My ever-changing mind May 23, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in My Portfolio.Tags: portfolio
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I decided today that it was time to check out all my blogs and see where they were at, if there was spam to deal with, edits to be made, widgets to change. When I got here I started looking back and came upon my February post about setting up a Pageflakes version of my portfolio. I went to check it out. It was a mess. My Swurl account was showing e-bay. One of my WebQuests is housed on a site that has been labeled malicious by Google. I set about to clean it up, and I realized that I don’t like the site at all. It is visual, but it seems messy. I didn’t delete it, but I am not going to advertise that I have it anymore, either.
Another change came to me today in terms of Facebook. I had joined a long time ago and left. Then I rejoined. But I didn’t do anything. But yesterday I logged on because a friend had posted a note that she was getting married. I wanted to congratulate her and get the details. Then today she wrote back. Then we ended up chatting for half an hour or so when she should have been out buying fabric to make her wedding gown. And it hit me. Finally. I realized that having something like Facebook that allows me to keep in touch with lots of old friends is pretty cool!
I am going to be posting more on this over at Random Thoughts, if you want to check it out.
Embedding video April 5, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in tech.add a comment
In looking for videos to help online students get started in WordPress, I found one that talked about embedding video. I have never done that before. But the video made it look easy. Let’s see if it works!
It’s from clicksharpmarketing.
Well, it worked fine, didn’t it? I wonder why I never got it to work before. Oh well…
Timelines March 30, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in tech.Tags: tools
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Free Technology for Teachers had a post a while back about 3 timeline tools. I decided to try them out because I want to ahve my students reate timeines in the course I am teaching this summer.
I looked at Timetoast, and liked it because if its simplicity. However, I didn’t like the fact that I had to put in a month and day for al entries. That lack of flexibility made me less than happy. But it still gets high praise for ease of use. Here is my Timetoast timeline.
Mnemograph is now TimeGlider. It was easy to use and let me only show the year of events. It demands a description for each event, though. And I can’t always figure out how to get to the beginning of the timeline. Here is my timeline done there.
XTimeline is, I think, my favorite. It is more linear in the way you work on it. You can see the events you have added in list form and can even print it out in a list. Here is my timeline there.
I am not sure that any of these are exactly what I want. On a couple of occasions, students will be creating timelines based on the reading they have done. It isn’t going to be a very extensive number of events they have to track, but I wanted them to work with the information in the text, and a timeline seemed the most appropriate first way to do that.
I could be happy with students doing a list, I guess, and then they wouldn’t need a timeline tool. But I like the idea of using the tool. Any suggestions?
Stats February 11, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in Word Press features.Tags: wordpress
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I love the new-ish wordpress dashboard with the graph of the stats. I am amazed to see anything other than a flat line for this blog. It’s funny, though, because I don’t really care who reads my blog or how many people do. But it is nice to know at least some poor souls stop by on occasion. Thanks to all of you, whoever you are!
Another beginning February 8, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in EVO 2009.1 comment so far
I decided that I needed to start on this today or I never would. So here is the beginnings of a more visual, if not really any more dynamic, e-portfolio. I took my existing Pageflakes page and added this page which, if I have done it correctly, should now be a public pagecast.
Update: I have been playing with the layout of this. I like it. But everything is a little too square.
More on e-portfolios February 8, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in EVO 2009.add a comment
In looking at the many different portfolios of Dr. Helen Barrett, I was drawn to this one at ProtoPage. I like the visual nature of it. I think, really, this is what I am after. She would, I guess, call it a working portfolio. Anyway, I like the looks (if not the ads) of this page. More for me to think about…
Building an e-portfolio February 8, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in EVO 2009.Tags: evo2009mlit, evo2009pdi
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One of the reasons I was interested in both the Multiliteracies and Digifolios EVO sessions was the idea of creating a better digital portfolio. And now in the Multiliteracies session, I should be doing just that. Of course, I have been so absent from both sessions that I have missed the prep work that would have better prepared me to do this. But I want to explore the topic a little anyway.
My current e-portfolio can be found here. It has not changed much since I first put it up. It has been updated, of course, but the basic look and feel has stayed the same. I look at what Vance has said is the closest thing he has to an e-portfolio, and it seems very similar to mine. But then I look at his friendfeed “portfolio” and I see something much more dynamic. The dynamic version is much closer to what I think I wanted for my portfolio. But, of course, I am not Vance Stevens, so mine would have to look a whole lot different (read that as smaller and less impressive!). But I am not sure how to go about making the transition from a more formal to a less formal type of portfolio.
I think maybe the answer for me is to begin to experiment with other “venues” for my portfolio. So that is the project I set for myself for the coming week. Let’s see if I accomplish it any better than I have any of the “official” EVO projects!
Not yet catching up February 6, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in EVO 2009.Tags: evo2009mlit
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I am so hopelessly behind in the tasks for the Multiliteracies EVO session, that I should be ashamed. And I am. Sort of.
But I was reading my feeds on Bloglines tonight and came across Michael Shade’s post about trying to catch up. He had a link to the reading Folksonomies: Tidying Up Tags? by Guy and Tonkin. I thought, “Wow! That’s something I need to read!” so I did. (I was a bit disheartened, though, to discover it was a week 2 reading since we are almost through week 4 now! Oh well…)
After reading, I immediately went to my delicious account to check out my tags. I have always felt that I have too many. But the reading made me think that most of my tags are OK. At least almost all of them are used more than once. The ones that aren’t are personal saves with tags that make sense to em. So I felt better about it than I had before reading the article.
But still, I am not happy with the way I tag. Even here on the blog, I don’t always use the same mindset when I tag posts, so it isn’t as consistent as I would like. Delicious is worse because it covers a much, much wider range of topics. This evening I went through a few articles that I had saved to see if the tags still made sense to me, and they did. But sometimes when I am going back through, looking for a particular article, I can’t find it as easily as I think I should be able to. I would like to find a good way to remedy that.
When I started using delicious, I didn’t really understand tagging. I think that is part of the problem. When I started a delicious account to use with my students, I knew what I wanted to accomplish, and it was easier to set the tags up. Also, the range of topics is still somewhat limited. That helps. And yet, the tags I have used there, signifying the course and the semester the articles were used, would be the kind of tags that some people consider troublesome in that they would never make sense to anyone else. But they really make sense to me. And they will make it possible for me to track when I used the resources that I have used – which is a very big part of why I set up the account. So am I wrong? I don’t think so.
Guy and Tonkin say:
Still, possibly the real problem with folksonomies in not their chaotic tags but that they are trying to serve two masters at once; the personal collection, and the collective collection.
For me right now, the personal collection is what is important to me. So I will continue to have the odd tag here and there .. and there and there and probably everywhere.
Favorite tool February 1, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in Uncategorized.Tags: evo2009pdi
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I have been terrible about participating in this session. I could go through the long litany of excuses, but that wouldn’t be too productive. I would rather try to respond when and where I can, participate to the best of my ability and not feel too guilty about what I don’t get done. (I am an oldest child, you may remember!)
I really think that my favorite tool at the moment at least has to be a wordpress blog. I know: pretty boring! But I have really been working with wordpress blogs lately, and I am really amazed with what you can do. I am currently setting up an ezine for our local writing project site — a place where we can publish our writing easily. I have been able to set it up, I think, so the new issue will appear on the front page and then move to the archives once it is replaced by a new issue.
I also have my portfolio, such as it is, on wordpress. I find it a very easy way to keep track of things.
And, of course, I have my personal blogs and now my student blogs on wordpress. Students find wordpress easy to use, and my current students seem to be taking to blogging better than any previous group has.
Blogging is still my main online activity. I expect it always will be. And as wordpress continues to grow and develop, I am sure that I will find more uses for it.
Two years of experimenting here January 25, 2009
Posted by Nancy McKeand in blogging, blogging birthday, personal.add a comment
Moving Along is two years old now. I started it as part of the the 2007 EVO session I did. For some unknown reason, the first post seems to be somewhat odd, starting out in the middle of a conversation. And this only makes the 57th post in all that time. Nothing to write home about, is it? But I have learned a lot here. And I expect I will continue to learn and to test my learning here. At least I hope I will!
