One step closer

I've been hemming and hawing about just applying to the LMS program at Salem State.

Basically, I need to take the MTEL and get a few recommendations to complete my application. 

Made a special trip to my husband's office to print this sucker out. Been awhile since I took a standardized test, so I think I know what I'll be doing now that I turned my assignment in early. 

One step closer, indeed! 

Week 5: Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom

Well, this week was a welcome change in that I was actually familiar with 4 of the 13 tools we were tasked with working with this week. I was starting to fear I was just too old (gasp!) to try to jump into a new career.

Our list of tools to explore included: Flickr, Big Huge Labs, Dumpr, Glogster, Google Drive, Zamzar, Survey Monkey, Doodle, StumbleUpon, BubblUs, Voki, Jing and Animoto.

Of this list, I had prior experience with Flickr, Doodle, Survey Monkey, and Google Drive (all in either my personal life, or my prior corporate life, but all in which I can see applications in education as well). I hadn't used Flickr personally, only on behalf of one of my clients, so it was fun to set up my Photostream and map my pictures (I intentionally only chose travel photos so my map would look more exotic!). It also made me very envious of some of our pre-kid travel!

A few other results of my exploration:

Animoto- Birthday wishes for my mom
BubblUs - Brainstorm on what the heck I'm going to do when I grow up
Voki - See my previous post...

In short, I could see applications in education to nearly all of these. I must confess that it was a stretch for Dumpr (plus the name is awfully unfortunate) - while I had some fun on this site, it was harder to think of a clear educational use.

I think the other thing to keep in mind - as with any web 2.0 tool - is to guard against style over substance. There's no use in a flashy tool if the content stinks. Two of these applications in particular - BubblUs and Glogster - reminded me of things I did back in the dark ages, just with a healthy dose of fun and cool sprinkled in, which is how it should be (in my humble opinion of course).

Fun with Voki

I'm working on the "exploration" part of this week's assignment, which is basically playing around with a bunch of web apps that I've never even heard of. It was a long day with the 5 year old who is on school vacation, and I think I am having a little too much fun with this one. For your viewing pleasure...

What I'm Reading

I had a rare 3 days away from the kids (including a very long airport delay on Sunday) so I made it through 2 of my inaugural picks in one weekend (see original post for my verdicts).

Had to return a couple of things to the public library today and perused the "Parent Pick" section while my kids played in the Children's Room.

Side note: If your library doesn't do this, you should really mention it to your librarian. There is a rolling shelf of 100 or so books that they think might appeal to parents of young kids - it's a nice mix of genres, mostly newer titles - but I always seem to find something I'm interested in.

Today's selection was:

Verdict:
3 stars. Pretty readable and decent storytelling but many of the characters were tough to relate to/empathize with and the ending kind of got a little hokey. Good vacation reading, but I don't know that I'll be rushing to read more from this author.

That and Happier at Home should keep me occupied until my next book club selection!

Revisiting Wikis

After copping to being a little OCD in my Diigo post, it pains me to break my linear flow to go back in time and revisit Week 3 but it must be done.

Our assignment last week was to explore a few wiki sites, and then create our own. I spent a good several days trying to figure out what the heck I was going to start a wiki about. Our professor gave us leeway that it didn't have to be education-related, which helped, but I was still floundering a bit.

I took a first pass using Wikispaces to create a travel wiki for Outer Cape Cod but really struggled with inserting pictures appropriately, and then got frustrated with the topic altogether.

I abandoned that one and decided to try PB Works next. To my surprise, I already had an account set up - I had completely forgotten that the final project for the LBS class I took in the fall of 2010 was to set up a wiki that could be used in a school library. It was helpful to look back on what I had done, but for this assignment, I wanted to start fresh and do something totally different, so I created a wiki for my book club who does things the exact opposite way as is recommended in this excellent Common Craft video on wikis.

Week 4: Online Organizational Tools (part 2)

The 2nd part of this week's assignment was to experiment with social bookmarking and social reading sites.

Social Bookmarking

For someone who once worked in marketing (for a company with a strong online presence, no less!), I am kind of embarrassed that social bookmarking was a pretty new concept for me. It definitely makes sense, especially the idea of having your bookmarks "follow" you to whatever device you happen to be using vs. being stuck on one machine. So I jumped in to add a few of my favorite sites and see which of the 2 sites we were advised to start with - Delicious and Diigo - might better serve my needs.

Week 4: Online Organizational Tools (part 1)

No, you're not counting wrong. I haven't blogged about Week 3 (wikis) just yet but it's coming.

But for now, onward and upward, to week 4. Our focus this week is on various online organizational tools, including RSS feeders, social bookmarking and book organization sites.

Part 1 of my assignment for this week is to evaluate an RSS reader and share my findings with the rest of the class. I chose Feedly and loosely used this rubric to help focus my evaluation.

I am not new to Feedly, but I had only previously used it on my iPhone and have not been too impressed. I always seem to be overwhelmed when I access the app, and many of the features don't seem clear in that setting.

It was a completely different experience using the desktop version. Using the core categories from the rubric, and ranking them on a scale of 1 to 5, my recommendation after setting up my RSS feed on Feedly follows after the jump: