Random Ramblings

I’m still on a techno-high with all the cool “stuff” all around me and seeing the big guys of the edublogosphere. They are live and in person. Kinda odd since you read their stuff everyday, but don’t put a real person to the post. Now I can.

The first session I went to today was:

#1 Using Cool Tools to Take Geography Across the Curriculum

This was an interesting session because it was a simulated classroom. There were 5 tables on the floor with 5 people around the tables. Each person had a computer in front of them. The rest of the people who didn’t get there early enough audience sat in bleachers around the room. Wonder how the “students” felt - can we say zoo animals?? To begin the session, Kelly and Kim did a pre-test using a quizdom-like response system. Then, they illustrated how to use Google Earth with a read aloud book. Good idea! They also did season picture clues from different places on Google Earth. This was a bit too simple for my middle school kiddos, but I can see the positives with the younger students.

Some of the activities they suggested were to map the Olympic sites around the world. Also, do mileage from place to place. Their website is:

www.beaverton.k12.or.us and www.ed_links/presentation/index.html

Good session. I’m impressed these ladies came in from Oregon. Long trip for them!

#2 Kathy Schrock

Let me start by saying anything that Kathy does is great. Love her ideas! The funniest thing about this session was that I chose a seat in the back and happened to sit next to one of my online ECU class members. We had never met in real life. Too funny! It sure is a small, small world. I have to say that Kathy is just as nice in person as she is a presenter and webbie. We were in the Google booth together and she is really funny!

Visit Kathy’s website for more great ideas, but these are the topics she touched upon.

43 things allows user to list goals and find others who share similar goals

del.icio.us collaborative bookmarking and tagging

Jotspot calendars, wikis, rss, create and online poll

Pageflakes rss aggregator and start page

gliffy flow charts, online schematic floor plan

bubbl.us concept making software, bubble maps

furl saves a copy of webpages

ZOHO online office with spreadsheet, database, and word processor

slideshare upload and share slideshow

flickr tag pictures and share

google videos try looking for public announcements

mediamax 25Gb of free storage and 1 Gb of bandwidth

voo2do task-keeping for projects

Goowy webtop you can design your own webtop

youos another webtop

G.HO.ST online desktop, you can choose any picture from Flickr as your background

getsparc 50 Gb of onlone storage

Zamzar online file conversion

Google Docs and Spreadsheets 500 Kb per document

peepel free office suite of tools

writeboard shareable whiteboard

skbrl online whiteboard

letterpop online publisher that can integrate with Flickr

scrapblog photos and text bubbles and can aggregate

PS… Kathy said not to try to keep up with her because she’ll go to fast - well, you know I took that as a challenge and yep, I did keep up :o)

#3 Process Writing for the MySpace Generation

http://poetry.teachingmatters.org online writing program with animate characters

http://write.teachingmatters.org

http://write.teachingmatters.org/user/register

I didn’t care too much for this session. Maybe because I’m not a language arts teacher. But, the idea seemed to be a good one. The presenter spoke of a grant she and others wrote for an online writing project. Worth checking out if you have kiddos writing on the Internet.

#4 Use Your Noodle - Learn Moodle!

Michelle Moore at michelle@remote-learner

www.theopencd.org

The room is overflowing - people are lined up against the wall and in the floor. Interesting program. I need to look into this more. Moodle is not only an online text assignment, but also, has a chat option, forum (like a bulletin board), polling, gradebook, webpage, parent roll so that parents can see the course online, and wiki. Glossary words are automatically linked back to the glossary. Assignments are between students and teacher and are not shareable.

http://moodle.remote-learner.net

http://docs.moodle.org

Wonder how this would work with my teachers?? In one computer classrooms? I need to show the other itf’s and play around with it a bit more.

Whew! What a day! So much information! Hope I can remember it all and use it.

Until tomorrow ~ Danita

Google Pictures

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:46 pm Filed under Conference, Web 2.0 and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.