Testing Out SlideRocket

I have been playing with a new Web 2.0 presentation tool called SlideRocket. It is pretty slick and pretty easy to use.

Here is a presentation I put together.

I always forget the Read of Read/Write Web

As I may have shared before, I am a doctoral student at Pace University in Computer Science for Education Professionals.

We are currently taking a class in Web 2.0 tools. So far, we have been dealing with blogs, wikis, RSS, and social bookmarking. I have been using these tools with my middle school science students for about 3 years and have been blow away by the work my students have done.

While we were working together last night, I had an insight. I have been focusing with my students and myself on the Write (authorship) part of Web 2.0, and have kept all of us busy blogging, producing podcasts, animating Vokis, participating in VoiceThreads, etc.

But then as I was setting up Google Reader, again, I started to look at filtering/customizing the information that's coming in. So, I went to Google News and did a search on "OLPC," because I am working on a project with the XO laptops. Then, down on the left hand side of page there is a link for "RSS." Now, I magically have a feed for news from that search, which I then dumped into Google Reader.

So now I am wondering how I can use these tools to help my students develop critical thinking.

This is getting interesting.

Did you miss me?

After a very busy teaching year and my first year as a doctoral candidate, I decided to take the summer almost entirely off. And I was completely off from the blog.

In that time, I had some time to reflect on my practice as a teacher as well as my dissertation topic.

It seems time to get back to work.