Thing 18: Meditations at Lagunitas

This is a podcast I created as an introduction to poet Robert Hass and a reading of his poem, "Meditations at Lagunitas." Learn more about Hass at www.poets.org. There are also two questions to answer at the end.

Thing 17: PodCasting

I have used PodCasts, created PodCasts, and taught a course on PodCasting last summer at our Summer Tech Institute. The great thing about PodCasting is that it takes so little technology: your computer, an inexpensive microphone, a free downloadable program like audible.com, and a little time to learn it. If you have a built-in video-cam on your computer, or would invest a little money in a USB camera, video PodCasts are possible as well.

Even on just the audio PodCasts, photos can be added on your website for an added dimension to liven up what your audience is hearing.

Thing 16: LibraryThing

What's in YOUR shelves? LibraryThing is a much better way to catalog what's on your bookshelves than Shelfari as far as I can tell. And it has a better networking system, better cataloging, better groups, better searches, just better all the way around. They have over 30,000,000 titles in their system, which is amazing.

I could use LibraryThing to catalog my personal library; it's been far too large for too long. My husband is a retired Professor of English. We've actually begun to give away books to scale down. But what is left could stand to be catalogued so that we know what we have, whether there are duplicates, how old, etc.

But the TIME to do it? Now that's another thing . . .

Thing 15: Is it delicious, or just tasty?

I've had my Delicious account for awhile, and I've added some new websites to it. For me, the problem is remembering it's THERE, and remembering to go back and utilize it. With all of the new technologies available, especially with Web 2.0, and being anxious to try every new technogadget on the web, I'm really terrible about going back and perfecting the ones that could help me the most in my classroom. I have not fully used Delicious in the ways I'm sure it could be used to its full advantage. Over Christmas I've going to revisit it and see if I can come up with a more meaningful way to visit it more often to remind myself of the value it can bring to my teaching and to my students. My Delicious account is:

http://delicious.com/vanderven1

Thing 15: A Kiva Christmas

In my Google Reader, under The Fischbowl, I learned about a great website that is just the charitable giving site I've been looking for during the past year. I've wanted to substitute some gift giving with global impact project, but hadn't found just the right site to do this through (Heiffer International is a good one, but I didn't feel connected enough to a person). Kiva, at www.kiva.org is a website where, for a minimum of $25 you can choose who you want your microloan to go to in the world. It gives an outline of the person, his or her project, the expected loan length, etc. They have a 97% repayment rate. At the end of the loan you have three choices: You can choose to put your money back into the loan pot again for another person, donate it to Kiva, or get your money back. Where else can you get that kind of deal?

If you do join, assign your gift to the Team called: SHIFT HAPPENS. Karl Fisch would just like to see how much impact his blog for teachers has had.

So, do the world a favor this year at Christmas--Look outside yourself (and maybe your family, too) and see the wide world in need. Give a gift certificate or a handful and help a neighbor across the ocean.

Thing 14: Writeboard WriteNow

The Web 2.0 tool I chose to explore is called Writeboard. It is a collaborative tool, and where I think I would use it most is with student writing. We don't do a lot of prewriting because it's so laborious to read it. My students do all of their writing online, upload their papers online, and I have a grading program that allows me to mark their papers and reupload them. But it's all time-consuming. This may be a way around all of that.

Thing 13: Creating a Globally Connected Classroom

I am playing catch-up, and so I didn't get to hear the "live" presentation of this (only the iPod downloaded version), but the presenter went so fast in the downloaded segment that it would take a superhuman to gather up all the information she was putting out there. I think that creating a globally connected classroom sounds like a fabulous idea, but from the idea stage to the implementation stage, it sounded like a tremendous amount of work, when really it's no different than what we do, as teachers, for any of our classes, especially if we're using technology.

Thing 12: Ode on a Grecian . . . Wiki?

In Thing 12 we were to make a slide show using Creative Commons photographs from Flickr, and so I chose photos that I thought represented the first stanza of John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" in some way.

Come visit my Wiki to see my two slide shows at:

https://vanderven.wikispaces.com/

Thing 11: To Be or Not to Be Flikr'd

Durante el ensayo de "Hamlet, por poner un ejemplo" de la compañía Factoría Teatro de Madrid.
by Julio César (FunKa-Lerele), Flikr

Studying Hamlet right now in British Literature represents a real challenge to my seniors, so I look for as many things to make it real to them as possible. This photo of Hamlet in a wheelchair could provide a lot of interesting dialogue starters.

Both a strength and a weakness of Flikr is the way that each photograph links you to the photographer's entire portfolio. Chances are if you like the photo that you chose to open or use, you will like any number of others he or she has to offer, and you can spend hours perusing just that one site, which equals a huge time consumption--an always present danger while web browsing as it is.

That aside, Flikr offers great possibilities for all kinds of PowerPoint and other presentations for the classroom because virtually any search of any topic I did yielded pertinent photographs. I think people in this world have traveled (and taken photographs) everywhere!!

Thing 10: Uncommonly Creative with Creative Commons

Wow!  So that's how MIT was able to put all those courses up on the web.  I have taken advantage of some of their materials during the past year (always giving proper credit, of course), and have thought that it was just such a swell thing for them to do, but never understanding how they could put all that material out there and not worry about a zillion people running off with their copyrighted research, etc.  So CC was the way.

I'm sorry I haven't noticed the CC logo until now.  I know I'm not the most observant person in the world, but I hate letting technology stuff slip by me.  Especially when it comes to copyright issues.  And I have to admit that I thought putting a URL with a photo in your online material was enough credit as long as its author had not expressly forbidden it to be used.  Yeesh; I hate 20/20 hindsight, but it's better than no sight.

Learning about CC will come in so handy for my classes because my students are constantly asking how to cite this or that.  They really are worried about plagiarism, especially with the Honor Code we have at our school; no one wants to be called up on Honor Code violations, even if it's unintentional.  So they watch their Ps and Qs, and this will help tremendously.