Week 5, little late

Warm weather has arrived, and I'm finding it harder to do school work. Getting ready to go on vacation next week, so I should really be trying to get ahead, ha.
Putting an image on my blog from an image generator was easy, but I wanted it to be on the side of my blog, and it got cut off. I tried making it smaller, but that didn't help. It's there though!!
My mind is boggled by the Web 2.0 awards list. It is awesome that there are sites that organize everything on the web. I thought you had to use search engines like Google to find what you're looking for, but that can sometimes be frustrating and sort of needle-in-haystack like.
I hope to be using Rollyo, del.icio.us, backpack to be more organized in my teaching. Finding good websites for math, and saving them in one place = huge time saver.
I'll have to look at urbanspoon, because it has my name in it and last.fm because I love music, but usually not mainstream stuff. Last, and totally least, hairmixer, because that's just silly.
Ok, this was fun.

IMG_1238

IMG_1238
Originally uploaded by dinlaroche

This is a photo from Creative Commons of Flickr, uploaded by 'dinlaroche'. I can't figure out how to put it on the wiki photo page, so here it is.

Under The Weather !

Under The Weather !
Originally uploaded by Ragstatic

I love this picture; the layers and the way your eyes are drawn to the horizon make it so interesting. It looks more like a painting than a photograph.

Long Island3

Long Island3
Originally uploaded by bspoon7

Long Island Maine in the fall.
I took this picture of my niece a few years ago. I played with Picnik to change the color and crop the photo. There are some neat options on Picnik so I'm thinking about paying the fee so that I can do things like soften the focus of the background of some of my pictures. Right now I use Shutterfly to edit and order pictures, and there aren't a lot of options for advanced editing.
I thought it was fairly easy to use Flickr and the directions on how to upload an image into my blog were easy too. I used Flickr's blogging tool.
I had some Flickr photo fun.

I am having trouble uploading an image from the Creative Commons section of Flickr onto the Wiki page. I keep getting the message that I need to be signed in to upload photos. I can't remember if I made a password for that or not. I think I'm overwhelmed! Maybe it's because I'm trying to do this at 11:30 at night, and am just plain sleep deprived on a regular basis and my brain is like swiss cheese. I guess I'll just email Barb tomorrow....

Ideas for communication and commenting on others blogs

I have some ideas about how to communicate with my students and parents and I'm just wondering what people think. Another teacher I work with has an incredible web page with places to click to see grades, lessons she's created on her smartboard, homework she's assigned, projects, and tons and tons of links to helpful math websites and games on the web. I have two little boys and not enough skill to create something like this so I want to use something on a smaller scale, that I can manage easily and won't take too much time to figure out or use on a daily basis.
Facebook is one idea I had. I figured I could make a 'Mrs. Spoon' facebook page and post stuff on my wall. But I'm not sure I want access to students' facebook pages for a whole host of reasons. I'm talking about middle school kids, enough said. But it is easy to use.
Now that I looked at Wiki's, I have a vague idea of how I could use one for communication, or a blog, but I only want one thing to manage. Any ideas?

Also, I'm not sure exactly what to post on other people's blogs. What are we supposed to be commenting on? On Paula's blog, I couldn't figure out how to comment since it didn't have a box at the bottom of the page for comments.

Wiki's

I just figured out that I've known about Wiki's and have used them for the past year. I had no idea what a wiki was, but like others I had been directed to Wikipedia numerous times while searching one thing or another. Also, I took a math course last summer, which cost me nothing if I participated in 20 hours of online participation in an extension of the class. The way we got our assignments and were led to links was through a Wiki, and I knew it was called that but never made the connection until I saw the example Wiki's on the barb2.0 page. Now it has more meaning for me because I loved how the information was presented and how easy it was for me to maneuver around wherever we were supposed to go through that class. I'm definitely going to make one of my own and see if it'll work for me to post assignments, helpful links and classroom information to my students and parents/guardians.