Our group of TLLs in Southern Maine became a very tight-knit group who revelled any chance to get together, share what is going on our lives (personally and professionally), and of course, share what new "Geek Tool" we have discovered. We always had a great time sharing with one another and working together. When the grant that financed SEED ran out and SEED had to come to a close, it was a very sad time for us all and we all vowed that we in Southern Maine would keep it going in some way, if not for the personal relationships, but to also be a means of support to us technology integrators and coordinators. Many of us do not have colleagues within our own district that we can discuss these things with.
We have had a handful of SEEDling get-togethers that have been wonderful. It is always great to see these people, catch up, and share. I just came from one of these social gatherings at L. Girr's house in Freeport. It was so great to see some of my old buddies. These people are so up to date and cutting edge! They have so much to share and are really pushing the envelop with Web 2.0 tools. It made me realize just how much I have to learn about those things so that I can be a good resource for the teachers at my school. We talked a lot about blogging, podcasting, Edublogs vs. Blogger, the new Garage Band, Flickr, NetTrekker, del.ioic.ous, Skype and a host of other things. So, many things that my mind started to go into OVERLOAD. My brain started to feel like it did at the end of the day when I took the National Teacher's Exam back in 1990 (I know, I'm dating myself here).
One thing that I am glad I remembered when I got home was Cheryl Oakes telling me about a Web 2.0 tool called >BubbleShare. She told me it was a place to upload pictures into albums and that you could share the albums with other people by emailing them to others or by posting a slideshow on to a blog. Another feature she mentioned was that you could add 30 seconds of audio to the album so that you can explain your pictures to those you share with. So, as you can see, I just had to try this out for myself. Once I set myself up with an account I discovered some really cool things you could do with this site and its tools. First, I downloaded and installed a Pluggin for my iPhoto so that my pictures could be exported from my iPhoto directly to my Bubbleshare account. Next, I discovered that not only could you add audio, but you can also add little text captions (like comics) to your pictures. You can order prints and gifts that contain your pics as well. |
Anyway, I wanted to add a slideshow to this blog so I opened iPhoto and exported my pics of the tour of Fenway Park that my oldest son, father in-law, and I went on earlier this summer. It was prettly slick! Next, if look at the instructions for putting a slideshow in a blog. Not only was it easy, but what really WOWed me was the different formats there were for the slide show. As you can see, I used the vertical format. What I do wish though was that I knew how to alter the HTML so that the words from this blog posting would wrap around the slideshow like it would a picture. What I ended up doing to make it look like it does is to create an invisible table (border=0) and then paste the code for the slideshow in one skinny column and a couple paragraphs of text in the larger column.
So now I am pleased. I have caught up with friends, learned a few things, eaten well, and have applies something I learned to something I find meaningful. All in all I would say it has been a good day.
