Thing 7

Once again, I have a whole pile of papers to grade so I am blogging instead. It's even better, because I used up 30 other minutes watching Obama. I figure my kids don't need to know their grades anyway:)

While I do use google quite a bit, I am amazingly overwhelmed by all the things it does that I am not aware of. I love that I can use it as a calculator and to figure out chemistry equations. It may not be completely useful for an English teacher, but it could be a neat trick to have up my sleeve.

Seriously, I am OBSESSED with Delicious. My classmates knew I would be when we learned about it. I am constantly running across things I would like to use in the future, but I've never been that great with my favorites. I knew that favorites aren't a mystery, but I would forget about them or they would be on the wrong computer when I wanted to use them. Now I have delicious everywhere.

The problem is I keep bookmarking things. I have already bookmarked so much that I don't even know what I have. I figure it will be a fun surprise for a rainy day or to use all that free time I seem to be bored with:)

I think the best part is that delicious lets me save all the technology tips I'm getting that I am of course going to use in the future!!

Thing 6

I have successfully used Google Documents with a colleague to work on unit calendars. It is great because we are not in the same house, so we are able to work on our calendar during the day when we can't easily walk to the other house. It's cool because you can comment and edit on the same document at the same time.

I am also interested in exploring bibliography templates on Google docs. I know that using templates is a little controversial in the English world, but I like the idea of getting students in the habit of knowing they need to cite sources in a specific format. (That was the longest run-on sentence)

As far as Wikis go, I have found some really cool English wikis and I would really like to set one up for my students. It would be really cool for students in multiple classes to interact. My problem is that I am finding the final product very cool, but I have no idea where to start. My Milli goal is to create a wiki for my students by the end of the year, and ultimately I'd like them to create pages.

I'll keep you posted:)

Video Question

Hi everyone~
I had this idea to have my students create a found poem from Book Thief and then set it to music, and maybe include images. I was going to try and use Animoto, but it seems complicated. Any great ideas on how I could do this. I'm sure there is a very easy answer. Clearly I'm showing how much I haven't used technology in the classroom!!

Thing 5

On my way home from school today, I stopped at the Chaska Library and got a library card. I spent much of my youth in the Stillwater library, but suprisingly it was a little intimidating to go get a card. Dumb, I know. It was a much bigger deal to me than it was to the librarians.

After getting the card, I walked around a little bit. I had forgotten how cool libraries are. Somehow the college library doesn't quite fit in. Although, I spent a lot of time there too. There seems to be some comfort at a library.

I'm not sure why I was surprised, but I ran into a number of my students. In fact, there were a lot of students working on computers and homework. It was nice to see that students have a place to go after school and access to technology that we all want to use more of in the classroom.

I have a feeling that I will be visiting the library much more frequently, and I'm thankful because I would not have gone if it wasn't an assignment!!