RSS feeds

Well, if I understand this correctly, I already have a RSS feed on my Delicious account. I can set it up to where it will pop up anytime I want something tagged to show up. For example, if I want to see every time someone bookmarks something with whales, it will pop up. I also use it on Facebook. I don't look at anything else - just the little orange icons that pop up telling me something pertains to me. I did check out the Feed My Inbox website and that was pretty cool. You can search for feeds or have it pop up whenever there is a new feed and it will email it to you. I personally don't want that many emails. I don't check mine enough as it is, my family will tell you! But that is neat that you can set that and it will do the work for you.

10 things that make me go HMMMM about technology in education

1. How are we supposed to use more technology when we have to share 1 laptop cart with the whole building?
2. Why does technology not work for me when it works for everyone else? Seriously, this is not a complaint. Famous story of mine: I was Editor in Chief of the high school newspaper. I was laying out a page. I tried to put a byline under someone's name. You literally copy and paste it. Called the teacher over. Watch this. Did it right, still didn't work. He did the EXACT SAME THING that I did and it worked for him. He laughed, I refrained from throwing something at him.
3. I wonder why people feel the need to post important information that is private on social networks such as Facebook. Is there a list of guidelines somewhere telling you what is appropriate?
4. Because, if adults aren't being ethical with their technology, how are children supposed to learn ethics?
5. Why does our funding get cut when we need technilogical advances but football players go on strike when they make more in one year than I will make in my lifetime?
6. How am I supposed to keep up with everything in technology without losing my sanity!? (It's already slipping...)
7. What happened to paper?
8. How do you teach a 7-year-old about the Internet when they can barely type their name under a minute?
9. How do I get an attitude ajustment to teach that 7 year old about the Internet, let alone 20 of them? :P
10. The only thing that stays the same is everything changes. I stole that from a country song. It's true though. My question: Why can't something stay the same? Is that really so bad???

23 things photo story

  This was taken by Meleah Reardon in Canada. She actually caught the sun on the mountains at just the right time. Here is the link to the bigger picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meleahrubino/6117755348/in/faves-67393067@N02/

I thought Flikr was very easy to use! I went ahead and opened an account since it was free. It literally took less than a minute. Everything was easy to find. I haven't uploaded anything yet, but I saw where to do it at and it looks just like loading them onto Facebook or something. Definitely something I will be playing with in the future!

23 things webinar

    Fascinating Fiction for
Teens and Kids

I watched this webinar from OPAL. It was about how the library chose books either in Braille or in audio to get sent to them every month so that they were able to have them available for people. It was actually pretty interesting because they only get so many books a month and they described how they broke down the percentages of fiction and non-fiction books as well as what titles they selected. The neatest part was that you could ask questions and they would stop right there and answer your question (this was a recording of a previous one). It was very interactive and that's how they wanted it to be. I think webinars are fantastic! So many people already use them and they will only continue to grow. Even  small businesses will be able to utilize webinars because they are cheaper than flying someone around the country. They are also more convenient, especially since they are interactive. I think they are here to stay!

National Library Service

for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

 Library of Congress

Jill C. Garcia

 Selection Librarian

Collection Development Section

Instructional Design

"Education has missed the boat, with respect to instructional design. Teachers come up with lesson plans on the fly, with little thought to why they are presenting information or even who their audience is. Teacher training, at the university level and during Professional development, needs to focus on helping teachers become comfortable with instructional design principles."

Teachers come up with a lot of things on the fly, but it's because something comes up and they have to. I do think that teachers tend to go with lesson plans from last year and forget to make revision if the lesson went well. In college during my undergrad, I had to write out these lesson plans that were two pages long for one activity to make sure I got every part of instructional design covered - I had to put who my audience was, what special needs their were, how I was going to keep them engaged, design assessments to make sure the objective was taught, etc. Once I became a teacher, I tried to do that, but it takes forever! Also, the basals that we use have most of those components in them and it's easy to simply rely on that and add supplemental  activities only when time allows (which, let's face it, is hardly ever!) As a grade level, we do look at our students, their needs, and our objectives.  I do try to tweak lessons to fit my class, but I could do more. That is why I am still learning and working on it!

Online community

• I chose Facebook, like so many others I saw. That's one of the reasons I chose it - everyone knows about it and almost everyone uses it!
• I use this to keep up with people, but also as a PLN. I can ask any of my teacher friends that live in a different state how they do Back to School night or Meet Your Teacher night and get lots of great ideas. Then other friends can reply, telling what they remember that was a fun activity.
• I don't see my library using it, just because my school is small and it only has students K-2. Parents would have to do most of the writing on the wall/checking on it/etc.

I believe educational technology is...

I believe educational technology is how you use technology to help you learn anything. If you don't use it the right way, you could actually create more work instead of saving yourself work. Learning how to use the technology to your advantage is the key. Educational technology is using your critical thinking skills and applying them to move forward in this generation where a new technological toy or program is popping up every day.