Left Lane Ends

I have been using Netvibes as my aggregator since it came available, and have loved it since day one. However, when Google rolled out iGoogle, I figured it required a look. So, I looked. Briefly.

First, you may or may not recall this post of mine about Google. Despite my continued wariness about their data mining, I still use them. But, I’m also still wary. Just be sure that you are aware of all the data they are collecting about you as you surf, read and aggregate.

Second, Netvibes’ preview interface beats iGoogle hands down. I love being able to read as little or as much as I want in a variety of different ways (mouse over, pop up, etc). Additionally, they just released an iPhone geared site. Very nice.

So, explore, compare, do as you please… I’ll be sticking with Netvibes for now. Until they get bought by Google, that is.

As a followup to my previous post, I gleaned that link from a Delicious RSS feed, the Delicious ‘popular’ feed. I love watching that box populate throughout the day as it displays links that are most tagged by Delicious users. You never know what will pop up, and there is usually something quite interesting to discover! Ahhh… popularity…
Here’s the feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/popular

(just in case YOU want another random feed to check throughout the day)

I’m not what you would call a history buff - maybe it just wasn’t brought to life for me in the right way. However, through my RSS feeds, I came across this link to ‘History’s Most Overlooked Mysteries‘. It makes me want to know more about a topic that I didn’t expect to explore today - and that, at least, gives me a little smile.

Dean Shareski writes about geography lesson ideas on his blog and says:

So there’s the challenge. Get your kids to dig into these tools and their value and post the findings.

Here’s one…Sam Farsaii, Director of Instructional Technology for Irving ISD, presented a way to use Google Earth the other day. Google Earth has a built in measurment tool. Why not locate a local landmark and compare its length/size/area to another well known landmark - a sphinx, for instance. Not only do students compare the two objects, but they almost literally fly around the world and develop concepts about global locations, continents and worldly perspective as they do so. This one little tool has so many great applications and is only a slice of the limitless application of Google Earth.

…just don’t tell your networking department about it’s constant bandwith consumption…

Oh, and if anyone can find a Left Lane Ends sign - mark it and send me the latitude/longitude so I can pull it up. People have found fly cars - someone’s GOT to be looknig for where the left lane ends…

I wasn’t sure what I would find when I got an email titled ‘Teaching vocab with blogs’, but Byrd Vocabulary has an interesting concept. While my thoughts immediately went to flash cards, I was impressed that students were developing connections to the words they were working on. Blogging is all about linking and connections, so the use fits.

John Witter has JUST started blogging within his classroom environment in a High School history course. I love his beginning post where he is openly purposing his blog content to gather feedback from his students about his teaching and lessons. Another great example of using blogs for more then just ‘writing a journal entry’.

How about a Wiki? Vicki A. Davis (at Cool Cat Teacher Blog) has had her kiddos start up a Wiki on productivity. She talks about this here, and you can visit the student Wiki product here. The idea is to have the students develop guidelines about daily planning that will help them as they progress through the semester.

Moving on to Podcasting: Darren Wilson, an Instructional Technology Specialist in Irving, TX, has started putting podcasts from elementary students online. They podcast their daily video announcements (in audio form) and have started podcasting student writing examples (that the students read) as well.

Bob Sprankle really gets his students riled up as they produce podcasts and other content online. You have to admit that student engagement is entirely different when the students take stake in the content as opposed to ‘Your journal entry for today is…’.

To be honest, I am just putting together a collection of links that demonstrate how educators can use some of these tools in a classroom setting BEYOND simply writing a journal to put online. These are great tools for instigating the development of connections within a learning environment, after all. I’ll post some responses from our group that I share these with - it’s just a quick demo…