A few "finds" to share...

I realized that I stumble across some great links, whether from Plurk, Twitter, or my Google Reader, but I'm not very consistent about sharing them. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try and be a bit better about that and here are a few that I've become aware of in the past two weeks.

My Brochure Maker
@kjarrett on Twitter mentioned this Flash-based brochure and flyer maker for making brochures as Publisher isn't exactly "friendly" for younger students. I have to agree with his assessment, too. I checked out this Web 2.0 application and it's very simple to use. There isn't a lot of room for customization, which I liked. Why? Because it will force them to focus more on the content and less on design.

Real World Math with Google Earth
I'll be honest with you...I hate math. However, had Google Earth been around when I was learning math, I can honestly say that I would have enjoyed it far more. This great site offers a variety of lessons broken down into four categories: Concepts, Project based learning, Measurement, and Exploratory. Within each category you'll find at least one lesson along with a Google Eart kmz file to use. What I also liked was the fact that both NCTM and NETS*S standards are listed along with other lesson information.


Educational Blogs You Should Be Investigating
This blog post is courtesy of mrssmoke of Plurk. There are other lists out there of educational bloggers, but sometimes going through them takes forever. She offers a nice, concise list of educational bloggers and has categorized them by field of discipline and grade level, which I find particularly useful.

Life Magazine Photo Archive - Hosted by Google

Search millions of photos from the Life magazine photo archive from the 1750's to today. Many of the images have not been previously published.
You can apply a filter to a Google image search by adding "source:life" to any search.

For example: computer source:life

50 Tools and Tricks to Revolutionize Your Notetaking
This blog entry by Holly McCarthy features 50 tools that "that let you share ideas, store your thoughts directly on a web page and more". Holly has sorted the tools into eight categories, which is helpful if you're looking for one particular function.

Harnessing The Power of My PLN : Part I

This summer, I made the decision to submit a proposal to present at my state's educational technology conference, which is something I have never done before. In truth, I never felt as though I had anything to offer. However, after attending GAETC last year and sitting through a less than accurate session about wikis and blogs, I felt almost obligated to present. I have learned a great deal about many different Web 2.0 tools, so the question wasn't "Will I?" but "What will I present on?".

I have become a fan of wikis in the past year, Wikispaces in particular, so much so that our district purchased a Private Label license for Wikispaces. Even though I am huge proponent of the technology, there are others out there, such as Vicki Davis, who I feel are much more versed on using wikis than I am. Also, I am not in the classroom and I feel the ones who can best speak on the classroom uses of wikis are those who use it with their students. So, perhaps after another year of using wikis in my district with my teachers, I might take up that topic an co-present with a panel.

Then there is social bookmarking. I have used Del.icio.us (now simply Delicious) for years until Diigo came onto the scene. Could I speak on Diigo for an entire hour? Sure. Do I want to bore them to death? No.

Then I thought about Twitter and Plurk, the latter of which I discovered this summer during the NECC conference as Twitter took a complete nosedive due to the high volume of traffic. Both are microblogging platforms, however each platform is a bit different. Could I talk about both of these for an hour? Yes. Did I really want to? Again...no.

However, what all of these had in common for me, plus a few other Web 2.0 sites, was that I use all of them as a part of my PLN (Personal or Professional Learning Network). When I created my it, I had NO idea what I was doing or how to foster its development, much less how to get started. It all kind of happened at random and had there been a "guide", I might have been able to gain so much more from my PLN earlier than I did.

So, that settled it for me. I was going to do a presentation on Professional Learning Networks and how powerful of a resource they could be. With that resolved, I turned to my own PLN for assistance, which is what I'll talk about in Part II of Harnessing The Power of My PLN.

Twitter in Plain English

Courtesy of the Common Craft Show - Twitter explained. If you prefer the version without subtitles, you can go directly to their website.

Why spell checking is so important

I think this pretty much speaks for itself. Thanks to @TeachaKidd on Twitter for the link.

Photo credit: Act like a professional

Neglecting the 'Write' part of the Read/Write web?

The more I use Twitter, the more I enjoy what I find, although some of what I stumble across is just mindless fun, or so I thought. I hopped onto Darren Draper's blog Drape's Takes where he used a graphic similar to the one below to vow how he'll be more vigilant about commenting more on others' blog posts and posting less frequently himself.

After thinking about it, I need to take his advice and make that same pledge myself. I don't post daily. In fact, no where near that. However, I find that as I'm reading blogs, I get lost in them to the point that I lose complete track of time and don't comment. It's not that I don't want to, but I've been more of a lurker than a commenter, and I need to improve in that regard.



Image source: The Bart Simpson Chalkboard generator

Twittering

First it was educational technology blogs that I began following, and now I've entered the world of Twitter. I signed up not too long ago, but never truly delved into it until today. Never had the time really until now. However, I can see why it's addictive. I searched for people who had 'education' and 'technology' listed as their interests and added a few people to follow. I've already come across a few new blogs to follow now thanks to that, plus some great links to podcasting tutorials. I think I'm in trouble! Check out my Twitter badge that I found!! I uploaded this picture I took of a redheaded woodpecker to my Flickr account and used that as the background for my badge. Not sure if I'll keep it that way, but it's different than most I've seen so I thought I would give it a shot. Just in case I take it down or change it, here it below for posterity's sake.

follow cobannon at http://twitter.com
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