30 Days....Day One

I'm officially 3 days behind (and counting) on the "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger" challenge that Steve Dembo (lovable teach42) suggested/dreamed up last week. I'm all about it. I know I'm not a great blogger, and I know I'm not a consistent one, which seems to defeat the purpose to me sometimes.

So, here I am. I'm going to bump out all these posts and get caught up. Be watching a space somewhere on this page for news of the wiki that some others and I volunteered to scratch together for Steve.

The "about" page.

I've never had one. Blogger doesn't really lend itself to one (although Dembo pointed out a work-around for that. I just can't look at it here at school, so I can't tell you if it works or not. I'll get to that this evening.)

So, I guess my first job is to set about getting one set up. I imagine this will (as everything seems to) me deciding to completely revamp the look of my blog. No biggie.

I'll update in a little while, and let you know how things go.

UPDATE: Okay, a day later..I've managed to at least update my Blogger profile. Does that count? I say YES!

Cool stuff I learned about today

Check this out. I already knew about the MIT open courseware project.

Here's the Yale one. I'm going to do the Old Testament class. And maybe the philosophy class. Anyone care to join me?

Here's some other interesting open courseware projects:

University of Southern Queensland (Australia)

Utah State University

University of Notre Dame

Learn something people!

AISDCL20 #14--Technorati and Tagging

I'm just not into tagging through other websites. I tag here, and it kind of feels like way too much extra work to tag to meet other services needs.

BUT, I get it. I do understand how it creates a networking opportunity when you tag your posts and look for similar ones out there. And when I'm searching for specific things in Flickr or Del.icio.us, it does, in fact make it easier.

It just feels...like work on this end. I know it's not, not really anyway, but it's just an extra step that I (if I really wanted to do this right *grin*) would do.

Okay, I'll give it another shot. (How'd I talk myself into that one?)

AISDCL20 #11--Web 2.0 Awards

Weeellll....it's probably cheating, but I chose to take a look at pbwiki. I already have one (well, our AISDCL2.0 wiki), so that's why I think it might be cheating.

I think it's easy--just like the name implies (easy as a peanut butter sandwich). Pretty much a point and click editor (like the AISD teacher webpages). The updated version looks snazzier, and is just as easy to work with.

I'm involved in ALL kinds of Nings (which is social networking without the MySpace stigma).

Texas School Librarians

TeacherLibrarian Network

Explore..Discover..Play!

Web 2.0 For Teachers

Progressive Educators

Nings are just a great networking thing, that's tied into a subject/them specific thing. They're easy to navigate and are great ways to collaborate and generate ideas and discussion.

AISDCL20 #7--Something technology related

So, since I think it's bad form for the leader of the project to not quite be done...

So, I'm working on podcasting lately. I've been playing with creating podcasts for the books that I'm reviewing for my library and for Tayshas. I think next year, I'll offer it to my TAs as a project for their grades.

Anyway, check out Audacity to try playing with your own podcasts. As long as you've got a microphone or digital recorder, you can podcast yourself!