Beginning to Catch Up!

I am so far behind, but I suppose it doesn't really matter.  I can just keep poking along, enjoying the web 2.0 adventure.  I got stuck when my old computer refused to show the Technorati video, but now with my new computer, anything seems possible and easy!

I've been using Delicious ever since I got this computer.  It has revolutionized my bookmarking. Now I have three categories of bookmarks - those on the tool bar (gmail, goodreads, delicious - sites I visit really frequently), those on the menu (useful sites - Boston weather, Boston movie times and so forth), and those in Delicious (the ones I go to when I have a bit of time to fritter). Of course, the Delicious ones are the most fun!  

Delicious would be a fabulous tool for teachers.  If I were still teaching, I'd tag sites that I could use with various curriculum units.  I always bookmarked things, but since I never organized my bookmarks, they were impossible to find - especially at the last minute, which is when I was usually doing things.  I know a librarian who's using Delicious in her school library where she tags sites for units that the various teachers are doing.  I assume she and the teachers share their bookmarks, a practice which will soon produce a very rich resource for every unit.  It seems to me that Primary Source could do the same thing with each seminar group.  At the end of the seminar, each participant would have an extensive online resource to use in their teaching.  

StumbleUpon

Well, I've found a second black hole - StumbleUpon. When you sign up for this site, you check off your interests on a long list and you add a Stumble button to your toolbar. Whenever you click this button, it takes you to a random site within your range of interests. There are thumbs up, thumbs down buttons as well, and after you've explored the site a bit, you click one of those. Your thumbs up sites are saved on your StumbleUpon homepage, so you can retrieve them easily whenever you want to spend a little time off task. One of the sites I found might appeal to those of you who are intrigued by Jackson Pollack and are doodlers as well. It's kind of fun to swirl lines and blobs of color around the page. I don't think Primary Source would have any particular use for StumbleUpon, but as teacher I might play around with it to find good sites to use with my students. For example, they list interests such as Ancient History, Geography, Japan and so forth. Who knows what random but potentially worthwhile sites might turn up?

Google Reader

I love Google Reader! I also recognize that it's a black hole. It's amazing how much time you can spend reading this and that, and of course, one thing leads to another. On the other hand, it's a lot faster to move from one site to another on Goggle Reader than it is to use your bookmarks. What this week's exploration has taught me is how much I need a new computer. I've been saying this for a year or two, so it's not a fresh discovery. As I sat on more than one occasion until my long blue scroll bar stopped jumping around, I realized that I could cut my online time in half if I weren't constantly waiting until the scroll bar moved or stopped moving.
One of the feeds I added that I think some of you might like is 101 Cookbooks (http://101cookbooks.com/) , a cooking blog with fabulous recipes and beautiful photographs. There are also lots of links to other food and cooking blogs. I have noticed that people at Primary Source like to eat!
One way I think Primary Source might use feeds is to have teachers who are going on a trip set up Google Reader and then give them several blogs or newpapers to add. For example, Time Magazine has a really interesting China blog (http://china.blogs.time.com/)that I couldn't seem to add to my Google Reader, but that may be my computer. Another possibility would be China Daily if it has a feed. This would be interesting reading for teachers who will be going on a China trip and would give them a sense of what was happening in the country before they visited.

Flickr

I did it! I fiddled around with Flickr for a couple of days, all the while thinking it was quite beyond me. Then this afternoon I received Abby's gentle reminder that I needed to produce something, so I just forged ahead. I've created a Flickr account - only one image so far, but if you go to you can see it. Since Primary Source started my adventures in China, I thought it would be appropriate to share a photo from a China trip. I didn't have a digital camera when I went with Primary Source, so I can't share those photos until I digitize them. The photo on this blog entry is from the Mu residence in Lijiang which I visited in March of 2006 after a visit to the Gao Xin School in Xi'an. If you check out my Flickr account, you'll see some different photos from Lijiang. The collections on Flickr are a fabulous resource for teachers. I intend to use some photos from it when I redo my China geography presentation for my daughter's class.

A Second Start

When I attempted to set this blog up, I discovered that I already had an account on Blogger. This came as a big surprise since I thought this was my first foray into blogging. As it turns out, it was my neighborhood book group blog, and I vaguely remember signing up when the rest of the group did. After the initial excitement, we never used the blog, and so it vanished into the black hole of memory. I've had this sort of thing happen before when I've tried to sign up for something or other only to discover that the very name and password I wanted to use had already been taken. I sometimes suspect that I was the taker of that name and/or password at some long forgotten earlier time. Who knows? In addition to Blogger, I may have multiple accounts on gmail, or ebay, or even Amazon.com. These ghost accounts are a bit like the unread books in my house, but because I'm constantly knocking over the various piles in which the books reside, at least I know they're there.
Enough random rambling - I'm interested in learning about wikis and all those other useful online tools whose names currently escape me. They strike me as having so many classroom uses, and though I've retired from teaching, I still fantasize about all of the ways teachers could be capturing children's imaginations and helping them become aware of the world and their own place in it. I don't miss the papers, the fire drills, the endless testing, the report cards, but I do miss the pleasure of developing and trying out new curriculum and innovative ways of teaching.