7/15/10 Class Blog

So today we learned about many of the Google Apps, PLN, Twitter, RSS, Simple Bookmarking (Delicious), and Nings and Wikis that would be useful for us entering into the school media program.

Many of the Google Apps we learned about I already used often (such as some of the search options and language tools, Books, Earth, Docs, and Sites) but I had never thought to use them in ways like this. The Google Lit Trips was especially interesting. When I was a kid I always enjoyed learning about the areas that the setting of the book was based on. I thought the example in class of Around the World in 80 Days is a particularly interesting example because so many different areas are visited throughout the course of the book, so for every new place a teacher could have a mini unit about that area. I also liked the new search functions she showed us, they will definitely change how I search for information in the future and I may have to check out Google News. I never used it before and it looks like a great way to keep up to date on what's going on in the world.

I had never used Delicious before either but I understood the general concept. It's a really interesting site and I'll definitely have to check it out for personal use. It'll be a lot easier to organize the websites I use and find new ones with it.

Twitter I am pretty familiar with, I had to join for a German class about a year ago (I also had to join a Ning for class) however we didn't really use either very much. Ning was mainly for uploading and watching videos and we tried to get Germans to tweet back to us in German...I tried at least 3 different people but no one ever responded. Oh well.

I thought using Skype in the classroom was really cool, getting authors and other interesting teachers to talk to the classroom for a period sounds exciting and I know the kids would love it too. That is definitely something I would try to use in my classroom.

I had also never tried a RSS before but now that I have it, I'll definitely check it out!

That's about it so far!