The Teacher's Aid

How sad that my class is over and all my “Virtual Friends” will go away and not let me know what they think. I have throughly enjoyed this course but find it difficult to navigate my way through a class once school got started again. Loved all the things I learned and reallize I have much more to learn! Goodbye 2.0 World! I promise to come visit real soon!

Wow! If I wasn’t overwhelmed before I sure am now! I do love the site Web 2.0. I find it interesting to see what all these other teachers are doing. The most interesting thing I found out about Twitter was that some teachers were using it to remind their students of upcoming due dates of assignments and sending out of a question of the day kinda thing. I think that I am not ready for that yet… but I do think that for some of us it could work. I liked the recommendation that you start by “following” people you already know and trust. I am a member of twitter but didn’t before think of it as an educational tool. I think we need to be open to these ideas. Children are so much more advanced than we are! We can’t ask them to be so socially connected through technology and then come to school and lay all that down and not be bored. Like I have said in previous posts I don’t know “how” I can integrate this into the classroom but I know it needs to be done and I will know how and when it is appropriate because of this class.

Have a wonderful day and now I am going to update my facebook status!

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This song makes me feel sad for the end of summer but love it!

I hate to keep repeating myself but I love to follow blogs and one of my favorites that comes in to my reader is I Am Baker. I read this recipe for Zucchini cupcakes with this yummy cream cheese frosting. I love this blog because the pictures are beautiful, the recipes are not too difficult. I especially love that it comes into my reader and I feel no need to save , organize or delete it.

If you love to bake go to this blog. I think you will think it is very “sweet”.

I made my custom page on Pageflakes. I like that place! I added the weather and local news to my home page. I noticed it also had a reader like google. I can’t get started with that because I will never get offline! I also checked out Netvibes. I really thought that Pageflakes had better content and page setup!

I was waiting for someone to invite me to comment or collaborate on a document… but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. I am creating a spreadsheet for my Sunday School Class that has the name and address, e-mail address, phone number, birthday, and anniversary of each class member. I am sending it out with the information that I have obtained in class for verification and for the class members to add in the missing information. I will let you know how that works out. I am interested in google docs and think it will be great to use for communication in planning field trips, parties, and donations from parents.

I hope everyone is doing well and hope to “collaborate” with you soon!

I cheated a little on this “Thing”. I am very familiar with you tube. This is a song that touches my heart and soul. I am glad I know who is “holding” me! I was pleased to learn how we can block other videos and be able to present videos in the classroom.

I will NOT embed my “podcast” here! It was worse that I feared! I sound silly, southern and uneducated!! So sorry folks! I hope you will not listen to it!

Sorry now that I am over the rampage…. I think podcasts are wonderful sources for children to learn to record and learn to speak with more confidence than this lady!

Now I must go delete these off my desktop and itunes before they download on all the families Ipods…. how humiliating

Well, I must confess… I read ahead! I felt it coming and I couldn’t wait. I have been at Camp Invention this week at school. I had to do the  camp cheer and I had to use the microphone. I know I am “Southern” sounding so the fear will come when I have to record my own podcast! That is crazy!!!!! I do not want to hear myself and neither does anyone one else…. sorry I am way off track.

I signed up for several podcasts on itunes. Some I was interested in I noticed had not updated since 2008. I already feel behind so I went on to others. I did subscribe to Grammar Girl as suggested to us and then found some others that were good for me.  Manic Mommies, Mommycast and Cooking with the Moms are the ones I subscribed to. These are supposed to help my organize my life and help me do it all better! Do you think they would do my podcast for me?  have to say that I prefer to see the people and things than to just hear it. Not crazy about Podcasts at the moment but in awe of how good their voices sound!

I love to read. I have a hard time keeping up with the reading from my Sunday School class during the school year. But….. during the summer I go wild! I read educational stuff, bestsellers, classics, self-help, whatever my kids are assigned to read in school etc. So when I saw this website I was very excited. I loved the groups you can join and list the books that you will be reading. It looks like they started in January as a New Year’s resolution of sorts. I love it! Most of them gave themselves a goal of 50 books or more!

I also found the part of the website where you can win books or sign up for the program Early Reviewers to receive free books (if you are chosen) to review for authors. I signed up and can’t wait to find out if I will receive any books!

I am not sure how this can be used in the classroom. I believe older students will take to this right away but elementary age will need some guidance. This might be something fabulous for our Media Specialist. I believe it might help cover the material required in books that the children are required to read. I am not sure yet.

I just know that  Library Thing, you make my heart sing! ♥♥♥