Lee Ann Spillane's Blog (19)

My friend Ryan once told me, "it's all about feeds." This was probably 2 years ago and we were talking about Web 2.0 things and the semantic web--ideas which like cloud computing are a stretch for my imagination, even now. I understand more about feeds, but I'm no expert. When I subscribe to a feed, content is delivered to me or more specifically to my reader. My reader, in my case, Google Reader, brings all of my feeds together in one spot:… Continue

I'm working on a curriculum project, Plugged-In to Nonfiction with my literacy mentor, Janet Allen, this week, so I was not able to go to San Antonio for NECC. However, I have been dipping in as often as possible and I was thrilled to listen in to Chris Lehmann's session this afternoon.



School is real life. Sometimes, if we're really being honest, it doesn't seem like it. When my first… Continue

cross posted on my personal blog Pink Stone Days



Alan Levine posted a Tag Galaxy picture collage about China on his blog which motivated me to check out the new-to-me web 2.0 app. You type in a tag and Tag Galaxy creates a visual, moving, 3-D galaxy of options for you to browse. Click on a planet in the galaxy (labeled with a category) to view that group of images. I almost didn't get to… Continue

cross posted on my personal blog Pink Stone Days



Wordle is a online application that makes word clouds. You know me and my word art, so this is just so cool. You can type in your own words and it will arrange them or if you use delicious , you can allow wordle to make a tag cloud out of your bookmarks. For those who've never heard of delicious, it's a social bookmarking tool. You post your… Continue

I'm still chuckling about last night's Second Life session. Jane Krauss asks audience members to raise their hands and what do I do? Jump up and down. Ah well, I'm new, a newbie as they say and I have a lot to learn in Second Life and in the Web 2.0 world. Everyone begins somewhere, right? I'm glad that I can laugh about it--and share the funny stories with the teacher next door to me at school, Tim.



Today I participated in a… Continue

I now have a Second Life. In SL I'm Ernestine Snoodle. Tonight I went to a presentation on Project Based Learning given by Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss. I enjoyed it and it was quite interesting, but I'm somewhat overwhelmed by what I need know how to do in SL. It took me quite a while to figure out just how to sit down at the amphitheater and forget learning how to raise my hand during the presentation, instead I accidentally jumped up in the air when I tried to follow the commands people were… Continue

I'm not an educational technologist, not by training, but I do love to share what I learn with other teachers and show them how they can use digital tools in their classroom to build literacy. This year in the Reading Writing Center I did a lot of that. If the RWC is truly a literacy-rich place where I demonstrate best practice literacy instruction then it makes sense to incorporate the "new literacies." Ewan McIntosh twitted a question about new literacies this morning asking if Twitter would… Continue

I'm listening to and watching a presentation Will Richardson gave at Manhattan High School yesterday I wish I could tag the video and write notes (tag) in places as I watch it like you can on Viddler which Ryan showed me the other day.



[Twitter Moment: I couldn't remember the name of the taggable, shareable video site and unfortunately I didn't post it to my delicious, so I just sent… Continue

I noticed something the other day. Try not to laugh, but I think the light went on in terms of tags. I use tags, though I think mine are a bit random, but as I was reading Will Richardson's blog the other day I started to see how many people's tags fit together. Just a small ah-ha I suppose. How much time does it take folks to cull through tags. I'm thinking of David Warlick's August presentation… Continue

Using a blog with my service learning students has been a challenge. I want to say failure, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Besides, failure is something to celebrate (like in Meet the Robinsons)--failure means there are lessons to be learned!



What's gone wrong? Here's the short list (warning to fellow English teachers, these will not be parallel or grammatically correct):



Students don't understand the difference between a blog post and a… Continue

It's February and I missed posting here in January. I've lived the busy teacher's life since returning from winter break. It's been a whirlwind.



I can't access this blog from school and perhaps that's why I'm writing less, but I do want to continue to note and journal about the technologies I'm trying and how they are affecting student engagement and my own practice. So, what's changed? What's new this month? In terms of my practice, I started a blog and a wiki for my service learning… Continue

Today I'm thinking about the digital tools I've been using lately with varying success. I'm also thinking about David Warlick's recent apology to teachers. He apologizes to teachers for talking about them to administrators and others invested in improving schools/education. Does he really apologize? His apology is for talking about teachers and "getting them to teach differently" with administrators and others-- or for reporting out conversations he's had. I think that's how he words it. I… Continue

It's been two weeks since NCTE (National Council of Teacher's of English). Reading David Warlick's blog post this morning puts in mind of teachers using technology. Teachers who do and teachers who don't. Interesting post. Ultimately it comes down to doing your job as a teacher for Warlick. He says, " Teachers who aren’t using computers and the Internet in their classrooms with their students…

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Well, last month's attempt to embed video into my blog post obviously did not work. I thought about editing the entry today. Cleaning it up. Sweeping away all the code. I stopped myself as I deleted paragraphs, changed words and erased the codes. Why not leave it? Leave it so that I can learn from it. Obviously I didn't embed the code correctly. So, I went searching for solutions and posts with answers. I've found a few but am still reading.

And reading, and reading... that is one…

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<embed width="340" height="290" wmode="transparent" flashvars="file=http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/ChannelRssHandler.ashx%3fcontentItemID%3d694149%26mi%3d1&autostart=false&overstretch=false&LinkOnScreenClick=0&InitialVolume=40" quality="high" name="mpl" id="mpl" src="http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/dbox/3/flvplayer_abc_small.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>

What are your three words?…

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So, today I attended Orange County's inservice conference at the convention center. I must say that David Warlick's presentation, inspired awe. Redefine literacy. Literally. We have to. As Warlick says, it's not about…

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So, I've learned a lot about viruses this past week. Who knew that viruses, adware and spyware were mutually exclusive but similarly symptomatic? My laptop picked up something at camp--and no not band camp. Though that whole idea and a recent comment from a pastor at church got me thinking about people that use computers for porn (if you're not following my tangents the American Pie movie is running through my mind while I contemplate a unit I taught to a health class in the Reading…

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Ever feel like someone is trying to tell you something? I recently learned about avatars. I don't even know enough about them as virtual personalities to write much of them, but I'm hearing avatar everywhere... even my mother, a retired dental hygeniest brought it up in conversation this week. She actually told me a rather amusing (if scandolous) story about a friend and her avatar. So... I'm thinking, how could I use avatars and Second Life in a high school? Safely and cleanly of…

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I've decided to use this blog to journal about technology and Web 2.0 tools in my classroom. As a mentor for the Florida Digital Educators grant program I am expected to conduct action research in my classroom. I plan to use these musing and posts to gather my thoughts and process my experiences toward that end. My apologies to any readers who wander by... this is truly going to be a working place for me... a work in progress that I can later shape.



What is technology integration?… Continue