The following rather lengthy post gives my observations while "playing" with various blog sites I visited.
Twitter
Day 1 on Twitter had me realize many things. First, getting an account was easy, finding the real Stephenie Meyer’s Twitter was a bit harder. (I am still not sure if the one I looked at was real.) Second, by the end of my first day on Twitter, I had one follower, but after being initially happy that she found me, I think she realized that she didn’t know me and chose to ” unfollow” me. Second, I chose to follow stores I knew, authors, librarians, libraries, a few friends, some food sites, my college, and a humor site. (Who doesn’t like a good laugh?) Third I observed that while most people don’t use complete sentences (which I am ok with), I really can’t stand the lack of use of punctuation, capital letters, and uncommon slang. Lastly, I was not sure what the “#priorities” meant, but I am thinking it is some sort of ongoing list. It only took me until day 3 to figure out that # is a hashtag and a way to categorize your post and make it easier to find for people looking for related material.
I am still playing around with the security settings, background colors and design, finding people to follow, linking it to my blog, and reading tweets. (I still think it should be “twits,” but understand that that would just be bad PR.) It is easy to lose a few hours trying to follow several people, let alone my mere 30, and all of the links that these tweets lead me to discover.
My initial thoughts were that this is great for written “sound bites.” Like many others, I envision a teen using their Iphone or Blackberry to post their latest epiphany to the world. I never realized that this could have business and school uses. I currently do not have access to a computer during the school day on a regular basis and my cell phone doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles, so I don’t know how practical this would be for me as a school tool right now.
Blogger
While I had a blog from my previous course I tried to do something different with it. I couldn’t bring myself to change the book backdrop because it is so “schoolish” so I spent a few hours navigating a possible connection between Twitter and my Blog. After a while of this, I finally went to Google for some answers.
A positive for me is that I can write as little or as much as I want on my blog. I am not limited to a short one sentence blurb, as in the case with Twitter. I like how I could link my Blog to my Twitter account along with listing those that I could find of other classmates and Barb, of course. I like how this helped me organize all of the Twitter accounts a little better.
Edublogs
I loved the home page of this site. It was uncluttered and colorful. Somehow, it put me immediately at ease. I liked how the 1st thing that I saw at the top of the page was “Why Edublogs?” and next to it “Help & Support.” I liked how the edublogs are broken down further into students, teachers, and campuses. They seemed to address some of the most common concerns in blogging and schools on that page. From the layout I knew exactly where I wanted to go to have my questions answered. The word FREE jumped out at me as well. I liked that it was allowed by most school filters because it was an all education site. The privacy settings took a little digging to figure out. While the free option blog has privacy to search engines, only the paid options offer full privacy with security. I found the Top 10 Ways to use Edublog to Teach very interesting. I realized that my alma mater also is offers a campus blog through Edublog.
LiveJournal
In contrast to Edublog, LiveJournal immediately seemed cluttered and too commercial. The prominent add for Ideeli designer boots along with the virtual gift shop, with its animated gifts below it, drew my initial attention. The site was very drab and cluttered. The help options were a little less obvious as was maneuvering the site. LiveJournal claims to be a global community where you can customize your own personal journal along with imbedding multimedia options or social networking with friends or those with similar interests. They make it easy to stay connected while on the go with options for email notification, text messaging, and IM. Again, I found that my alma mater was part of this as well.
WordPress
On first glance, WordPress seemed to offer diversity with samples of different types of blogs on their home page. I loved that they have a 10 step walk-through guide for the nervous and technically challenged. (They definitely market to real people like me.) I like how they step-by-step walk you through the set up steps with actual screen visuals. Their words of wisdom, “Blogs need a focus.” make so much sense while their approach to it was very humorous.
Some blogs were related to national news, humor, cooking, and technology. One blog that caught my eye was titled The Future of Texbooks in a Digitized World. I was amazed to find out that there is a California Law requiring the use of electronic textbooks by 2020 in all primary and secondary schools. (After further clicking, I found that the law requires access to all textbooks on line that are used in print form.) The post talks about how newspapers were slow to react and nearly went under financially as a result. The post states that the financially feasible thing to do is for textbook companies to jump on this ereader bandwagon early and make their etextbooks be non-transferrable and charge the user a per-use-fee.
My favorite quote was by Mark Twain “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” When it comes to exploring technology, this quote is even more appropriate. This site couldn’t be MORE user friendly, even for a novice like me.
Twiducate
While the home page states it is a social networking for schools site, the background color makes it hard to see the purpose. It looked promising but then clicked on the YouTube video and my computer monitor went black and made a not very nice grinding sound. After having my husband, bring it back up and check for errors I was a little leery to hit play button again. With that said there really wasn’t much more information offered on their home page. You could log in, play the video, read the 6 bullet points about their site, or sign up. It left me wanting a little more info before I even would think about signing up.
TodaysMeet
This on-line “room” allows users to meet and participate in a two-way presentation. There is a time length that you chose for the room. While you don’t have to be on Twitter, the use of hashtags on TodaysMeet pulls in anything from Twitter that comes after the hashtag. This is beneficial when trying to talk to multiple people without your meeting being totally public. When I read the feedback of the “TodaysMeet meets Twitter” News, out of 13 posts there were 10 that expressed some problems. Hopefully since the last post was from June 2010, TodaysMeet has worked out the bugs. I also learned that backchanneling allows for sidebar communication.
Edmodo
The name sounds like some sort of modern Japanese anime, but it is, in actuality, a social learning site for classrooms. On this site you can customize you connections, manage support and monitor activity. In Edmodo communities, you find what other teachers recommend in content areas such as math, social studies, language arts, and science. The introductory video gave a nice overview of the applications of Edmodo. It likened Edmodo to a membrane functioning in osmosis which allows the flow of information into the classroom. Other digital content publishers, such as Quizlet, are part of the Edmodo learning community. It makes learning and sharing seem like a breeze.
Supportblogging.com/Links+to+School+Bloggers
This page is quite a resource of information. I was like a kid in a candy store, not knowing what to try first. I found myself on a link to a page about Web 2.0 and The 21st Century Learner. This person spoke of the divergent learner and the need for the right half of the brain to become more involved with how we learn. I also saw an interesting blog site on Smartboards.
Edublogawards.com
I found this link off of this year’s winner “Free Tehnologies for Teachers” http://grade1ad.litcircuits.com/2010/03/27/backchanneling-in-grade-1/
It showed how 1st graders could interact in a chat room. I liked how the teacher felt that the quieter students didn’t feel awkward about joining in for this virtual conversation. She also posted the comments in real time on the Smartboard along with teacher comments. I know kids love to use a computer and can image the excitement that this exercise would have brought.
I also loved the links to edays instead of snow days post. It talked about the merits of having a virtual learning environment allowing more time for students that didn’t have access to a computer. All of this technology is really making me think of learning in ways I never thought possible.
Edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix2.gif
The breakdown and groupings of the writing versus reading blogs for students and for instructors was visually easy to understand. It was similar to a road map for blogging.I know that I have much more to learn, but I am taking some advice from Mark Twain. Breaking the technology down into more manageable pieces is a good first step. This was an incredible journey and in some cases I felt that I barely scratched the surface. I am much more aware of the many sites available and the applications they can have in a school environment.
