Google Sites

I have created a professional portfolio on Google Sites. This seemed like it would be much easier than it was. I actually created five different Google Sites while trying to figure it out. I also found that you cannot delete a site once you create it, or at least I couldn't. If you can find a way please let me know. On my professional portfolio, https://sites.google.com/site/patrocksportfolio/home,
I have a short purpose for the page as well as my education. The site also contains some information about my coaching philosophy and coaching credentials etc. I believe i will be updating it from time to time to make sure it is up to date and all of the information is correct. I'm not too sure how helpful it will be for now but maybe in the future???

Library Thing

LibraryThing.com is a website that book lovers will love. It is a place for people to "shelve" their favorite books and even have discussions with others that love the book as well. I could see this being a tool for book clubs or even in high schools where students are reading classic novels to get the perspective of students from all over the world. For example, I would probably have a different perspective of "The Great Gatsby" being that I grew up on long Island and went to school on the Gold Coast, than someone from Kansas. Much as they would have a different point of view of "The Grapes of Wrath". My user name at LibraryThing is Prock19, check out my book list!

Online Image Generators

There are tons and tons of image generators out there on the web. I looked through few and most are easy to use and also fun. I can see myself spending some "quality" time messing around with many of these, once I have some time!

Here is a novel cover featuring my son!

Locating Podcasts

Just looked at two sites for locating podcasts online; podcast.com and podcastalley.com Both were interesting and had a lot of information and different podcasts to choose from, a little too many. I found it tough to find a podcast I wanted without knowing the name of it. I did however find a few that interested me, mostly sports talk radio and some weekly fitness shows.

YouTube

I am a huge fan of YouTube. It is a great way to waste time on a rainy day or a great source of information. Youtube makes things as easy as they can be when searching for a video. All you need to do is type in what you are looking for and you will find a video. Off course there are usually more vidoes than you actually need, so using this in a middle school such as mine can be tricky and would probably need parental consent. As for using it as a coach or in the classroom it is a great tool. As a coach if I find a video about proper technique I want to share with my players I can easily share it with them. As for the classroom there are plenty of interesting videos that i show my students, especially if we don't have the materials to do a certain activity and still want them to see a lab. Whole lessons could even possibly be taugh using YouTube.

I selected this video of Tony Gwynn talking about hitting because this is one of the ways I would use Youtube as a coach.

The second video i selected is one that I would show in my science class.

Technorati

Went to the popular site Technorati and found it interesting. I put in the word "Kinesiology" and searched for Posts and then for Blogs. I found 28 blogs about kinesiology. I then searched for "ball" and then "movement" and then "nutrition" and I found that two of the sites of the original 28 were tagged with these words, kinesiology4u and physicaleducation.net. I can see how this can be very useful when looking to read up on particular subjects such as kinesiology.

Is Del.icio.us delicious?

I believe it is! This is a bookmarking site where you can store all of your favorite sites. It is similar to the favorites button on your computer with one exception, you can see your favorites anywhere. This is particularly helpful to me since I am constantly using four computers in my life, my basement desktop, my home laptop, my school laptop, and my the computer in my coaching office. I have found that sometimes when I am working at home on my laptop and find a website I like I need to e-mail the link to myself so I can go to that site when I am at work or if I want to print it off in the basement. Not anymore! all I need to do is click on the button on the top of my screen, of course I needed to register, and it is saved to the net. Which means no more ridiculous e-mails to myself with websites on it.

I can see this being a very useful tool in a number of arenas. First as a teacher, I can bookmark some sites that I find interesting and that my students might also find interesting. I would probably have a different Delicious site for my students to see than for my personal use. The students could then read some of the web pages without me having to try to bookmark it on all of their computers.

The same is possible for sharing ideas and interesting sites with colleagues. Just bookmark it on Delicious and share it with the teachers I work with and other coaches. I can see school departments having their own Delicious site to share with each other, and also coaches sharing on different things they find on the web. Now that is Delicious.

Google Docs

Just logged on to Google Docs. Pretty impressive stuff. Basically you can make any document into a web based document. Any document from spreadsheets to word processing can be converted to a web based document... and easily. I think this will have a big impact on my career as a teacher. My district has already started to use Google docs for a lot of things including only surveys about the climte of schools and curriculum choices. As we move forward i can see google docs becoming and even bigger part of my career.

Web 2.0 Awards

I'm probably a little behind the times here, but the list at SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards amazed me. The first thing I found is that if Google doesn't run the world now, they are well on their way. Is there anything that doesn't come from Google? Google Docs? Google Maps? I also found some other pretty cool sites. One of them was SpanishPod This is a website where you can learn to speak Spanish on your own terms at your computer on your own time. There was also another website that might come in handy tonight, cocktailbuilder.com Guessthegoogle.com looks like a pretty cool site to just sit at all day long and waste time while in a trance. Might have to do that some day, but not today, got work to do!

RSS

What a week... first I had a little stomach virus, was able to get through it and actually went to work. Then it spread... my wife, my son, my wife's family. So I had to take a day off from work, not because I was sick but because my wife and her family were sick!

Anyway, I am now a subscriber to bloglines.com It is really pretty cool. I am able to basically bring all of the websites that i might want to read on a given day to me rather than looking for them. I was even able to have folders for different types of sites. SI.com and ESPN.com among others are in the sports folder. I have a news folder, and a politics folder. I also have some other folders from other websites like celebrity news, music news, and even one for my classmates news. It was real easy to set up and I am sure it will help me find some articles that I want to read, and probably some I don't. either way I won't have to waste as much time looking for those articles. This internet thing is actually pretty cool. i think it might stick around.

Oh and here is a the link to my blogrole... www.bloglines.com/public/prock19

J! E! T! S!

Jets! Jets! Jets! Lets hope this is not a repeat of my life as a Jets fan. They always do this to us. They take us to the brink all the time. They have us all think, no they make us believe, and then they rip our hearts out. Hopefully not today, hopefully Rex and the boys will be able to complete a great season. I'm going against prior knowledge and every ounce of common sense I have in me, but I KNOW they can do it!

If not, there is only a month left until pitchers and catchers report!

Technology in the Classroom

December 2009 027
Originally uploaded by prock19

I have always tried to be up to date with technology in the classroom. Of course some things always hold me back. My ultimate goal is to have a paperless classroom. For that reason my students are usually working on projects which they can hand in on line. One of the newer (well to me at least) websites I found is called www.xtranormal.com This site lets kids make movies of some of the things we are doing in class. The student in this picture is working on his project for the settlement of Ancient Greece.

Social Networking and MicroBlogging

It’s Friday again and time for another update. This week I have read several articles about Social Networking and MicroBlogging and there uses in the classroom. The first article, Examining Social Software in Teacher Education made some good points about social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Writely. What I really got out of this article is that these sites have many uses in the classroom. One of the points that really stuck with me was, “Social software acts as a space in which collaborative and cooperative learning can occur.” I could not agree more. Most people see social networking sites as a way of wasting time, or playing on the internet, and it can be. But, used the right way social networking sites can have a profound effect on students. It is pretty easy to say that kids like technology, the internet, social networking, and of course their friends. Why not put all of those together to achieve the highest level of engagement. I know when I am teaching a unit and we are using sites where kids can interact with each other, the engagement level goes way up and the student work goes way up as well.

The second article I read this week had to do with how technology is changing the way libraries work. It discusses the different uses of social networking such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts in a library setting. For instance, it discusses the uses of blogs and how different libraries are using them. Some are using them strictly as informational services. These informational services include library announcements, closures due to holidays, library events and lists of new books. Some libraries have begun to use blogs in other ways such as in library service, and a feedback tool. I think this is similar to the way that blogs are used in education; some are just starting out, posting assignments and such, while some are having students write their own blogs.

The third article I read again deals with the issue of social networks in the classroom. I found myself chuckling a little while reading this article, especially when it talked about how readers on the internet navigate their way through information. They use such strategies as looking for key words, and links. My “LOL” moment came when I found myself reading it online doing the same things the author spoke of. Of course I then printed it out and read over the whole article again to make sure I didn’t miss anything!

Friday

Finally Friday!
An I-pod Friday as well. This is where my students in my classroom get to listen to their music while they finish their work. It is extremly quiet, maybe because I have my I-pod on as well. Only one ear though, so I can hear the cries for help!
Tony Gwynn spoke at the Baseball Coaches Clinic last night, unfortunately I wasn't there. Would have liked to hear him speak.
My wife is amazed at our son... my 2 year old knows our phone number. I think he learned it from listening to me order breakfast and dinner on the weekends. He is a smart little squirt.
Three day weekend coming up, lots of work to do. Gotta switch out some light fixtures, fix the sink, and complete some school work for my masters. Monkey Business tonight with the wife and son, gonna be fun, he loves that place. I'll post some pictures when I get to it this weekend!

Have a good weekend and enjoy!

1st Post

Hello out there! My name is Pat Rock and I am starting this blog! In this blog I will post weekly updates about my life, including my professional career as a teacher and a high school coach. So stay tuned for updates!!!