Karen C. Seddon’s DEN Blog

We live in such a fast-paced age with information that comes at us through multiple forms of media. Even our television viewing has been transformed since the DVR and the ability to record live TV. We are a clickable, on demand society. As we use the Internet more and more, bookmarking websites in our Favorites is common-place, but don’t ask me to remember the address! It’s no different with our cell phones. Who remembers phone numbers anymore? You just click speed dial 4 and your best friend’s number automatically rings. Bookmarks work much in the same manner. There’s only one problem. Your cell phone is easily carried around with you. Your home computer is a little heavier!

A creative website
Furls are the answer to the “I can’t remember the website” dilemma. Why not have a place on the Internet where you can bookmark all your favorite websites and have access to them “ubiquitously!” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) Furl websites include www.furl.net, http://simpy.sourceforge.net/, but the most popular is del.icio.us. You have no need to be tied to one computer anymore. With your bookmarks saved to an internet site, you simply log on to the Internet, log into your favorite social bookmarking site and all your favorites are there, no matter whose computer you are using. Best of all you can share! Pretty cool stuff.

An image to share.
Public domain images that are high quality go overlooked on the USA.gov site. This image is from the collection, Earth Art. Isn’t it beautiful?

A proverb
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Buddha

An encouragement
Now what do social bookmarks have to do with the classroom? Just about everything. As we give our students projects and research to do, they can spend half their time on unnecessary surfing. Sending them to your del.icio.us site gives them the exact places that you want them to go. They can even leave comments about what they have found, learn to paraphrase information they are looking for and share sites with other users. I would also encourage students to create their own social bookmarking site such as iKeepbookmarks.com because they definitely cannot bookmark at school. Why not encourage them to develop research skills that will enable them to quickly return to websites for further investigation and more detailed reading any time, any place and at any pace (and may I add from any computer!) Let me know your favorite uses for social bookmarking on my blog.

How do you do that?
Using delicious is really a breeze. I’ve created a special delicious account for “tuesdays” so that you can experiment with its ease of use. The most effective part of using this social bookmarking site is the ability to “tag” your favorites. Create hints that best describe the website and these hints or “tags” give you the ability to search by topic. You can even add other users of delicious to your network and search through their sites. This can lead to other people in their networks who in turn share your favorites and the sharing can get exponential. Give it a try. Create an account and use a name that will actually identify you so that others who would like to share with you would be willing to join also. For those teachers who are already using social bookmarking in the classroom, please considering joining the conversation in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches
“With the introduction of iMacs in my classroom, I am able to teach the students (K-5) cross-platform on both Macs and Windows. I am able to show them the benefits of more than one platform and it is very important to show them the differences and give them a lot of exposure to help them make their own decisions to what platform they may want to use in the future.” Sherry Black, McKeel Elementary Academy

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
K

I’m still trying to process all that I learned at FETC this past week, but one of the highlights was spending time with DEN members.  I spoke with Steve about adding my “tuesdays with Karen” in the DEN blog and he said to go for it.  Although it is not Tuesday, I will put last’s week in now and see you on Tuesday! 

It is so hard for classroom teachers to leave their students to attend conferences.  It is also very difficult to prepare for a substitute and for schools to pick up the cost of travel, registration and sub pay. Yet, conferences offer teachers some of the greatest professional development opportunities anywhere. My absolute favorite technology conference is FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) in Orlando each year.  I have learned more, gained more skills and broaden my network of tech buddies more than any other place.  This “tuesdays” I am writing from FETC!    

A creative website 

Don’t be discouraged.  You can be at FETC! This is the perfect time to learn to be “a podcatcher,” one who subscribes to a podcast.  The best podcast available for teachers who want to learn about the latest and greatest in instructional technology is without doubt – Conference Connections by the Apple Distinguished Educators. Even if you get to go to FETC, you cannot possibly attend every session and hear every speaker.  The Apple Distinguish Educators record as many of the top speakers and sessions as possible and host them for you FREE in iTunes.  I have learned more about technology since I’ve been podcasting than all of the years I’ve been going to conferences. Look for them a few weeks after the conference is over.

An image to share

An image to share.

My feature image is the logo for Conference Connections (just a hint to really check it out!)

A proverb

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Robin 

An encouragement

With standardized tests just around the corner, it may seem crazy to mention professional development, but keeping yourself current in your field also keeps you sane.  Can you imagine if you only had standardized test preparation to look forward to?  Technology integration offers the answers to engaging our students. Learning unique ways to utilize technology comes from hearing/seeing what others are doing and then “tweeking” it to meet the needs of your students.  I really would like to encourage you to listen to the following episodes of Conference Connections: Secondary Leadership with David Gordon, Tales of a Classroom Blogger (both from FETC 2007), David Warlick, TEC SIG luncheon (long, but great) and Mitchel Resnick: Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society.  Let me know your favorites in the comments.

How do you do that?

Using Conference Connections is really easy, but don’t you hate when people say that and then assume you know how to do something?  To listen to Conference Connections podcasts, you have options.  You can go to the Conference Connections website and click the RSS feed button.  This will notify you in email when there is a new episode.  Then you can click the link they send, go back to their website, listen to it on your computer or download it for later.  The way I prefer to get them is to subscribe in iTunes.  Open iTunes and click on the iTunes store and type Conference Connections in the search window.  Click subscribe and then any new episodes will be automatically downloaded to your iTunes.  Just be careful to delete the ones that you don’t really care about.  Overtime, you could have quite a collection.  Synch you iPod and the podcast is automatically ready for you to listen while you do the dishes, vacuum or other fun jobs. (It does make those chores go quickly!)

What are teachers saying? 

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“Technology has been a huge help building background knowledge for my students. Sometimes we forget that we’ve lived a whole life and they’ve only been around for 10-11-12 years so there’s a lot of things they don’t know. It’s a whole lot easier to show them something than to describe it.”  Ramona Fischer, Boone Middle School

As always, I am,

Ubiquitously yours,

K

http://www.ecubedcreative.com 

Grace Wycliffe (SL)