Thing #22, Copyright and Creative Commons

The laws on copyright are fairly difficult to understand, but students still need some knowledge of the subject. Even the comic book (from Duke University) is not especially easy. The site on Cyberethics for Kids has some good examples, written in language that students can understand. I would probably make use of that site, and keep coming back to the subject during the year in an effort to give students an awareness of this important (but neglected) topic.

Thing #21, Games

The games on Fun Brain are a little easy for high school English, but some of them could be fun and practical if played at the most difficult level: Plural Girls, Grammar Gorilla, Rooting Out Words, Word Turtle, and Spell Check.

Thing #20, Digital Storytelling

The Library of Congress has many stories on "Experiencing War" from the Veterans History Project. These stories are told by the persons who experienced them at http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/alphalist.html.

Thing #19, Video and Audio Tools

I've been listening to Pandora on a regular basis (daily) for the past couple of years and loving it. Recently, Pandora inaugurated a monthly limit (40 hours, I think) on free listening. After 40 hours, you pay 99 cents for the rest of the month. Quite a good deal. The only flaw on Pandora was that there was no station for Broadway musicals. Hurray! AccuRadio has Broadway musicals! However, I just e-mailed AccuRadio to complain that they had no musicals starting with the letter "Z." No "Zombie Prom." What a rip-off.

Thing #18, Podcasts

I don't own an IPod, but my wife does - and we often listen to podcasts while in the car. My favorite is "This American Life." We also listen to "Leo LaPorte: The Tech Guy," "New Life Live," and various other technology, book review, and current events podcasts. In the Educational Podcast Directory (under English Language Arts) I found quite a few that could potentially be used for an online classroom. A show called "Grammar Grater" from Minnesota Public Radio was especially intriguing. I listed to a fairly entertaining episode called "Misnomers and Malapropisms."

Thing #17, YouTube and Downloading Videos

I got really bogged down on Things 15 and 16, so I'll try to get back to those later. In the meantime: Like everybody else, I often use YouTube. I check out cultural oddities ("meme" is the word, I believe), musical performances (Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, Merle Haggard, and everything in between), replays of sporting events, TV cartoons from my childhood (Clutch Cargo, Beanie and Cecil, Mighty Mouse), and so on. Today, on Yahoo Video, I found the amazing "Nirvana vs. Rich Astley" clip. On Google video, I found a Harry Potter parody that was funny for the first few seconds. As for this embedded video, I have no idea why we're seeing a bullfighter while listening to the voice of Rootie Kazootie.

Thing #14, Online Resources

Although Curriki did not seem to be working, I found plenty of other online resources.
1) From Thinkfinity, Hands-on Science Activities from Science NetLinks.
2) From Kathy Schrock's Guide, "Cool Quotes," with quotations in many categories.
3) From Free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, a site on ""Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916"
4) From Google U.S. Government Search, Quick Facts form the U.S. Census.
5) From PBS Teacher Network, a site on Great American Authors,
6) From the Smithsonian's "Encyclopedia Smithsonian," a site on the invention of the electric guitar.
7) From the Library of Congress site for Kids and Families, American Memory, "millions of digital items" including one on "The 19th Century in Print."
8) From the National Archives' online exhibits, a site on the "Deadly Virus: The Influenza Epidemic of 1918."
9) From Calisiphere (the University of California), many primary sources about California, including topics such as the Gold Rush and missions.
10) From CLRN, "California" in "America's Story" from "America's Library."

Thing #13, Online Books

Storyline Online has some good picture books, read aloud on video. Lulu and other online book publishers make it much easier for ordinary citizens to publish books and other stuff. I don't quite grasp the concept of Wiki Books, with free educational textbooks that anyone can edit.

Thing #12, Tags, Delicious, Diigo

I never use the Bookmarks feature of my computer because somebody at my house has hundreds of sites listed there, and I figure I could never find a new bookmark. So, I can see the value of Diigo and Delicious for cloud-bookmarking, with access from any computer. Diigo's features of highlighting and post-it notes seem like they could be very useful in a classroom setting.

Thing #11, Gen Y

Although I'm usually pretty skeptical of generalizations concerning the generations (the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, etc.), I have to admit that today's young people did indeed grow up with certain technologies and are much more comfortable with them than the rest of us. A post on Blog Catalog ("The 5 Key Ways I Believe Our Education System Needs to Change So That Future Generations Can Succeed") sums up some of the points we've been reading about: Collaborate, stop lecturing, technology instead of textbooks, quality research instead of quantity research, and there's no need to learn the "long way."

Thing #10, Wikis

As I study all these "Web 2.0" technologies, I wonder which of them will become established parts of life (as Wikipedia has become) and which will be quickly forgotten. Which will be time-saving and practical, and which will not be worth the effort? I use Wikipedia as much as the next person (a lot!) for looking up simple information, but I wonder to what extent other wikis will become part of the classroom and the workplace.

Thing #9, Web 2.0 Application Exploration

Here are five sites that I'd like to use in the future:
Boo.com - A travel site, with a variety of reviews, photos, weather reports, and information on hotels, restaurant, and sights to see.
Monster.com - An alternative to Craigslist.
Bing.com/maps/ - A variation on Google map and Yahoo maps.
Revolutionhealth.com - Plenty of information on a variety of health topics.
Tweetscan.com - Type in a subject, and see what Twitterers are saying about it. This could be an excellent time-waster.

Thing #8, Free Technology

There's way too much stuff here, but here are five sites that looked good:
Wiki Field Trip - As you move the cursor over a map of a city, Wikipedia entries appear about the local sights - right at the exact location.
Teacher Tube - A variation on Youtube, but everything is appropriate for teachers and students.
National Geographic Kids - An excellent resource for science, geography, etc.
Hulu - Lots of TV shows, movie clips, etc.
Who Wants Pizza? - A fun way to study fractions.

Thing #7, RSS Feeds

Sometime in the past 24 hours, my wife (my computer guru) used the term RSS and I asked her what the heck she was talking about. Hey! Now I know! I guess I already started doing the RSS thing (but didn't know it) when I signed up for Google Reader in Thing 3 (or was it Thing 4?) I can see how it can be a time-saver. I can also see how it can be a big time-waster, if I get too carried away with it. How to use it in education? I don't know. I'm not that far along yet. Maybe I'll know after I've done 23 things.

Thing #6, Image Generators

Comic Strip Generator

Thing #5, Flickr

My previous impression of Flickr was that it was responsible for e-mails from friends with "765 photos from Henry's first day of kindergarten" and "1,250 photos from our trip to the Grand Canyon" and "75 million photos of my face from a distance of five inches," etc. Now, I see that it can also be a source of images that I'm trying to find - from just about anywhere.

Thing #4, Searching the Web

I learned that I would need to spend a lot more time studying these other search methods in order to understand how to use them effectively. (There are way too many choices - that's why almost everybody just uses Google.)

Thing #3, iGoogle Suite

The best thing about my personalized iGoogle page is that there's a photo of the San Francisco Giants' ballpark (Candlestick, PacBell, SBC, AT&T, Enron, whatever it's called) at the top. I was pleased to learn how to place the various "gadgets" on the page, including calendar and news. As for the featured article: I see that the main point is that two-way communication is the way of the future in education, but I don't quite grasp what the author has in mind about the "learning commons."

Thing#2, Avatars

My wife made me get an avatar, although I don't really understand what "Extra Credit" is going to do for me. Why did I choose a samurai guy? I don't actually know anything about martial arts, but I just watched the "Kill Bill" movies and I'm hoping that Uma Thurman will look at my blog and be impressed.

Thing#1, Blogs

This is a link to Clovis 23 Things, a "fun professional development program for teachers, parents, students and others." http://clovis23things.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/register/

My 92-year-old father started his own blog two years ago; it's about time I did one of my own.