Week 5, Thing 12, Rollyo

I liked this site, and could see it being useful as a way to lump together some of my favorite resource sites. The site was easy to navigate through and made it extremely easy to set up my own roll. If you were to save certain websites into rollyo and then have students use only that search roll it could also be helpful in controling the sites that they are searching through.

Week 5, Thing 11, Award Winners & Ning

I looked at a book website, biblio.com, and I thought it was pretty good. Being a recent college graduate I am familiar with lots of book websites, especially those with discount textbooks. This site had numerous books all for reasonable prices and even a variety of very cheap used books. Sites like these are great for new teachers, like myself, because it is a cheap way to begin building a classroom library. If you are in need of books and do not have a lot to spend I would definately recommend biblio.com.

I also looked at Ning, and while it looks like a great way to connect with people, it didn't really appeal to me personally. I am not someone who likes to be a member of every group online, especially when it involves posting personal information or pictures of myself. The site reminded me a lot of facebook and myspace, and I believe that an account at any one of such sites is enough. They all have their numerous groups you can join and way to post your thoughts which can be very useful and addicting at the same time. I think that if I were to become a more active user of such a site I could easily find myself spending hours doing nothing but reading other's posts. I also see the positives of such sites - it is an easy way to keep in touch with others. I have definately used facebook as a way of keeping in touch with many of my high school and college friends and I think it is great for that.

Week 5, Thing 10, Online Image Generator

I made my image at FDToys (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/). I had some minor difficulties uploading the image...it would only let me do it "small" so the words are difficult to read. The motivational poster says: HUNGRY? Why eat healthy when there is cake?! The cake is actually from my wedding and only the very top fit into the poster, but it still look delicious!

I really like the image generators. I find them very easy to use and I like that you can easily make changes/edit your work. The thing that I do not like about having visited all the different resources out there is that I have a million usernames & passwords and I can't remember them all. I have tried to use the same ones, but on a few I have been unable to get back into them. These generators would be great for students to make visuals for projects of all kinds.

Week 4, Thing 9, Useful blogs

I found all of the search engines to be useful and easily navigated (I must admit that I clicked on all the links). Of all the search engines, I really enjoyed looking through the edublog. The others all seemed to be more tied to my personal use for blogs, but this particular search engine provided me with ideas for the classroom. On the edublog site there is a blog about polar bears that is really amazing. While looking at that blog I realized the amount of creativity that students can put into a project like the polar bear blog. I also thought about those shy quiet students in class and how blogging could be a way for them to share their ideas, and respond to others ideas. I found the google method to be the easiest to use, but that is a search engine I am familiar with and I think that helped a lot.

Week 4, Thing 8, blogroll

Before today I had not a clue what a RSS feed or blogline was, but after spending the last couple of hours navigating through the different sites I can understand why so many people use them. I was able to find out a lot in a short amount of time. Setting it up was easy with the simple steps provided by Bloglines, and I was amazed at how quickly I completed the process. I really liked how in the set up it allowed to choose things that interested you and then automatically added those feeds for you.

I could definately see myself using this technology in both my school and personal life. I think it would be a wonderful and convenient way to keep in touch and up to date with friends and family. I could easily see students using this type of technology for discussions and projects. The only potential problem that I see with such technology is addiction. I could see myself spending endless hours looking for information and findinglots of new things to post about.