The Giving of the Thanks

Four classes down, Eight to go. Whew. It is the giving of the thanks that I am doing right about now. I'm a third of the way done, and I'm finishing this puppy come Hell or high water. Keeping in mind that I don't believe in the Hell. But I do believe in the high water, especially after seeing so much of it last year. My, my but that Iowa River can rise up when it wants to. But that's a whole 'nother story.

Anyway, we gave of the thanks, we made of the dinner. It was lovely. My son is here, my daugher-in-law, and my grandson. Plus my mom, my brother, my nephew, and of course my dog, Mabel. I actually wish there were more of us, but I shouldn't be greedy. So I'm grateful for those that I had here, and for those that had afar for we are all of good health this year, and of good cheer, and I know that is quite a lot.

Now for other things, not to drag on and on, but I'm on to my newest class which is of a Zen nature, ish, and one of my assignments is to develop a survey for a project I'm working on. The project involves programming a DynaVox speech box for a young man that is non-verbal. It is a rather heavy box that has a programmable touch screen that allows me to put "buttons" on it with pictures that once touched will say anything I program them to say. I know. Pretty heady stuff that. But I try to think like an 18 year old male. HEY, clean it up. He's a nice 18 year old male. I try to think like him, and give him buttons that are appropriate for school. So my survey is very broadly concerned with that. Please consider taking it, it's located at:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEozVnBYQmtzeTRPVFBLSlhHMy1SS0E6MA

BP16_2009113_Video#2_SketchfuIsFun

(2009, November 15). Retrieved from http://sketchfu.com

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BP12_2009113_Web2.0FinalPersonalChoice_SketchfuRocksLikeEtchASketch

This is my last foray into searching for Web 2.0 Tools as an assignment on my own. I looked under the category of "fun" for a change, and lo and behold, there was Sketchfu! I must warn you, it's hiding it's light under a bushel, because this sweet little tool is not merely fun, but it can be used for much, much more.

Stop and think for a moment about all the times when you've been trying to describe something to someone over the telephone with absolutely no luck. You come at it from every angle you can think of, and still no success.

"It's about four feet tall, but it gets narrower towards the top, and it's kind of a kelly green, but not quite, then near the top there's this sort of a blueish trim that goes all the way around..." We've all been there. The person on the other end might as well put the phone down and make a sandwich, take a walk around the block and come back when we're done for all the good that description does.

Cell phones with cameras did a little bit towards saving that fiasco, but not everyone is favorable towards allowing pictures to be taken. So we were back to the descriptions. Now, you can draw a picture, and either direct your description-receiver to it, or send the picture directly to them! It's amazing, you can dispense with all of the confusion (assuming you can draw anything remotely like what you were describing, and if you can't, I"m sure there's a Web 2.0 Tool out there somewhere to help you, but that's another blog, my friend) and get right to the point!

And for uses in the classroom, kids can come right back to the classroom and draw what they've seen on a walk, or a field trip and email it home so the parents who were unable to make the trip can appreciate it as well. The drawings can also be printed out and used in portfolios or to decorate the class, they can be copied and pasted into reports as well. Best of all, as usual Sketchfu, found at http://sketchfu.com/ is FREE. Give it a whirl my friends.

BP11_2009112_Delicious_ILoveBookmarks

Social bookmarking is a pretty brilliant idea, and uniquely usable for classroom teachers, especially secondary and higher. When trying to make it possible to reach all of the students that a secondary or post-secondary instructor would teach in a single day, the mind fairly boggles. But the idea of using social bookmarking makes it much easier. Using a common naming technique, making it available to all students and then updating it as necessary, and all of the students would be able to keep up with the class information.

Many instructors require students to do research online, especially in high school and post-secondary studies, this is an excellent way to keep students linked in with information. Rodd Lucier has an appreciation for this on the Clever Sheep website as he outlines with a link to an excellent video by Common Craft, and then explains in very simple terms that even the most frightened luddite will understand.

In "The Role of Delicious in Education" we have the history of Delicious, chapter and verse, as well as the psychological meanings behind every move made on the site. It might be a little more in depth than most people need, but it certainly explains very clearly how the site works, and why. I appreciated some of the candor and humor that Dr. Grosseck used when discussing the ways people use the Internet, and bookmarking. She did a remarkably thorough job of explaining Delicious.

For my third site, I chose http://wiki.classroom20.com/social+bookmarking#toc3. It's not authored by anyone in particular as far as I can tell, but it's chock full of links and other information about bookmarking that are useful. It also gives a great bulleted abbreviated list about why social bookmarking is a good thing for education. I like things that are short, sweet, and to the point. Most teachers do because we don't have time to wade through paragraphs of junk for someone to make their point. Lists are better. This site does an admirable job of making its point.

As is often the case for teachers, we find ourselves defending various aspects of education. If any of the teachers reading this ever find the need to defend social bookmarking, any one of these three websites would do an absolute bang up job of it for you. Just direct people to them.

Grosseck, G. (2008, March 29). The Role of delicious in education. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/2413801/The-Role-of- Delicious- in-Education

Lucier, R. (2008, January 8). Social bookmarking in the classroom. Retrieved from http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2008/01/social- bookmarking-in-classroom.html

http://wiki.classroom20.com/social+bookmarking#toc3