Thing 6

Flickr is a great way to share photos with family, friends or the world. It also is a great way to get images for projects. The copyright issue makes it a little trickier for use with students (they tend not to worry about these things despite reminders), but still a wonderful resource.

Since I'm dreaming of getting back into my garden, I did a search on flowers and insects. Came up with some wonderful photos. I'm hoping to upload one of them, but first I have to figure out how. Got it.

Thing 5

Okay, this may be a stupid question, and maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but do posts from the blogs I just signed up for get sent to my email automatically like a listserv, or do I have to go to my bloglines account and look at them? I suppose I'll find out soon enough, but that's my question about RSS feeds. From a rereading, I see that I go to bloglines to read them, it just organizes everything for me.

I'd like to hear the answer to Erika Hansinger's question about whether there' s a way to add these RSS feeds to my blog. Having all of it in one place would save a little time.

To answer your question about how this would help in my personal or professional life, it's a great way to quickly get information I want about a topic. Although like anything else, sometimes the information posted will be relevant to something I'm looking for or working on, and sometimes it will be info to be tucked away for future use. Or it may set me off in a whole new direction.

Thing 4

I liked the video by Common Craft on RSS. Very amusing. Enjoyed going to the three bloglines accounts you named and poking around their chosen blogs. Found some interesting stuff - an article warning about the problems with having laptops in the classroom (on a college level) and one on using cellphones to an educational advantage. Went to Bloglines, set up my account and signed up for some of their suggested blogs. That gave me 11 Feeds.

I want to add some of the blogs I saw on the three blogline accounts and I can think of other topics I could look for blogs on, but am wondering if I'm going to be overwhelmed with information. I suppose I can always delete some, or just ignore the posts like I do emails that seem irrelevant or unimportant.

I guess I'll just wait and see how it plays out. Common Craft suggested RSS feeds can save a lot of time, but all of this technology is addictive and I have a feeling there will be a lot of time spent anyway. :)

Thing 3

I enjoyed looking at the educational blogs, and learned a lot about different ways blogs can be used other than just for entertainment. I can see using a blog to try and connect to the students in my high school (I'm a librarian). I haven't figured out what approach to take with a blog and would like it to be something that the students willingly participated in (I have no way to force them anyway), but I think that a school blog by definition is unattractive to the students because it smacks of schoolwork. How to overcome that?
I don't have the advantage of building relationships with students through constant contact like a teacher in a classroom. My relationships are more hit or miss and take longer to build, but I'd like to find a way through the use of technology to engage the students, teach them more skills to be savvy Web 2.0 users and make a difference in their lives.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

As I stated in my first post (see The First Step), I have mixed feelings about technology that allows people to communicate their every thought to the whole world in an instant. On the one hand, it's a fun way to share with people you know, and possibly get to know people you wouldn't otherwise connect with. On the other hand, it's fraught with danger - real dangers for young people who think they are savvy, but really aren't practiced in the ways of the bad guys - and self-made dangers - embarrassing oneself by saying something that's not well thought out and being unable to hide the evidence or pretend you didn't really say it. Especially in front of your colleagues, or worse yet, your boss!

In a larger sense, I don't think I want to be as connected to the whole world as technology causes us to be. I like to go home from work and step back into my life - the life where work and the troubles of the world shouldn't intrude. I enjoy my job, and I like the people I work with, but I love my extended family and still don't want to live with them 24 hours a day. (A perfect example of a comment I may live to regret.)

Reading the article by David Warlick just adds to my personal tug of war. It's great to have all these new ways to share ideas and information. I'd like to try videocasting or gaming to teach research skills to students. Similar technological methods have proven to be effective ways to impart this type of information to students, and students prefer to have access 24/7, from wherever they are. However, despite the fact that technology is supposed to make our lives easier and get our work done faster, that doesn't seem to be the case. On the contrary, it can make our work day longer (I'm extending my work day as I write this); allow us to check in and "just take care of one little thing" while on vacation; keep us from ever disconnecting to truly relax. You sit down at the computer to do one thing and the next thing you know you've frittered away three hours.

As for the video "Pay Attention", I agree with some of it and disagree with other parts of it. Technology can be a wonderful tool to engage students and give them new opportunities to learn and create, but it can also be a beast that takes over and distracts from the ability to educate. I use Google often and do wonder how we lived BG, but keep in mind that most people don't go beyond the first page of results, and many people have no idea how to (or care to) evaluate a web site and therefore may not be getting reliable information?

Are we educating children just so they can get a job or to feed their imaginations and souls; open their eyes to worlds they could never know from the past and present; give them a breadth of knowledge on which to build? Perhaps 61% of graduating seniors are right in thinking that their school work will not have a bearing on their success later in life - I guess it depends on how you define success. It's also possible that some of what they are learning will not have a direct bearing on their success, but may give their life "richness" (to quote Bill Gates).

I'm all for new technologies and using them to engage and educate children (and adults), but education should drive the use of technology, the use of technology should not drive education.

MHO

The First Step

The first step is a doozy. I want to keep learning about new technologies and in my line of work, I must keep learning, but I have grave reservations about sending thoughts out into the blogosphere. It seems fleeting and yet permanent (waiting to come back and bite me). And so very public - I already have a problem with holding my tongue. But here goes.