RSS Awareness Day

Where would I be without my Twitter network?! Last night I was in a panic because I could not for the life of me find my teaching materials for the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I'm just starting with my sixth graders. So I sent out an S.O.S. to my Twitter friends and within minutes had two fantastic websites sent to me by Diane and Pat. My Twitter network continues to amaze me with their continued generosity and kindness! Thank you one and all!

Fast forward to this morning...without a tweet from Will Richardson I never would have known that today, May 1st, is RSS Awareness Day. I'm willing to bet that very few of us knew that! In case you're scratching your head and trying to come up with what "RSS" might stand for, let me just stop you right there before you come up with something really off-the-wall. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is the format we use every day to get our blog feeds sent to us. Care to know more about RSS or RSS Awareness Day, then please visit the RSSDay.org website. Thanks again to Mr. Richardson for this one!

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One Last Lecture

Would it surprise you to know that one of the most popular videos on YouTube has nothing to do with strange people doing stupid stuff? In fact it is a video of a college professor giving his Last Lecture. This video has probably already made its way into your emailbox, or you've heard friends or colleagues talking about it, or you might have seen Randy Pausch himself being interviewed on ABC recently.

Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer last year. The video is based on a lecture series that asks the hypothetical question, "If you could give one final lecture, what words of wisdom would you leave behind?" In this video Professor Pausch discusses his childhood dreams and how he realized them.

It truly is inspirational.




"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

Now That's Creative!

Paper Art

From: jovirakel, 1 year ago

| View | Upload your own

It's not my artwork, just something I got on my e-mail box and thought I'd share here. the artist: www.petercallesen.com


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Do You Flock?

Image from Flickr user Capitrueno

I've spent some time today trying to figure out Flock. It wasn't in my original plans for today, but problems with Internet Explorer and Twitter started me thinking, "Wait a minute, I remember downloading Flock...why aren't I using it?" A very good question! Flock calls itself the Social Web Browser because you can do so many different things with it: check email, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, even YouTube. I can even blog directly from Flock, which I'm doing right now for the first time. They make it incredibly easy to share everything you find on the web with your network!

I'm still trying to figure it all out and would love to hear from those who are experts at it. Speaking of experts, be sure and check out the following screencast from Liz Davis, the Queen of All Things Screencasted.



Or for a longer demonstration, check out the following video from last year's TechCrunch Conference.



And for the record, it was very tempting to title this post "What the Flock?" but I didn't know how mom would react to that!

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Field Trip!

Field trips are a lot of work. First there's the paperwork, then there's prepping the kids for the trip, and, of course, finding drivers, and then more paperwork. And when a driver cancels at the last minute, you check your blood pressure, say a few Hail Marys, and start making phone calls.

And when you're planning a field trip to San Francisco you never know what kind of weather to expect. We were unbelievably fortunate today, as you can see from the photo I took of the Golden Gate Bridge. Beautiful, beautiful day!

Our trip today was to the Legion of Honor, where we were to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. I have been an admirer of her work for many years, so to get to see this exhibit was truly a privilege. Her work, mostly done in black and white, somehow manages to capture more of a person's inner beauty than can be discovered on the outer shell. I loved every minute and every photograph, even the ones that made me gasp. Especially the ones that made me gasp.

I found out just before we left school this morning that the Legion of Honor was also holding an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with a number of other antiquities from Israel. They only had one small portion of the Scrolls, Psalm 119 to be exact, but to be that near a religious document that was written over 5,000 years ago was truly awe-inspiring. Flash forward two minutes to find me asking one of my seventh graders, "Did you see the Dead Sea Scrolls?" After receiving the response, "Yup. Cool," I was quickly brought back to reality.

While I loved being able to see both of these exhibits on such a beautiful day in San Francisco, I have to admit that the best part of our trip was getting to spend some free-spirited time with my students. I brought my camera with me and once I started snapping pictures of the kids, the goofiness took over. "Miss McMillan, take a picture of this!" Pose. "No, Miss McMillan, come over here and get this!" Pose. I took seventy pictures in all, and can't wait to share them with my students. Goofballs, each and every one!

As we were leaving the city, I snapped one final picture. The saying around these parts used to be, "Welcome to California. Now go home!" The sign today said, "Dear Yuppies, Make sure you have more to offer San Francisco when you move here than just your Money!" Things have changed...but not by much!

Happy April Fool's Day!

If you're looking for a high-tech prank to pull on someone today, look no further!

Social Bookmarking 2.0?

My Twitter friends and I have been playing with a wonderful new tool the last few days, Diigo! (pronounced dee-go) If you're a regular reader of my blog (hi Mom and Dad!) you'll remember one of my first posts was about the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. And I'm sure that, after reading that finely-crafted post, you were moved to venture into social bookmarking. Well, if you've gotten comfortable with del.icio.us it's time to try "del.icio.us on steroids" (special thanks to @lizbdavis for that one!)

With Diigo, not only can you bookmark web pages, but you can also highlight text and attach sticky notes to the pages you are saving. Whenever you return to those pages your highlights and sticky notes will still be there for you. A very handy tool for researching, wouldn't you agree?

Mama always said to share! Diigo makes it incredibly easy to share your bookmarks with friends and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter, or even your own blog. You can also create a group to do research together, or join one of the many groups already set up on Diigo. Once you've saved some bookmarks, you can look for other people who share the same interests as you; people who may have some fabulous information to share!

Ok, have I given you enough information yet to make you want to go check it out? Did I mention it's all FREE? Oh, NOW I have your attention! Well, before you go, check out this video from the folks at Diigo and then go sign up!