Thing #10 Embedded Slideshow

Photo Credits:

All floral photography by Julia Walker

"Children Are..." by my daughter, Sarah Browning, in Ghana, Africa

summer 2009

"Unique" - children's day by M@rg

"Curious" - What a Child Sees by Thomas Hawk

"Amazing" - children's day by ayashok photography

"Bright" - Late for children's day! by Seema KK

The hardest part of this activity was choosing which images to use

from the millions that are available. CC is a great resource for any

kind of photograph you can even dream about needing.

I also incorporated some of my own photography. That is my hobby

and I love to share when I can.

The picture of the group of children is near and dear to my heart.

The one white girl in the picture is my youngest daughter, Sarah.

She is a 20-year old Junior at UT Austin. This summer she is in

Ghana, Africa, where this picture was taken. She worked with a

team of university students to build a library for an elementary

school in Accra, Ghana.

The most rewarding part of this assignment was the fulfillment of

the final product. I like the metaphorical imagery of the flower

pictures to the children's pictures.

I had a problem with the text in this post not wanting to wrap at the

end of a line. I had to manually return at the end of each line. Has

anyone else had this problem? How do I fix it?

Thing #9 Flickr

Wow! Over the last two days I have discovered a gold mine in Flickr. Before Thing #9, I found photos online through a Google Image search or used my own image (of which I have thousands). I even opened my own Flickr account and uploaded some of my own photos.

What I learned from Flickr is that there are thousands of photos on the web that can be used under CC. Some of them are similar to mine, some are better. I also picked up some photography tips.

The photograph I chose was taken by markiteightdude in Colorado. To me, this photograph represents the class - 23 Things. From a distance the Internet is colorful, unique, and intriguing as in the picture of the tree with red on it. As you get closer, you find thousands of individual, interesting, and different items as you would upon taking a macro view of the tree and finding a multitude of tiny ladybugs.

Thing #8 Creative Commons

Although I had not noticed the CC logo on pages I have visited, I believe it can have a great impact on education. Teachers and students both can search for resources without having to choose whether to use them or not due to copyright infringement. It's putting more tools in our toolbox.

I use digital images, audio, and video in my teaching. But, it is usually my work that I own. I share photos online on a regular basis. The web is a convenient way to share my photography hobby with family and friends.

CC is new to me. I have already found some things I can use in my classroom. I found a list of ESL Read Aloud books in one spot. It's nice to have a list to pull from at my fingertips.

I like the idea of "share, remix, and reuse." I look forward to learning more about CC.

Thing #7 Commenting

Darren Rowse published a post on his blog called "10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog." He states 90% of blog visitors are "lurkers," people who read and don't comment, 9% comment contributing a "little," and 1% contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Blue Skunk calls them "trolls."

I find myself often "lurking," reading gain knowledge. A blog should be more of an interactive discussion among a large group of people. I am working to learn how to comment. The further I get in this course, it is getting easier with practice.

Inviting comments, being open-ended, and asking questions are good ways to increase commenting on your blog. Bloggers want to know their work is being read. Commenting helps accomplish this.

Commenting is important to ensure the proper function of the blog... interactive conversation.

With each comment I make on blogs I'm following and subscriptions on my Reader, I get slightly more proficient with commenting.

One last blog I particularly enjoyed that you also might enjoy is Drake's Takes: Edublogger Etiquette - Responding to Comments. It is a good example of conversational commenting.