Daily Archives: May 12, 2013

Hello from North Carolina!

My name is Cheryl Burris, and it would appear I am the only out-of-towner.  I live in Whispering Pines, NC (a village next to Pinehurst).  It is as quiet as the name implies and I love it.  Although I live in golf country, I have no clue how to play the game.  I do, however, drive a mean golf cart, which is the preferred mode of travel here.

As for my experience, I have been an elementary school teacher in NC who preferred the 5th & 6th graders due to their independence and budding humor.  I also taught in Alaska for a federal program called STARBASE Alaska where I taught space and aviation science to 3rd through 12th graders.  It was very interesting and a bit of a culture shock when we went to some of the remote areas to teach.  Finally, I taught a military intelligence course when I was in the Army.

I am currently a Sunday school teacher and am assisting my pastor with our church going digital.  We have a lot of retired people who are unable to attend but are very handy with technology at times, military stationed around the world, and working families who are unable to attend the various Bible studies conducted on Wednesday night.  Going digital is my way trying to reach out to the community.

I am a slow adopter for the social media and am not really familiar with the Web 2.0 stuff – that is what lead me to this class.  However, I am really interested now and hope not to experience too many challenges or steep learning curves.

Alternatives to Google Reader

newsreader_small

As some of you may know, Google is discontinuing its Reader and since an RSS reader (or aggregator) is one of the tools you’ll be using for this class, here are some alternatives. If you are already using Google Reader, most, if not all, of these readers can automatically import all your feeds.

I’ve experimented with Feedly, NetNewsWire, and Flipboard and found them all to work well. When I’m out and about, I especially like to use Feedly (iPhone app). Anybody else have a favorite RSS reader?

Image courtesy of Creative Commons license and Flickr inju

안녕하세요!~ (Annyoung hasehyo! – “Hello” in Korean)

I’m Justin, an ’08 Penn State alum and currently a high school math teacher in NJ. If you’re wondering about the post topic, a fun fact is that I study Korean and spent a summer there.

Where I work, I’m an iPad supervisor for our one-to-one program in which every teacher and student has an iPad. Looking to learn more ways to infuse technology into the curriculum, I took this course. I’m familiar with a variety of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest to name several. Next year my school will adopt MyBigCampus. It’s a “social learning platform” that allows for wall posts, activity feeds, following other users, and a suite of teacher tools such as online assessment, blogs, wikis, file storage and sharing, etc. As I tinker with this resource, I’ll share my experiences.

I look forward to working with everyone!

If interested about the iPad program at my work, check out the links below:

Update: PSU blog