Thing #19-- Cook and Lose Weight!

I can't say I looked at the instructions for this thing through my professional educator glasses. I took one look at that list of fun Web 2.0 tools and I immediately gravitated towards the things that concern me personally right now... post-pregnancy weight loss and cooking... ironic yes?

The winners in the Health category were the first to catch my eye... RevolutionHealth and PEERtrainer. Revolution looked very similar to WebMD and so I did not spend much time with it, but PEERtrainer definitely struck a chord. It had wonderful articles on my specific weight-loss scenario ... working mother and nursing and even had groups that I could join with other women that are in similar situations. Being in a group involved setting a visible goal and logging food and exercise each day. So, in terms of useful parts the ability to find information on a topic I was interested in using a search tool as well as being socially involved with commonly-interested people were the key with this site. With a professional lens, I see these parts being useful to me with the topic being middle school science with the ability to communicate with other teachers in the same content field.

Another site that I absolutely LOVED was I'm Cooked, an arsenal of videos of recipes being cooked... just like food network!!!!!! This is far more useful to me... a novice "chef" as I am not only able to get the recipe but see it applied in ACTION! WOO! ahem... sorry... professionally... the useful parts of this site can be applied to education in that there are Many MANY MANY! things in science that are much better seen than read.. hence why we have labs. Unfortunately, budget and time often prevents us from doing as many as would be useful so if there were a site dedicated to science projects and labs (especially dangerous chemical reactions) I would definitely be all over that in my class! Yes.. YouTube does have some stuff right now... but it would be nice to have a site that didn't also have inappropriate "suggestions" scrolling across the screen or on the side bar.

Sidenote: Web 2.0 awards = del.icio.us tag? you betcha