Week 5, Thing 11

I've really been having fun playing with the various web 2.0 tools this week - in fact, I haven't been able to move on to any other "things." I have especially enjoyed Pandora, a personalized radio station. I'm rarely on my computer now without listening in to the Sarah Maclachlan, Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, Enya, Mindi Adair and others mix. It's fun to see what new (and old) music and musicians Pandora selects for me to listen to.

I also set up a Pageflakes page which is a personalized page that allows you to draw in all sorts of Internet content. I have a calendar, the weather, a comic strip a day, and a funny frog who follows my mouse. It's more diverse and fun than a simple bloglines page.

Week 5, Thing 10

I borrowed this great title from:

Meyerson, D. E. (2001). Tempered radicals: how people use difference to inspire change at work. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

A "tempered radical" is someone who belongs and works within an organization, yet has a distinct agenda that differs from the organization and works for change (often small and incremental) either at a personal or organizational level from within. I really like it because I feel like it describes what many of us strive for as we work within schools. We have a difference because we are not classroom teachers and we have an agenda that may counter the current school culture of testing and sorting students.

Week 4, Thing 8 & 9

Okay, I'm back. Actually the weather in D.C. for ALA was perfect! It was a very comfortable temperature - cool and dry. Lots of events were within a walking distance so it was great weather for going on foot!

I think I might have come back sooner but of all the web 2.0 tools I just can't get excited about RSS feed but maybe I just needed to give it a try. I did set up all the blogs listed on my blogroll so now instead of checking eight different sites I can just check one and see if there have been any new posts - kind of cool! If you click "mark all read" on your bloglines then it gives you a blank slate of sorts and you will be alerted of any new posts in the future.

I played around with Feedster and discovered that you can put phrases in quotes so my search for "discourse analysis" was much more productive than the search without the quotes. Somehow, and I think it was Feedster I discovered someone in Ireland who is blogging about his dissertation in education! Along the lines of my post below, I would like to make the process of my dissertation more transparent and public and I would prefer to find a circle of people doing something similar to work with.

A new feed for Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/ led me to a post about different aggregrators http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/ and I think I would like to try Pageflakes.

It's been really fun to read the comments to my blog. Apparently the person whose pic I used (Web 2.0) from flickr posted to my blog.