Mr. Shoe’s Education Blog

Blogs, Wikis, and RSS have some things in common and some differences.

• All are Web 2.0 tools
• Blogs and Wikis deal with creation of content
• RSS is a tool used to alert one to new content

Blogs and Wikis allow for creation and posting of content. Blogs revolve more around one person putting out information, and receiving feedback through a commenting process. Wikis are more of a collaborative tool, where in a creative common space many users help to supply information, edit and design the content held in the Wiki.

Depending upon the desired teaching outcome, teachers can use both tools to enhance student learning, and help to differentiate instruction.

RSS feeds assist users to gather information. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are “subscriptions” that automatically send an alert to a user who subscribes, letting the user know that “fresh” content or updated content has been posted to the site. RSS can help with research, keeping an “eye” on content and delivering changes to an RSS Aggregator. The aggregator will post an alert with a brief synopsis of the update. The user then determines whether to explore the update now or later!

Zamzar.com: To convert files from multiple types to formats that can be read by software you may have.

Teachersfirst.com: Plenty of resources. Search by Subject and Level. Matrices.

MapSkip.com: Persons post pictures and stories of locations from around the world. You are encouraged to contribute if you know the place posted, or make your own posts. Uses Google Earth, so you can have map, satellite, hybrid or terrain. (Found on Teachersfirst Website.) There is audio and video. Registering gives you access to more, and it is FREE.

Lynne Schalman’s Delicious site: Just GO THERE. TOO much to explain, all levels, all curriculum an omnibus of sites.

US Elections

• The US Elections, from the point of view of You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/youchoose
• The Democratic Party website: http://www.democrats.org/index.html
• The Republican Party website: http://www.rnc.org

We covered the first 11 of the 33 questions about the “facts” of technology. I have to remember that we start with bits, move to bytes, then we go in multiples of 1000.

A Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, which by rule of thumb is one double spaced typewritten page.

A Megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, by rule of thumb 1000 DS typed pages, or roughly a book.

A Gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes (one billion), by rule of thumb, a small library.

A Terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion), by rule of thumb, a large library, like the Library of Congress.

I’ve also learned how to link Video into a ‘blog and I’ve linked photos into my blog as well.

This You Tube video shows the relative positions of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, using Google Earth.

Welcome to Stephen Shoe’s Summer Core ‘blog for completing the requisite homework activities.

This picture of a Basset Hound, looks like my boy Pokey!

Picture from: http://www.basset-hounds-basset-hounds.com/basset-hound-rescue.htm

This Yellow Lab looks like my boy Barney!

Picture from: http://www.justdogbreeds.com/labrador-retriever.html