Thing 13

IDEA #1: Search De.licio.us to find links for student assignments. I got a couple of ideas from this part of the assignment. How to incorporate these into next school year is something for me to work on over the summer.

I guess we'll see if this works out or not as we get closer to next school year and I get more comfortable with how to make this a part of my classes.

IDEA #2: Create your own De.licio.us bookmarks for various subjects/resources to use with student assignments. Since we have several things that we use our AP Biology blog for and since we have several internet type of assignments for all of the biology classes, I think this idea will have some immediate use for me. I just have to sit down and spend a little time creating these, but in the long run it should be a good tool to use.

Week 11 + 12

I investigated several sites on the Awards list and was surprised to see how many of the sites I already make use of. Google Maps, Wikispaces, Craigslist, CitySearch, Google Earth, iMedix, Pandora are all sites that I have anywhere from to some to great experience with.
I'm currently working on a way to incorporate Wikispaces into my Honors Biology classes, although I still am not sure how this can be done with meaningful results. A lot of this stuff is fun and cool to explore, but as regards doing something with this for a targeted result with my class curriculum, I do not feel that I have found something yet. Using some of this at this point seems like just another fad to add to what we now do. We have problems with the kids focusing on the material and I think all of  these distractions create just another way for the kids to be distracted from the topic at hand.
I realize that the kids are undoubtedly making use of many of these sites already and perhaps know them better than I certainly could how to use them, but I in most of these areas that I have tried to incorporate into my class usage, there is still the issue of getting the kids to actually think about what they are doing. If we can find the key to getting more thought process out of the students, that would be something I would much more motivated to investigate and utilize.

Thing 10

I have been playing with Image Chef - an image generator - and I think this exercise could provide something possible during updates of my web site and maybe even for spicing up some of my class handouts.

Week 5 - Thing 9

I added several RSS Feeds to my Google Reader account - some related to science and some related to education. I tend to think that the science ones will be more useful than the education ones. I don't know how inclusive the list that I chose from really was. Nothing jumped up and grabbed me as info that I just had to have at a moment's notice.

Week 4 - Thing 8

I set up a Google Reader account and have added several feeds for various topics: Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Miami Dolphins football, and Swimming. What do I like about RSS and newsreaders? I'm not sure yet since I have not been following any of these feeds yet, but the early thought is that I can find topics of interest all in one place and can keep up with certain things without spending as much time as in the past. How do I think I might be able to use this technology in my school or personal life? Again, early idea is that I can save myself time while keeping up with topics that I normally follow week to week. I'll have to spend more time thinking about school applications. Patty's idea that this would make following student blogs easier is a possibility. I'll have to explore the idea to a deeper level and see what develops.

Week 3 - Think 7

I have reviewed several of the Social Networking Sites and see a couple that might be incorporated into several of my classes. I do like the flickr option "Tell a Story in 5 Frames." I think we could find a creative way of using this to explain or define certain biological processes. I think I will cogitate on this idea to see if something is workable.

Week 3 - Thing 6

I made this "trading card" on the Trading Card Maker for the study of mash-ups. I was disappointed that several attempts at a number of these sites did not work. This was my 4th attempt at making a Trading Card. I cannot figure out why some pictures would not upload, particularly since this one was larger than one of the other photos I tried to upload. Perhaps the pictures need to be in some specific (although unspecified) format in order for them to upload.
Either way, the process was easy enough to figure out.