I Can Tweet, Blog and Diigo

The first semester of this teaching year has been one of transition, change, and flexibility. It has also been one of busy-ness; four 1 credit online classes that required a lot of participation and learning of new to me technologies. It's been busy, but it's been fun.

I can now tweet, blog and Diigo. I can use Google Apps and create and use iGoogle pages and apps. I love my iGoogle pages. I can keep track of my appointments, see what's on my to do list, check my RSS feeds, and keep track of what's new on the blogs I'm following. The latest news is right there, as well as the weather.

I can download education podcasts to my iPod, and Skype with classmates and instructors. Now, I can even GoToMeeting.

I am ready to sign up for more online classes, and am looking forward to using the tools in my teaching practice.

Follow me on Twitter: MarciaK49

I love this stuff!

Kindergarten Resources

You can access my new Kindergarten Resources list at
Kindergarten Resources

Moodle, a Tool I Can Really Use!

I have spent the last week looking at a number of Web 2.0 tools that I could incorporate into my teaching practice. I've tweeted, blogged, added bookmarks and shared bookmarks with Diggo, entered course work into forums using Moodle, and researched using Moodle in the courses I teach in the Media Center. A fellow online student graciously let me use a guest account to log on to her Moodle course so that I could see what it was like, and I also logged on to the demos on the Moodle site.

I found it easy to use as a student, and not that difficult to set up as an instructor. Obviously, it takes quite a bit of up front work to bring the class online, but all in all it is a tool that I would be happy to use here at school.

I have some ideas that I plan to present to my administrator, and will show her examples of schools and classes that are already using Moodle.
Wish me luck as I attempt to bring more collaboration to our school.

Twitter and Me

Well, I've finally done it. Yes, I can now tweet. I've tweeted twice now. Once to announce that I had fully joined and another to say I had changed my background. I don't know that I will tweet on a daily basis, but at least I'm trying it on for size. I think that this is something that I could go crazy with. I mean, first I started blogging. Then I started following other people's blogs. Then I added Google Reader so I could keep up with them without actually visiting the blog. Now I'm tweeting and following others. This could become a full time job. How do people do it all? I think I might have to retire from my teaching job in order to keep up! But that defeats the whole purpose of doing this. What is the purpose of doing all of this? To incorporate these tools in to my teaching! To help me find new ways to connect with my students. I think I'm going to have to find a way to balance all of this!

Researching Web 2.0 Tools

The final, and biggest assignment in our class is to source Web 2.0 tools, try out three of them and then choose one of them to focus on and write about in depth. This is a great assignment as it forces you to really get out there and take a hard look at all that is there to be used. I have to say that the task is overwhelming and that one week is not nearly enough time to do a thorough analysis. Here are a couple of the sites that were posted:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/edtools.html
I have visited Kathy Schrock's pages many times, but this is the first time I've used it to find Web 2.0 tools. Her site led me to this one:
http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/
It has some great presentation tools and a lot more.
But this one my friends is the motherlode. You could get lost in here - there is waay too much good stuff! http://www.go2web20.net/

If I'm not back by tomorrow night, it's because I'm lost in this Web 2.0 playground! More later...