Student Application:  What an amazing tool!  Go Google!  The education possibilities of google news feeds are endless!  I can see our history teachers assigning currents events in a whole new way.  Instead of surfing newspapers for an article that interests a student for a current events assignment, students can set up their own news feed on a topic related to their current studies in history.  For instance, a World Cultures course studying Africa can send students to Google news to set up a feed about an African country they want to study for current events and developments.  All of a sudden, the news is relevant, personal, and more exciting than ever.

Personal Feeds:  I set up a feed on the subject of teens.  While I was not surprised, I was saddened to find that most stories in the current news about teens are not positive.  Topics like car crashes, shootings, knifings, violence, obesity, and depression clutter the news listing for teens this past week.  The article that caught my eye the most, however, is “Kids Dis E-mail, My-Space Dominates and Cyber-Attacks Grow More Dangerous” because my own experience with teens at school is they do not see the Internet as a potentially dangerous space.  They think nothing of sharing their most intimiate secrets with a few billion online users.  And according to this article, Korean teens see email as a formal communication tool, designed for business.  Instead, teens in Korea are using a social networking technology, similar to Face Book, to communicate .  In fact, Koreans are ahead of the Japanese in the uptake of this new technology.  So, my question is where are American teens?  I venture to guess we are not too far behind (knowing how popular My Space has become), but is our current educational practices, curriculum, and instruction preparing the teens for this?  Is it something to fear as a parent and educator, or is it an exciting new development on the technology frontier?

Initial Reaction to All That Good Stuff:  I have a whole slew of informative and smart blogs popping up in my reader.  My first reaction to all this news is overload.  It’s unbelievable how much information is out there.  Every time I read a post, I find another nugget to bookmark, star, or email to a friend.  I am back to the time factor.  Thank goodness the RSS reader is set up so user-friendly.  I love it that I can surf through 200 new items in a short while.  I guess this is like skimming through the Sunday paper, well sort of.  It’s not as cozy as a pair of slippers and a newspaper in bed.  Even though I have a wireless laptop, I’d much rather snuggle up with a paper than a laptop that tends to get warm on my lap.  Maybe if I were a cat…j/k.

Gems of the Week:  I saw Cool Cat Teacher present at NECC last summer in Atlanta, and she inspired me to start a class wiki.  She made teaching sound so easy and fun.  She is sharp, dynamic, and fearless.  I find her blog no less than her real life persona.  She pointed out some new tools called “microblogging streams”, “backchannels“, and a twitter search engine called Terraminds for the microblogging streams .  I have no clue what she is talking about, but I know know enough about her cutting-edge style to know that these are things to spend some time exploring.  Does anyone out there know about these tools?  She also points out that PowerPoint is not the end-all in presentation tools, and if we really want to instill technology fluency in our students, we need to expose them to multiple tools that serve the same purpose.  Check out the 13 online alternatives to PowerPoint.  The days of PowerPoints being too large for email or bringing to a conference on a thumbdrive are long gone. Use an online presentation tool instead.  The last little jewel I found was another blog called First Day of Kindergarten, which was mentioned by another blogger.  (I so cannot tell you who, as everything gets so interconnected and you forget where you started in the first place!)  This blog was designed for a teacher’s online high school course.  Mr. Plough offers students a chance to approach assignments in multiple ways, utilizing web 2.0 tools they choose to explore.  He even gives tutorials and links to all the tools.  This is a great resource!  Check out the little slide show on how he defines Web 2.0 and take notice of all the wonderful links on this post for learning to use the tools.  I’ve added Mr. Plough’s blog to my reader–why reinvent the wheel?

Okay, first I must say that I finally have the hang of this reader thing.  I can’t believe how easy it is, and I can’t believe I didn’t use this when I used blogger with my students.  I was working waaaaaay too hard to keep track of the little buggers online.  Ahhh…hindsight is always 20/20.  I am now itching to try this out again with my students with a blog or a wiki. 

 As I surfed through all the amazing pieces of information, including catching up on “All Things Considered” from NPR, I couldn’t help myself but to be drawn to all things Google.  Google docs, Google earth, Google gmail, Google, Google, Google.  Wow, what a giant! 

Google Docs can revolutionalize how students collaborate on the revisioning and editing of a piece of writing.  I checked out the professional development tips from Technology Learning, only to find easy tips on how to use the docs feature of Google, as well as some wonderful links to other resources, including a posting on “Why I Love Google Docs“.  Of course, I couldn’t really buy into what the previous blogger had to say, as she had numerous spelling and grammar errors throughout her blog. This is actually a good learning opportunity with students, showing them how bloggers gain your trust and respect when your words are crafted with care.

The blog Infinite Thinking Machine featured a blog post on “Google Apps for Your Domain in Education”.  This piece of information is especially interesting for schools who are trying to cut their tech budgets, but still offer some of the most cutting-edge communication tools out there, all the while using your school’s domain.  It is interesting how the school district rolled out the Google applications and helped the staff and students learn the ropes.

As if that isn’t cool enough, I had the opportunity to see a video of the Google Doodle Artist himself.  The blog Infinite Thinking Machine posted an announcement that students can enter a contest for their best Google doodle.  The video shows how Dennis Hwong draws all the doodles on a graphics tablet.  The video is edited in such as way that it speeds up the process visually, making the art look so simple and yet inspiring. I am going to keep my eye on the Google folks.  They really are leading us into the future with simple, efficient, and timely 2.0 tools.

What strikes me as fascinating is the amount of time that is involved in keeping a vibrant blog, as well as the users in cyberspace who spend their time reading, commenting, and linking to the posts.  While I see the value in keeping up with a few spunky blogs, I also see the time-suck effect.  I also find myself skipping down the page, skimming for words and ideas that jump out at me, instead of reading every word.  I guess this is also how I read a newspaper.  I think it is definitely a skill to learn how to read blogs so that you get the most out of them.  As a language arts teacher, I see this as an important 21st century literacy skill, and as a technology educator, I see this skill as vital in preparing our children for the world they will enter in just a few years.  I love it that blogs are dynamic, interactive, and offer an authentic audience.  This is so powerful for us all–someone is out there listening!  Now, I want to get my RSS set up to improve on the time-suck!

I was inspired by the Students 2.0 blog, where a group of high school students sharply point out the inadequacies of the face of education today, in the posting “Amateur Education“.  It makes me sad to see that our current education system is failing in transforming students into the life-long learners we all value as educators.  The idea that we are selecting the content, deciding what kids should learn, and programming them to want to succeed based on grades and assessments we see as relevant. This posting is in concert with the blog post from Wandering Ink in “How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci“.  Here, blogger Kris Bradburn magnifies what schools are doing to squash the little creative da Vincis sitting in our classrooms.  The high school students in the Amateur Education posting would be refreshed to hear Bradburn’s approach.  Interestingly enough, commentors on this posting suggest that we turn to Web 2.0 tools to combat the dull traditional approach, allowing students to be more interactive and create content.  But, as many commentors pointed out, can Web 2.0 truly combat the politics of education?  The national and local testing, the agendas of policital parties, and more?  What will it take to truly reform education for the better, providing opportunities for students to truly be prepared for jobs that do not exist today and to offer creative thinking and constructive opportunities for all those little da Vincis?

Web 2.0 tools are already changing my own professional practices.  For instance, rather than students sharing their writing in class, they can have an authentic audience on the WWW, editing and commenting on their work via a wiki.  Instead of wondering what an author might think of our class interpretations of a novel, we invited the author to participate in a discussion board on our class wiki.  All of a sudden, the learning becomes incredibly exciting, real, and relevant. 

Today’s students are the digital natives, and living in their world, I need to reach out to them through their way of learning.  As an educator, I feel it is my responsibility and calling to find interactive ways to create content and learning environments for student growth.  What blows my mind is that students we teach today will have jobs in the future that do not even exist yet.  How do we prepare a generation of learners for a world that values creative thinking, problem solving, and seemless use of new technology tools as they become available? 

As a learner and individual, I am already finding tools that serve my own needs.  I particpate in facebook to keep track of friends around the world.  I participate in nicenet with some writers, where we give feedback on writing pieces.  I see uses of wikis and blogs in my own school as well.  Instead of my principal sending out a weekly TGIF inspiring note about something she observed each week, she could post her ideas on a blog or wiki, where all the faculty members could also post their responses and inspiring experiences of the week.  Instead of waiting for students to return from being absent, we can share documents online and post work for easy access to all.  The possibilities are endless, which is why it can also be so very overwhelming.   

Challenges:  As a life-long learner, I am challenged by having confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner.  I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses.  If something involves numbers or spatial relationships, I immediately put on my shields and back away.  I know that confidence in my own ability to be a thinker and learner can help me overcome these kinds of hurdles.

Easy…Resonates:  What resonates with me in thinking about the habits of life-long learners is the idea of creating your own learning toolbox.  I find that I enjoy collecting items that I need, and I enjoy the process of discovery.  I look forward to relying more on my colleagues and creating a network of educators who are in the trenches with me.  The idea of interacting on the web with colleagues and being part of an electronic community is a tool I really want to explore.

 Most Important:  What will be most important to me is to PLAY!  I am constantly reminded that time to explore and discover is almost more valuable than direct instruction and feedback.  I find ways to apply new tools and information when I allow myself the time to truly try things out, adapt them, and take risks.  I think in our busy lives, we forget the power of play.  Because I am the mom of a 5 and 6 year old, I think I am going to take a page from their book and really learn to PLAY!

Did you know that Google is more than just a search engine?  I consider myself a “Google super user” myself, uploading and sharing documents with Google Docs; collecting podcasts and RSS feeds in my Google Reader; editing and storing photos with Picasa; personalizing my igoogle home page with widgets; and utilizing the intuitive Gmail interface.  But, wait!  There’s more!  Wait until you check out Google Earth 5.0!

Google Earth 5.0 is a free download to the general public, and for educators only, you can subscribe to Google Earth 5.0 Pro for free, once you have requested and received approval this special educator status.

The unbelievable features of Google Earth 5.0:

• “Fly” to any place on our planet from an aerial view.
• Zoom in and pan to the left or right.
• View street cameras of live web cams of various locations.
• View still photos of key landmarks and sites.
• Explore the oceanic layers.
• Capture and record the tour or path you want visitors to experience.
• Insert “pushpins” to give directions and point out facts or mark particular cities, landmarks, or latitude and longitude markings.
• Post hyperlinks, embed videos, and other multimedia web 2.0 snippets.
• Allow your students to add their own content to an already created Google Earth file.
• Export files to save for the future.