A bit of frustration

This week I am frustrated by the lack of posts by PS staff. Jenn and I have tried very hard to create an interesting, self-paced experience for all. Unfortunately, the self-paced part might be impeding some folks from actually learning anything! Does anyone have any more suggestions for how we can encourage everyone to try out the latest "thing"? This week, I hope to get around to those people who haven't posted in order to personally guide them through the process. Even though this will take up quite a bit of time, it seems that a face-to-face reminder is what is needed to light the fire.

Podcasts!

Last week I was re-inspired to listen to podcasts. In part, I had stopped listening to my podcasts because I was no longer riding the bus to work. Now that the snow has fallen, I'm back to riding the bus and able to catch up on several long-neglected subscriptions!

My ALL-TIME FAVORITE podcast subscription is "This American Life," a production of Chicago Public Radio. I highly recommend that you subscribe to this podcast.

My other recommendation is that you subscribe to a whole bunch of different podcasts - it's ok, because they're free! Then, after a month or so, go back and delete the podcasts you didn't like or never listened to. I regularly clean up my podcast subscriptions and subscribe to new ones. You never know what might turn out to be really really great.

I think teachers can begin to use podcasts in classrooms, even if no portable music devices (like iPods) are available. Many podcasts are quite brief and could be used to introduce a new topic. Others are longer, and students could be assigned extra "listening" if they need enrichment opportunities.

Today's Boston Globe

Two interesting opinion pieces from the Boston Globe:

Softer skills for ed reform

Education, democracy, and rights

Perhaps someone might feel compelled to comment on behalf of Primary Source?


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Google Docs and Google Calendar

These online productivity tools have the potential to change the way we collaborate. I have been using both tools now for a few years and I absolutely love that I can travel paperless almost anywhere. Louis and I use Google Docs for things like trip planning, dog research, and cleaning schedules (this is a recent need we discovered). I love that with Google Calendar I can share my calendars and see when other people are free without the back and forth of email. This saves me time and headaches. Really!

I hope that everyone gets a chance to try out Google Docs and Google Calendar. If you have questions, PLEASE let me know. I'm happy to sit down one-on-one with anyone who asks. This is incredibly important and will help us be greener, happier, and more productive!

Study Tour Wikis

I am so excited about introducing wikis to Primary Source. I think they have great potential in almost every program area. There are some downsides to wikis, but for the most part, I think the benefits outweigh the challenges.

One idea I have is to use a wiki for study tours. Instead of typing a regular document for a destination report, participants could post their reports on the tour wiki. This will allow them to work collaboratively and include links to websites as well as images and text. The benefits to us in an administrative sense would be great. No more copying and collating, no more distributing papers. The teachers would do all the work! And in the end we would have a permanent resource that could be shared with other teachers and future tour participants!

China!

Not really Web 2.0 related, but this New York Times article about American students studying abroad in China is quite interesting!

Delicious and nutritious!

I have been using Delicious.com for about 3 months now, and I absolutely LOVE it. I highly recommend downloading the Delicious toolbar for Firefox so that you can quickly and easily click on the TAG icon when you want to bookmark a site. It also loads two other icons that let you easily find the sites you've bookmarked. I really love that I can share my bookmarks with other people with just a click of a button.

Also - I've discovered that tagging can be fun and easy, too! I don't usually worry too much about what words I decide to tag any given site - as long as I include at least one word that I'm likely to search for later on, I'll be sure to find that site. The more tags the better, I say!

My username is maggie.kaiser if you're interested in sharing bookmarks with me!