DStolzman's Blog

Subscribing to Blogsline was easy.  Linking blogs was easy to do.  All methods are pretty easy.  The one I liked the best was just clicking my installed blogsline book marklet.  By having the blog up and clicking on the book marklet, subscribing was simply deciding what folder to include the blog in. 

Clicking on the B button feed, (orange  B button) on many blogs didn’t work for me.  I received a message stating the I would add the blog to my favorite column after clicking on this button subscribe feed.  After several attempts I was able to use the button with success.  By clicking on the orange button I was able to connect immediately to my folders in blogline when hitting the orange B subscribe button.  Go Figure! 

Last, the hard part of this Thing was actually finding blogs of my interest.  I tried to subscribe to yahoo news and came up with an error.  I will try to look at news blogs after reading others success in this area.  I can’t wait to see discover new blogs by reading fellow Thing 23 classmates.

www.bloglines.com/public/dstolzman

Blogline:

Watching the tutorial to join blogline was very informative. Setting up my account was easy. The hard thing was linking my blogline to my post. I had to go to the accounts to make sure I had agreed to have my blogroll public. This was the only thing that made me a little confused.

I think this will be a great tool for organizing blogs. It looks like a tool that I will be able to keep my favorite blogs organized and easy to find. This will free up my favorites link on my computer. How do I handle blog overload? Right now I just add a blog to my favorites. This is becoming very unorganized and making my favorites column very long. I had seen the RSS symbol in the corner of many blogs and I like that all I have to do is click on the symbol and I can subscribe to my favorite blog. Easy!
I also like how I can have my favorite blogs alert me when something new is added to a post. I like the fact the RSS does the work for me. I don’t have to search my blogs to see if anything new has occurred.

I found Thing 7 to be fun!  I enjoyed looking at the bookmarked sites of others.  I found the tutorials very informative and when I went to set up my account it was very easy.  I learned that delicious is a yahoo product.  I have a yahoo account already, so all I had to do was give my yahoo email and password to join this site.  The buttons are very useful and make the site easy to navigate.

Delicious: dstolzman’s bookmarks

I had forgotten about social bookmarks until I read the Social Bookmarking article. I am the type of user who bookmarks everything into the favorites column. I could see myself using a social bookmarking site to help me with organization.   Also, I am encouraged that my colleagues could share their favorite sites to a social bookmark. I have, in the past, composed an email to my colleagues and posed a question, does anyone know of a good site where I could find…? I think the use of social bookmarks could really benefit me and my colleagues in this respect.

An advantage of social bookmarking, for me, would be finding web sites faster. I like the use of tagging sites to find information quickly and more efficiently. I also like the fact that I could be exposed to sites that I had never really heard of before.
A disadvantage of social bookmarking, for me again, would be poor tags. Reading the tips article on how to use tags correctly was helpful. I can see how individuals who label tags poorly could set themselves up for undesired information. Also, obtaining information from a poorly tagged site would be really frustrating as well.

Last, one area that I would think about before assigning tags as bookmarks is my awareness to what others had named the tag. When assigning my tag bookmarks, I did pay attention to the suggested name for the tag.

I enjoyed reading the two articles on how to comment on a blog.  I appreciated knowing that I should be thoughtful in my response to blog articles or presentations.  I learned that joining the conversation is what I should be thinking of when commenting on a blog post.  I was the commenter that would say “nice blog”.  So I learned a lot from the two articles.  Also, knowing how to comment on a blog will help me join in on the conversations to online communities.  I have not posted a comment to any online communities because I do not belong to any.

When I received my first comment I was thrilled.  Brooke was my first comment, and her response to my post was positive and sympathetic to my frustrations on posting web links.  It made me appreciate that  I was not the only person who was struggling with  linking web sites.  So, thanks Brooke!

I think it is important to comment on blogs.  For my classroom blog, I wished that families would comment on my posts.  This way I could have knowledge that my school news was being read and acknowledged.  Comments are validation that your writing is being heard so I think they are a vital tool to blogs.

For students, I believe that comments are important.  Students can gain knowledge that writing is to be read.  I think positive comments can give that extra spark to a student who is insecure about writing.  One nice comment to a student may be all that is needed to acquire confidence that they are  a good writer.

I am amazed at how many things can be performed using Google.  I didn’t know that Google had a password feature to gain access to a variety of activities and presentations. 

My impressions on Google Doc is positive and negative.  I can see Google Documents beings used at the administrative level as a positive.   I foresee conference scheduling  to be issued using a Google document.  All teachers would post their conference date, time, and student.  Teachers who have siblings in the school would go onto each teacher’s document, and view the information.  They would then schedule a time that would coordinate with the posted conference time on the document.  Families of multiple children could attend conferences on one day and within both teachers corresponding time frames.   A negative of this would be overlooking a family or finding time to make sure we coordinated times correctly. 

Google Maps is a nice feature to show children.  Since fourth graders do not have school emails, I would use this feature to show whole group.  Maybe if we were going on a field trip, I  could pull up the map and show kids the map area  of the field trip.  We could make activities to use on the bus, or at the field trip site, based on the Google map information. 

On a personal level, I enjoyed using the Google maps to see my residence.  I can see myself using this for trip planning.  As for google documents, I have only tried to download a document.  I am not secure enough to send the document to anyone yet.

This photo was taken last year in October.  It was taken in Ludington.  I like this photo because it reminds me of one of my favorite places, the beach.

Reflections on thing 3:

My struggles with this post were linking my chosen website to the post, and applying widgets. 

Everytime I tried to link the website to the post I was given a message telling me that my link was broken.   I finally figured out why I was not able to link  the websites to my post.  I needed to switch the tab feature at the top of the post  to the HTML tab.  By doing this I was able to link my website.  My last struggle was taking the courage to activate my widgets.  I did think I broke my blog at one time, but I just didn’t drag the widget heading far enough to activate.

This website was recommended to me by a fellow teacher.  It is free to join and gives  great advice on teaching. What I like about this site, is that I can pose a question to teachers in my grade level, and receive advice or recommendations on my question. 

Pro teacher community

Two blogs that I found exemplary for me were:

Welcome to Room 8 This blog stood out to me because it was similar to the blog design I use in my classroom.  Also,  I related to this blog because it is a blog from an elementary teacher.   I was able to see how her blog could relate to young students.  Also, I loved how a teacher in Vermont asked Room 8 if she could have her classroom connect with the Hudsonville classroom.  You can read about this in the About Mrs. Myrmel tab.

Kindergarten Blog  This blog stood out to me because she used a lot of slide shows and picture links.  If you click on the Teacher Tube link you can see  pictures of children who can and cannot blow a bubble.    I also liked how she had a map of the world displayed on her blog.  I liked seeing where her blog was being viewed throughout the world.   Finally, I liked the Shelfari bookshelf side bar.  I have never heard of Shelfari before.

Ideas on how I can use these two exemplary blogs.  To start, I plan to link video and slide shows in my blog.  I also plan to have my classroom students comment on my blog.  Finally, it would be nice to add some  links to my blog, such as the world map that identifies who is reading the blog.

Have you ever head someone say, “I love this book I am reading.  This is my second or third time reading it, and I am still finding new things or ideas from it.  Every-time I read it I find something new. ”   Well, that is how I felt when reading the wiki page, “What is a blog.”

I knew that blogs were great communication tools for teachers to use with students, parents, and administrators.  I also knew blogs could be used to dialogue with students.  Yet, I never paid attentionto the bigger picture, that blogging was about literacy.

I guess I wasn’t ready to connect my blog as a literacy tool.   Maybe with this class I am opening up to the possibility that when I blog I can emphasis more than my newsletter.  I can emphasis literacy.