Following a Tweet link -- Custom Search Engines and Clipnotes

I followed one of Dennis' Tweets to this link:
http://mrgsclassroomreflections.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/trying-to-reinvent-the-wheel/

It's a blog post by a teacher of students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disabilities, who has experimented with creating a custom search engine, and using some tools that allow you to clip and present short bits of text, for his students because their own "filters" aren't that good due to their disabilities. I wonder whether these tools would also be good for elementary aged students, since their judgement also isn't always that good (due simply to their ages).

Example projects I like (briefer)

I was in the middle of writing this post, and I had saved periodically, but somehow I closed that window without saying "Publish", and now I can't find my saved stuff! Very disappointing! My original post had all sorts of annotations, but now I'm just going to try to paste in a couple of the links if I remember which ones they were:

http://mrkelln.wordpress.com/
I really like the informal tone ("you guys") of this blog, where a middle school teacher writes to his students about projects they are doing that integrate curriculum with having students use lots of cool digital creativity tools.


http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321
Cool PictureTrail stuff documenting classroom activities

http://rrfournier.wikispaces.com/
Useful information that staff need at certain times every year.

(Hey, the earlier draft just came up, and I posted it. Very strange.)

Example projects that I like

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321
Third-grade teacher's class blog, with PictureTrail stuff.

http://mrkelln.wordpress.com/
A middle school teacher writes TO and about his classes. He's experimenting with incorporating lots of new technology (Moodle for science lessons, Voicethread, etc.) in ways that the students learn the technology and use it themselves for projects. I like the informal tone of his posts to his students -- "you guys", etc. Interesting and kind of inspiring site.

http://msgee.edublogs.org/
An interesting example of using a class blog to motivate students. The teacher posted about reading strategies she was teaching, and her third-graders posted about their implementation of those strategies.

http://math8geometry.wikispaces.com/
Eighth-graders each made one page of a geometry wiki. Each page teaches one concept well. Interesting, and I bet the kids enjoyed doing it, but I bet they learned more about making a wiki page than about geometry overall from this project. Fun and a good way to learn technology, but not necessarily an efficient way to learn the geometry itself.

PictureTrail

The graphic (picture cube thing) that I just mentioned is apparently called PictureTrail. It takes lots of forms, not just a cube.

Cool picture cube graphic

Often I find the idea of including graphics more overwhelming than enticing, but this blog

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321

(which was one of the example projects that Dennis gave us links to) has one that even I really like -- a rotating picture cube thing. Cool!

Why I take notes on some of the articles here

I really like reading articles this way: I have the article open in one window on one side of my screen, and my blog open in another window on the other side. I read a little bit, then take notes and / or comment, then read some more, etc. -- Just like teaching "active reading" strategies to students, I feel like I get a lot more out of the articles, this way.

I certainly don't do this for every article -- that would take forever. And, right at the moment my wrists, shoulders, and fingers are starting to hurt -- NOT GOOD! So, it's just about time to stop taking notes, for tonight, even if I keep on reading. I really do like reading online this way, though.

Why creativity and information literacy together?

Why was Session 4 on both Creativity AND Information Literacy? These seem like very different topics. Right now it is the information literacy stuff that interests me the most. So much of web 2.0 "creativitiy" seems to involve pictures, movies, or sound -- I am more interested in text.