Thing 6

I can honestly say after loading up my own photos to flickr I may begin to use this as a primary use for my photos. I have a Mac and home that gives me the ability to take photos from my camera and then directly load them to Facebook which is my main method for showing off my obsessive tendencies to take pictures of my son (and soon to be daughter). Yet, I think that I may use flickr in the future to keep them and send them to those people who are not part of the facebook community, plus it is another way to make sure that I never loose those photos. Sadly, a few months ago my husband decided to reformat our other computer not realizing that all of our family photos were on there (including our honeymoon, Alaskan Cruise, and all of my son's photos from birth to age two) were stored on there and not printed. We ended up loosing a lot of very important and priceless photos. Ever since then I have been looking for a place other than facebook and the computer to store my images and I think flickr may be it. Plus I loved the easy of uploading (fast even from school) and how easy it was to label and tag.

Thing 5

I was very impressed by what flickr had to offer. I never realized that it was something beyond just another photo website. I personally have used places like Kodak and snapfish for all my personal photos. I never realized that this was a great outlet for school type photos as well.

The photo I selected was of Andrew Carnegie and his wife. The reason I decided to look at the Library of Congress photos is my students are currently in the library working on a primary source photo project of the Gilded Age. I wanted to see what types of offerings flickr had for my students. Although they did not have a tremendous amount of photos that students would use for this project, they did have a lot of unique photos that they really could not find elsewhere. Also, I think this is a useful site to introduce my students to as another search option for graphic historical sources

On a personal note I may try switching to flickr for my photo sharing it looks like it has more of sharing capacity then Kodak in that I can invite people and then after a period of time restrict their access. I like to show off my photos to friends and family, but I don't really like the idea that years later they can still have access to my photos.

Thing Four

Although I already had an iGoogle homepage from another tech PD I did with Maureen and Joan I had fun updating it with some new gadgets (the hamster with the wheel) and adding a few new news feds from the Hartford Courant as well as Google News which I thought offered a wider world news feed then CNN did. My only compaint is that once you pick a theme (mine was valentines day) you can't change the font color which made some things hard to read. I will be sure to pick an easier to read St. Patrick's day theme in a month

Thing 3

After taking sometime to explore other people's education blogs I have found that there are so many more uses for blogs then I was previously aware. So many of these blogs were used for various purposes other than your basic homework/organizational classroom tools. I even looked at some there were almost a lesson/activity in their own right. I found one teacher off the blog list that was in the process of having this classroom Skype with another teacher across the country for a joint class session. This was amazing. I think back to how excited I used to get at the thought of a pen pal letter in elementary school, what about a lesson and collaborative working with a student who lives across the country or perhaps the world.

When I look at other people's blogs I start to realize the endless possibilities that are out there for putting technology into my classroom

Thing 1 and Thing 2

So originally I signed up for this because it looked easy and a great way to put an extra credit in the bank for some day when I needed one. Now looking at what we will be working on I am excited. I have always loved to have the newest tech stuff in my classroom and love to use it with my students.

This year I have really been working hard with my students to get into Blog and Wiki use. We use blogs weekly in my psychology class and use a Wiki for informational purposes. I am always looking for something to grab the attention of kids who spend most of their day glued to their technology.

Personally, I love this stuff. I have my own blog that I talk about mom stuff and review books (I even do some for publishing companies), I love my new kindle, I am a full blown facebook addict, and my newest addiction is my cell phone that now has unlimited texting and Internet access (thank god I couldn't afford an iPhone or I may never have left my couch).

I can't wait to see what the rest of our Things are!!!

PS-I had way to much fun designing my avatar for this!!!!