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"Let those who are in favor with their stars Of public honor and proud titles boast, Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, Unlooked for joy in that I honor most. Great princes' favorites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun's eye; And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foiled, Is from the book of honor raised quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled. Then happy I, that love and am beloved Where I may not remove nor be removed." A sonnet, William Shakespeare Today my husband and I celebrate fourteen years together and I am so very grateful for his unconditional love and support in a world full of conditions. It is amazing how one that I did not know for 23 years could now be more family to me than family. A great man of faith, when we lost everything we saved in our first five years of marriage and a pecan grov...

This is a great post about 30+ tagging tools from Mashable.com to help you make meaning out of tags. I put it through delicious but wanted to make sure everyone sees it. We'll definitely be using it in current events this year and as we research trends in IT in our classroom! Wow! Let me know if you've used any of them, most of them are new to me. tag: tagging , trends , tools , web2

Logging on to my computer, I use twitterfox that has all of the twitters I missed pop up like little incoming e-mail boxes in my bottom right corner -- saw this from John Pederson : ccLearn is being launched as a part of the Creative Commons efforts. Here is what they say about it: ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources ( OER ). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers. With legal barriers , we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education. With technical barriers , we promote interoperability standard...

Show tonight! I'm excited about the WOW2 show tonight! It will be on at 9 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time (that is Atlanta, GA time for those who want to convert it) at edtechtalk.com . How to Listen! To listen, go over there and click listen. You may click on chat to enter the chat room. Now, let me tell you why I'm excited. (See their great new help for newbies .) Virtual Learning doesn't have to mean Second Life Although many are excited about Second Life , as I saw with my students last spring, it is not ready for students (unless you have the funding to buy a private island and the hardware), but there are many colleges that have some incredible learning environments that ARE safe for students and provide meaningful, genuine learning experiences, tonight we will feature several such programs as we talk with Jeff Stanzler: UM School of Education faculty and Director, Interactive Communications & Simulations. I've asked for permission to copy some informat...

I get somewhat irritated when I read posts like this one: The Apocalypse is Nigh, Stager of Twitter, Flickr, and NECC which is based upon another article, Twittering While America Burns . In His Apocalpyse Article, Matthew says: For those who aren’t in the know [or don’t especially care], Twitter is a social networking service that combines features of text messaging and blogging; Flickr is for photo sharing. Countless blogs in my RSS reader gush over these fashionable darlings of “web 2.0″ daily while: Less than 25% of Detroit students graduate. Chicago is a war zone that’s actually worse than a real war zone The British national curriculum evokes the words “Hell” and “handbasket” There are millions of kids who can’t read this post And those are the examples I thought of in the last seven seconds. I don’t expect all educators to lend their manpower to all causes, especially when some are better suited than others to tackle a particular problem. I do, however, expect educators ...

Was just going through Joyce's favorite tools over at the School Library Journal Blog and came across Big Huge Toy's FD tools for Flickr including this cool Motivational Poster Maker -- how cool to create and make posters that include your students! If you sign up for an account, you have 3 days to set up high res images and if you have a poster printer at school, get busy -- so cool! Thanks, Joyce, the whole article is a Gem!

I needed a good laugh today! But this would be a great conversation starter as we discuss our growing dependence on the Internet (and the companies behind it.) :-) Hat tip to this goes to Alec Couros via twitter . tag: internet , funny

Free Staff Development/ Webcasts/ Podcasts at Edtechtalk.com For those of you who have recently joined the blogosphere, there are some great FREE webcasts over at edtechtalk.com with some great educators. You can listen live and participate in the chat (click on chat room) where you can ask questions to the speakers live, or you can subscribe to the podcasts to listen to later. I subscribe to everything at edtechtalk and listen to all of them. There are some college professors and staff developers that require their organizations or staff to select and participate in several shows a month to encourage innovation and participation. It is exciting to see the growth and interest from the audience-- (Some of whom just listen, the chat is optional) and I believe that such live forums are truly the future of our staff development. Tuesday Nights - WOW2 My little piece of this webcast fun is on Tuesday nights where I co-host the WOW2 show on 9 pm Eastern Time ( See the time zone conv...

Just received this information about the next Webcast Academy. If you're interested, this is a great program! We would like to invite you to be a member of the Webcast Academy Class 2.2. The class will officially begin July 25, 2007 @ 8:00 EST facilitated by Susan Ettenheim and Cheryl Oakes. The goals of the Webcast Academy include: -increasing the number of people who are capable of producing live, interactive webcasts -applying the open source community approach to skill development -creating a place that formally recognizes proficiency, excellence, and innovation in these new media skills It is our hope that those who complete this class, will put their skills to use on the Worldbriges Webcasting Network, but there is no charge for participation and no formal commitment required following the completion of the internship. We would also like to invite you to preview the basics of webcasting by joining Paul Allison and Jeff Lebow on July 21st @ 3:00 PM (19:00 GMT). Paul and ...

Sometimes ephiphanies come from the strangest places: I learn about so many cool things on twitter, so much so that I even check it before my RSS reader. Today, Sue Roseman talked about visuwords , the online visual dictionary. Meanwhile, was Skype chatting with my friend, Graham Wegner in Australia, king of smartboards and Web 2 middle school teaching, and I told him about visuwords . He thinks it would be great on the smartboard. Then, he told me about how he likes to use the visual search engine quintura , particularly its kid friendly version quintura for kids . He said (I had permission to quote him) - this is the skypechat: [8:40:04 AM] Mrs. Vicki Davis says: Look at this super cool site - http://www.visuwords.com/ [8:40:15 AM] Mrs. Vicki Davis says: I'm just flipping out how I'm going to use it in class, just blogging it now. [8:41:18 AM] Graham Wegner says: brilliant on an interactive whiteboard [8:41:44 AM] Mrs. Vicki Davis says: Have you seen it before? Did you ...

I will re-emerge. I'm quiet and retreated from the world, trying to get things done and resting quite a bit. With the recent loss of my Granny and several other "losses" of late, I've been thinking about this thing called life and how it is truly a roller coaster. No one has the corner on victory and no matter how bad it seems, no one really has the corner on loss either. As I ponder loss and how terrible it can be, I also draw and think upon the things I've learned from history about loss and those who have overcome tremendous loss to continue to make a difference. So, as I journalize, I just thought I'd share a bit about my thoughts on loss and how (I hope) to come out of this. I do not speak as one who has mastered loss or one who is even over it. I speak as one in the throes of loss drawing on my own life experiences and the wisdom of others. 1) Give it Time This comes from my own Grandmother. My grandfather died suddenly when Granny was a young 59. ...

Tomorrow - Tuesday is going to be a great show over at edtechtalk.com at 9 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time. It will be Wednesday morning for our friends in Australia but they are going to take the time from their winter holidays to talk to us about the great things that they are doing. Here are four of our Over the Top Educators from Down Under, if there are others out there who we didn't invite, consider this an invitation to join us and share the best practices from Australia with the rest of the world. Graham Wegner - Teaching Generation Z - He is really the inspiration that put this together -- it was totally his idea and I appreciate his working to figure out the time. Graham is great and I love learning from him. He did a phenomenal job with middle school peer review for the Horizon Project . and I'm dying to learn more about him. Judy O'Connell - Hey Jude - Another blogging phenom, you need to check out the toolboxes she's been writing about on her blog late...

The Webheads are phenomenal people and are getting ready to kick off another Webcast Academy on Wednesday nights from 8-9 EST. You will learn how to webcast and do some incredible things as well as meet some super amazing people. My good friend Cheryl Oakes will be working with this session and she is so very helpful! For more information and how to sign up (it is free) go to http://webcastacademy.net/About_Webcast_Academy . I think this is a must-do for any serious educational podcaster and although I cannot do it this time, it is on my list to sign up for when things settle down a bit for me. tag: podcasting , webcasting , webcast , education , podcast , webcast academy , webhead

Simulpost with TechLearning I want to leave a legacy how will they remember me? This song by Nicole Nordeman has the question that I ponder today as we bury one of the inspirations of my life, my grandmother. In order to be effective where we are today, it is vital that sometimes we back up and observe ourselves from afar -- "How will they remember me?" Was I a good listener? (or a self absorbed know it all?) Was I helpful? (or did I make people feel helpless?) Did I use the power I do have for good? (or just to serve my own ends?) Did I find talent in others and help them on their path? (or did I just care about my own recognition) Did I inspire others? It is important that we look at what we do and rethink how we will be remembered. There are some teachers that propelled me on to greatness and there are some that were unkind and labeled me, and I used them as the angry focus of my determination to succeed. I now live in the hometown where I grew up and there are some p...

Thank you to Steve Hargadon for making an mp3 of the presentation that Adam Frey and I did about wikis in education. Some other great listens: I met Doug Johnson of the Blue Skunk Blog and was, well, totally impressed. Here is a podcast of his lecture, Classrooms and Libraries for the Net Generation . I listen to Doug as do many. There are a lot of other great podcasts I haven't gotten to yet on the Official podcast channel of NECC and the webcasts are just being posted . Why I will be quiet for a bit If I seem quiet, I am. Those who follow me on Twitter , know that my grandmother has taken a turn for the worse (it started the Sunday of NECC), and pretty much any breath could be her last. It puts things in perspective so I have been been spending time with my kids, my family, and just spending a bit of time alone to think and grieve. We are a very close family and although we knew it was coming, it doesn't make it any easier. And, although my blog ranking will inevitab...