Out of the fast lane and slowing down

One Last Thing.

Well the roller coaster ride is almost over. I do have to say this has been my favorite education so far, even though I spent most of the time wanting to pull my hair out, it is definitely challenging. I think this class provides a lot of great information, but it's almost too much in a condensed time summer course. I know we have all proved that it can be done regardless of being technically challenged, but I'm sure we are all feeling the effects. My favorite part was learning about all the free productivity tools that are available on line. These tools will be very useful in the future. Probably the most surprising thing I learned is Facebook is not as evil as I thought. I'm not sure how well I'll keep up after changing web2.0 tech after this class but hopefully I'll find what I need to know. It would be great if Dr. Wall could link the ever evolving 23 things on to teacher pop to help us less technically savvy people. I have found a lot of great tools and will be using them to keep organized and in touch with current news in my fields of study. I would like to keep my page updated but not sure how well I actually do it. I'll probably at least use my flicker account now that I have it. I don't know what else I would add or change to the class than providing a warning for those who take it during a short semester.

Thing # 4 and you thought I couldn't count

Well now that the other 22 things are down we're back around to # 4. Commenting is needed in an online community so people know they're not just talking to them selves. Another benefit to commenting is you may be able to provide information or encouragement they other wise would not have. The Blogs I commented on were Shannon's because I agreed with her on the amount of time it takes to accomplish some of these task on line. I commented on Mitch's blog on how podcast can be useful even without posting them online. I had to agree with Lori G. on how feed readers were going to make a difference on the amount of junk e-mail I would receive, and I informed Amber where she might find more School House Rock videos. The last class mate I commented to was Brittney on here great idea for using wikis to go global. My blog search led me to Brad Kimberly's Blogging-Iraq page. He was blogging about how Iraqi dirt gets into every thing and I let him know that three years after leaving Iraq I'm still finding dirt in electronics. The last blog I commented on was on The Fat Girl's Guide to Living. I was looking for blogs on recreational kayaking and found their post on larger people and kayaking. The post talked about kayaks with larger cockpits but I noticed they didn't mention sit on top kayak which have plenty of room for any body. I'm part of a large group of kayaking family and friends and this is problem we see a lot of people misinformed on. Hopefully my comments will help someone.

Thing # 23 Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a great site to ensure the material you use is legal and that you set a proper example of media use for students. I plan to use Creative Commons for my media needs on my future assignments. I also plan to have my students use Creative Commons so they can show their legal use of content on projects. I found this attribution at the bottom of the Web 2.0 / 23 things page.

Thing # 22 Podcast

The podcast I listened to for exercise was from the Dave Ramsey, I'm not always able to listen to the show on the radio so it's nice to catch it later. Dave has a lot of great and simple advise on personal finance. and believe excerpts from his show would be great for my class. I added the RSS feed to my reader so I know when the most current shows are posted. I found the podcast through podcast directoy.com which I found pretty easy to use and it provides a lot of topic areas to look through. I believe I will create some of my own podcast later on to help supplement lessons.