Podcasts

I found a good educational podcast at podcast pickle called The Teachers Podcast. I think it is very important as an educator to always learn new things. I think there we can always get better at what we do and the way to do that is to learn and try new things. That is exactly what this podcast is about. It covers new ways for educators to use technology and new technologies as well. It is very much designed to be a tool that you can use in your classroom and not just a bunch of random information.

Flickr

I think sharing photos of a common interest would be a great way to get your students to interact and connect with each other and also you as the teacher. We could use it after a field trip to post photos and then comment on which parts each student enjoyed the most. We would also post pictures from different days of the week and invite parents to observe and comment on the activities. Hopefully this would allow the parents to feel more connected to what their children are doing and learning about and also help the students feel more open in talking with their parents about what is going on at school and what they're learning about.

Twitter

I was thinking of useing twitter in a similar way to what we did the RSS feed. I think it would be helpful in my professional development to follow some educator's twitter pages and learn from them. I could hopefully build a relationship with a few of them and learn more as I go. I also like some of the ideas about useing twitter for other things besides tweets. Educational videos would be a great idea. Posting some or viewing other people's. I also think its important to know you're not the only one having the problems you run into on a daily basis as a young teacher, so viewing some other teacher's twitter pages and seeing some of their thoughts on their struggles could be a really big help. I think we can always learn from each other and following people on twitter is definitely one good way.

RSS & the Panda's Thumb

I really found this RSS thing to be very interesting and useful. I've never found much use for blogs because I dont have an hour to sit at a computer surfing blog after blog to see what everyone is thinking. This tool really makes it easy to keep up with the things you're interested in.



I found an article on the Panda's Thumb about Intelligent Design and Creationism called Jonathan Wells: Another ID Creationist Who Doesn't Understand Information Theory. I found it interesting, because it was talking about cloning. The mere mention of cloning sparks endless conversation among most people. The argument for ID was that cloning doesn't creat more information. It just copies it. The author then basically states that since there is more information the information is new. Its kind of 6 in one hand half dozen in the other to me, but nontheless I enjoy watching the two sides go back and forth. I also really enjoy the pictures on this blog.

Social Networking Website

I found a pretty cool website on Georgia High School Football. I recruit GA so it could be pretty helpful in my professional life. It has information about high schools games and what players are doing well, which is clearly something that would helpful to my recruiting efforts. Feel free to check it out and see what you think.

Safety

Safe blogging should be pretty obvious. I think the most important thing is to remember that ANYONE can read your blog. This means your loved ones, friends, and even the occasional creeper. My mom seeing something bad I say or a creeper getting interested are two bad scenarios. So I'll try to keep it interesting, but not too interesting.