Thing #8

Don't know what my problem is but now I seem to have ended up back at Thing #8. Kind of glad I did. Cool idea to have one place where all of your news comes. I usually just check out msn.com, yahoo.com and once I have read those I head over to comcast.net, but they get a bit boring towards the end of the day. I really like the idea of having so much news delivered to me in subjects I like without all of the background noise. Beats newspapers. Now if only they included a sudoku puzzle or two...

Thing #16

So I skipped a few... I'll go back...maybe. I decided that jumping around to those items I could connect to more readily and immediately made more sense, so I started today off by looking at the idea and application of online productivity tools. I have used Google Docs may times to open documents that I don't have a program for on my desktop, and knew it had the capability of sharing docs, but was intrigued to find Zoho Docs does the same thing, as well as many other programs.
The idea is pretty simple- instead of having to email docs back and forth between users and interested parties, these programs allow you to use/edit/update docs at one time (everyone working on one paper...starting to sound like high school again when we had papers to complete for class... it used to be called cheating, now it is called productivity!)
Guess the need makes sense. Would have made all of those updates on my resumes years ago a lot easier and much faster.  So many emails back and forth to family and friends for ideas and edits... What is even scarier is I am just old enough to remember typewriters!!!

Thing #3: Avatars, Shmavatars

After working diligently to create a self-portrait, actually reading the directions allowed me to post my picture onto my blog site. Crazy how directions work. You read them and they tell you how to do things. Is it supposed to look like me? Or can I continue to get away with making myself look better than I really am?

Introduction

Welcome to Room #201 at Iron Horse Middle School. While I learn this whole process from the very basics, I think it is more important that we spend more time talking about what students in my class are doing. For example: today the students of my Living Skills 1 classes continued to work on their Sugar Cookies recipes, including their butter cream-frosting ingredients, while the Wheel 6th graders finished up their Chocolate Chip Cookie Sticks. They love cookies.
I really love the brand new Kitchen Aide stand mixers that were purchased over the last 2 days. The sleek black shininess of them "stands" out on the dull blue-gray counters like a beacon to the students to work better, cleaner, and smarter! Amazing how something so simple (yet sooo expensive) has such a positive effect.