Thing 21 - podcasts and photo story

This was a tough one for me. I had to go out and buy a mic and figure out the settings to make it record properly, download audacity, download the lame encoder from audacity, think of what to say, learn how to use the software, and me without even an ipod to my name! Now comes the hard part, exporting it to this blog post. Here goes... This will be used for a Texas trivia contest over the course of the year for our fourth graders. Book trailers, audio reminders for directory paths, student storytelling, lots of cool things...

The next task is easier for me as I have already explored Photo Story this summer for my twin boys' high school graduation retrospective. I had lots of fun playing with the music and old photos. I didn't have a mic at the time, and it would have been fun to add my comments to some of the pictures. Unfortunately, it is very long and would not load so I tried a shortened version below. I may have to play with the file size some more (still 2M) to get it to load. It was the highlight of the day for my family members. I can see this in place of biography reports, author studies, history events, U.S. state reports, almost anything ....

Thing 14 - Technorati blog search

I have been very curious about Technorati since it has been referenced many times in this 23 1/2 things adventure. I explored keyword searching which helped me get to the right area, and then tag searching to follow out specific themes such as "library_love" to watch the latest video submissions on You-Tube. I am quite sold on tags. I also did some research on solar energy blogs on Technorati and on Google Blog Search. Both pointed me to excellent sites, although different ones on the top 10, so I think searching in tandem is the key -- not sticking to just one site.

It wasn't really surprising to me to see that the most popular blogs at the moment are technology-related (with the exception of The Huffington Post probably because it's an election year). I think things change so quickly in technology that blogs are the only way to keep up with things. Educationally speaking, I think this site is more geared for older students and professional development. I did see some interesting videos promoting the library which gave me some ideas for creating one for our elementary library this year. I found so many more blogs of interest to me on Edublogger.

While I explored the widgets I chose not to join Technorati because I feel I'm getting spread too thin. If I get too many things going, I won't develop the habits I need in any depth. At least I know what the site is if I need it again. There were no tutorials for using the site either which makes me feel that the site is really for techies, not so much for educators.

June Authors' & Illustrators' Birthday Calendar

June Authors' & Illustrators' Birthday Calendar