del.icio.us, web 2.0, and more!

I have to say, delicious is one of the most awesome things I have learned about all semester. How wonderful to be able to bookmark and share your educational findings with others! I wrote my website summaries on a MLA documentation guide I've used since high-school which has been infinitely valuable for me these last four or five years, and then on a new website I found for English teachers. This site allowed teachers to search for literature by genre, grade level, culture, and a few other factors. This is definitely very useful for one who would like to represent literature from other cultures, but maybe is not familiar with much of it. It isn't just limited to books either, it can be used to locate poetry, essays, and folklore, among other things! The other nice feature is the inclusiong of the RSS feed, so that your delicious can be linked to your main page, be it pageflakes or what have you. This makes it easy to link up sites that you want your students to have access to, as well as the ones you use for your lesson planning and such. Wonderful, wonderful idea.

The lab on web 2.0 basically taught me that all of the cool things that are popping up like crazy on the internet lately, are based in web 2.0. Basically, anything that allows users to interact, add material to the website (such as youtube, flickr, and wikipedia), or alter information on the website. I discuss further the benefits of these applications, particularly in centralizing a place online where students and teachers can interact, discuss, and complete assignments, in my post on the forum.

Also, we've been working on our PSA. Scott had the wonderful idea of making a commercial of dowtown Grand Rapids, promoting the local haunts and trying to get people to hang out and support the downtown scene. We had a ton of fun filming on what was likely the last warm day this year! Trevor did an amazing job editing the video, with the help of Jeni, who was in charge of spazzing out on Scott and I. And I managed to find the perfect jazz song for our PSA, entitled "Walkin' the Dog." It was a great time, and we were all very satisfied with the final result.