ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Thing Ten: Image Generators

I used HeaderBar.com to generate a personalized blog header for this course. I also tried the ImageChef link to access Poetry Blender and created an image with a simple, animated message.
I played around with many of the options provided and it seems to me like these image generators can be applied mostly as creativity tools to enhance the overall finish of student products such as personal blogs, classroom pages, ppts., writing projects, etc. As of right now I am not quite sure with any other ideas of curriculum application other than for this, but I hope to read of other ideas from class members.

Thing Nine: Useful Blogs and Newsfeeds

I liked Technorati as a resource for locating useful blogs. What I really liked was the organization: grouping by subject, ranking by followers, summary of blog, user reviews.
As a professinal resource, I liked Edublog, which lists the award winning blogs by categories.
By far the most confusing for me was Syndic8.com. While I'm not the most technology/computer literate person, I'm not the worst either, but Syndic8.com simply was out of my understanding.
The most unusual one (although fun for those days when there's not much else to do) is Cool Tools which I found through Bloglines. It contains review of new or old tools such as hardware, appliances, software, websites, and other "tools" that have been used and reviewed by others. I liked that the reviews are from actual users and not commercial.
What I like to do for finding other blogs to follow is to look at the blogrolls of those blogs which I've found usefuk/interesting and then locate similar blogs.

Thing Eight: RSS Feeds

Wow! RSS are great to know about! It's unbelievably easy to set up and use and the information that is of personal interest is very easy to follow without having to open so many sites and go through old information. I signed up for several of the blogs on School Library Journal since this is important in keeping up with my professional life.

I did a quick search on using blogs and RSS applications for schools and one idea I liked was for maintaining an ongoing discussion of a novel being read in class or as a book club. Participants could post and check for new comments provided by other readers until the next face to face meeting. Parents could also have an opportunity of joining in and being part of what the students are reading by visiting the blog.

Updated:Thing Three: Set up Blog and Avatar

For Thing Three the assignment asked that we become familiar wtih avatars and choose one for this course. I've tried doing this through yahoo avatars with no such luck. As another member posted, the only exporting that seems to be possible at this time is for Facebook. Am I missing something? I did a search for free avatars and downloaded one from a different site. I believe I've followed the process correctly as I've posted comments on other blogs and I see my chosen avatar there.

Thing Seven: Captioner & Jigsaw

Two other web apps that I really liked were Captioner and Jigsaw. I think both could add to student learning experiences. For example, if you've had a chance to explore Captioner, you'll see right away that it is a wonderful tool for adding captions (of course) to digital photographs. This tool could be a great addition to a creative writing experience of creating one's own graphic story or comic strip. Students would be writing, applying varied punctuation as needed, learning about the essence of voice from characters, etc.
Jigsaw, I thought right away would be a great tool for vocabulary development. Pictures or images could become jigsaw puzzles and it could be a classroom center activity to learn and review vocabulary words. Students would complete the puzzle and match the image with a list of words. Rotate after every certain number of minutes and have fun reviewing a different voc. word. It's hands-on, encourages cooperation. Of course, it would also serve as a beautiful gift for Father's/Mohter's Day!

Thing Six: Flickr Mashups & Third Party Sites

Trading Card Created using the Trading CardMaker. Fun. I would say one library or classroom application could be for use in a book club. Students could create trading cards for every book read with most important book info and reviews. Or these could also be created beforehand by library staff and used to promote a genre of the month such as "Mystery" "Forgotten Books" "marvels of the world", etc. Students would be encouraged to read all in a list or collection and collect all of the trading cards.