Thing 16 - The Library Thing!

I LOVE books!!!

This is an incredibly cool and useful site for fellow book lovers, researchers, educators and students.
Its utility is boundless! Here's ONE suggestion:

1. Assign a book to students
2. Have students search Library Thing for the title
3. After reading the book they can join and post personal thoughts/reactions
4. Then, have them find a "similar" book to read :)

Thing 7b - Checking My Reader

I have quite a few subscribtions in my reader...

Some have to do with education, some with politics, some with dietary issues, and others are just plain fun.

I've been caught up in the fervor of the recent general election, so many of my favorite feeds are political in nature -- so one that recently caught my eye was this one from The American Pundit called Still a Very Red Map. Since I'm a conservative who voted for John McCain, this was heartening.

Both CNN and The New York Times have similar maps (interactive) that I can get lost exploring!!! What a social studies geek I am :)

Thing 12 - A Slideshow!

A Cold War Life -- some pictures from my past...



BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Thing 14 - A New Toy!!!

Wow! So many things to play with... it's hard to select just one (or two) but one DID catch my eye. Quizlet is SO COOL!!!

I used it to create several Georia High School Graduation Test Review Sets for my students.

This is an amazing way to prep for VOCABULARY and CONCEPTS. Students can even use this to create their own study sets to share (wishful thinking for my own daughter!). The first step is flash-card-like. You become Familiar with the set through exposure. The next step is to Learn the set by typing in the correct term/answer. Then you can practice with a Scatter or Space Race game before you are Tested.

AND...
This one just took my breath away:



I used WORDLE to create this image of the Declaration of Independence!
The word sizes are relative to the number of times each word is used in the document.
You can type in your own words and even use RSS feeds to make these amazing creations which are also customizable by color, orientation, font, etc.
I'm going to use this next semester to either:

• allow students to "introduce themselves"
• illustrate eras of history

~very exciting~