Poverty images

I searched online today for images of poverty. I started by typing in 'poverty'. This led me to 'poverty in America'. I was struck by some of the cartoon images and then decided to further search for those. Overall, the images that struck me as the most interesting were the cartoons and graphs. Some of the pictures of the children were interesing as well. I saved them on my desktop and then uploaded them into Flickr into a set called poverty and tagged them.

Google Docs

I have read and reread. Visited and revisited the Google Docs page. I read the sample Webquests. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it all. Finally, someone from the class wrote something on the page which I felt gave me a jumping off point. Now it looks like we are starting to share ideas.

Delicious

I was playing around on Delicious tonight and, from others suggestions on the class discussion board, I added others to my Network. This will make it a lot easier to keep track of others bookmarks. I also thought that, since there are so many of us, it would be a good idea for us to have a place on our wiki to organize everyone's usernames. It's nice to see that people are already using it. :)

Web connect

We just finished up our first web connect. Getting on the page was easy. Once we were all there, it was difficult to sort it out and organize. We finally settled it things ran smoothly for most of us. It was really nice to put some faces and names together and to share ideas. It's a shame that some people had difficulties and couldn't fully participate. Those of us that did participate had a nice introductory conversation. I'm not very familiar yet with WebQuests so it was good for me to hear what people had to say about them. Also, it was helpful to hear what professional backgrounds people came from. We practiced using proper web chat manners. At times it was easier to type what you wanted to say as opposed to speaking it. You didn't have to wait your turn or worry about forgetting your idea. Overall, I liked this format for communicating.

Following up on 'Technology and Problem Solving'

I just finished reading 'Technology and Problem Solving' by Howard Budin. There were many programs and much software that was referred to. I first looked up Decisions, Decisions: Immigration by Tom Snyder Productions. It seems that it may be a little too mature and expensive for my fourth grade students. This is a shame since I think that it looks interesting and valuable. I then went back to our class Webspiration page to play around with some of the features that I didn't realized existed until reading the article. It's very interesting the way that the program can take the web that have been created and reorganize it into an outline. That's something that would be very helpful to my students. I also like how you can use pictures inside the web to represent words and ideas. I spent a little bit of time looking up The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. This looks like a cute program that my students would like. It was also very reasonably priced. I'm definitely going to look for this to buy. Lastly, I tried to figure out a spreadsheet program. I tried Microsoft Works. What I learned was that I need someone to teach me how to use the program properly so I can teach my students how to use it.

Thoughts on the class discussion page

Over the last few days I've been trying to work my way through Dewey's writing. Whenever I take a class, I always do the reading. I find that knowing that I'm reading to learn and to share on the discussion page has given me an extra reason to push through it though. It's nice to know that I can work through it on my own time and reread in order to share rather than having pressure to recall on the spot in a face-to-face discussion.

Webspiration

I received my invite to sign into Webspiration today. I was immediately excited to see that many ideas were already on the class web. It motivated me to think about what I could contribute. I added some balloons and connected them with arrows. I changed their color and hyperlinked when possible. It piqued my interest so much that I started to talk to my coworkers about their ideas about poverty in America.

I'm not sure yet whether my students would be able to use something like this. Although it's not that difficult to use, it may be too complicated for elementary aged kids.

Using old ideas in a new way

In a computer class that I once took at Fordham (where this blog originated) I learned how to use a site called Bloglines. It's a site that you can gather all of the blogs that you read into one place. It notifies you when a new post has been completed and it gives you the ability to save posts that you want to read again. At the time it was taught to us but we didn't spend much time on it's many uses. Since then, I have used it to follow the multiple gossip sites that I read daily, some home improvement and cooking blogs, as well as to follow the Lost (tv show) blogs that I enjoy. Today I had the idea to add all my classmates blogs to my account. Now I can easily read and follow when everyone posts. Very exciting!

Using Blackboard

So far I really like using blackboard. Overall, it's fairly easy to use. I've been able to figure out all parts, thanks to the tutorial, and like that many parts of the class are in the same place. I especially like the discussion board feature. It's been great to read what others think and to see what they have learned. It is also great to share my ideas with the group without being 'on the spot' the way you are in a face to face conversation. I can write, read, revise and then post.

The one problem that I'm having is that I'm unable to post from my home computer on the discussion board. For some reason I don't get a text box to write in. All the other features of the page show up on the screen but not the text box. I can and do post from my school computer which shows the post page as it's supposed to be seen. So far my solution is to email myself what I would have posted at home and then post when I get to work. Any suggestions?