TweetDeck and Twitter

I have a confessions to make. Yes, I'm a twitter junkie. I have totally become hooked on Twitter. I twitter in the morning, at noon, and before I go to bed. I have twittees from all corners of North America. I follow education tweets, teaching tweets, fitness tweets, and alas, Coquitlam tweets. I am absolutely amazed at the things I've learned.

For those of you who don't know what Twitter is, it's a social networking site. It allows you to converse in 140 letters or less, what's going on and share different websites that are pertinent to your areas of interest. You can follow different tweeters whom you think are interesting or who seem to be helpful. One of my favourite tweeters is a teacher from Boston who tweets the best free sites for teachers. If you have a question about something, tweet it; someone will answer it!

If you haven't discovered this yet, check out the Twitter site. It's a great place to learn things and hear things!

I'm officially a 'newbie'!

I began this morning with coffee and my computer. I was determined to finish, or at least start on my lesson for SFU that's due next Wednesday. I'm supposed to take a lesson I've taught and turn it into a 'technology' lesson. So I got to work. Lo and behold, I figured out what I was going to do.

Now, I won't bore you with the lesson details but I got very excited when I actually figured out how to do something new. There was a page I wasn't able to copy that I needed for the kids. I took a picture of the page with Jing and then was able to upload that image onto my virtual classroom site. I was so proud of myself; for about five minutes. Then it started. The 14 year-old got up. When I excitedly showed her what I had done, she laughed and then said, "But mom, why didn't you just use paint? Everyone uses that!". Of course my answer was, "Paint? What the bleep is that?" Now, I've been spending an awful lot of my time exploring my computer and never come across 'paint'. Apparently, it's been hiding in my accessories section. The 14 year-old proceeded to show me that there's a button on the keyboard that takes a picture of the page. Then you open paint, copy the page in and voila! You can actually edit, draw boxes and other stuff. Then she wrote down in my notebook, step-by-step how to do this. Boy, was she patient and did I feel dumb!

Needless to say, I guess I'll be playing around with this program in the next bit. Who knew that teenagers actually have a purpose!

On Becoming a Techno-Geek

I've been thinking lately about how much I actually don't know. In fact, I really am down-right stupid. I have so many sites down-loaded onto my computer, but I can't seem to figure out a good place to house my e-portfolio.

What's an e-portfolio, you are probably asking (especially if you're family). My main assignment for Simon Fraser is to 'house' all my learning 'artefacts' in cyber-space. This sounded great when it was first mentioned. However, it's much more difficult. There are only a few sites that you can do this on. Seeing as I can't decide what to make for dinner, I'm finding this difficult. This e-portfolio has to have videos and pictures and writing and all sorts of other stuff (that's a technical term).

Maybe, if my life only consisted of trying to find this elusive site, I'd be finished by now. Alas, parents, teenagers, husbands, students, etc. seem to be taking my time right now.

Good thing it's only a pass/fail course!!!!!

Too Much Time on Their Hands

It has come to my attention, via 10 emails, that I have not blogged for a few days. Things must be really desperate if all you live for is reading my useless rambings! So...I thought I'd better post before I receive another 10!

Recently, I spent some time experimenting with something called voicethreads. I know that many of you thought I was just wasting time. I hate to disappoint you all, but I was actually doing school work. Unfortunately, you all were just guinea pigs!

At school right now, I am working on social responsibility with my two social studies classes. The main focus of our unit is the Holocaust. From there we are talking about all sorts of issues. My intent with voicethreads is to start a discussion board with my students. Just like I did in my experiment, I can upload a video or picture and invite my classes to have a discussion about what they are looking at or reading. I think that this might turn out to be a very valuable tool and am very excited about trying it out. That's what I'll be spending my weekend working on.

I know...now who doesn't have a life?????????????????

On Being a Life-Long Learner

Since I began my SFU course in January, I have been exploring the world of the internet as an educational tool. Who knew that there was a world outside of e-mails and spider solitaire! I can't believe all the things I've learned. The only problem is that now I belong to so many sites, I have to write everything down so I remember my usernames and passwords. It would make life a lot easier if I could use the same ones for all sites. But oh no! Some sites want numbers, some sites want capitals, some want my first-born!

Anyways, here's some sites I've been exploring:

• education/glogster


• animoto


• voicethread


• Lit to Go


• Prezi.com


• photo laboratory


• educational blogs


• delicious.com


• google documents


• introduction to podcasts


• wordle


• freemind


• widgets

And the list goes on. Have I really explored these? Of course not! Who has time for that. I've spent most of my time joining these sites; I haven't a clue what I'm doing!!!!!

Hopefully, in the next little while, I'll be able to actually try these out. I'll keep you posted on what I learn! Perhaps I'll even send you links to things like my e-portfolio that I'm supposed to have started!

In the meantime, hang in there! I promise I'll share!

The academic world!

I've just finished reading 80 billion articles on self-reflection and have discovered one thing! I am very tired of thinking! I think I'll reflect on the fact that I need some good sleep and a spa day! Surely by the age of 43, I've done enough self-reflection.

Actually, the articles all have to do with self-reflection of your teaching practice. The articles also dealt with being critical of what you do. As teachers I think that this is a given. I know that I'm not perfect (damn near close to it, though!). There are a lot of ideas I have floating around in my head that I'd like to try with my students. However, it's quite difficult when the resources aren't there.

Alas, I digress...that's a totally different blog!

I have a bone to pick...

I was talking to my mother yesterday. To provide a bit of background, my mom had a knee replacement two weeks ago and is undergoing physio and blood tests, not to mention pain. She's 82 years old. My father, who adores her, is 83 and the most honest man you could ever meet. In my whole life, my father has only yelled at me twice (for which I'll keep secret!). He's a very patient man who spent his working life teaching young men in jail and then through technical school, young men and women, how to do auto body work. He's the light of my life.

Anyways...when I asked my mom what was going on yesterday, she mentioned that my dad was at ICBC because someone claimed he had backed into him with his van and done damage to his vehicle. Now my dad, even though he's elderly, is a very honest man. He figured that maybe he could be responsible so he checked his van...nothing there. Upon further conversation with my mother, I discovered that this was not the first time this had happened. In fact, he had been accused of this once before (I didn't know...but we won't get into that now!).

So, my dad has to spend two wasted hours at ICBC with my mom at home with no help. This is ridiculous. There are actually people out there who are watching for elderly people to blame their stupidity on. I am so angry about this that I'm ready to go to the newspapers about it.

What do you thing?????? Should I????? Or am I overreacting??????

Let me know.