Tool #5: Go, Diigo, Go!

I consider myself pretty technologically savvy, but I truly had no idea of the power of social bookmarking. In an overwhelming online environment, social bookmarking can truly bring order out of chaos. Too bad Diigo can't be used on other parts of my life...

I joined Diigo and bookmarked three sites, all having to do with my son's newfound obsession with lighthouses. I visited http://lighthousegetaway.com/, http://www.nps.gov/caha/index.htm, and http://www.obxconnection.com/outer-banks-webcams.htm, and tagged each differently based upon their content.

This can really be an amazing tool for student research and collaboration. By sharing bookmarks and tags in a group, then students could easily share resources. This would likewise work extremely well for teacher collaboration. It could also be a great way for teachers to share specific sites with kids without having to bookmark multiple devices. It's an exciting new tool for me, and I really am looking forward to playing with it more.

Tool #4: A Googol of Possibilities

I really enjoyed monkeying around with Google and its manifold applications today. I had toyed around with Google Docs before, but found it to be difficult to implement at that time, particularly with few folks using Google Docs at that time. Now, with consistent use throughout our campus, I plan on beginning the school year using Google Docs for the many documents that I must share with teachers and campus leadership. Using a template, I began creation of a campus assessment calendar, which last year was posted on a dry-erase board in our workroom. From student information to lab schedules, Google Docs is a fabulous way to share the many documents that fly back and forth among us. It also seems much more "green" and secure than having hard copies of documents all over the place. There are a few people I'll have to wean of the "need" for a hard copy all of the time, though. (This means you, Liska!)

Google Reader is really a nice tool for fostering a collaborative environment. Whether subscribing to the blogs of professional organizations, other teachers, or students, it really makes the keeping track of other blogs streamlined without having to sift through hotlinks or bookmarks.

Google is proving itself to be the Swiss Army Knife of the Internet; it seems there's very little it can't do.

Tool #3 - Long Day = Lame Mashup

I'm loving word clouds, but not at all a fan of trying to get a Wordle saved to post here, so I went to Word It Out instead. I spent the day driving through the eastern North Carolina countryside from the coast to Chapel Hill with an unruly 3-year-old. My word cloud is just a list of the towns we drove through today. My brain isn't capable of much more right now. I can envision this being used to really enrich academic language. Kids could generate a list of words having to do with a topic and then have classmates try to guess their topic. There are many, many possibilities. Academic language is such a challenge, and making vocabulary work novel for kids with higher-level thinking is a challenge for educators. Word cloud tools are a fabulous vehicle for that.

I toyed with almost all of the image generators and had a lot of fun. The possibilities are unlimited for classroom use. Kids often need a way to synthesize the vast amount of information they learn. These multiple sources provide so much choice to kids on how they do that.

Tool #2: Community...in. Cadre...out.

Despite my initial crankiness, I am now getting excited. In the six years (SIX...can you believe it??) I have been in my current role, I have always wanted to create a math committee (or cadre) for my campus. People in education are in love with the word "cadre." Personally, I hate that word. It sounds so harsh and makes me think of an armed militia.

Anyway...I digress. In those six years, I haven't pursued a math committee because of the incredible time demands on teachers. Because of that, I think we have lost many opportunities to build a community of math teachers and learners. I really feel that a campus math instruction blog could be an incredible resource for our campus. There are so many fabulous ideas out there, but our time is so limited that we often miss out on those synergies we could create with more collaboration. A blog offers so much that a committee with scheduled meetings does not. It's ongoing, open to everyone, and online commenting offers a certain degree of comfort that people often lose when speaking in person. I now really want to create a blog for that purpose and get it rolling.

I think the thing that most struck me as I read about effective commenting is to keep it conversational. Acknowledging commenters and asking questions can do a great deal to keep the conversation going.

I have now commented on Maria's Modern Life, Beth's Blog, Number Antics, Coyne's Cool Kids, and Live 2 Learn & Learn 2 Live. I have also commented on my own blog. Do I get extra credit?

Tool #1 Reflection

It's fun getting started with this, but I am a bit concerned about how the course is going to go given the lack of discrimination in this first tool between the "need to knows" and "nice to knows." The blog setup is, by all means, a need to know. The avatar, however, is at best a nice to know, and it really seemed to be a waste of time. Perhaps I'm just tired and cranky.

I can see blogging as being a very useful tool in the classroom. It can definitely foster a collaborative environment where teachers and students can all share their thought processes and solutions to problems.