Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Bemoaning Blogger's Blips! Well, friends, I just lost another whole post in Blogger. My faith in blogger has eroded lately as their RSS feeds went down for several days and I couldn't even find my own blog for a while. I'd better blook it while I still have a blog to blook! I'd been composing in writely and love it. ( Google just bought them!) I think I'll go back to that. I'll try to resurrect the post from my memory for tomorrow, however for now, I'd like to share with you a great Web 2.0 Resource from Bob Stumpel. Great Web 2.0 resource Here is how I want to use PARTS of this list for further Web 2.0 discussions as well as talking about GUI's (graphical user interfaces.) I will split apart the list and give it to teams who will evaluate the services and create a Siskel and Ebert like show. They will also create a wiki to include hyperlinks and their evaluation of each Web 2.0 app. I may even record the Siskel and Ebert evaluations as a podc...

Keotag I have found that searching tags seems to give better results than just typing in keywords. I have long been frustrated with typing in words like "education" or "teaching" into Technorati and finding anything meaningful. Results are simply filled with live journal and Xanga pages that bemoan the passages of youth rather than serious edublogging information. Marshall K has again pointed me to a great resource. I used Keotag to search tags. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for the tag search. By searching tags you filter out the non serious journaler and get to the more serious blogger . The increasing use of tags gives you many more reasons to tag your blogs . Some Google Stuff! Search Google Scholar Another method to find research and "good" information is Google Scholar which researches scholarly papers and academic works. I like this! Add local library holdings to your Google Book search According to the Google blog , Google Book...

Today is a beautiful Saturday in a burgeoning Georgia springtime. I'd like to share a little of its beauty with you today. Perhaps when springtime hits you'll share with me also! Such things are more beautiful the closer you get. Reminds me of some students! Tags: flowers , spring , Georgia , education , teaching , coolcatteacher , blog , blogs , Vicki A Davis Tags: photos , photography , nature , blog , blogs , Vicki A Davis

Wikis, Blogs, and Web 2.0 This week We have had an exciting week in Computer Science. The chapter is on HTML and we are about to learn to hand code in notepad. I felt it essential that I update them since the newest HTML standard is actually XHTML 1.1 and their book is slightly dated. We had very basic high level discussions of the evolution of the Net from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 including the use of databases to power information exchange on the web. (Ajax, DHML, XML, database structures) We've related this to the mashup discussion that we had last week. Now, they are dreaming up mashups of their own that some of them will be presenting to the class on Monday. (These are linked to our mashup wiki ). Here are some ideas as presented to me orally along with a link to their wikis that they have just started: Hunters Paradise Hunters use GPS to note and then to plot their kills in an online website. This then mashups onto Google Earth . It will mash up with weather informatio...

What is a blook? Simply put, a blook is a blog in book form. Why should I blook? With how the Internet changes, I am often afraid that my blog will one day disappear into oblivion as blogger evolves or disappears. (They have the right to do that, you know.) When I was eight I wrote some great adventure games for our family TRS-80 which are now gone forever! I wish there had been a way to preserve it. Thus comes the reason for a blook. You can take your blog postings for a year or specified period of time and convert them to a book form. Most bloggers do this through self publishing at a website like LuLu . (That is who I'll use.) It costs around $30 and some of your time. You can also market your blook if there are those who haven't made the online world but want to read what you write. (Or give one to Mom for Christmas!) You might also even win the blooker prize ! On March 3 the short list was printed for 2005. (Some interesting ones that peeked my interest include A...

As educators, we must observe the world using the scientific method and always willing to glean knowledge for how we may be better teachers. Today I'd like to give you two inspiring stories from some blogs I read. Innovators work for love, not money Anne of Anne 2.0 says "radical innovations are only going to come from people doing their work for love and not money, because the risk-reward ratio is not on their side." She comes at it from the context of research into innovation and entrepreneurship from an article entitled " Economics rediscovers entrepreneur " in the Economist this week. How it applies to education? I agree too, that radical innovations in education come from people who do their work for love and not money. You can buy someone's presence in a chair for money, but you cannot buy their spirit, their enthusiasm, and all of the creativity that person embodies. That is what education has lost by emphasizing only salaries and not workin...

Today I spent the day taking our high school to Americus, Georgia to see President Carter speak. He wasn't speaking about world peace or politics, but rather on his career as an author of twenty books and a great "writing across the curriculum message" at Georgia Southwestern University. I pondered these things on the way home. "Giddyup" to learning and not "give it up" (For non Americans "giddyup" is what cowboys often say to their horse to get him to go! ) Politics are irrelevant in this, Jimmy Carter is smart man . When he wanted to write a book on poetry, he found some professors at Arkansas State University to help him. He called them " his professors ." He is the first American president to write a work of fiction, " The Hornet's Nest ." When we decided to write a novel, he found out the best professors at Emory and UGA and others and invited them to the Carter Center for a private session on how to write...