Blog Junkie

What tools/sites do I use frequently, occasionally and which would I like to learn to use more proficiently?

I have “borrowed”, well stolen actually, this blog idea from Claire Thompson of Clarify Me.  I thought it was a great idea as a January reflection. Thanks Claire! Mimicking is the highest form of flattery! Really, a published Canadian author told me this!

I first heard about Web 2.0 one year ago, January 2008.  Betty, our Simon Fraser University Faculty Associate came up to give us TLITE students a workshop/introduction to Web 2.0.  I had to look up Web 2.0 in Wikipedia! After the workshop I got a little excited.  Prior to the workshop the tools I could/did use were:

• MS Word
• hotmail – I actually had to be shown how to add an attachment!
• tablet – some drawing on my daughter’s tablet
• Google Search – very, very basic

I never do things in a small way.  It’s the full monty or not at all!  See what happened in 12 months!

Now I frequently use these tools/sites for Social Networking

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Delicious
• Classroom 2.0

I frequently use these tools/sites on a regular basis:

• Google Reader
• Google Search
• iGoogle
• gmail
• MS Word
• MS PowerPoint
• Firefox
• Edublogs – learned how to put in one of my own pictures!
• Bibme – great online site for creating a bibliography
• hotmail
• Inspiration Software
• Booktagger

Tools/sites I have used occasionally:

• Elluminate
• WizIQ
• Yugma
• Blogger – I started my first PLE blog there, but moved over to Edublogs
• YouTube
• TeacherTube
• PBWiki
• Google Docs
• Google Presentation
• Google Calendar
• coComment
• Technorati
• LIveJournal

Some tools I would like to learn more about and use more proficiently are:

• Google Notebook
• SKype
• Diigo
• PBWiki
• Wink – a totally cool tutorial creating tool!

Some sites I use for Professional Development are:

• Classroom 2.0 – they have great on-line presentations using Elluminate
• TappedIn – absolutely LOVE this site.  I will be bringing my 2 upper intermediate classes here in a virtual classroom
• Knowschools – have taught me everything from tagging to blogging to wikis to Everything Google!

I also attempted to try the 31 Day Comment Challenge.  Crashed and burned. Failure.  I also gave up on the tablet thingy too as well as digital scrapbooking.  There definitely is something to be said about hands-on art!  I even joined Oprah’s book club for Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, just to see what that was like. Don’t even ask!  There’s a limit even for flakey Liberal Arts folks. Yeesh.  Oh yes, I also managed to embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation with the direct help of my daughter’s friend and a techie from Future Shop! Haven’t a clue how we did that.  Something about using an FLV converter and Divx. Huh?  I even made a slide show for a school I was temporarily working at using an IMac! Ha, I hate Macs, but have you seen the whole Mac Goes Green thing!  I so want a new Mac!  Just saying…you know, putting it out there.

I figure the learning curve was pretty steep.  Learned a huge amount.  Also discovered the true meaning of “Information Overload”! Now I try to stick to learning ONE thing at a time!

In all seriousness, I pushed hard to come out of my comfort zone, stressed myself out, slid into a funk or two, all because of an absolute belief in the value of using technology to enhance curriculum.

So, what tools to you use?

I really like Google. Except for the ads now appearing on my blog!  I know I am not using it to near its potential so I took a Knowschools course on it to increase my Google knowledge.  It was an amazing 5 days of  learning in a well presented on-line course.  Sharon Betts did an amazing job.  (As I visited her site I was sidetracked into her blog on her solar home. For those interested in solar energy see here.)  As usual in these courses I ended up with a degree of information overload, but managed to pull back and figure out what was important for me.

1.  Google calendar - I almost managed to miss my registration for the final semester of TLITE!  Far too close for comfort.  This little tool should be very helpful since my 2 luddite day planners and 1 desk calendar do not seem to be doing the trick!

2.  Google search and custom search - I did not know how to search efficiently at all and I am holding a postion of a Teacher-Librarian.  This was actually the top of my list of reasons to take the course.  Not being proficient at this is not acceptable to me considering my new teaching position.  I learned to use things from quotation marks, to site searches.  This was incredibly valuable and should make searching for educational research papers much more effective than in the past.  I also added a custom search into my Book Bin Blog.  Custom searches limit the search for more exact topics, in the case of The Book Bin, books reviews and soon other great library blog sites.  I thought this search would be very valuable to use with my research groups at school.

3.  Google Docs – I have used this myself only once this past summer as part of a co-operative mini research project on cyberbullying.  It was an interesting experience, and Sharon’s activity gave me an idea for my last action research project – using Google Docs with one of my research classes.  Listening to other course participants discuss their classes using this was exciting.  Co-operative learning is a big part of my classroom teaching and finding a way back to it for prep relief teaching with technology was great.  The students are able to work on a research paper collaboratively and simultaneously, email it to each other, share their ideas/knowledge and really own their own learning.  I thought this was an incredibly powerful learning tool for teaching.  Explore:  http://googledocs.blogspot.com

4.  Google Notebook – I really saw the power in this for myself as I work through another action research project and another research readings summary.  This Google tool allows you to collect notes, browse, clip and organize information online.  A great way to organize my reading notes.  Also a great way to keep track of blogging posts that push me to write a post on.  This tool allows you to create, manage, tag, export, share and bookmark the notebook.  If this appeals to you here are some helpful links:

http://googlenotebookblog.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=how+to+use+google+notebook&emb=0&aq=f#

http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog//2008/04/using-google-no.html