Our Garden

I was reading our garden blog and saw a great video on kid's gardens. One of the ideas expressed was "Sow gardens so kids can pick their future." What a great statement about learning, growing, investing, dreaming. That's pretty good poetry, too.

Real Salad Dressing, Please!

I just read the most interesting thing on the School Garden Weekly (http://schoolgardenweekly.com/). It quoted an NPR report that said you need a little real oil-based dressing to absorb the nutrients in a salad! In a study at the Iowa State University people who used low or non-fat dressings did not absorb the nutrients as well. It also said that by cooking carrots a little you actually increase the nutrients that are absorbed by the body.

No more salad spritzers for me!

A New Thing: InspireData

Thanks to our Fourth Grade team I am learning InspireData! This is a wonderful tool for gathering and demonstrating data in many different formats. The company has a free 30 day trial for exploring...so I am working away. There is a problem, though: the User's Guide with the Tutorials doesn't always match 30 day trial exploration's format. Someone needs to give that a look at Inspiration Software, Inc.

Thing #21

Thanks to Patricia, Vicki, Elizabeth, Marty, and Anne! We got connected on creating our own video (or Podcast) for Thing #21. Enjoy the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, too!

Thing #23 Time to Reflect

What a superb experience this has been. I really enjoyed working at my own pace, spending more time here, going back and re-reading information, sharing comments with fellow travelers.

I think my very favorite discoveries were Rollyo and Nings, they could be very useful for both teachers and our young students. As far as my lifelong learning goals I found lots of new ways to access and filter new information and strategies. I'm not really sure which of the myriad techniques will stay active in my work, time will tell, but I have acquired a taste for searching out new things. That's probably the biggest plus of participating in the 23 Things project. I really loved discovering Library Thing and Delicious, and the organizational tools offered by tags and labels. Those were big take aways.

The project is extremely well organized, and I don't have many suggestions about it... perhaps to check all the links periodically, and have Mac OS platforms available for everything. I know several of us in Dallas had problems with Podcasts and Videocasts, but we will be working on those together this fall. I would definitely participate in a future exploration, especially one so expertly designed as this.

It's hard to think of one word to describe my learning experience, but I would say "delightful" fits pretty well! Plus it was delightful to have my cohorts for support and suggestions; we had a pretty outstanding team of learners and explorers!

Thanks to my "homies" at Spring Branch ISD! You made me very proud!

Thing #22 Ninging around

There are so many possible uses in the academic setting for Nings. Elizabeth Bayer's idea about a support system for new, and older, teachers is a great idea. I looked over the Ning in Education site. It's pretty impressive; I loved the interactions, problem solving, and idea sharing that was going on. Didn't find but a little bit about music; maybe a little more exploration into my TMEA colleagues will yield a music education Ning community.

Honestly, I have never been interested in the Facebook world! I have a page, to which many post, but rarely post on it myself. I can sit with someone and talk for hours about anything and everything, but the even light of the computer screen leaves me cold and eventually impatient. Is this generational? I think to some degree, yes. (Have to confess Twitter misses me entirely!) But I know this is a dominant method of social interaction in the technologically-up world...there is a huge divide there, but that's another subject. One of the best parts of 23 Things is learning what a wide world of techniques and strategies are out there being used effectively. Maybe this old dog...

In the article 7 things you should know about Nings there was a good suggestion about institutions using Nings as a way to maintain contact with constituent groups; I immediately thought about our Alums.

Thing #21 Oh, oh! Trouble.

Anne, I was impressed with your video! Unfortunately I ran into a few snags here. I did try to download Photostory, but found it only for Windows platform. Rats!

I was able to download Audacity (really simple) and I am familiar with programs like it (Garage Band has a similar look and somewhat similar techniques, and Digital Performer allows something very similar in its audio area). But for some reason I was unable to import any music on my computer, even from Garage Band. Mysterious! A search on acceptable formats for Audacity turned up nothing. I did see I could import Midi files, but discovered later that Audacity can't read them yet. Double rats!

So now my question is for Anne, just how did you do that charming montage of your pets?! I think Podcasts and Videocasts is something we could explore as a group at school, maybe with Patricia and Anne leading the way!