Thing # 11: I saw it Flickr and then disappear

What a trip! Some of the journey was rewarding and fun, but I often questioned if the destination was worth the trouble. Yes, I took the tour, but it felt like too much information to process at the time; the map was confounding. I found myself floundering around the rest-stop instead of hitting the road; the road looked too scary to travel alone. And then my guide arrived. I'm talking about you, Rhonda! It was nice to travel in the footsteps of someone who has been there and done that. Rhonda helped me navigate the cumbersome process of avoiding obstacles like forgetting to give an author attribution or leaving off the URL address. And then there were KITTIES (thanks, c0simba2)! I am creating a brief story of my new kitten, Toby, and illustrating his bigger-than-life personality. It was pretty cool to find pictures that seemed to capture what I was thinking and envisioning for my tale. I can imagine students creating mini biographies using images from Flickr, and subsequently, presenting these stories to the class as an example of amazing creativity and a way to view themselves and their world. What a wonderful starting point for a student journey through a myriad of topics and issues. They could even follow this personal pictorial with a character pictorial from the text they are exploring. Now that's a destination I would like to visit.

Thing #10 Anything But Common

Wow! I am amazed and comforted that there are brilliant and creative people out in the world thinking about things like Creative Commons. I formerly believed that I, and all other teachers and students, would just have to take our chances and hope that what we used and sampled and modified would never be challenged based on copyright law. I have noticed CC on websites, but I think I just assumed it meant the same as C; I never even questioned it before now. I use audio and video clips from the web in my teaching, and now I can be relieved of culpability, real or imagined, by noticing the copyright status of the content I am interested in. I have also shared content on the web, again, with no thought of fair use. The web has the feel of a car; we are willing to curse at strangers and steal their lanes because we are insulated by the glass, plastic, and metal of our moving vehicle, and the insulation and anonymity of the screen/screen name feels similar. I think this is the potential danger of CC. Restricted use is still restricted, and the explicit permission granted by the CC is easily aberrated to include all uses. I definitely think the positive possibilities of CC outweigh the possible negative abuses.

Thing #6 Reader, Reader, Pumpkin Eater

Here I am again, correcting a mistake. Sorry- all of you fans and followers (the hundreds of you!)- I forgot to blog about thing 6. I have to say reading the posts that come in on my reader is a mixed bag. I love the feeling of being updated about everything and feeling in-the-know, but I now recognize that my brain will only hold a certain amount of information before it does a Spring cleaning. I believe that I will have to train my brain to process, file, and store blog updates and information in a new way. I am actually excited to imagine that I can build new neuro-synapses through this process. The think of interest I am most consistently excited about is the NPR updates. I am a total NPR nerd, and this makes me feel even more "connected"; I see the endless possibilities for people to become even more involved with things they are truly passionate about just by following reader post updates.

Thing #5- A Reader On the Reader

First, my apologies. I just noticed today that I am missing a post for things 5 and 6. I am rectifying that now. About the reader function in gmail: BRILLIANT! Anything that makes the overload of information less overwhelming and more managable is great. I find myself feeling satified rather than mystified when I am exposed to only the latest posts from sites and blogs I am interested in. I am having a great time reading the Literary Kicks posts. A complete literary/word nerd like myself is in heaven when I see a post entitled Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfuctional Pricing?, and this site is full of things like this. It is finally a comfortable feeling to be linked to blogs because it is like having a subscription to my favorite magazines, and they are delivered daily. I am still struggling with the "read" function, and I have an overwhelming urge to click "all read" every now and then, but I think I will manage.

Thing #9- I Have Sand in My Shorts

What rock have I been living under that has isolated me so much from technology that everything about it- EVERYTHING- seems so foreign and difficult to me? I went to the sandbox, I took my shoes off, I stepped over the edge, and I found myself in a swimming pool gasping for air. O.K. I will forgo the drama for a moment to outline my experience. Thing #9 has taken me longer to complete than any other thing, however, I have been able to use what I have learned in previous things in a way that made my new skills feel practical for the first time. I think I get creating links now, and following the formatting instructions actually made sense as I completed each step in the sandbox page process. I played in the sandbox for a while and viewed the pages of others to get a feel for things, and I think I actually have a feel for things (in the loosest way possible). My sandbox page is as complete as it can be without Thing #10, and I will add that component as I can. I am cautiously excited that I am building something now, instead of the random wanderings I engaged in previously, but I stress the word cautious. I am curious to see when/if I recognize that Web 2.0 skills are in my grasp and applicable to my educational goals, for myself and my students. I am looking forward to playing in the sand and squishing it between my toes...I should probably take my shoes off first. That is the scary part.

Thing # 8

Wikis are a new and uncharted territory for me. I looked at several of the educational wikis on the list, and the variety of form and function was both amazing and intimidating. The "codeblue" wiki seems to be just a list of links, and though I am sure that is useful, I don't quite get how interactive it is. I saw the list of topics in the left frame, but I was not particularly intrigued because of the very "flat" look of the site. The "1001 Flat World Tales" site was much more engaging because it had a great look and the function of the site seemed organic and useful. I love the global educational opportunities this wiki offers, and it makes me want to create something like it, if only on a local/schoolwide scale; I can envision a vertical project like this one being successful in my department or school. The "Discovery Utopias" wiki is another site that is an epiphany of possibilities for student engagement. The nature of the site i.e. the discussion tab and left frame topics creates a rich and complete "world" in which students can be creative. It is the cure for the disease of lost creativity I bemoaned in an earlier post. All of the wikis get me thinking about ways in which I can use a wiki to enhance the educational experience of my students, but I have so many random ideas that pop up (everything from an ongoing writing workshop on rhetoric to an interdisciplinary wiki site that connects writing/literature and art) that I will have to explore more wikis and really plan for the learning outcomes I want. I know that I don't want something thrown together and half-baked; I believe that discourages wiki-curious teachers from giving wikis a shot.

Thing # 7: Commenting on Commenting

I want to post something that is occupying my mind since reading ninjamickey's Thing #7 post. How do I overcome in the blogosphere what spoken language so generously forgives? The mistakes: missed words, inability to spell, tangential thought processes, the randomness (and I argue, joy) of verbal conversation. We refer to blogging as "conversation", but a lazy neo-ludite such as myself finds it disconcerting, even scary to be launched into the strict and merciless world of blogging. Is this the creation of an insecure mind that knows colleagues and admired friends are viewing every mis-spelling and linguistic hiccup? Of course it is. All I can think of right now is how many words I butchered, and how many misused phrases I integrated into this diatribe! And so, how does this relate to commenting on the posts of others? It makes the process a bit forboding, ominous, alarming, terrifying, dismaying, intimidating...o.k., see what I mean? I actually looked in a thesaurus to make sure my list was descriptive enough. Commenting is putting yourself out there. Like my colleagues have pointed out, it is easier to make substantial comments on the blog of someone you know, in the flesh, but much scarier to post to someone who exists only in the great beyond of internet space and time. I know how Rhonda and Salinger and Ninjamickey will interpret and respond to what I post because they are "real", I can read their facial ques, sense the boredom or surprise or disgust in their sighs and eye-rolling. How will a blogging stranger take my typed banter and comment if they don't know my facetious (yeah, I looked it up) inflection and eyebrow raising? I am terrified. Perhaps it just takes guts and practice. Let's hope so.