Thing 42

Internet radio: who would've thought??

I tried out pandora to begin with, thinking I wouldn't like it and that it wouldn't play the kind of music I wanted to hear. Wow - was I ever wrong! It was fast, great-sounding, and I could continue to work while i listened. I tried putting in some obscure music genres and artists - but it was able to find most of them, or make some pretty good guesses about something close to it. It was great fun!

Last.FM seemed to be a little clunkier to use - and it seemed more like the songs were for sale. It did, however, find some great music for me very quickly, and again, the quality was excellent.

I used these at home where I have high speed Internet access and it usually moves pretty quickly. I didn't see any lags at all in either Pandora or Last. Grooveshark seemed to take a lot longer to load.

I thought I had found something new and wonderful that I could share with my kids - but when I asked my daughter what she knew about them she said "I've been doing that for ages" so I guess I'm still behind! She uses a site called Slacker.

Thing 41

This was a perfect time for me to find out about these great services because I've been feeling frustrated trying to keep updating so many different websites - and having to log in to each one, type out my update and then maneuver to the next website. 

I'm trying out Lifestream in the hopes that I can make it work with two accounts. I'm using it on my personal accounts to update my sites, and that's working just fine. I've found that I have a need to update a bunch of accounts as well for the ISTE SIGMS - so I think this will be a great way to update all of those as well. It will be especially nice for those because the information I post will generally be the same for all of them. On my personal accounts I have different viewer: family, friends, co-workers, and professional people. I don't always want to post the same information to those groups. Consequently with this one I'm finding that updating each one individually is a better way to go. 

I would like to see a similar application where I could put different posts into each website through one URL. I see some drawbacks to doing that, however, and even to the way I'm using Lifestream. When I update my websites this way I don't get to enjoy reading the updates that others have posted - and that is one of the main reasons I use these sites. 

Thing 40

Okay - what could be more fun than the Wheel of Food? This is one that is perfect for the indecisive family - and mine fits the bill every time! Now when someone asks "where should we go for dinner?" we'll be able to actually come to a decision. What a fun little app!

Visual Headlines: I can imagine that today's visual headlines (April 27) will be all about the swine flu! It was a pretty fancy interface, but moved very slowly. I wasn't impressed - although I think it had lots of possibilities. It just had too many little quirks to make me think I would ever recommend it. 

The "walkability" score of my neighborhood was incredibly low. I guess we don't have the things around here that score high. Kinda disappointing, because I think we have a beautiful walk.

I also tried out Google's history timeline, which I think fits in with these very well. It's a great way to get an overview of what was taking place during each decade, at least according to Time Magazine!

Thing 39

I think the digital storytelling and escrapbooking is fantastic!

I was familiar with voiceThread, and had shared it with the CMLE audience just last week. I think this is a website that is an incredible tool for schools. There are so many ways that this could be used - from sharing projects, to book reports, to understanding concepts and getting multigenerational comments from people. There is just so  much that can be done!

I also enjoyed looking at Scrapblog, Framento and Scrapo. To me these seem like they would be more useful for home use - but they would be fun at school as well. I am always encouraging teachers to post pictures of their activities in order to send them out to families. The bonus is that grandparents who live thousands of miles away can also view them - but most are so secure and nonthreatening for students. 

These are excellent tools - and I look forward to sharing more of them with my teaching staff. I thought VoiceThread would make an excellent conference breakout session, and a great "Techie Tuesday" item for my staff. I think the others would be great for teachers to learn, but would also be fun to share with parents in a community education program.

Thing 38

I found the applications i learned in this lesson to be incredibly useful and helpful for schools!

The first one I really spent time with and shared with all the media specialists in my district was wink - the way of compressing powerpoint slideshows. They can get so unwieldy - so this was very helpful.

Then I spent a lot of time looking at jing - and I was really excited about the possibilities with that one! I intend to create a lot of tutorials for my staff using it - because so many of them really want and need to be walked through all of the screen shots, and it is so easy to  do that by creating it in jing. What fun!

Skitch was also a blast to work with. I thought these were great - and I can really see a lot of applications for school use. I found them to be very easy to use and a person could put some very professional-looking tutorials together very quickly. Thanks!

Thing 37

Wow! It's been a while since I've gotten any work done on my "things". I played around with the fun digital storytelling tools a few weeks ago and then didn't get back to them to write about them. 

I love Animoto. I think I enjoy it so much because it is so intuitive and so very simple.  It's just so amazing how quickly you can put together something that looks so professional. I can't wait to share it at school!

I enjoyed playing with all of the great photo programs again. I'm not always sure how students could use these at school, because we are so limited on the number of cameras we have - but I have always thought it would be fun to have students create their own "year-end" video selecting the pictures they'd like to use from our folder of yearbook photos. I've never felt I could do this because of the strain on the network. I need to look into this and find out how network intensive it is. If it's not bad this would be a wonderful year-end project!

Thing 36: Generate Some Fun!!

 Ah generators! What a blast! (And what an enormous consumer of time!!

I loved using the generators - but find so many of them to be just plain old "fun" and not of much real use. However, here are my favorites:

PDF convertors - I install one of these on every computer in my school and teach teachers how to use them. It helps for sending documents home to parents so they can actually read them.

Graphs and other template-type generators - I'm sharing these with teachers through my "delicious" links, individually, and through short staff development opportunities during staff meetings. They are great, easy to use and fun.

Wordle - The art teacher and I are going to use this as a fun "last week of school" project. In media the students will generate their list of words - their favorite school things from the year (teachers, friends, subjects, etc.). They will pick a favorite layout and print it. Then they'll take it to art and decorate the page with their own illustrations and border.

ToonDoo - I love sharing the funny things kids say - and I continue to look for ways to share them. I need to develop a "media specialist/teacher" character (me) and some kid characters and re-create the funny things I hear every day at school. If nothing else, I could send these out through email to share them with the staff - or post them in the lounge. Our schools are so full of humor, and we need to share it!

I love the name generators! I can never think up a good name, especially for blogs and other usernames. I actually stole one from my sister (purpleloon) and she's not happy about that at all! So I thought these were fun and I'm hoping to get a name I can use for myself out of one of them.