Voice Threading

Today I learned how to make a voice thread! It was the neatest thing! I effectively uploaded several photos, recorded my thoughts on each like a powerpoint slide presentation, then edited my settings so that other folks could view it as well! That was rather exciting to be able to do all of that in a relatively small amount of time. A brand new task has been mastered! Go check it out!

http://voicethread.com/#u554397.b661868.i3500484

Blog on a Blog

I have been following the EduBlogger. Today I found a fascinating little tidbit from it that kind of gave a 101 crash course on blogs. I have been having trouble working with mine and with the RSS feed and I found this bit very helpful.

1) A blog is like an online journal. I need to check it or add to it at least once a day. I should add it to my list of things to do such as checking my email, updating my Facebook, or writing a letter to my penpals. It does seem like a rather hard way of working, but if I want to be successful with this thing, I need to be here more than once a week.

2) I can bookmark popular posts. I still don't know how to yet, but at least I can look for the option.

3) I need to somehow increase my readership if I want my blog to be important. I figure the best way to do this is to start dialoging on other people's blogs and they, in turn, will be interested in reading mine. Once we get some good conversations starting, then I will have a reason to be on this thing.

So, that is what I learned today on Edublogger.

RSS Nightmare

RSS - I still have not found the usefulness for this feature. I haven't been back to my Google reader account that I created and consequently made a mess of. I think I made a technology toxic spill on the internet and someone is going to have to clean it up for me one of these years. You know, that is an interesting question:

Do sites that are inactive for a certain period of time eventually get shut down and deleted from memory? Or do they stay out in the computer system forever and ever? Is there such a thing as overloading the system with an infinite amount of memory? hmm... maybe it is time for me to go read a science fiction novel about computers going rogue on mankind!

Be Googled!

So, I have looked up both my maiden name and my married name in Google and am proud to say that neither displayed anything embarrassing or plausible for identity theft. My maiden name turned up that I had made the Dean's List several years ago as well as an old address. My married name turned up in church bulletin as teaching a Sunday school class this past summer as well as my Facebook account. You could therefore deduce from your findings that I am a smart college student at UAA, living in Anchorage, attend a church, and am socially connected on the web. Not too bad considering how much time I spend on a computer!

RSS Nightmare

I'll admit that I am new to this RSS deal.  I have little idea what I'm doing and what few buttons I have managed to push have left me with more confusion rather than less.  I looked up some information online and discovered that RSS is supposed to syncronize one's internet updates into a readable formate.  I like the idea.  Everyday I visit about 10 sites on a regular basis: 2 news channels, facebook, my online email, my uaa email, blackboard, my blogger, the weather channel, and the library.  I would LOVE to have all of the information on one site!  But, when I went to try and set up Google reader, I ended up with not the news stories I wanted, but rather tons of useless articles that I would never have the time to read.  I just overloaded my reader with just one site!  EEk!  Help!  

Passed my smarts on

So, yesterday I sat down with my in laws and had them log into the National Geographic site to explore it (my brother and sister in laws are age range 22-7 years) and all were quite enthralled with the games and interactive tools. All of them are home schooled and loved the cool computer tools. Fortunately, they all were unable to trump me in the geography game. I remained in control of my pride as a result :).

So much for being smart

So, I thought I was smart.  Then I went to the National Geographic website and started playing the little kid games and failed so completely that I'm seriously doubting my abilities to teach now!  ha ha ha

No, it was a great website that has tons of wonderful games for kids and interactive learning tools.  I could be entertained for hours, so I'm assuming any student able to read and comprehend large concepts would also be entertained.  I also learned something from the videos and games I played, so I don't doubt that this site could teach students something quite quickly and completely.

On the other hand, a word of warning for this site; it did contain a large bit of graphic material so younger students might not be encouraged to wander around the site without supervision.  The graphic material when taken as a purely scientific view, is quite fascinating and wonderful to learn, but younger students might not be able to make the distinction.  I would recommend that teachers carefully look at what they would like the students to do at this site before they assign a project.