Deliciousness

Well I am now an official member of Delicious.  I am still not sure how I feel about that yet, but I am working on it.  I can see why some people would want to use this type of page in order to get a feel about certain sites, but I would much rather make those types of determinations on my own.  I was able to rediscover a site called “how stuff works”.  I actually contributed to some of the information found on their site regarding Bradley Fighting Vehicle Systems.  Ahh, the good ole’ days.

Thing #16

I utilized the iGoogle page because I am pretty used to the graphics and layouts associated with Google apps and pages.  The process of creating my customized page was quick and easy which is a good thing considering the fact that it will no longer be available after 01 November.  I also created my to-do list and attached it to my customized page.  The first item on this list is also my last and you can see it in the screen shot below. 

I am out of the sandbox

This exercise did nothing but frustrate the heck out me.  I thought that I left a comment in the sandbox of gloom and pain on several occasions, but at this point I have absolutely no idea.  I aspire to never go through an experience like this again.  I am taking my ball and moving over to thing #16.  Good day. 

Thing #14

I created accounts for both Gliffy and Mindmeister.  Gliffy was much easier to use, and although I am able to accomplish much of what is available in Gliffy by simply using Office tools, having a site dedicated to the creation and editing of flowcharts is pretty handy, especially in a classroom environment.  The tools associated with Mindmeister were much more complicated and I doubt that I would ever utilize them again for myself, let alone for a group of 5^th grade social studies students. 

Lucky 13

 

Had I been aware of ZOHO I might have made the decision not to purchase all of the Microsoft Office products that I currently own.  Having said this; I do find that I am able to work more fluently with Office than I am with these other alternatives.  Perhaps this ease of use has more to do with the fact that I have been using Office tools for such a long time.  After exploring both ZOHO and Google Docs, I prefer ZOHO as it is a bit easier for me to negotiate.  Google Docs, however, could be a more useful classroom tool because it contains a feature that allows for students to collaborate by sharing a document or other work.  Students can work together to edit each other’s documents, along with the teacher, in order to receive real time feedback on their work.

Thing #12

I am certain that I would never make a personal or family calendar public, but for classroom purposes I think that a Google calendar would be a great thing to have for teachers, students, administrators and parents alike.  Instead of a child coming home to the boring parental posed question of “what did you do in school today”, they could be confronted with “how did your project on photosynthesis work out for you?” 

                I went ahead and created a calendar for family use.  Since I have to do the work for school anyway, it might as well end up becoming something that I can continue to benefit from.  I also took the opportunity to download the Google calendar app to my droid bionic so that I can continue to access everything on the go.  I shared my calendar with my family members, linking it to their email accounts.  I am sure that they will still claim to be unaware of everything that I post on it though, but it is definitely worth a try.  Google calendar has a neat function that updates the HTML code after changes are made so that you can embed a current version of your calendar in to your blog.  FYI, my life really is as boring as the calendar would lead you to believe I am sorry to admit.  I have attached a link to the calendar. 

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=396a3t8q6r295oafv1shc2ls0s%40group.calendar.google.com

Thing #11

After working down the list of suggested search tools, I found that Google blog search was the easiest of the bunch.  Although you need to be somewhat specific, the results of the search are almost all content related and after some additional searching, you are bound to find what you were looking for. 

                Topix.net was great because it automatically generated an entire page of news, topics, and events that were specific to my current location.  After playing around there I subscribed immediately.  The page is not too busy, is easy to navigate, and most of the content is highly relevant to anyone living in the selected area. 

                Technorati is a very blog-specific site dedicated to everything “blog”.  The site is very user friendly and they have a very good help tab if you do run into any problems while negotiating the content. 

                I am somewhat of a movie buff and I was able to find some pretty good film-related feeds.  Instead of having to visit multiple websites dedicated to movies, these feeds roll up multiple stories and consolidate them right in one spot.  Some of the more unusual blogs were sort of politically centered and had to do with topics that were very ideological.  The bottom line is that there is a blog for almost any interest and although the content is almost bottomless, the blogosphere must be travelled with the knowledge that some of the content is based on point of view, opinion and bias.  As a tool for rapidly locating specific content-based information however, RSS feeds are unmatched.