Thing #15: Wiki Connections

I was not able to login to sandbox but I did explore the 2.0 links.  It was great to see all the ideas and resources contributed from other teachers.  Wikis are a great way to gather information and share resources.     I could use it for notes, recipes or critic reviews in my foods classes.

Thing #14: Wikis

Having gone through the wiki tutorial, I have a new found appreciation and understanding for Wikipedia.  Wiki's are awesome and thanks to the "Plain English" presentation, they seem very user-friendly.  I think it would be fun to use a Wiki in my foods class to allow students to contribute recipes and write recipe reviews.  It could be a project on being a food critic.   It would also be useful for yearbook in coordinating and organizing plans for the yearbook.  I like the idea of being able to reach a lot of people at one time.  At least a pre-determined list of people.  Then again, anything posted online will reach a lot of people at one time!  There are so many possibilities with wiki's and I am glad to be more informed and aware about how and why to use them.

Thing #13: Copyright

In my foods classes, copyrighting has never been an issue that I needed to address.  Working on the yearbook is another story!  From writing copy to selecting pictures, we have to be extra careful about what goes into the yearbook.  I have learned a lot about copyrighting this year and so have my students.  Besides using our own pictures, students would find pictures on Google images to use.  For example, they wanted a picture of an iPod for the tech page so the students googled "iPod" and found a picture they liked.  Of course this was not a picture we took so we could not use it.  Instead, the students took pictures of their own iPod's to include.  A Fair(y) Use Tale and the other videos provided will be great resources for me to show my students next year before we start our work on the yearbook.

Thing # 12: Del.icio.us

When I began looking into Del.icio.us I really did not understand the benefit of it because you can already bookmark any pages on your browser.  Then I read the article from How Stuff Works and I quickly understood the benefit of having an account with Del.icio.us.  By saving and tagging your bookmarks, you are not only organizing them so they are more user-friendly, you are able to access them online from any computer.  Bookmarking on your browser will save the page but only on the computer you are working on.  For business trips and presentations when you may not be at your "work" computer, you can still access the websites, track the research, and hold on to useful information online.

I love to bookmark pages on my comp but I do a lot of work at home as well as at school so I could see a huge benefit to having a Del.icio.us account.  There have been many times when I find a great resource or recipe while on my computer at school and I save or bookmark the page (I probably have at least 25 pages).  There have been multiple occasions when I go to access that same information at home and either can't find it or spend 20 minutes looking for it again.  It would be so much more convenient to have it all organized in one spot.  I might just have to sign up . . .  :)

Thing #11: Explore Web 2.0 Award Winners

I checked out the list of 2.0 winners and quickly found the "Best of" related to food.  The first place winner is imcooked.com.  It is a video recipe sharing site.  It will be a great resource in my Living Skills classes to show students short video demos of special skills or techniques we are learning about: chopping, measuring, cooking an omelet, etc.  It reminds me of YouTube except every video is a recipe demo.

The next site I checked out was urbanspoon.com.  I actually used to have an app for this on my iPod.  It is a great resource for anyone.  It covers a specific area and offers suggestions of the best places to eat within that city.  You can narrow your search by the most affordable, fine dining, types of cuisine, or location.

I also joined an English Ning site that I was invited to by another teacher.  I am hoping to share ideas and gather new resources for my ELD class.  It will be a great way to collaborate with other teachers and share lesson ideas.  I am still waiting for approval on my profile before I can fully access the site but I look forward to exploring it more.

Thing #10: Image Generators

http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Fortune+Cookie

#9: Education Feeds

I started my search for Education blogs on Google Blogs.  I searched for "nutrition" and "food pyramid" but did not have much like finding information that would be useful for my Intro lesson on the Food Guide Pyramid for next week.  I checked out Technorati for a bit and then explored EduBlog which was my favorite.  They have a whole list of Blog competitiors for the "Eddie" awards they give out.  There are several different categories.  For example, "Best classroom blog", "Best use of social networking in a classroom", "Best group", etc.  I searched through a few and read some of the entries that are in the running for "Best blog post".  It was very entertaining and impressive to see what people have done with their blogs and how they incorporate them into their teaching.

I am thinking about starting my own class blog.  I think it would be a fun way to share recipes that we make and post photos of the students cooking in class.  It would be fun to have the students post to the blog sharing about their experiences cooking at home.  I have so many students emailing me pictures of food that they make or sharing stories about the pillow they sewed at home.  I think it would be great to have them share their experience on a class blog.  I wonder how I get one started?  Can I make a group blog on blogger or is EduBlog better for that type of blog?  How do allow multiple students access to one blog?  I need to figure this out but I think it would be a wonderful thing to add to my class.

Here is something else I found on my blog search . . .