Tool 5: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I just finished creating an account for both accounts, but it seems that Delicious only works with yahoo, so it seems like it may make more sense to use Diigo.. From what I can tell they both seem t0 be user friendly, meaning that for the average joe when it comes to computers that these two applications are pretty simple to use and self explanatory. I do like the concept of being able to bookmark over the web, and then being able to access it from any computer, because I have noticed that I have bookmarked sites on my personal laptop and when I want to access them on my work laptop that I can never seem to find the site again. I even try performing a google search where I try to retrace my steps to find the site again, but 6 out of 10 times am unsuccessful, and then I am the type of person to retry the same steps in hopes that it may pop up for me, which it usually never does. This tool will help me in bookmarking pages that I can have access from anywhere with a computer and internet access, possibly even from my phone in the near future. Not sure how that will pan out because the browsers are not the same, but if it is a host site that stores the bookmarks it may work, but just haven't ever thought to try it out from my phone. I used just two generic sites for testing purposes, but these sites happen to relate to my field of profession (Health Fitness)

http://health.msn.com/
http://tahperd.org/

However the second site is very useful, because it talks about a lot of the legislation that takes place in regards to our field of profession (health fitness) again.

I could see the social bookmarking tool being extremely useful when it comes to like research projects, because then they could easily access the bookmarks from any computer without having to jot down the site or emailing it to themselves, and then having to pull up their emails and signing in and then going back to the sites, this would be a faster reference tool for them at the touch of their fingertip and very manageable. As far as Health Fitness, I think it would be easier for us to hotlink it like we did here for this blog, and then have our students follow our blog to stay up to date, or explore the web page in their own recreational time.

Tool 4: Cool Google Tools (Reader and Docs)

This particular tool was enlightening to me, because I have always heard of this type of technology being available, but I have never participated in a google doc until now. As I was watching some of the youtube footage on this particular topic, I found myself saying "I wish I would have known about this when I was facilitating the after school programs we did" Because I noticed a lot of the after school program required a lot of tedious paperwork. However if the parents and students were trained in this particular area, then when doing permission slips and so forth, I could have the parents fill out their child's form online. I also thought how neat would this be when preparing for a meeting with colleagues how this could be of great help in getting ideas rolling or at least everyone's brains turning because they could add there own notes. I also thought that we could have students record on paper or even an "itouch" certain data onto a template created by the teacher, and this way it could be recorded automatically without us having to go back and enter it in, and with that being a hopeful possibility how this could hopefully integrate within Fitness Gram, and how that would allow more time for activity and less time in the office recording data for students, it would hopefully eliminate an extra step with our huge state test that we do twice a year. All this is hopeful thinking for now, but I definitely think that this is something that could be executable with the right computer programmers and so forth. I liked google reader in the sense that instead of always having to check certain sites we find helpful, that if we were subscribed "we" would be notified of new messages or postings rather than us checking them, and that is one less thing to not have to constantly check, since email is something we check daily anyways as teachers. Like I said I am seeing so many possibilities, but I would like to sit down with someone in our particular field of specialty and let them know what we could really use when it comes to our classroom. Now one draw back I did notice, was I believe, now I could be incorrect as I am not the most technologically advanced, but if they did not have a gmail, they would need to create one as this does not sync correctly with school email for instance...??? Anybody know if this is workable? or something that they are looking into integrating all types of email accounts and types?

Image Generators and Mash-ups

This particular tool/set of tools seems to be a great addition to the bag of tricks that we are beginning to acquire. Just from the little experience I have with Animoto and Flickr to showcase some photo shows of my students and Health Fitness events such as Run for the Arts, S.O.A.R (students offering academic relationships) and many more school and community events. It seemed very promising when seeing these tools I am familiar with mentioned along with Wordle, Dumpr, Spell with Flickr, and many more which I am not as familiar with. Therefore I attempted to sort through each one of these sites offered under tool 3, and the ones that seemed to be user friendly were the ones I mentioned above, Dumpr, Spell with Flickr, and Wordle. In my Wordle example I listed the Fitness Components that we use in our curriculum presently, which can easily be transformed and flipped into a lesson or at least an introduction/lead up for the objective that day. The wheels are slowly but steadily beginning to spin (quality versus quantity), and the more I am thinking of how I will incorporate this within my every day teaching. After completing a few of the tools from number 3, this seems to be progressing in a positive direction, because it is very similar in the way I create my lesson plans. I think that times are changing at the speed of light when it comes to technology, and most of the things they are discussing in this blog, our kiddos are already using this or something of the same nature. The neat thing I would like to see though, which I am sure they have already created is to have this set up on our phones, and then we could use our phones to manage everything, versus lugging around a huge laptop. I imagine this will eventually replace paper, notebooks and overhead projectors all together. There is a new tide of things coming in, and we just need catch on the wave.

Tool 2: Building Community and Comments PLN (Personal Learning Networks)

I think the idea of building a network outside of a network within(School district) is a great concept. This actually reminds me of when I used to participate in an online community such as Xanga, and somewhat like the popular Facebook that we have today. Especially the commenting part when people just simply update their status, and all of our friends comment on what we may be doing at the time. The whole following people and keeping up with them is like twitter, because they update their status continuously throughout the day. Blogging is simply the same thing, and the neat part about it is collaborating with people from all over the place. I could follow someone from another state to see what they might be doing with their curriculum in relation to the Health Fitness world. Even share ideas with others or even inspire others to take an idea and create one from that idea. Like I said the concept is phenomenal, I must say I am a little on the fence when it does come down to what we as Health Fitness educators do and that is having our students stay active, and learn life long leisure activities that can promote a healthy lifestyle. So when my colleagues are pondering the idea of how we will incorporate these skills within our classroom setting or shall I say the gym/outside it will be a challenge, however I am constantly looking for new innovative ways to deliver the instruction and activities to my students. I think this can just be an extra "tool" to add to what we already do in our profession and that it can help to further bridge the gap as far as technology inside and outside the classroom, because our students are in a new era that is constantly changing so it is time for us to adapt as well to reach them. Most of the blogs I chose for now are Health Fitness teachers that I know personally, and I will be commenting later once we get rolling more into discussing the topics at hand directly related to our curriculum, plus I am still learning and exploring where I can find other blogs that relate to my specifics. So I will be commenting soon, but what stood out to me the most was the fact of how commenting can turn a statement into a conversation and furthermore create discussion from just one person to multiple numbers of people.

Tool 1: Blog Set up and Registration

This was actually quite fun and humorous, and the wheels are already turning inside my head on how I would integrate this within my content area, which is Health Fitness. I feel that this task may be challenging since our students are supposed to be moving 70-85% of the time known as MVPA (Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity) However at only tool 1, this does look promising, or at least interesting to say the least. I will keep you all posted on my next 10 tools that I have to accomplish. I must say though hopefully the rest of the journey will be as simple as this task was.