They chanted—“¡Soy, soy, yo soy español!” (“I am, I am, I am Spanish!”) and “Champiñones, champiñones” which is a demonstration of their offbeat humor since it means “mushrooms, mushrooms” but follows the rhythm of “champions” in Spanish and sounds a lot like “champions” in English.

Yes, “We are the champions”, and the song did play Monday night during the 4 hour parade of the Spanish team through Madrid. So many people, over half a million, crowded the streets that the city officials requested that no one else go to the stage at the end.

I showed my spirit and predicted the winner by buying a team Jersey and a cap before the game.

On our way home from one sister-in-law´s house to another, we waded through the jubilant crowds. Here is one such crowd filling the Bravo Murillo street shortly after midnight Sunday. I don´t know if you can tell, but a lot of the celebrants are Latin American immigrants. The World Cup made a lot of proud Spaniards, many of whom are Spanish only by residency. 15% of the Spain´s students are immigrants, most of them from Latin American but many also from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. There is some resentment, especially during the economic crisis and high unemployment, but the truth is their children are rapidly being assimilated and they provide labor in areas the Spanish are unlikely to cover on their own, especially elderly care.

Thing 23: Season Finale

Season finale because the show goes on.

1.There were so many things that I discovered with 23 Things. I think Delicious will have a big impact by making the internet swamp easier to navigate. I had a good time with the mashup applications and I'm sure I will return to them. Having my own personal blog is great and I plan to continue it, and I've found that being tuned into other blogs has really opened up my online experience. Helping all that happen are the RSS feeds from blogs that I added to my iGoogle page and that I want to add to my blog.

2. I've been putt-putting along on a little web tech bike for a while and this program and really cranked up the accelerator.

3. At times the Web has seemed like quicksand pulling at my time and energy, and I believe that is a real danger. I don't want too much of my time to be plugged in.

4. I have only one small suggestion. I wish the program had introduced me to Delicious and social tagging earlier so I could have started the organization sooner.

5. I would definitely join in another discovery program like this.

6. excitement

7. The last few days I haven't had time to go to the members' blogs and I plan to. But right now I have to finish some major projects and get ready to fly to Spain on Friday. Yipeee! I'll probably be visiting you guys from there.

Have a great summer!

Thing 22: Ning

Ning sounds like a great idea. The security and control the application offers sound perfect for the educational environment. I would dive right into setting one up for my class except for two things--no, three things:

1. Our district doesn't allow the use of social networks.
2. Even if they did, at my level (elementary,) students don't have individual log-ins so they couldn't register and participate from within the school network(I don't know if the district settings would allow a student to log in to another site like yahoo and from there log in to Ning, or even if that would be desirable).
3. Many of my students don't have internet access at home so the benefit of Ning would be limited.

As an individual, I can see some uses for a Ning personal network. I can see it being a good way for far-flung families to build an online meeting place. As an educator, I don't know why it would be particularly better than the blogs sites that are already out there. Except that it apparently is really easy for non-experts like myself to set it up.

I joined the Texas School Library Ning and was disappointed to see a bunch of blog posts that were essentially advertisements for products or other blogs.

So, while Ning seems ideal for a classroom/parent network, that is precisely what I can't use it for. And while I can use it for other purposes, it is not as compelling an option.