Thing 16: You Pick!

I kept working on Thing 16 so I skipped writing about it but I guess it is time to get it all down.....
Well...I had decided to focus on my school website. Most of the design was dictated by my district trying to keep things cohesive. Probably a good thing to keep me focused!    
I had a bunch of irons in the fire....I wanted to improve on my presenation to the staff about databases, ebooks, audiobooks and online sources.  Then I wanted to create some professional development to share with my staff...."If your research paper can be answered with a google search then  it is void of higher level thinking".  LOL  I have been inspired by the book RX for the Common Core:  Toolkit for implementing inquiry learning!  And then I thought I really need to develop a better web presence with links to all the sources I wanted to share.  So that is where I began.
My web page:  http://www.ichabodcrane.org/Faculty/jtwoaxe/www/index.php   My hands are tied regarding the layout and colors but overall it does the job. The link on the left...looking for a book?  a database? - click there and you will see a link all the way to the right for SYMBALOO.  It is still a work in progress but I love symbaloo!! I had a tendancy to list links I thought students and teachers would find useful but they got long and cumbersome....so in comes symbaloo!  Easy to use - visual - easy to organize and edit!   My favorite link on Symbaloo is my JUST FOR FUN link...check it out!
Unfortunately I created my symbaloo pages and then found out that  Symbaloo released a version developed specifically for teachers. SymbalooEDU, this new version comes with new features aimed to assist educators in gathering the best educational online resources. Educator's refer to this visual aggregation as a Personal Learning Environment (PLE).  This is something I plan on revisiting.
In researching what to use for my bookmarking I came across StumbleUpon.  It  will ask for your interests and then select content based on those topics. But instead of scrolling through lists of links, you can click the "Stumble" button, and StumbleUpon will send you directly to a webpage that's relevant to one of your interests. Once you land on a page, you can vote to “Like” or “Dislike” the content, and StumbleUpon will take your vote into consideration when choosing future content.  Lots of good information I wouldn't have found or stumbled upon on my own.