Thing 23

Well, I am not sure that you will consider that I actually ompleted this PD.  I was not able to get my Powerpoint to work either on Slideshare, I kept getting error messages with my attempted upload.  I did get a Powerpoint uploaded to Zoho, but it didn't play very well and when I went back today to access it, I couldn't locate it.

I really did enjoy doing this and wish I had had more time and fewer computer glitches.  Just the fact that I was able to get my nurses uploading information into my Google Docs spread sheet would have been enough for me to be exited about.

I am sure there will be somethings I learned about that I won't use often, like Twitter, but I will continue to use Facebook, although probably not as much as most people. 

I am excited about Wikis and hope to use that medium and introduce it to others.  Those of us who worked through this PD learned about things that most of our students use on a daily basis,  If this is what we can do with technology now, where will we be 5, 10, 20 years down the road.  I hope I can keep up with it and learn about and use more new things as they come about.

Thanks Maureen and Joan for doing this.  I think this ought to be required.

Thing 22

I edited the newington 23things wiki.

I also edited a wiki called How to buy clothes that fit.

I started a wiki at http://ctschoolnurse.pbworks.com/School-Nurses-Are-Great#view=edit

It says
I started this wiki page as a place for school nurses to document the kinds of things that they do. It will be interesting to see what they have to say. I think I will start by opening it up to the nurses in Newington and then maybe opening it up to others.

Wikis are something that I think I might really use in the future. Someone had a really bright idea.  I am always amazed at how people even think up these things.

Thing 21

Wikis are interesting.  I think it is great that many people can be involved in editing a document, and when doing group work (I was even thinking about working on the NEAS&C report) it could certainly save some time.  I think it is important to remember and to remind students that wiki's are editable so they may not be the best reference material. 

I am on the executive board of the state school nurse association and we could certainly use wikis to work on position papers etc.

Thing 20

When I got my new computer I had the opportunity to install a free eReader provided by HP and Barnes and Noble.  It came with some free subscriptions to a couple of papers, some sample eBooks and some free eBooks. 

For me the jury is still out on eBooks.  I am not crazy about reading things on the computer, although I must say that my new lap top makes it easier than it was in the past.  I read a lot, (I read the 7 Tales of Narnia during the summer) and I do enjoy having the book in my hands, on the other side of the coin however, when I think of all the books I might be able to carry on my computer when I travel, eBooks don't seem like a bad idea.  I like the way it keeps your place, but still allows you to move forward and backward if you need to.  You can also write in the margins and or annotate with some of the eBook readers, not a bad idea.  I think I will continue to try using the eBooks and perhaps someday soon with welcome the change.

I did look at some of the selections of eBooks on the NHS website, I'd be interested to know how the students like them, most of them are so tech savvy.

There actually are a lot of internet sites for free eBooks and eBook readers.  It seems as if the prices are starting to come down.  I would say that it would be good to do some good research before purchasing one however, they are still expensive enough that if you are buying one you want to make sure it is the best one for you.

Thing 19

I am getting close to the end, and having more trouble than I have had all along.  I went to screencastomatic.com and created a screencast about my experience with Web 2.0.  I was able to get it created, but can't get it to play.  A message said I needed to install the latest version of Java, which I did, and when I open the screencast it says it is playing, but the timer never moves.

The URL is below
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c6jOVvjgd
I placed the embed code below also.

Thing 18

I have listened to podcasts in the past, and at one time was subscribed to some RSS feeds that came to my computer automatically.  I found that I ran into the same thing with podcasts that I do with my DVR, lots of material to review and little time to reveiw it.  I do like a number of the shows on NPR, both local and national and periodically listen to Car Talk, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, Faith Middleton among others.  It is nice that we can listen to these shows at our leisure, or better yet, come up to the computer to listen to the podcast when we drive into the garage and don't want to sit there waiting for the show to end.

Thing 17

Well, I have spent the last hour trying to upload a presentation to Slideshare and Zoho, I keep getting an error message with Slideshare.  I seem to have gotten the presentation uploaded to Zoho, but am waiting for a presentation preview to appear.  In the essence of time, I will come back to this "thing" and try to successfully embed the video in my blog.  If I want to get this PD done on time I must continue with the next thing.  I must say that I have had great difficulty with this particular session.  I like the idea of having presentations up in the cloud as I travel frequently to do presentations and am always worried I will forget my flashdrive, my netbook or laptop will crash or there will be some other reason why my technology won't work, so getting the presentation from the cloud would be very helpful.

Thing 16

I tried to explore the Knowtes site (to develop flash cards), but it was shut down.  I did explore the Remember the Milk site which is supposed to make a to do list, calendar type of application that you can access from any computer.  I found it a little cumbersome, but will spend more time with it and see how it works.  It would be nice to be able to access lists and calendars from any computer.  It is sometimes difficult when you can only access certain things from certain computers.

Thing 15

I actually got involved in cloud computing when I first started working with this PD. I needed to be able to gather information from the various schools regarding absenteeism. In the beginning I was receiving daily emails from 9 schools and transferring that information to a spread sheet.  I developed a form for the schools to fill out which transferred the information to a spreadsheet in Google Docs.  This "cloud computing" made my life sooooo much easier. 

Thing 14

Social networking.  I joined facebook a while ago when I was looking for some previous contacts in the National Association of School Nurses.  I actually was able to connect with quite a few people whom I had no other way to contact.  It can be kind of exciting when you find someone you have lost contact with.  I am not the kind of person to be checking Facebook every day so I probably don't get as much from it as others do.  I know my thirty something son must practically live on Facebook.

I also joined Linkedin a while ago, but have not had as much contact through that as I have had with Facebook.

Thing 13

So, I set up an account on Delicious, it is easy enough to set up the account and add the bookmarks.  I think I will probably use this frequently, the trick is going to be to remember that it exists.  It is an interesting concept, so it certainly rates working with it for a while.

Thing 12

Social bookmarking is an interesting concept.  I like the idea that my bookmarks or favorites can move from one computer to another.  I have been in the situation where I know I had something bookmarked at school and wished I had it at home, or having crashed a few hard drives in my time, losing all the bookmarks along with the hard drive.  I'm not sure about the public part, but we'll see what happens when I try it.

Thing 11

I have kind of fiddled around with widgets before.  You can add them to your home page, and really isn't my Avatar a widget?  I added a Voki to my blog, as well as a health activity pack.  It sure makes things easy to ad these things to your blog when you can copy the HTML code and paste it to your blog.

Thing 10

Twitter-I am not a big fan of Twitter.  I opened an account and sent a tweet.  I don't think I am the type of person to spend that much time on the computer.  I don't text on my cell phone, email is more my cup of tea.  It is in interesting concept and I can see how the kids really like it, but I don't have an interest in keeping those I know up to date about my life minute by minute.

I checked out Time's 50 Best Websites 2009, I was somewhat surprised to see that I was familiar with quite a few of the sites: Flickr, Twitter, Skype, Google, You Tube,  Amazon, Netflix, Wikipedia, F,acebook, Pandora.  A couple others that I checked out were Supercook, Tripit and Aardvark.

Thing 9

Copyright!!!!!!!!  That disneylike video was a little hard to take, but seriously.  I think that for students there are a lot of blurred lines regarding copyright and plagerism, some of the things that are available on the internet will blur those lines even further. I am not so sure that even adults who are not involved in education really understand about copyright law.  I think it is important that teachers frequently not only remind students about copyright law, but what the law means.  I know that even when I taught in higher education there was a lot of misunderstanding about what copyright meant. 

The additional websites were helpful, although I wasn't crazy about the comic book.  We all need to keep copyright laws in mind when we are working on our blogs.

Thing 8

This was a fairly simple thing to do.  It's nice to know that you can embed all these things in your blog.  Serious bloggers have a lot available to them for content.

I found a video about school nursing to embed in my blog.



Maybe this will give you some idea of what being a school nurse is

Thing 7

I looked at YouTube, which I have done before.  It can be overwhelming how many videos there are.  I also think that it is unfortunate that people take excerpts from YouTube to defame people or humiliate them.  One thing I think we have to remember about the internet is that not everything we see there is credible.

I watched a video about my hometown and commented on it, although I guess I it was more difficult than I hought, I wasn't sure it got posted and ended up doing it 3 times

Thing 6

I opened a  Flickr account, it was really easy as I already had a Yahoo account.  This would be a good place to put pictures you want others to see, although I kept my account private.  I have also used a site called Snapfish which is similar. I did upload a picture and it was really easy.

Thing 5 with picture

I found a picture of James Madison's "Temple" on Flickr.  I chose this picture because Bob and I visited there while we were on vacation in Virgina a couple of weeks ago.

This is James Madison's "Temple" it is located a Montpilier in Virgina about 45 miniutes west of Harrisonburg.  It was placed over an "ice house" and they stored ice and other things that needed to be kept cold.  This allowed the Madisons to have ice for cold drinks and provide guests with things they might not otherwise have had available to them in the summer.

Thing 5

Flickr is interesting, it's nice to know you can easily find public domain pictures so easily. I was able to find some pictures  of places I visited on vacation.