Spring

Spring is officially here and I thought that it was about time to add to my blog. Unfortunately, the project that I began with this blog is over. Thus, I didn't NEED to update.

Currently my time is taken up with wedding plans for my daughter. Things are going well there. She finally got all the bridesmaids in to order dress! If only she would order invitations soon.

Learns 2.0 Wrap-up

This certainly has been a wonderful adventure. I am anticipating that this blog entry will be slightly longer than previous. Thus, I am using a new found skill and I am writing this in Google Docs. This way I can type and come back to it later to add and edit.

I found myself going back over my blog entries to see what all I have done. Many of the "Things" I still use, such as Google Docs and Reader, RSS feeds, Delicious, Flickr, & Blogspot.

I love the availability of my documents at work and home in Google Docs. I am currently using Google Docs with my daughter to create a wedding guest list.

Delicious has become my site for students to locate information I have found for them. I do plan on creating a Delicious site for teachers to use. I will begin bundling the sites by grade level instead of just by topic.

Flickr has been a great way for me to get photos off of my school server. Why not use space on Flickr's servers instead of loading up the school server? It is also easy to share the photos. Next year I am purchasing a subscription for the school.

Some "Things" I plan to begin using, such as: a wiki for library documents, "SEOmoz's Web 2.0" website, and Library Thing.

This has been a great experience and I would love to do it again.

Podcasts

It was fun listening to a variety of topics. I finally used PodcastAlley to find a couple of podcasts on using SmartBoards in the classroom. Unfortunately, I do not have one yet. I am hopeful that I will a plan on using information from these podcasts to inform teachers and administrators of their benefits. I have not yet started podcasting. I would like to begin a 6th grade podcast over the weeks events. Perhaps over the summer I can lay the ground work for this project.

Youtube

YouTube has many fun videos. If you have preteens you may have heard of Fred. Fred is a character created by a Columbus, NE student. He has been hired to promote "City of Embers" in his videos. Fred is a phenomenon worldwide. I have even seen commercials on tv that have taken on a resemblance to Fred's video's. This link is to the movie promo and not one of his "normal" videos.

Web 2.0 Tools

I found Docstoc at "SEOmoz's Web 2.0." Docstoc specializes in free legal forms and business templates. I found many types of "business" forms. I did find that the Education link on the homepage did not work (probably why the site is still Beta). However, the Education link under the documents tab did work. This site is going to be very useful to my daughter in college. She is taking an entrepreneur class dealing with the steps and forms it takes to start a business.

Google docs

I have been using Google docs for a short time.  I have used it primarily for minutes at meetings and personal documents. It was neat to find that I could use Google docs to publish to the web or to my blog.  I am typing this post in Google docs and am going to try to post it to my blog.  My school blocks Zoho, thus, I will not be trying that site.  Well, if you are reading this, I must have gotten it posted to my blog.

Wiki - Edits

It is very easy to edit a wiki. I have just edited the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki. It is very easy to do. My service unit utilized a wiki when the area media specialists were creating curriculum. The only problem I had was printing from the wiki in a form that my administrators could take to the board for approval.