Task 9

I have been working with "delicious" for the past week. I converted all my bookmarks from Firefox to Delicious. However, that was a mistake. I didn't realize that there were so many bookmarks on my computer. These were sites I had not saved. So I had to go back and delete lots of bookmarks. Quite a job.

I like the tagging feature of "delicious" but I find that I'm not repetitious enough in my tagging. So when I press a tag, only one or two sites come up. This will improve with more items saved.

I looked at sites recommended by others, but those don't have much appeal. There are just unlimited sites to read. I need to get away from my computer and not read sites all day. I prefer to sites that I find because I need specific information.

I just found "Answer Garden." Definitely looks interesting. Here is the link:
http://answergarden.ch/

Task 8

Even though I have added pages to our class wiki, this was a hard task for me. I had no trouble creating my page. But then I wanted to add photos of my garden. I had so much trouble figuring out how to do that. Amy saved me. Thank you, Amy! I sent her an email, and she helped me learn how to copy the photo from my desktop to the wiki page. Still I took forever to figure out how to make the picture smaller. So for most of today I had a giant bloom covering half my page.

Anyway, I did learn how to add photos to the wiki and to make them larger or smaller and move them around. I also created a newspaper about my garden and added that to my wiki.

Then I visited other teachers' pages to try to add comments to their pages. I felt like I had no imagination. Joy asked, "What restaurant is my favorite?" Finally I settled on Watershed. I think we go to such ordinary places just so we can eat with our friends. "What were my favorite books?" Lina asked. I did come up with a couple. But once I read other peoples' favorites, those all seemed like my faves too. I will need to get my brain working faster in a month.

Task 6

I've been looking at and trying the teacher tools listed under Task 6. I already use Quizlet for Vocabulary. One of our parents last year found this site, and Brian connected our class. Quizlet is terrific. We post our vocabulary words and definitions, and students used the site to study. They also could take practice tests. We eventually used Quizlet to design our tests. The kids can all take the test online and sit beside each other. Tests are randomly produced, so there's no worry about cheating. Quizlet's tests were easier than those created by Brian. So he supplemented by writing a story that students had to fill in with vocabulary words.

Yesterday and today I used Ta-da! to make a list of activities I want to do in San Francisco. George and I are going to visit our son, Harper, and his wife, Yukari, for 5 days starting on Saturday. I made my list from ideas two friends gave me. Then I checked out the ideas online. I edited my list several times. Today I sent it to Harper, Yukari, and George. They can edit, and I'll see their notes. Ta-da! looks like Writeboard, which I love to use for teacher conference sign up.
http://marthaa.tadalist.com/lists/1652350

Today I signed up for TeacherTube videos. This seems like a fun idea. The videos are created by teachers and teach various subjects. I watched a math video about changing fractions to mixed numbers. The guy rapped and was entertaining to watch. Then I looked for a video on American Colonies. The one I tried to get was not there. I saw part of a video on earthquakes. It was not worth my time. The charts were hard to read. Also, the introduction was frightening. If I use TeacherTube, I will need to spend time finding and previewing the videos. Not sure if this will be a worthwhile site.

(This is my niece's new baby, six week old Ollie.)