Thing #19 I'm An Author!

To get the ball rolling with the awards list I clicked on Lulu - a site that lets you create your own book for yourself or publication. I didn't get any further. About 10 years ago my parents and I did a family cookbook. My mom is the oldest of 5 girls, and my grandmother's twin sister has 4 girls. My grandmother and greataunt left a great legacy - 24 grandchildren, 57 great grandchildren, and to date 6 great-great grandchildren. We have been tossing around doing another cookbook for several years, but it was so time consuming the first time with everything involved I haven't wanted to tackle it. Now, thanks to the wonder of the web, I think I can have the cookbook redone in a couple of months, and it will look great!

I plan to use some of the other sites for graphics for the cookbook. When it gets finished I'll let everyone know!

PS: I also started a science fiction novel I have been wanting to write since I was 14.

Thing #18 Free For All

For many, the cost of MS Office can be prohibitive. The free programs can allow students that have access to a computer and the internet to do papers and presentations and whatever else they need to do without having to buy an expensive program. One of the disadvantages is that internet access is required, and not everyone has internet access. The greatest advantage, of course, is that anyone with internet access can be as productive as those with costly programs such as MS Office.

Thing #15

I titled thing #15 as thing #14.

Thing #14 Library 3.0 and beyond

The fact that so many teachers are participating in Library2Play indicates the growing need for a paradigm shift in the teacher mindset to meet the needs of today's students. When I was going to graduate school I thought the Eric database was so much better than my undergraduate and high school tools for research of going to the library - usually several libraries - and finding the information that I needed to do a paper or find out some tidbit of information. Now, with the world literally at your fingertips, we can accomplish so much more in a much shorter time.

Libraries, as well as teachers, need to be aware of the changing learning styles of students and the general public. For many of us, we will always prefer to curl up with a good book for leisure reading, and may prefer to read lengthier text out of a book rather than scrolling through a computer screen. Sometimes it's hard to find just that right spot on the trifocals to read the comptuer screen. I envision a future where going to the library will be a virtual reality trip to libraries and books and exotic locations.

Thing #11 Here a book, there a book, everywhere a book-book

I added my Harry Potter and Anne McCaffrey (arguably one of the premier science fiction writers ever, in my opinion)books to LibraryThing. I didn't know how many closets and cubbyholes in my house contained books. I stopped counting around 500. I have books that my mother and her sisters read when they were growing up (1930's and 1940's), a collection of old school books including some original McGuffy's Readers circa 1900, and scads of books I read to my niece and now read to my grandkids. I probably won't post in LibraryThing I learned more history from romance novels than I ever did in a classroom.

When I was adding my books I also found out I had missed some Anne McCaffrey published in the last year or so - I definitely need to get to the library and book store more often. I am on my way to Barnes and Noble to get them as soon as I post this!

I'm not sure how I could use this in the classroom, but I will enjoy sharing thoughts with other bibliophiles on my favorite authors. I am certified to teach math and English: most of the sites I have looked at have tickled the math side, this will nourish the creative side.

Thing #10 I Spy With My Little Eye - Images

Once again, I found that hours had passed and I had added too many websites to my favorites to include in my blog. There were websites to add countless creative customized images to websites, blogs, and emails. The 'Dummies' bookcover was one of my favorites. Creating the book covers can be found at http://dummies.book.cover.txt2pic.com/. Another site I enjoy is the Confucius signs that can be found at http://buy4cheap.brinkster.net/signs/confucius/quotes.asp. I also found a sight that uses 'Clippy', the paper clip icon used in MS Word. These websites and more can be found at http://www.imagegenerator.org/.

I thought of one application for students - using one of the sign or book cover generators to creatge a novel way to illustrate a rule or definition. Students could put these together in an Activboard flipchart or Powerpoint slideshow.

Every new Thing seems to be more fun than the last!

Thing #9 Information overload

I spent several hours looking at Cool Cat Teacher blog, Google blog search, Topix, and several others listed in L2P and mentioned other places. I am defininitely going to have to spend some time deciding what is the most use to me. In Google blog search there are over 5 million blogs tagged Geometry, and in Topix over 11,000. Technorati was the most confusing for me, and Google the easiest to use, even though there is so much there. The most unusual thing I found: At one point I got sidetracked in Second Life - a virtual reality world that I found a little weird. There was an ad to 'Add your school or business' to the world in Second Life. I'm not sure that is a direction that I want to go in for my students. I can see some addictive personalities getting 'lost' in virtual reality.

I plan to used the list of top 100 educational blogs as my starting point when I am looking for a specific topic. I need to work on my Circle of the Wise. I am glad I am doing this over the summer when I have more free time to explore and wander.

Thing #7 - Google is an action verb

I have created a Google calendar, added iGoogle to my favorites, and found several buildings to use from Google Earth in various geometric shapes to use for a lesson on polygons I am going Tuesday in summer school. I also found my house - decorated for Christmas - on the street view for Google maps, and saw my car in the parking lot at school. I saw the building in east Manhattan where my son is living while working as a traveling nurse at Sloan-Kettering. With the cost of flying, this may be as close as I can get to a visit this summer.

Thing #8 RSS

It's incredible that information can be accessed even faster - your new information coming directly to you and not even have to go to the website to check for updates. Through RSS I could use a blog as an assignment and know when students have posted a comment instead of having to check repeatedly. For my next get-together with friends I am going to post a blog and will know who responded and when.

I can see this as saving invaluable time for librarians. The news will come to you instead of you going to the news.

Thing #4

Thing #1 - thing #4 now completed - I think!

Thing #3 - Avatar

I loved playing with Barbie and dressing her up when I was smaller. Creating an avatar is even more fun.

Thing #6

A couple of years ago one of our math teachers created a set of 100 trading cards we used for TAKS review. The trading cards were very elaborate with photos of teachers and famous mathematicians, graphics, vivid colors and a TAKS problem. I just ran across my set cleaning out my room for the end of the school year and wanted to surf the web for the program she used to create the cards. What timing!

In addition to the trading cards, I also had some ideas for creating puzzles for both my students and my grandkids and putting our family cookbook online.

Thing #5

I searched for 'Geometry' and there were 42,971 photos. Wow! I spent at least an hour looking at the images and thinking about how I could use these as part of my lessons.

The hard part was picking just 1.

7.5 Habits

For me, the easiest habit it to make a goal. The hardest is looking at problems as challenges rather than as an excuse to abandon the goal.

Thing #1

I've finished Thing #1. Only 22 more to go!

One Giant Leap into Cyberspace

This just goes to show you are never too old to learn something new!