Library Thing

Library Thing is a great way to create your own library that people can view and comment on. The site has thousands of popular book titles from any category that you can think of. The search engine makes it easy to find any book you wish. By adding books to your library, the site gives you other books pertaining to that category that you may enjoy. You can also connect to other people who enjoy the same books that you do.

My library

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/dj2123

Big Huge Labs.com

This is a site where you can do some pretty funky things with your photos. For example, you can turn a photo into a calender or a movie poster. The site allows you to create slide shows, photo albums, i.d. badges, trading cards, and magazine covers. Winners of phys.ed. class tournaments could get their pictures taken by their teacher and place on the cover of a magazine. Teachers could hang these in the gym for the rest of the school to see. Check this one out!!!

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

Podcasts

Podcasts are pretty new to me but they seem very useful. Subscribing to a podcast is very easy. They can be placed as feeds on your Bloglines account or on your blog. Again, just like You Tube videos, podcasts can provide someone with very good information about a subject. If a student knew what your bloglines account address was, they can check your page for useful podcasts pertaining to certain subjects. When I looked up different podcasts there were some good ones that dealt with health and fitness. They can be found on my bloglines account.

You Tube

You Tube is a site that I spend about 85% of my time on when I am surfing the web. I like it because you can find videos about anything you want to look at. Recreationally, I use it to learn songs on my guitar. Professionally, I also use it to find videos pertaining to coaching football and track. You Tube has videos that can help me become a better wide receivers/defensive back/sprinting coach. These videos have information on drills, techniques, and strategies pertaining to these sports. Posting videos on your blog is a good way to get information across to students in a health/physical education setting or athletes in a coaching setting. Here are some videos I use:

Defensive Back Drills


Tips from Cornerback Champ Bailey


H.S.I. Sprinting Videos (Maurice Greene and Ato Boldon)

Technorati

Technorati is the like the "Google" for blogs. People can do searches for blogs, photos, and videos on this site. Just like many other sites, these blogs, photos, and videos are broken up into different categories such as sports, entertainment, etc. It is a pretty straight forward site and simply another way to obtain information about specific topics. I would use this site as a sports fan. What are others out there saying about the World Series, Super Bowl, or NBA/ NHL Finals? It can also be another way to find different pictures and videos from the internet. Perhaps, Technorati can be a useful tool in finding information on Health and Physical Education topics. Perhaps, I can look up blogs on people who post about specific foods, diets, or eating habits and share them with my students during a nutrition unit.

Del.icio.us

I see Del.icio.us simply as a way to organize some of your favorite websites. It takes bookmarking a step above just adding to your favorites on your desktop. Now instead of needing my own computer to pull up my favorite sites, now I can pull them up by accessing a webpage from any computer. This is actually not a bad idea!! As a teaching tool, students can pull up some of their teachers favorite websites and get information. This is something I would probably use more for teaching health. I may give my students a report to do on a specific disease. If they access my Del.icio.us site, now they can pull up sites that I feel would be helpful to their report.

Google Doc's

I found Google Doc's to be a very easy way to pass around documents via internet. This allows for easy editing and changing of a document. As a Physical Education teacher, I am constantly using editing Microsoft Word documents and passing them to my collegues. I can see myself using this for field day documents, weight training spread sheets, or even health tests. I'm trying to post a document to my blog but it is not going well. I couldn't get it to directly transfer to the blog so I had to copy and paste the url. Anyway, this is a speed and aglity training document that I use during the summer. I am a speed and agility trainer for a number of teams at Parkland High School in Allentown, PA.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfsz2dd8_1f829wtc5