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?