Thing 14

I already had a Facebook account because that is what my friends use, so I did not create another one. In fact, after reading some of the material for Thing 14, I did not want to increase my exposure in this area and tightened up the security on my existing account. Truth be told, I am not sure why I have one at all! I do not use it very much. My basic feeling is that too many people use social networking sites too much when they could be doing something more productive. That said, the fact remains that my daughter received her last job offer on Facebook. Perhaps it is more useful than I thought! Should a site such as Facebook in education be used at school? My feeling is that there are plenty of other more appropriate tools to use.

Thing 13

I had a Delicious account years ago, but I could not find the login information, so I created a new one. After reading the comparisons, I decided to create a Diigo account to compare the two. Again the Yahoo password problem surfaced with Yahoo continually prompting for a password when switching back and forth between the different services. Yahoo asks for my password more often than my bank software! I then exported my bookmarks from Firefox as an html file and imported the file into both Delicious and Diigo. An immediate difference between the two was that Delicious imported 645 bookmarks and Diigo imported 628. Perhaps Diigo checks for duplicates? I then added Newington23 tags to some boating links in both services.
Which one would I pick to use? Diigo has the highlighting and sticky note features, so it wins the comparison on a features basis, but it also has advertising. Diigo is like Delicious on steroids. I can see how these tools would be very helpful in the classroom. Unlike the links we use on our Webnet pages, students could access them at school or at home. Very nice for adding some direction for students on the Internet.

Thing 12

Before I studied tagging and social bookmarking, I thought my bookmarks were organized. I have been using Firefox as a browser on all my computers for years with an extension called Xmarks. This keeps all the computers synchronized, with the bookmarks categorized in folders. The advantage of tagging is that each bookmark could have multiple tags associated with it instead of being repeated in multiple folders. The social bookmarking features would make it easy to share bookmarks with others and have those bookmarks available on any computer.

Thing 11

Did anyone else notice that the Google site alone had 142,000 widgets to pick from? I had to look at the number a few times before it sunk in. Imagine how many there are on all the sites listed! In the end, I decided to go with a boating related widget. I found one called geoWake on Widgetbox that leverages Google Maps and NOAA charts to provide an interesting product. I must be getting comfortable with embedding code because it placed the widget in the sidebar and I had to move it to the post. Unfortunately, it starts in Florida. To use it, just enter a search location, then click on the X. The chart button will display the charts available at your location. All navigation aids are clickable. Quite a useful widget for the BoatMan and in teaching geography.

Thing 10

I created my Twitter account and clicked on the link to follow Technology. The first thing I noticed was Biz Stone is the co-founder of Twitter! I wonder if I'm related? Perhaps an email would be a more appropriate place to ask. I then posted a few tweets and logged out.
The best of list contained links to many sites we have covered or will cover in this activity. Investigating every link on that list would take a lifetime.
I watched the video about Twitter and I remain a skeptic. I really don't understand the need for this type of communication or how anyone would use this in the classroom to enhance student learning. It seems like it would be just a distraction.

Thing 9

After watching the video and reading the article about copyright, I started to wonder if I should take down the video I posted for Thing 7. I decided showing 22 seconds of a one hour show should fall under the fair use guidelines. Besides, watching the clip might cause someone to click on this link and buy the series! The value of the work has not been diminished.
The Internet has certainly opened a brave new world for copyright issues. While most people are aware that copying books and movies is a violation of copyright law, many seem blissfully unaware of these issues when copying music. It has simply become too easy with the equipment available today. This means that as educators, we must be aware of these issues and communicate them effectively to students. The Creative Commons approach appears to be a way to manage some of these concerns.

Thing 8

I uploaded some videos to YouTube using various methods in order to check out the process. I used PWNYouTube to download and save a video. I then edited the video using iMovie and used its share feature to send the video directly to YouTube. While in iMovie, I also shared some of my own videos. I then tried emailing a video from my cell phone to YouTube, but the quality was not very good. In the end, I decided to share a video shot last summer with my digital camera. It is a re-enactment of the Golden Spike Ceremony in Promontory Point, UT. It depicts an important moment in the history of transportation in the United States. For the first time, it was possible to travel from coast to coast by rail.

Thing 7

It was a lot of fun looking at the list of suggested sites on YouTube. Since TV today seems to consist of crime shows and "reality" shows, it was especially nice to watch the Carol Burnett show outtakes. That means anyone wishing to watch variety shows from years past can easily find them on the Internet. It was interesting to see that the laughing baby video has been viewed more than 100 million times! It also becomes quickly apparent there is a lot of school inappropriate content on YouTube. That is why it is filtered for students, but available for teachers in our district. Hopefully, teachers will use it wisely in the classroom. I chose to leave a comment on one of my favorite episodes from the original Star Trek series called By Any Other Name. It contains Scotty's famous line, "It's green."

Thing 6

Since I have been using Yahoo Mail for years, I checked my account and found I signed up for Flickr in 2002! For this assignment, I decided to create a new account anyway. What I noticed was, unlike Google, Yahoo keeps asking for your password when you go from one thing to another on the Yahoo site. What a pain! Maybe I will use Google and Picasa in the future.
For the second task, I uploaded some pictures, setting some to private and some to public with the tag Newington23. I then did a search did not see my photos. I checked the FAQ and found out that it can take 24-48 hours before photos appear in search results. I spent too much time checking out some of the Flickr Tools, but I enjoyed Flickr Memry on pimpampum.net and Jigsaw on Big Huge Labs.
I can see how teachers could post photographs to Flickr and use them as the starting point for classroom discussions. Actually, with two billion images available, you would not need to post anything! If what you want is not on Flickr, it probably does not exist. Like everything else on the Internet, it would have to be done with care.

Thing 5

After watching the two videos, I decided the best use of Flickr would be to backup all my photographs. I wonder how long it will take to scan all those shoe boxes full of photographs? The next step would be to categorize and tag the photos. It looks like another long-term project that could be a nice hobby for retirement!
I decided to do some comparisons between Flickr and Picasa when searching for images and noticed something interesting. Picasa is much more literal with its results. When you search for "Thoreau", you actually get pictures of Thoreau. With Flickr, you get three times as many images covering a wide range of things having something to do with Thoreau. Using other search terms seemed to have similar results.
To avoid copyright issues, I decided to use one of my own pictures from Flickr. I used this photo to continue the lighthouse theme on my blog. It is a picture of Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It might be the most visited and photographed lighthouse in the United States. It was probably the inspiration for Longfellow's poem, "The Lighthouse". The park around it is an excellent place to fly a kite!

Thing 4

When I first looked at the 23 Things list, I thought Thing 4 would be easy. After all, I created an iGoogle page when they first came out, a My Yahoo page many years ago, a My Netscape page before that, and a My AOL page back when AOL was the only game in town. That must mean I did Thing 4 a long time ago!
In the spirit of trying something new, I decided to check out Netvibes and Pageflakes. I navigated to the Netvibes page and turned on all the check marks. It chugged away and informed me I had 941 new things to read. Yikes! I don't need that much news. Pageflakes seemed clean and simple by comparison. They both have good integration with Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail, but so do iGoogle and My Yahoo. I saw no reason to switch. Actually, I have my home page set to the Google search page. I find I use the Internet most often to do research, so it is a nice simple, calm place to start.
For some reason, seeing all those new home pages with their embedded weather information caused me to want to add local weather to my blog. Thus began a long involved process to get what I wanted, the data from our own weather station at Anna Reynolds. In the end, I needed to change my blog template to get the gadget to display correctly. While searching for the html code, I found some links to the data which I added to the blog. Give them a try!

Thing 3

Wow, I think it would take until March 26 just to navigate to every blog listed on the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs blog, let alone read them! Yes, the information available on blogs is mind boggling. (or is it "mind bloggling"?) The question is, as it is with everything on the Internet, how to separate the wheat-data from the chaff-data.
The James Logan Courier blog was really impressive, until I noticed that material was repeated on the links at the right and much of it was from years ago. Wait.....That is impressive in itself. They have been blogging since March 2006! I guess we are behind the times.
The Bud the Teacher blog was interesting, but it contains another unbelievable list of other blogs. The quote from Jaron Lanier's book caused me to wonder if I should put my name on this blog. Are we in any danger with this activity?
The Superintendent's blog looks like it is the starting point for some good discussions. Hopefully, teachers, parents, and students will have some input in the decision-making process. If there is an Adirondack chair facing the view in her picture, it would be a great place for frustrated computer users to sit and calm down.
The ETLMS blog had an entry on Wolfram-Alpha. I remembered trying it out years ago, so with great interest I checked out the iPhone app. How cool would that be, having the power of a super-computer on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Unfortunately, $50 is really expensive for an iPhone app.
What should we make of all this? A blog could be a very useful tool to facilitate communication between teachers, students, and parents. It would be best to keep it simple and to the point. In other words, do not put links to 200 other blogs on your classroom blog!

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I decided to participate in this program to get an overview of the tools available on the Internet to facilitate interactive communication and see if there are any technical "issues" that might arise to prevent the use of these tools. It also appeared to be an interesting and enjoyable way to earn CEUs!
After watching the video on 21st century learners, the first thing that popped into my mind was, I must be a 21st century "forgetter". I firmly believe we all must learn something new every day. The difficult part is retaining what we learn!
As for the students in the video, someone must have told them to look bored. Unfortunately, they look beyond bored. Depressed would be a better description. Yes, today's students are familiar and comfortable with technology. The question is, what do they do with it? They spend hours on Facebook, listening to iPods, watching TV, and texting, but is it anything other than entertainment or socializing? We, as educators, need to channel those technological skills into something that will benefit them in college and the workplace.
The article was interesting, but I'm not sure how texting in the classroom could be used for constructive purposes and not get completely out of control. Meaningful cooperation between teachers in different subject areas is always a great idea. Implementation is the difficult part. The superintendent mentioned in the story must be operating on a day longer than twenty-four hours to be able to read all the teachers blogs!
Thing 2 was easy until I decided I wanted two avatars. The first one worked with no problems, but after creating the second one, saving, exporting, copying, and pasting, I ended up with two identical avatars! Can anyone guess how it was finally accomplished? The funny part is, I think it took longer to create an avatar than to watch the video and read the article for thing 1.