Thursday, March 26, 2009

Social Bookmarking

It's time to switch from Faith overcoming fear: our first year of cabin ownership! to Respond to this week's assignment in your blog assignment.

This week we're learning about social bookmarking and in particular using the site Delicious.

Last year was the first year I really started to use a social networking site. The other Tech Teachers that I knew were using Linkagogo. Their lists looked great. It seemed like a logical idea. I just didn't want to do it. I fought adding that piece to my skill set. Finally I bucked the trend and set up a Delicious account, and I haven't looked back. It's a really easy way for me to organize student bookmarks. I can keep teacher bookmarks on the same site. I have the option of publishing them or keeping them hidden which I think is a very valuable option.

I use my Delicious site as the homepage for our computer lab so students always have access to the sites I have previewed and feel are appropriate for their use. I've also added a link to my web page so that parents can access the site. The one thing I haven't done is advertise my list to teachers in my building. I think that will be my next step.

If you haven't opened a Delicious account yet you should. It's a great way to store and organize all of your bookmarks.

Click here to examine my bookmarks

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Remnants


I'm behind in my blog posts. I promised I'd post some pictures from our visit last week, and I got off track.

It was easier to post when there were major changes and new adventures to relate. Right now we're going up expecting everything to be the same. We want to arrive and not find anything amiss. We want to go up and relax and enjoy.

Of course there's always some little project to do while we're up there. That's probably one of the joys of cabin ownership. This trip Dar wanted that darn roll of old carpet out of the basement! I left out the quotation marks, but you could probably put them in without too much difficulty. So we spent a few hours rolling, unrolling, measuring, cutting, and fitting remnants of the old carpet to fill up the bare spots left behind when the stairs were removed. I did a pretty sloppy job I have to admit. I don't think I'll be picking up any extra cash laying carpet when I retire! But it looks fine for now: I cut and fit; Dar put down the double sided tape and supervised; Louis laid around looking confused.



Wildlife update:
I've written a few times about the dearth of wildlife up at the cabin. I'm sure if you get off the beaten track it's as busy as a safari park. They're just more elusive up north. I guess I'm just used to our suburban setting where animals have learned how protected they are, and we see relatively tame deer, rabbits, pheasants, fox, woodchucks, and birds flocking from neighborhood feeder to feeder.

We've seen tracks in the mud, so we know there are deer in the vicinity. We saw and heard a lot of hunters up there last fall. The previous owner had his own deer stand in a tree not far into the forest behind the cabin. Maybe that's the problem! Maybe there's a stench of death around our place, and the animals are afraid to come near it. Or maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of all those murdered ruminants gather late at night to plot their revenge on the men in orange. They're probably right outside our door every night trying to figure out how to get in!
Makes you want to come up and visit, doesn't it?

Actually, we did finally see some deer last week. As I was sipping my first cup of coffee on Saturday morning I saw some movement out in the woods. On closer inspection it was a group of deer walking through the trees. I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of them, but if I had it would probably have looked something like this . . .
sort of.

More adventures to come I'm sure!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Setting up an RSS feed

I'm enrolled in a class in Wayzata and I listed this blog as one I'm keeping on a regular basis. Well, on a fairly regular basis anyway. This week's assignment is to set up an RSS feed in an RSS reader.

I've been a regular reader of blogs for a long time. Since I have a Google account I choose to use Google Reader, and it's been working very well for me. It's very easy to add and delete blogs, and also very easy to both scan blog entries and star them for archiving.

I have three or four Educational Blogs that I follow such as Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/) which has a ton of links to both educational and technology sites. I also have a feed from the Hennepin County Library which lets me know whenever a new item has been added to their collection. I want to be the first to see the newest Bollywood extravaganza! My son in Alaska is keeping a blog which I keep track of in Reader as well as the blog written by Nancy Neal's daughter who is taking a J-term in South Africa. Having access to all of those blogs in one spot really saves me a lot of time and energy. Opening up a feed reader in Google is one of the best things I ever did!

Monday, March 9, 2009

A Trillion Dollars!

We'll be heading up to the lake this weekend so expect a blog entry then.

I saw this little slide show today and thought it was pretty impressive - and worth sharing. How big is a trillion dollars?



It's a slide show not a movie, so you have to click on the advance button to see the next slide.

If you have a Google account you can click on the small square button next to the slide counter and it will show up full screen so you can read it more easily. Otherwise you'll have to enjoy the smaller version embedded here.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Birthday Party

We couldn't go up to the cabin this weekend because both Dar and I were celebrating birthdays. We had a little get-together on Saturday night. Dar thought it would be nice to post some pictures. Remember, if you click on a picture a larger version will open up so you can see it more easily.











We're hoping to get back up to the cabin this weekend, but for sure the weekend after.

The "Do You Like The New Color" poll is closed. The results were: 85% Liked the new color, 15% thought it really didn't matter because we aren't going to repaint any time soon. I'd say everyone was correct on that one!