Week 5 - Thing 11

I heard an interesting story on NPR today about how people are turning to the Internet for medical information and help. Particularly, people are building online communities using social networking sites to talk to each other about their health. People are using things like blogs to discuss symptoms and treatments and to support one another through illnesses. In the list of Award Winning sites, there is a site called TuDiabetes.org which is a Ning-like site for people affected by diabetes.

I already belong to a Ning for MAIS-Tec. Among other things, our Ning is a great way for members sub-divide into groups for discussions of special interests.

Week 5 - Thing 10

This is an image I created using ImageChef.

Week 4 - Thing 9

Topix.net lets you get community news from any zipcode in the nation. I spent a few minutes looking at the news from my home town, Perryville, MO. Google and Yahoo offer many choices of feeds too. I'm going to look around for the best feed for World and National news stories (and maybe American Idol :) .
You can also search Topix by keyword. This could be a great tool for a Current Events class. Just enter a current topic that is making headlines and your search results will give you links to related online news stories from sources all over the country.

Week 4 - Thing 8

I just set up an RSS feed using Google Reader, and guess what? I am following all of your blogs! This will be a lot easier than checking each blog for new items. If you ever have your students set up individual blogs, this would definitely help you keep track of their work.

Week 3 - Thing 7

The article at the end of "Thing 7", Social Networking Sites - what are they and how are they used?, is quite thought provoking. Schools are looking at things like Facebook as potential platforms for teaching and learning. I believe that CBHS has to investigate the pros and cons of using Social Networking for class assignments. Sounds like a good item for the Technology Plan!

Week 3, Thing 6

I have heard the term "mashup" before, but wasn't quite sure what that meant. This exercise helps (a little). I spent some time in FD Toys'Trading Card Maker. It was kind of weird to see all the librarians who have made and exchanged Trading Cards of themselves! (no offense, Ellen). A possible curriculum connection could be to have students make trading cards of Historical or Literary figures.

Week 3 - Thing 5

This is one of the photos I posted in my new Flickr account. I'm glad Flickr is included in the Classroom Learning 2.0 project because we are considering using the Flickr uploadr to host photos for our school due to limited server space of our own. After spending some time in Flickr, I've discovered there is so much more to learn!

The Big Huge Labs site has great potential for classroom application. Students could create a magazine cover pertaining to a subject they are studying and then imbed hyperlinks to articles they would write on each subtopic listed on the cover. The Librarian Trading Cards were interesting!