Thing 10 - Reflecting on Wikis

When I first saw the video of the Lefever right away I thought, hmmm maybe this will work for the teachers I am collaborating with for a new class next year. Because right now we are emailing stuff back and forth to each other. It seemed perfect. I quickly explored the other wikis in the list, thinking "Hey these are easy to do websites. They solve the problem of having to find a home server." Then, before I started to write this I looked at Tech Time's reflection because I know she has been using wikis and thought, "Ohhhh, Nooooo!"
So I don't think any one wiki I looked at inspired me to create one of my own, like I said, the video did and the article both made a wiki out to be a great collaborative tool, so that is my inspiration. The hurdles I forsee are trying to get the teachers of my project to use it. Some do not have many computer skills (but I have at least taught them how to email more effectively). It would take training with a wiki to overcome most of those hurdles. But some might actually be the internet itself. I have teachers who do not have a computer or internet acces at home (How do they teach?) Is it worth the fight? With the struggle I have had to get my teachers using email and viewing a schedule on a website, I don't know if it is worth the fight to try to get them to use a wiki as well. But, for reasons I don't think are even clear to me, I will keep trying. "Never give up, Never surrender," Galaxy Quest (1999) http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/

Thing 9 - You expect a lot from this thing

Okay, I made the image, saved it to my pictures folder, and uploaded it here. Maybe it wasn't as hard as I feared. Although the directions then said to add a link to where I made this. Where was that??? AHhhhhh! Okay, I can do this, I've only closed down my windows a million times, but I can recreate what I did. Let's see, I would like the Things better if when we clicked on a link it opened a new window, can't you set things like that?
Okay, I opened up 23 Things again for the tenth time tonight, found Thing 9, clicked on Big Huge Labs and then Movie Poster, so the link to that is http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/poster.php. And yes there was a Link icon to add it into the blog. But I wonder if I had just copied and pasted. I am going to copy this link http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/poster.php and see if there is a difference. Now what else did I have to do for 9? Reflect, probably, I'll go back and check.

Yep, reflect. It would be fun if I didn't feel like I was running out of time. When you said play, you ment play. I don't know that I like to play online. I want to know where I am going and what I am doing. I often get into a website and get busy playing that I forget the objective. I was playing with creating an avitar but then couldn't figure out how to use the avitar. It did make me want to load my casino game on this computer though, because it has a great face creator on it and that would be a neat thing to put on my blog. I had a good creation on my last computer before it died. And I digress. Fun, but time consuming (especially when you babble).

Editing

How do you edit in this program? Go to new posts, then you can edit an old one.

Thing 8 - Cool Tools or Fustration Causers

After I played with the tools, I was glad I read the posts below because I had a lot of the same questions. 1. How do I get to these tools if I was in Flickr? 2. How can I put these tools somewhere other than the computer? 3. How can I use these tools while teaching?

I liked the spell - because it could help teach about layout. Often as I look at my students' newspaper and yearbook, I wonder if anyone teaches layout anymore. The letters need to be similar or have a connection apperance to them. The spell feature had a neat way to change a letter to make a better "fit".

I did the matching using the RESA23 tag, so they were familiar pictures. I could see my Japanese teacher taking photos of the kangi characters so students could make sure they were recognizing them (but if the sight needs to connect to Flickr to do it, then the students would be blocked.) But I liked this matching because it flips the cards for you. (Like the appeal of computer solitare)

And I like Sudko anyway, so I liked that. It might be easier for a student to learn to do that puzzle before a number one just because it may be easier for some to focus on the image rather than a character.

Thing 7 - Finally, my reflection

I can't beleive it has taken me so long to get back and do my reflection. I was hoping that I would see a response from someone on the Thing 7 blog, about not getting our pictures to post in the RESA23 Flickr list. But there is no response that I've seen. Anyway, I put my picture there, and I can see it on my account, I just don't see it with the others. But I notice there hasn't been anymore added since I tried to add, there's been something like 86 pictures. Is there, perhaps, a limit?
But back to the reflection question, how would I use Flickr in my classroom? I can't. It is a site blocked, and I don't see myself fighting for it to get unblocked. While it is a neat tool, I'm not sure I see an absolute educational need for it. If kids want to electronically show us a picture, they can throw it in a power point, that works well.

Thing Six - Librarians in Star Trek are still sterotyped

I started my search with the term Star Trek and came across this typical sterotype of a librarain. The person who posted this picture was nice and gave a good history of it. (It was a scene in one of the movies that never made it into the movie.) And even though I have never really noticed anyone in Star Trek shows or movies wearing glasses except for the one where Kirk needs to sell his glasses back in the eighties for money, here they had to put the old specks on the lady (complete with scowl, too). I was reminded of how horrible the movies and television are about what a librarian is. I think I like the Read poster that shows that Bat Girl was a librarian.

Any way, I think I am getting carried away with the picture and not the "Thing". I have search Google images before and gotten strange results but nothing like I did in Flickr. Since it is each person who posts the pictures tags that helps you find it, it's not like you can search for a specific item.

Okay, now the other thing I tried to do was upload a second picture and I am finding it did not download from flickr like some of the others that I did download. Curious as to what's up with that.

Thing 5 - RSS feeds

I have been neglecting my things and had stopped in the middle of this one. Oh, what joy to have to go back and review what I had already learned. My first question is how do I get my Bloglines link to look like it does on Jackie's video? In my tool bar, I have Links and I have to click that and then find the Bloglines on my list. I am not even sure what the other "links" are in this menu. (The joys of breaking in a new computer.) Anyway, I guess as long as I have figured out how to do the RSS feeds, it doesn't matter that they are exactly the way we were instructed to do them, right?

My other question was where was RSS when I was doing my job search? I remember having to visit every district's website everyday looking for new postings. RSS works for other things than Blogs, right? I am not a big fan of reading random blogs. I do think I will like that I have linked the news to my bloglines account and School Library Journal (thanks for that suggestion, Mary).

So how am I planning on using RSS in my personal or professional life? I will probably be more aware of the RSS indicator now. Like I said, I don't like to just randomly search for something that interests me, so instead of spending a ton of time "surfing", I will keep an eye out for things to add to my reader.