Thing 7 - Twitter

I set up a Twitter account. I put in a couple of friends and family. I will see what happens. I just liked the name Twitter. Perhaps it will prove to be an interesting thing to see what people are doing. I will check back to this post soon and let you know.

Thing 7 - Communications

I am having a bit of trouble seeing how to use IM in the work arena that I am in. We are all so busy all day long, that to sit and converse in IM during the day would be next to impossible. E-mail is great. We talk a lot that way. We share lots of ideas and information in this format. Blogs could catch on and perhaps that would be a good first step in getting our department to try an new thing. Some of us have a 23 Things blog and we could start there.

I really don't see text messaging ever being a part of our media department either. I text message often to my own children and it works great. Both of my children (age 15 and 20) text much more often than actually talking on their phones. I use to have to worry about them using up our minutes. With unlimited texting, our bill is actually lower now. :) But again I don't see doing that in school. The video of the text messaging was interesting. I could see colleges using that much more than K-12 education.

Thing 6 - More Image Generation

Big Blue Labs has so many choices of things to do! I made a trading card. I could see using this with kids. It would have to be controlled in that you need to have the correct pictures available to them. But what a fun way for them to personalize some school project. Another great presentation tool. Using it as part of a PowerPoint would be great. I just have to think how to do it easily and safely. I get way excited about how to use this with kids, but time is a big part of things. I only see the kids for 30 minutes a week. I need to get some of the classroom teachers into using technology in this way. It can open up a whole new world to them and the kids. (The teachers are a harder sell than the kids :)

I also added a slide show from Flickr on my blog. That is cool!

Thing 6 - Online Image Generators

Image chef - Yet again a new area on the web that I had never explored. Some of this image stuff is way too much fun. You can lose yourself very easily. Made my own little sign and posted it to my blog. I still like it when someone smarter than me creates these sites and then lets the rest of us come and point and click. I now need to try the big huge labs again and try making a trading card. I know in my playing yesterday, I did make some chia pets. Nothing better than an interactive chia pet. :)

Thing 5 - More Flickr

Mashups ...
Big Huge Labs ...
Who knew these were even out there? I am sure many people did, but these were new to me.

What fun. You could get lost here for days playing with the features. I just had fun making a picture of my media center into a puzzle. Now I want to go play with Flickr color Pickr.

Just the fact that you can take an ordinary picture and jazz it up is great. This would be a fun and easy way to make more interesting brochures and promotional items for your programs. We all use pictures. Now we can use Flickr's.

Thing 5 -Spell with Flickr

I now have an image at the bottom of my blog which spells out the name of my school. It was so simple. :) I am so amazed that there are so many smart people that make these programs do all the work and then we can come along and use them with such ease. Isn't it nice that everyone out there in cyber world is kind and is willing to share? What a simple idea, but fun to use. I like my letters!

SMARTBoard teaching area

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Originally uploaded by g.seaburg

As I have experimented with Flickr, I am now trying to upload a picture of my media center into my blog. The step by step directions are very good, but I must say it did take some time to find just the right place to do this. I am hoping that when I finish typing this and post the entry, that it appears. Then I may try it again to see if it works. I can see some good uses for sharing photos on the personal side of my life. I still need to think how I might easily use this on the teaching side of my life.