Reading YA

I have been trying to catch up on the YA books on my TBR pile so that I can donate them to my HS Media Center.

After a long wait and much anticipation, I just read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. I had booktalked The Hunger Games with my sixth graders the first day of school and have 17 kids on the waiting list for that one. I'm sure the list will be just as long for Catching Fire.

I don't want to spoil anything for those who have not read The Hunger Games yet. (But, why haven't you? Put it on the top of your TBR pile right now! You won't regret it.) So I will just say that this episode is just as exciting and enthralling as the first episode. Beware though that it ends with a cliffhanger. You too will be haunting the internet to find out when the third (and final?) book will be available.

Here is the book trailer:

My First Movie

Move over, Steven Speilberg! I am a movie maker!

This was my cool web discovery of the day. Interesting philosophy and a cool web 2.0 tool too!

Angela Maiers Promise Poem

View more documents from Mike Sansone.

Thing 47: Evaluation

That's it. I have run out of time to complete all of the More 23 Things. I looked at each one of the ones I didn't complete and plan to work on some of them at some time in the future.

This round was different for me. I skipped around a lot. I started by reading all of the "things" and thinking that I really wasn't too enthused about any of them. They all looked like they would take much more time than they would save. I don't really think that my opinion has changed after working through the majority of the things.

I think that screencasting has a lot of applicability to my teaching. I do plan to make more use of it. I would like to do digital storytelling with my students. I definitely want to explore GoogleDocs with my students.

Twitter -- not so much. I did decide to follow some people. This doesn't seem like it will be a source of more information for me. Maybe I chose the wrong people to follow. I did put a Twitter widget on one of my iGoogle pages so that I can check it more frequently.

Pandora and Hulu might be useful but I don't have time to watch what I already want to watch on Broadcast TV. I can't imagine finding the time to watch more on my computer. The music will be more useful. However, I have my iPod which already has all my favorite music.

It was nice to refresh my memory about some of the BigHugeLabs tools. Again, I want to share those with my students too.

I liked the whole concept of the 23 things. I liked being able to pick and choose which ones interested me and being able to do them when I had the time. Self-directed and self-paced is my favorite way to learn.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

I'm in the cloud. My personal email is gmail because I got tired of having to switch all my email addresses when I changed internet service providers. I am starting to move my documents into GoogleDocs. I have a Flickr account and a Photobucket account.

I even have a Facebook page and a MySpace page but only because I needed them for the first 23 Things. I check them only when I get a message from them telling me that something new is happening. I did manage to connect with someone on Facebook that I haven't heard from since I graduated from college in 1972. She found me! I think that we are actually going to be getting together soon to catch up on our lives.

I very much appreciate the ability to access my stuff no matter where I am. I have already wanted some information stored in my school's E drive since I got home and wish that I would have transferred that document to my GoogleDocs. Transferring more files is going to be first on my to do list when school starts in the fall.

I would like to teach my sixth grade students about GoogleDocs because I think that would help them a lot in their high school career. I don't know how often kids have told me that the document was at home or, worse yet, on their flash drive but unopenable because it is a different version of the programs we use at school. My concern there is that they need to have email addresses to access GoogleDocs and to collaborate. We don't give the kids email accounts primarily because we don't want to manage or police them. Many parents don't want their young kids to have email for the same reasons. But it sure would be useful!

I just got something from the Official Google Blog about Google Apps for Education that I really want to run by our school technology people. I think that would give us more control without more work.

I think that cloud computing is the wave of the future. I'd rather surf on it than be drowned by it.

Thing 38: Screencasting

I have tried out ScreenToaster and not had any luck with it. I need better directions. I tried to make a screencast of adding a URL to my Delicious account.

One of these days I will download one of the free ones and try again. I can see that this would be very useful as I am teaching students how to do things. However, I will have to download this and create my screencasts at work. At home I am using Vista and at work we are using Windows XP. Things just don't look the same.

I did just order a microphone for my computer as it looks like that will be a useful accessory for a number of these Things. However, my microphone won't arrive for a few days.

This is a "set it aside until I'm back at work" thing.

Kids Today

Kids today! How will we keep up? Do we even have a chance to lead? We need to be a community of learners.

I spent a little time this evening searching for Education 2.0 on YouTube and found a number of interesting videos. This one is my favorite so far.