Week 2 in CEDO 535

While searching Wikipedia to check for how accurate the site is, I looked at some things that I know quite a bit about. Two Harbors, Minnesota was one of the items I checked the entry for. I spent several weeks each summer wandering the woods and rivers near this town. During those 30+ years of vacations, I learned a lot about the area by listening to the people who lived there. One of those people was Walter Sve who owned and operated the Split Rock Cabins, where my family usually stayed. Walter was a commercial fisherman and carpenter who augmented his income through the operation of a resort that his son operates today. However, due to pollution of Lake Superior by the taconite mining industry, the commercial fishing industry as well as the fishery of the lake were nearly destroyed. A link to the legal battle to stop the pollution can be found here.  Here is a short video detailing some of the trials and tribulations of commercial fishermen on Lake Superior.

We also were working on mini-blogging (aka using Twitter).  I have a feeling that I might get addicted to this. I hope that it does not overtake other pursuits that I have at this moment though.  But, with currently 0 followers, I guess I won't have to worry about getting a big head by having lots of people wanting to know what I say :).

Editing this Sunday evening ~7pm.  Thanks to Twitter I found some neat new sites we might be able to use.  The first is an image hosting site. http://imgur.com/
The second is an open source security software:http://preyproject.com/
This software allowed a guy to recover his laptop when it was stolen and he had gone out of the country.  Link to that is here: http://storify.com/hawaii/sean-powers-laptop-recovered?awesm=awe.sm_5J8w5&utm_content=tweetdeck&utm_medium=awe.sm-twitter&utm_source=direct-awe.sm

Week 1 CEdO 535

One of the assignments for this first week of class was to look at potential sites to host an educational blog.  Our review of the sites (a minimum of 3) was to be documented and shared by the end of the week.  Some of the sites that were interesting for an educational purpose were: Xanga, Edmodo, 21 Classes, Edublogs, and WordPress.  Each of these sites had attractive features that a classroom teacher should be able to find useable. 

The Highlights

I was floored by the the ability of Edumodo to have assignments and grades for your classes on the site.  This site really seems much like a Moodle type site for running a class and allowing a site that students could use to discuss class topics while not in class. 

Xanga was interesting in the fact that depending on the activity on a certain blog, they were able to get different rankings.  The highest ranked were linked on the homepage of Xanga.  This allows users to see where and what the buzz is.

21 Classes is neat due to the fact that a teacher is able to set up blog sites for their students in a relatively safe environment. 

WordPress is very informative with an extensive user guide to bring a user from "zero-to-hero" with regards to the use of the site.


We've also had the chance to read a bit of Will Richardson's "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web Tools for Classrooms".   The intro is a good history on the development of the ability to author things on the web.  Things are much more plug and play compared to the start when to do anything, one would need to know how to code what they wanted to show online.  Now, all one has to do to author web material is to sign up on a site.