Information is power!

Oh my gosh!!! 30 boxes is an outlook junkies, fix.  I love this site.  It allows me to establish contact with my  personal “buddies”  spread through out the U.S. who use Lotus in their jobs and not Outlook.  I love the fact that I could have an RSS feed to my do list.  I would upload my lists for when I  travel or for the  Nike  2009 marathon.  30 boxes gives me a personal calendar that I can access on web.  I can also connect to my flicker account.  30 boxes gets two thumbs up!

Blessed are the storytellers for they shall lead according to David Warlick.  What an awesome speaker.  He stated that the best choice for an educational leader is a great storyteller.  Who knew?  I found that response suprising, but in retrospective with programs like Flicker, MySpace, Facebook and other tools of social networking, it appears that “we” are no longer focusing on what the media says is important, but what we convey to one another as important.

Warlick explains that it will be the storytellers who engage our students as they learn to tell their own stories.  I thoroughly enjoyed Warlick’s conference as he too is an awesome storyteller.

The Flickr site is awesome.  I lost track and time and spent double the time I should have.  My theme is  Where is the sun?  I found pictures of sunflowers which I consider vessels of sunlight. 

 created by ichiro kishimi

I decided to see how advance the information shared on the OEM commons was.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I decided to see what information I could find on malaria. I found information from the CDC!  The site also offers one the opportunity to enter a query.  Cool!  

Creative Commons is long overdue!!!  I like the fact that those who choose to reserved their right, still can and those who do not now have an medium to communicate that as well. As one of the idiom stated on Mr. Lindsay’s wiki ” two heads are better than one”, I agree and creative commons is a place where the two heads can join. 

As a librarian, I am one who respects and promotes fair use. I like the fact that creative commons gives the creator of a work the right to decide whether to share or not and makes it obvious that he or she wishes to share by placing the item in the creative commons.  However, I am curio

I can definitely see a wiki in my future.  Wikis would be a great place for troubleshooting with other members of the technology department  or my tech teams at my schools. I would like to establish a wiki for use with other Instructional Technology Specialists or the Tech Specialist and Network Analyst at my schools.  It would be a great way to troubleshoot problems or dialogue to establish more efficient ways to work together.  I can also see a personal wiki in my future that I would use with my girlfriends when we plan our monthly get togethers or our annual getaway. 

I investigated the Dr. Reich’s Chemistry wiki, Room 15 Wiki, and Math 12V Outcome  Portfolio.   Of the three wikis I investigated, I found the chemistry site to be the one I would tweak the most.  As a former chemist for more than a decade, I thought that the layout of the wiki could be a bit more aestheically pleasing.  The topic of chemistry is already intimidating to some, so a wiki on science or math has to be presented in a manner to facilitate use of the wiki.  I thought that the students of the Math 12V did a good job in presenting complex materials in an organized as well as aesthetically pleasing manner.  When designing the layout of a wiki, I observed that color scheme selection is just as important as it is when you design a website as your wiki is a webpage.  I liked the content, outcome tools, and overall design of the Room 15 and Math 12V wikis and would leave them as they are.  I would make the chemistry site more aesthetically pleasing and the information a bit easier to access ( I found a few dead links).

Wikis are yet another tool that I plan to place in my educational tool box.

I searched the word “prevalence” in wikipedia.  I have a friend who works for the CDC and prevalence is a term that is widely used in the field of epidemiology.  The definition of prevalence is the the number of new cases of a disease over the population during a certain time period.  Prevalence in not to be confused with incidence which is concerned with new case of a disease within a particular period of time.

To both mine and my friend’s surprise Wikipedia did a good job giving a definition of both terms.  Wikipedia even provided a distinction between the two terms.  I am pleasantly surprised.  However, I am not an advocate of Wikipedia as in the past my teachers and students have found incorrect information on Wikepedia.  I am not sure if they have put into to place some safeguards to ensure the veracity of the information found on their site.

Hi Everyone,

I found an awesome feed for walkers.  Prior to my career as an ITS, I began walking half and full marathons.  I haven’t done much long distance walking for the last few years, but would like to get back into walking and found this walking feed and its absolutely fabulous!  I wish that  I had the “marathon pack list” prior to my first marathon.  Take a look for yourself, there’s information for recreational walkers too.  Let me know what you think.

jar

The genre of blog writing is less formal than the other forms of writing that I am use to reading.  When reading a blog,  I feel that I am engaged in a conversation with the writer.  In some blogs, I feel as though I am reading a journal or that the blogger has taken me into his or her confidence as they share their personal thoughts.  My heart went out to the fifth grader who was not only dealing with pressures of passing the fifth grade, but attempting not to fulfill the prophesy of failure as predicted by an older sibling.

Teaching Brevityallowed me a glimpse of the world of a high schooler and her thoughts regarding the traditional essay assignment.  Blogging for this student provided the teenager with a voice that they sometimes crave, but do not always have.

Commenting on a blog further promotes the relationship and or dialogue between the reader and blogging. Blogging provides the opportunity to promote writing as the the person leaving a comment provides feedback to the blogger.  The dialogue also provides an opportunity for learning.  Just as students can teach one another so can a blogger and those who comment to their blogs.   The title of my blog is “Information is Power” and if blogging promotes the exchange of information it has the opportunity to educate, engage, and empower!

Web 2.0 is facilitating the expansion of the tools in my educational tool box.  As I am introduced to various 21st century educational tools and required to use them; I am inspired to develop new ways to introduce these tools to the teachers and students I teach.  My ultimate goal is to inspire the consistent use of the aforementioned tools among the teachers and their students.