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.