Thing 12

Since we're about to start studying sound waves I thought this bat widget was perfect. Now I hope I can figure out how to paste it on my webpage. The kids would be so surprised. How cool. But how do I get rid of the ads without paying the fee? I just had trouble adding text after I embedded the widget. The added reflective comments would not show up. However, I do see them in the draft and they are sort of "stuck onto" the widget code. Does anyone know what's going on?

Thing 11

Posting comments on others' blogs is a little scary - my ego sometimes gets in the way - I don't want to come off sounding trite, trivial or inane. However, I get excited seeing that there was a comment posted - it's a validating feeling and especially if one is on the pc at 12:30, suddenly it doesn't seem so inanimate or that these typewritten words or just dying in a the void of a vacuum somewhere. At the same time, it can feel a little unfulfilling if its a conversation that I want to continue - like right away because I have a stream of questions that came up due to the other person's comments. However, I love feeling that sense of cyber-community, riding that Cyber-Wave!
The comments I have received have served to keep the curiosity alive and keep exploring for even better videos and to seek better ways to organize them. Actually, blogging and commenting serve really to make "all of this" less overwhelming.
Students will take to it quickly and enthusiastically as really evidenced by their attraction to texting, IMing, and their participating in social sites like Facebook, etc. Blogging taps into their need for social contact and validation. However, I also see that we can't be surprised if we see versions of "cyberbullying" rearing its head and be prepared to deal with it.

Thing 10

I was not able to download videos using Keepvid or PWNYoutube. I am working on this at school and both sites were blocked. However, I was successful using Zamzar. Although it is easy to use, I don't like the lag time that it takes. I first tried a very small cute Sesame street video (letter W for water, wind, waves and wet - since I am on this wave unit in science) that is short and not a large file at all. It took about a 1/2 hour for me to receive the email that I could download. It took longer to receive a slightly larger file - the surfing video (biggest wave ever surfed). I have yet to try the Bill Nye wave video song. The resolution does not seem to be as good as projecting the video from Youtube directly.
I don't know how I am supposed to be adding comments to the video I imbedded. Maybe I am misinterpreting what I am to be doing: Am I to submit comments about this video on my blog or to the Youtube site where I am found the video (which I already had for the previous Thing)?
One thing I'd like to know (and I haven't looked ahead so maybe it's one of the Things we'll learn to do yet) is that since I can see me accumulating quite a few of these downloaded videos to enhance the units, I need to be able to organize them and make them easily accessible from my computer. My desktop is getting quite cluttered!

Wave videos and a wave song to sing from Bill Nye

The two videos are very different. I love Bill Nye science songs and this one, on waves is especially entertaining as well as educational. The other video shows a person surfing on a 85 foot wave, purportedly and believabley the largest wave ever surfed (successfully). It's jaw-dropping and almost frightening if one has ever surfed or been pulled into an undertow.

Thing 9

I was disappointed with Schooltube and Teachertube. The videos were boring - at least for the subject matter (waves) that I was hoping to find for class. I hit the jackpot with Youtube. It is not blocked for teachers in our school. I easily found Bill Nye song videos on that topic. I found surfing wave videos I can use purely for entertainment for the students, as well.
The only issue with Youtube is one definitely has to be prepared to preview videos and have them preselected and downloaded so as not to get any inappropriate videos being advertised on the right side of the screen.
Taylor Mali made me laugh with his poetry about girls lending pens and made me cry when he talked about his wife(is it really true?!) jumping to her death.
He is a most talented man. If that story is true I hope and wish for his healing.

Thing 8

Okay, this was more fun than I have had in a long time on a Saturday evening. Talk about being caught in a time-free zone. I can see huge possibilities with the "motivator" maker http://bighugelabs.com/motivator.php as well as the
captioner and poster maker on Big Huge Labs. (Ok, now that's frustrating, the link insert button does not want to cooperate and insert the link so I just copied and pasted link and it's not coming up as a hyperlink. I don't know what I am doing incorrectly but if anyone out there has advice please HELP)
Those applications, however, were very easy to use. I could use them to make posters of scientists for the month's theme (Black History, Women's History, etc). I am very psyched about this, since I am disappointed in the offerings from the local teachers' store. Students can create probably more interesting things than I can. So they would even be more geeked. What a way to illustrate vocabulary words! The memory game was addictive on the Flickr memory However, at this moment, I am frustrated since the link button is not posting the links as I have copied and pasted. I was frustrated with the Image Generator since for me, at any rate some of the applications were difficult to use and not intuitive. I sure could have used one of those wonderful tutorials like we had on how to use blogger, etc. Trading Cards Maker was a disappointment to me since that application would have been the most useful but I could not get it to work satisfactorily and I had to learn by trial n error that I needed to become a member to make it work at all. Plus, there were no directions if one wanted to center the person's name (I just hit the space bar until I thought it was centered. Again, a tutorial video would have been most helpful.
Danuta

Thing 7

Flickr opens up another huge source to add a visual dimension in teaching concepts and vocabulary. I am very excited to try this. I could put together sets of photos to show certain vocabulary. I am hoping that Flickr makes it easy to put together a slideshow.
One of the issues that I can see coming up is that it may be time-consuming at first - because there is such a huge variety of photos to surf through, and I tend to overthink my choices. The other issue is to be wise and choose what can never be deemed inappropriate photo choice.
Danusia

Thing 6

I decided to search for photos using the keyword,waves. Choosing this as a topic was tough - it took me over an hour of looking and being mesmerized by photos before snapping myself out of this reverie. I am an 8th grade science teacher and we just started the wave unit. So I was thinking I could use this in class. I loved many of the wave subject photos however, I made myself choose these three not necessarily because they were my favorite - which they weren't, but because they showed different characteristics of a wave. The Cirrus clouds have a wave pattern with a crest and a trough. I could even talk about cycles and frequency if I set up some artificial parameters. The crashing, breaking water wave seems to show a nice amplitude with some energy. Lastly, the waves made by an object dropping into the fluid show a property that oan occur with water waves where the energy spreads out in equal directions.
Danuta

Thing 5

Wow! I am seriously addicted to finding and reading blogs. Take the warning of the video presenter seriously when he said this. I had to force myself to stop just now. It was overwhelming as well as empowering since I found many helpful blogs for personal and professional applications. I felt like I was really part of a larger community. It's sort of a paradox since one is sitting by oneself reading these blogs in isolation but the feeling is as if one is not by oneself. It is definitely a freeing experience for me. Time limits: set them up - you'll need them. Another surprising thing for me is that many sites of interest to me didn't have RSS feeds.
Danuta

Thing 4

I can really appreciate the concept of the "Reader". I find that it's similar to bookmarking my favorite sites (like at school where I find that I need to bookmark sites for science) but now I can receive updates from my favorite sites. I like the idea of organizing them (which I still have to do with my favorite sites at school - I am not good with this whole idea of "organizing"). So far I am finding it easy to do. I like the tutorials - easy to follow. I am trying to do all of this at school due to small grandkids at home who wouldn't understand why I can't play with them but I am having trouble with school computer in that it loads pages but with an error message so it seems I can't comment on people's posts unless I try multiple times. I have learned to save everything I post before hitting the "publish post" thing or else it may disappear!!
(Like they just did now when I got a message of "Error" after clicking publish post)
Danuta

Thing 3 Reflections

I am hoping that blogging may end up being another learning modality that will reach more students that otherwise may not have been clicked with. I am thinking that I'd first use a blog format to have students comment, reflect on their own work and thereby they would influence the work of other students, especially when they are working on a project. So in effect, this would end up being a form of presenting their work with more reflection on their part. However, I think they would respond with wariness and hesitation since it would be interpreted as more work to be completed on their part and another deadline to be met. I have great frustration in having them log on to my website to get vital information. They are 8th graders and still just want to email me their questions - even as general as - I was sick, did I miss anything?. So my cynicism as in regards to their blogging is my concern, as well as parental concerns as to their child's internet safety since they may regard this blogging as internet chatroom thing that they hear about on the news. So I would first have to educate the parents as to what the blogging is and what it entails.