now. Students could do a lot too with Teacher Tube. This is a way for those who love to perform to show what they have, of course it would be content related. But I can see some end of the year show being put up too. I think I would defend Teacher Tube to parents. It is supposed to be good stuff for education. There is the chance that some bad stuff could end up there but the chance are better here that they don’t than on You Tube. I think I would show it first in the classroom with just what I posted or a particular post that pertain to what we were studying.

Pod Casting 2

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The good, the bad, and the ugly of creating my podcast- well all I can think of is good. Except for the minor part of getting the microphone to work on my computer. But I am as smart as that computer and I figured it out. Long story.
It was a little scary loading the LAME encoder because of course my computer looked nothing like the video but I guess it worked because in the end everything was where it was supposed to be.

I got my About Me all typed up and read away. Saved it as an MP3 and then went to the podcast sites. I started with Podomatic. It wasn’t difficult really. I just started looking around for things that might be related to uploading and wa la there it was. I just followed the directions from there. Simple.
Next I did Gcast and wow was that easy. Good thing I did this one second or I would have been concerned when I went to Podomatic. I am going to have to say that this has been the easiest thing so far. And that is saying a lot because I spend days on some of the assignments trying to get them to work.

Doing pod casts in the classroom seems like a no brainer. Can you imagine having your lessons all recorded and uploaded and students could listen to them any time? What a difference that could make to some students. I know it might take some time but in the end when they are all finished you have probably gained time by not having to say the same things over and over again.
Podomatic

Bubble Share

Well, let’s see about Bubble Share. First it was not being cooperative when I was trying to load the site. When I did finally get on it, it was then not cooperative in the loading the pictures part. Who knows, maybe it was a great night for loading pictures.
Ok, I have spent three days trying Bubble Share and since I have many many more assignments to complete for this class I am going to have to move on. I did my best with this but for some reason I cannot get the site to do anything for me. I have the one picture loaded and that is all it will let me do. I have clicked all buttons, add photos, edit album, you name I have tried it. So this is what I have, it is what it is.
I am going to have to say I would not use this in my class only because it was too slow and wouldn’t do anything for me. Now I wouldn’t tell people not to use it but I would tell them about my experience. They should try and then tell me how it went.
This is my lonely picture : BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Podcasting 1

The first pod cast I listened to was Stuff You Should Know- What Can Be Done With a Dead Body? Very interesting. Who would have thought two guys could go on and on about what you can do with a dead body. It was pretty funny though. These were their ideas:
Pressed into a diamond
Shot into space
Green burials- eco pod, bamboo casket, cremation, alkaline hydrolysis, artificial coral reef(burial at sea)
They spent most of the time talking about the different ways of doing green burials. I learned some cool things.

The second pod cast was Things You Missed in History Class- How the Louisiana Purchase Worked. The pod casters discussed whether people were mad about purchasing the Louisiana Territory. They thought the southerners were probably glad about it as they could push westward with their land and crops, since the borders were not totally established. The end cost was 2,500,000+, about four cents an acre. There were 529,400,000 total acres establishing 13 states. They seemed to think that there is a chance that people were not happy because they got people not just land. The people in these lands were not like the east coast states- different religion, ways of living. In the end they thought that the Civil War ultimately happened partly because of all the different ways of living.

The third pod cast I listened to was Just Vocabulary. They gave vocabulary words and their meanings. Some of the words were facilitate, jibe, kudos, molt, glut, loathe, histrionic, immaculate, mercenary, and expansive.
This was a great pod cast! I would highly recommend this one. The only thing I missed was the spelling of the word. Maybe that is on a different pod cast somewhere.

I thought all three were very good and I would go back and listen to more of the series of each one. The sound was good and the content on all of them was informational. I guess there are those out there that are not all that truthful. You must be aware of that.
I would have loved to have this when I was in the classroom. Again, just another way of teaching to different types of learning personalities. I could probably figure out how to get this to the students even if they didn’t have an iPod, which is where I listened to these.

Voice Thread

Wow! This all happened very fast for me. I was just going along following the directions and whamo the next thing I know the thing is on my blog. Guess I had better do my writing now.
I guess this could be used in the classroom. There just would have to be some reason to do it, which I can’t think of one right now. Well, maybe it would be good for different students who just get bored with the same old stuff. Something new and different keeps them interested. Once again this must be able to be accessed through the district portal. If you had a camera and the students were taking pictures of things for class- idea- what about a “how to” assignment? That would be great. Step by step instructions and then people could even comment on it. Maybe if something didn’t make sense. I am liking this idea! I might even have to try a different one.
Again a concern would be inappropriate content. This might have to be done with parental and administration consent and then there is always peer monitoring.

Bubble Guru

Bubble Guru was kind of cool. I think it would be a great thing to add to any presentation. However, it would have to been in a perfect way not just something to have there to fill space.
I think it could be a nice addition to a website, maybe as an introductory piece.
I would not by it. There are just too many free things out there.
If something was free then it would definitely be a consideration, but even if it was cheap I probably wouldn’t buy it.
I think video makes a big difference just as audio makes a difference over just reading something on a page. The lady on the Bubble Guru site keep me listening and watching. I even played her twice.

Social Bookmarking

I clicked through all of the social bookmarking sites and wrote down five that looked like they would be easy to navigate through. Now this probably isn’t the smartest way to choose a site but when time is valuable reading through a bunch of stuff is a waste of time. So I narrowed it to blinklist, diigo, sourceforge, furl, and delicious. My final choice was furl. That site had a video demo and seemed ok enough for me to give it a try.

So, I have used the social bookmarking thing for a bit. It does seem like a good thing. I am so not into change I am not sure if I will keep up with it or not. I kind of like my own bookmarks on my computer but the thought about losing all my favorites or not being able to have them anywhere I am has crossed my mind more than once and has even annoyed me a couple of times when I switched computers and clicked on my favorites forgetting I was not on my original computer.

I am thinking at this point I probably won’t use the social bookmarking site but not because I don’t like it. I am pressed for time now. But I am thinking that during the summer I will begin with it and add my all my favorites and really try to use it. I will even go to a different computer in my house, since I have more than one and that is where the annoyance comes in.

I will recommend and talk about social bookmarking with my friends and see what they have to say.

I am good with furl. I might try delicious only because I watched my library friend, Barb, use it one afternoon and it was pretty cool.

I was slightly amazed with what I could do with furl but I was not shocked or elated. Ask me this when the summer is over.
The only thing I can think of using it with students would be to save websites they have found for an assignment in one class or at home and they need to use it in a different class or at school. The good part is that we can access some of the sites from our district portal. Those would be the ones I show them.


http://www.furl.net/my/archive

Flickr Tools

Testing of the tools!!! What fun that was. On the Tools for Flickr I tested delivr, clockr, and flickr framer. I really like all three of these tools. If I had places for a gazillion pictures in my houses I would be in trouble with these tools. I loved making the stamp with a picture of my niece on it.
Fd’s Flickr Toys was also loads of fun. I used the map maker and mapped the countries I have been in and hopefully I will be able to link that on this blog, but who knows, at least I am thinking of trying. I also did the jigsaw, which I might also add as a picture, and the trading card. Again I need places to put these things! Ah, maybe I can give them away to the mothers or grandmothers.
I have to admit that The Great Flickr Tools Collection site just frustrated me because I didn’t really see any point in searching around on this site. It was just a lot of words for me and not anything like the other two. So I tried and got nowhere.
I think I spent about and hour and a half on the tools sites. I could have spent much, much, much more time. And there is a good chance that I will use these sites for more of my personal pictures.
I can also see this as a great thing in a classroom. From my last blog about Flickr and using pictures in the classroom leads me to believe the tools would even be better. The teacher could load the pictures and have the students create something that goes with the topic- traveling, history, personal story, and on and on.

Flickr.com

I think I am liking Flickr a lot. It is kind of cool to have your pictures on line if you would like. Although I am still not too sure about keeping my stuff on the internet where anyone could possibly get a hold of it. I suppose you could find all kinds of pictures out there. You could dream up all kinds of places to visit or compare the places you have been with others who have been there.
I guess that at this moment there aren’t too many dislikes. I always have trouble at the beginning of any new thing and this is true of this site too. The more I play with it I am sure the easier it will be. The good thing for me,finally, was that I already had a yahoo account so I didn't have to set that up.
I would love to use this with students. Although I don’t have my own classroom I could visualize how I would have used it in my previous job. Taking pictures and uploading them for all the classes to see would be fabulous. My biggest concern is the other pictures that could be found on this site and that they may not be appropriate for a classroom setting. My point was made the first time I went to the Flickr site-the topless woman. Not that the picture was in poor taste, just not a good thing if you give this as an assignment.
I think I might continue to use it in my personal life. I am not really into change much but this has grabbed my attention.
The picture of the railroad tracks is from flickr. By golly I did it!

This is the link to my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aznative/

Wiki

I think I am liking this wiki thing. The video in the Wiki Webpages made it seem easy, however, I know nothing is as easy as someone says it is. As I was viewing the three wiki host sites I found that the PB Wiki demo was the best for me.
I think I would try wiki’s in the classroom if I had my own class. I might even try it in the library some day with a class. It seems there could be all kinds of ways to use it. I had an assignment in civics where the students created their own bill of rights. How cool would it have been if they could have done a wiki instead of paper and marker and it could have been one for the group instead of one for each person.
I guess my concern would be just the part where anything could be added appropriate or not. However, since the classmates would be reading it I am sure peer monitoring would be a huge factor. But with the PB Wiki I am thinking I could control some of the work.
I would show them everything about the wiki page, editing and history included. It would only take once for a screw up and I am sure the others wouldn’t follow suit. I can see here where admin. support and parental support would play a big part.
I am excited for this tool!!!

My Choice

I am choosing blogger.com as the blogging software that I am going to keep. I knew right at the beginning that this is the one I would use if I had to do this on my own. The other two I chose as part of my three were 21publish and edublogs. These two caused me more frustration and anxiety than one person should have to have. I absolutely detested 21publish and cringed every time I had to do something with it. Blogger was just easy and I didn’t have to spend so much time figuring out how to do the things required of me.

I still have the same feelings on letting the students choose the one that is best for them. Of course I would show them mine as the example but their assignment would be to look at the other ones, use them, and then decide. I think they would find that blogger.com is one of the easiest ones.

Tagging

On my mission to learn about tagging this is what I found with these different sites:

Del.ico.us- found my topic easily- “edgy” books and young adult books
I liked this site. It mostly found what ever it was that I was looking for like “edgy” books and young adult books. There wasn’t necessarily bunches on each topic but I got the basic idea of how to use it.

Technorati- search was usually all over the place; never did see anything about “edgy” books, lots of “books” though
I was not amazed with Technorati and kind of a little disappointed. Mostly what I searched, young adult books, ASU football, flat classroom, came up with many different things mostly having nothing to do with what I was looking for. Not that this is the website’s fault. Maybe I just was thinking of the wrong things to type in.

Flickr- amazing pictures
There wasn’t really one picture that I found the most interesting. I tried all the “common” pictures like Hawaii, Egyptian Tombs, ASU, just to see what I would find, which was pretty much what I expected of Hawaii and the tombs, but ASU had some things I might not have thought of. I also tried the educational ones for me like young adult literature, edgy books, flat classroom and got a lot of pictures but mostly of the same event that someone tagged “literature”

Playing with this could land you some pretty cool things. I can easily see how someone could spend hours looking at any one of these and lose a whole day or night or two or more! I just kept wanting to go back and see what else I could type in and see what came up.

Blog Searches

Suffice it to say that I actually liked doing the blog searches. I can easily see how you could sit for hours doing that. I had to limit my searches to three like the assignment said otherwise I would still be looking at stuff. You can pretty much find anything out there.
I really didn’t find any of the blog search engines any better or easier than another. I liked BlogLines, BlogScope, and BlogSearch the best though. IceRocket and Technorati were good too but I found that there was a lot more found than just my topic. Sometimes I had to search through some stuff to find anything that I thought was useful.
I searched iPhones, podcasting, and ASU football, all things I am kind of interested in. I don’t have an iPhone but I think it is interesting to read about what people are doing with them and what the iPhone can do. Mostly the podcasting things I found were places you could go to listen to a podcast. I did find one that talked about how to make your podcast more entertaining. That was good. Of course anything sports related is going to have lots of talk value. I even found one blog where you could vote on the quarterback’s (Rudy Carpenter) performance. That was my favorite.
Any of the blog search engines were good to use. I think it would be up to the individual on which one he/she would want to use. If I were to have my classes use these I would have them look at all these different blog search engines, with my guidance of course. Then I would let them choose their favorite. The thing I would stress the most when they decided and even before is that the search must be narrowed down. They will quickly find, as I did, that a broad term nets you many things that just don’t pertain to what you are looking for. I can see great conversations being generated by these blog seaches.

Blogrolls

Creating the blogrolls was pretty straightforward on all three of my sites, blogger.com, 21publish, and edublogs. Once I did the first one on blogger.com, which I thought was the easiest, I knew what I had to look for on the other two. I did look on each site for a help button just in case. I think though that I need to do about a hundred of these so I remember what it is that I did. I hope I have done them correctly.
If I was choosing a site to add blogrolls to I would definitely choose the easiest one for me because then it would be easy for me to explain it to my classes. I think it is a great idea to add a blogroll on a student’s site. They could add the teacher’s blog to start and what a better way to stay in touch with your classes. Also adding their favorite blogs lets them be in control of some parts of their blog site. And I would know a little something about what they are keeping tabs on.

RSS

RSS

Setting up the RSS readers in both the browser-based aggregator and the web-based aggregator took me some time. I am not savy at this stuff and it ended up more frustrating to me than anything else. I am not sure how many google videos I searched and watched or how many just plain google searches I did before I kind of got the meaning of what I was supposed to do. I guess the good part was that when I finally did figure it out I felt like I had learned something. I chose Bloglines and used Firefox as my two.
I had seen the RSS symbol many times and wondered what to do with it. Never did anything with it because I just really didn’t care that much. But…………… now that I know what it does I think it is kind of cool. Using Firefox was very simple to set up and use and ran into no problems, once I figured out how to do it, which took me way longer than it should have. Bloglines was also very simple to use. I really don’t have a preference at this point in the game.
I think these could be beneficial for students. If you actually set up a blog for your class or classes what a great way to keep everyone current in a few simple steps. I think I would like to demonstrate each type of reader and let the kids decide what they like best.
Using RSS could help teachers always be in communication with students even if they were absent or school was not in session.

First Blogging Experience


I did it. This is not my thing, jabbering on about anything just to jabber on. So I will answer the questions and call it good.

Creating my own personal blog site was pretty easy. There were no “here are the instructions follow them step by step.” instructions. It was just the basic information that you see all the time, name, email address, title, etc. when you click on the set up site button. It was pretty self explanatory as far as I could tell and very easy. On one site, 21publish, I had to give personal information which I wasn’t as comfortable with as say the edublog site or blogger.com site where I didn’t.

Something that I found out about when setting up the blog was that I can control who sees my blog on each site, however, I did have to do some searching to find where it was that I could control who sees it. This is called exploring the site and learning. I figured it must be there because I figured there are times when you don’t want everyone seeing what it is that you are writing. I also like the fact that I can control the comments too. Edublog was the easiest as it was right on the set up page. The others I had to dig for.

If I was going to have a class set up a blog site I think I would pick at this point 21publish. It was the easiest for me to get around in after I logged out and then back in.
I chose this site because it was the easiest for me to get back to and do what I wanted to do. As a newbie this site caused me the least amount of frustration. If I was a student in my class I know I would have been questioning the teacher bunches on why the others wouldn’t work so easily when I went back to them to do the work. I found it very frustrating trying to get back to edublog and blogger.com and do stuff. 21publish was very simple.

As for information I would give my students about setting up the blog, it would be the same instructions that I give every time I am doing something on the computer with them. Read and Follow the directions to a T. It usually works just like they say when you do what they say. Be patient too. You are as smart as the computer.

I thought setting up the blog was pretty easy. Just using it is causing me heart palpitations though. I am jut not a talker and don’t have a lot to say. Writing about things is sometimes difficult. Even answering these questions took awhile because I just wanted to answer them with nothing else to add.