RSS Feeds

http://www.bloglines.com/public/tomger@madawaskaschools.org

This is the link to my RSS feeds. Wishing all of you fathers a happy fathers day and a great summer. Tom

Linkedln & Plaxo Account

Both accounts were easy to set up and at this point in this course I believe that it has become obvious that there are multiple ways of communicating and dispensing information. These last two accounts, linkedln & plaxo are similiar to the other social networking accounts and at some point you would need to choose one site and make that your primary source of communication. These last two sites are also a way to manage your personal and public business by linking to all the other social networks available. Many of these sites would be excellent social networking sites for regional organizations and as resources for business people who travel the world, I believe the digital portfolio page is a great tool, these are tools, for people to provide potential employers, students and business clients with important information. In terms of my business, high school education, the primary source at this point is still basic email, but the future is fast approaching and these tools give me insight into potential methods to improve communication and thus education.

Digital Portfolio

Greetings to all my classmates in Kin 710. Today was the last student day at my school and tomorrow is the last teacher day for this school year! This was a tough year with a group of students that tested me every day. The great thing about teaching is you try and make a difference and every year you get new students. Anyways, enough ranting on such a beautiful day, my digital portfolio site is listed below. Once I got going and watched the videos a couple of times it wasn't half bad. Hope your quest goes as well. Best Regards, Tom

http://sites.google.com/site/tgerardfpukin710/

NY Times

The following link may be of interest to some of you and the article on pickle juice is tasty!
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/phys-ed-can-pickle-juice-stop-muscle-cramps/

Image generator

I believe on this issue I am becoming technology impaired! I have tried several versions but get stuck at various points in the process-especially when they start asking for pay pal! I can see how someone could use this technology for entertainment purposes but I usually use either a clip art download or some of my own pictures to entertain the students. I do not believe that this is something I would use on a regular basis but if properly trained, using one site might be as easy as copy and paste is in regular word documents.

LibraryThing-2

Discussed the use of this technology with our school librarian yesterday. She was aware of it but questioned whether or not this is something that she would use in our school. The enormity of the task of re-listing all the books is the issue.

I am attempting to embed the link to library-thing and that explains the above link. This is based on the section of library thing that allows for a chicklet.

LibraryThing

Interesting site for people who enjoy reading and also a great site for professional organizations. Nice to see that it was created right here in Portland, Maine. The search procedure is really simple and it allows you to look at what other people are reading and possibly help you pick out your future reads. This is the link to my site for your info http://www.librarything.com/home/TomGerard
I have forwarded this link to our schools English department for their review and possible use. Once again, there is much wonderful technology out on the Internet.

Final Warm-up Match Ahead for U.S. Soccer

podcasting search site

Truly addictive, you could virtually never leave your chair if food was delivered to you. As I imagined, there is no limit to the material available and in this podcast search engine this is also the case. Since I like sports I first went to this genre and explored and then I typed in fly fishing which directed me to a totally different world. Rather than download to watch the video, I used my new found skills to link an Orvis pod cast site to my RSS feed bloglines. Good stuff. I believe I will now order a pizza and continue my quest after I listen to a couple of flyfishing podcasts. Heck, I may never have to lecture again in health class-I'll just keep playing podcasts!

Armando Galarraga's perfect game ruined on the last out

Ump: 'I Missed It'

You tube

http://www.restlessgroove.com/Restless_Groove_Website/Video.html

This is the web site for my son's band Restless Groove and their you tube video's. Hope you enjoy it.
In my school we can use You tube but our censor filter will not allow our students to visit this site. Teachers use appropriate sites for lessons but screening and auditing is required. Our students know far more about you tube than we do!

Ps. My son Peter is the lead guitarist!

library 2.0

This reminds me of an Alfred Hitchcock movie I saw once where the librarian was considered obsolete and therefore needed to be "eliminated"! I can imagine that librarians, who manage books are wondering where how and when on this one. E-books, Kindle and more. Even the wikipedia discussion of library 2.0 is lacking in depth and yes a blogger coined the phrase library 2.0! This may not be the next greatest thing!

Technorati

Overwhelming amount of information and sources of information from all over the world. Now that I am over that shock. Using their search features I was able to find a blog site from a previous student in this class and read his blog about this site. Interestingly, I share some of his thoughts. This site, Technorati, has endless possibilities and as a friend of mine used to say, the rabbit paths it takes you down may get you lost! This site is not as user friendly as other sites that we have explored but much of it may have to do with the design. It fits into a nice user world that is looking for quick ways to grab the reader. This site if managed and explored to its fullest would probably be a very valuable tool. No one has tagged kinesology in the past few months. The top 100 blogs and the Technorati authority is useful. They have taken all the homework out of our searches and verify the validity of these blogs. That is always good stuff.

Del.icio.us

You have to admire the creativity of the creators of this site. Just the name alone makes it easy to remember. That being the case, many a time I have been at my home site and wished I had access to material at school so I could work on it from the privacy of my house. Having access to sites that I have preselected our using the time of others who have surfed the web for information is a great idea. So for private use, yes, I can see how this site has much to offer.
In regards, to my use of this site as a teaching site or reference site for my students, I could foresee using this option to select sites for research that I have previously audited that would provide them with good information. This would be an easier method than writing web addresses on the board or sending them emails with approved sites. The only constraint becomes setting up the site and maintaining it as the teaching world like many jobs requires plenty of hands on and the time left is very finite. I like the concept but realistically, am not sure how often or to what degree I would use it for teaching purposes. As stated previously, for my own personal use I can see the effectiveness.

Technology for education

The technology we have studied and explored in the past week has many implications for use in the classroom. One online web activity for instance was Flickr, as part of my p.e. course I regularly take digital pictures of activities(interestingly-the camera was the result of the donors choose option discussed in an earlier email from Scott), print them out and post them on a bulletin board for public viewing. I could just as easily upload these photo's and allow my students to view all the photo's online. In regards to the blog site, I could use blogging or twitter to provide my students with schedules, updates to training or other student driven needs that they could access during off hours. This might save a few phone calls to my home etc. The Face-book student-teacher issue is a sensitive matter but the use of a Face-book fan page may have applications in a school environment. At this point, I do not have enough knowledge about this application to form an educated comment on the fan page. I really like the idea of student created podcasts to demonstrate knowledge mastery in health and p.e. All of our students have laptops and getting them to create podcasts to demonstrate higher level thinking would definitely be a quantum leap over the basic fact recall summative testing done quite often in p.e. Lastly, having each student create an RSS feed on health and p.e. sites could open their eyes to new concepts that they could explore on their own. For instance, the N.Y.Times has a physical education section that explores many concepts within our discipline that I find interesting and I am sure a segment of my students would also find this educational. In conclusion, my eyes and energy has been redirected by the potential that exists to use technology and help the students use their intellect for more than videos and games. These do serve a purpose, but only as filler and not as content.

Web 2.0

This site is just as good if not better than the RSS feeds that we looked at in this lesson. Now that I have an RSS site, I linked onto a health site for new feeds. The interaction between these sites using addresses is simple. My children have used Pandora for music which is a great site but seeing Last as the top web 2.0 music site was intriguing. I asked my daughter about this site and she said they used this site in Europe where Pandora did not exist. The world gets smaller every day.

Google Docs

Now this is a cool site. The details and explanations are overwhelming but so are the options. The family budget site was extremely user friendly and plugging in a few numbers allowed you to see exactly what was happening to your income. The fact that this information is available for free on the web is excellent for people that live in the Internet world. Based on what I see on this site, much of the work we do in school such as spreadsheets, budgets etc. could just as easily be completed on this site. It is simply amazing how much and how easily information can change hands. I am pleased they are slowing down the oil leak in the gulf also, thanks to my RSS feed!

RSS Feeds

I just completed the task of installing and setting up my blog-lines account. It is simply amazing how easy the task was to complete. The only issue I had was when I moved to our class blog site and used the link to add the RSS it always asked me to sign in one more time. There must be an easier method and I will find it as I continue to investigate this site.
On a practical note, I can see why this is much easier having information sent to you rather than you go looking for information. This is like "executive summary" for Internet surfers. Good stuff.

Flickr

Greetings to my classmates at Fresno Pacific. This is a live shot out of my classroom window looking into Canada. This technology is unbelievable and its amazing how it is all interrelated! TMG

microblogging

I asked my children and their friends ( all recent college grads) about the concept of microblogging. They all use it in the form of facebook but twitter, etc. were not things they use on a regular basis. They all stated they would use the tools if they were a course requirement! Aside from that use, cell phones and facebook are their communication choices!

Social Media Articles-3

editorial: Examining Social Software in Teacher Education

This article is timely in that the two previous articles discussed were related to the students and the underlining question was how do current administrators, teachers and support staff use social media effectively? This article delves into how future teachers are educated to use the very technology they are using to promote learning and teaching in their future occupations. Pointing out the role of social software as an environment that supports scaffolding in learning, active participation of the student, an environment to publish artifacts of their learning and lastly a virtual learning community is really what this course is all about. This article helps one understand how we can use social media in our profession and guide students away from "poor decision making" in posting photos in sites such facebook.

Social Media Articles-2

Web, Library, and Teen Services 2.0
Bolan, Canada & Cullin 2007

Great article, informative and eye opening. The component about teen involvement as crucial to the success of technology has not hit my school. This article and its discussion on how progressive libraries are accommodating physical and virtual space; plus what it means to students will be shared with my colleagues. The line on gaming in which they state "contrary to what some may think, gaming is recognized as a literacy activity" would be a great writing prompt for the students. My employer uses a content barrier to catch "bad" students who are playing games and more laptop privileges have been lost due to gaming than anything else. This article tells libraries and schools to embrace the availability of social media and not to banish it! Social media used effectively could very well help students who struggle with conventional school pedagogy and methods. I will stir the pot and see what rises!

Social Media Articles

Social Networking by A Weaver and B Morrison-UVA
The article was interesting in that it seemed to sum up all the beliefs, enlighten me on unknown information and pose a perfectly good question. How can all this social networking which is basically "unappreciated by their parents demographic" going to be accepted in the modern workplace? As the article points out the web has created endless opportunities for communication and more will be developed but will this affect face to face communication to the point that this becomes a lost art? I don't believe it will but as educators we question the use of technology and the affect it is having on current high school students. Key to this is the section on facebook, that many current students use to post pictures and communicate. The netiquette and use of this site by potential employers and school administrators for illegal activity is so true. I have seen actual cases in my school where this has occurred. Technology can be a great tool but as this article points out, using it properly is the key.

Social Media Articles

You tube

Heard on the radio today that you tube is 5 years old today!

microblogging

The past hour plus has been spent exploring the world of micro-blogging. I can now understand why "famous" people would love this and how you can reach out to the world. I asked my class, seniors in high school, if they used any of the micro sites and all they use is face book. Tonight I will ask my children who are all college students how they use this same technology. We have to ask, what's next! My wife would say this is way too much technology and I agree. This is a good question, why would anyone want to know the details of someone's life!

Introductory blog

This is my first post for KIN 710:Technology in Kinesiology. Interesting in that a previous course I took in health required a blog site and after trying to update this site it was easier to delete it than modify it. Well the blogger administration required a password being sent to my cell phone in order for the new blog to be created. This level of security and detail is a good feature to help protect us all! My curiosity in how this technology can be applied to physical education is growing with each log on to this course.