Thing #23 - Comments

This has been quite a journey! I will need to go back and revisit the instructions pages for the "things" that I plan to incorporate, so I'm glad to have the blog as a resource.

1. My favorite activity was Photostory. I had so much fun creating my video and will figure out ways to incorporate it with my students, most of whom are reluctant writers and might not be as reluctant if we're breaking it down into screens of text. I am also intrigued with Wikis and want to explore using them with our dyslexia teachers' group.

2. 23 Things has pushed me to experiment and explore technology and take the time to consider how I could use it. Because we had guidance, feedback, and exercises to complete, I put forth the effort to explore. It also helped that we get 18 hours!!!

3. It has been a lot of fun to see how many things are applicable to both my professional and personal lives, such as Photostory.

4. I thought the format was very well designed. It might be good to go back and try the directions for the various things where we encountered problems to make sure that it is still functioning in the same way that is written; the embedding of the TeacherTube videos, for example. My IT husband ended up helping me with it.

5. I would definitely participate.

6. Empowering.

7. Will do.

Thanks so much for all of the work that the team captains do for this staff development. I think the idea of the face-to-face sessions was a very good one. If there had been some a little later in the summer, I might have been at a better place in the process to attend.

Thing #22 - Nings

Ning for Teachers - Teacher Lingo - was like being in the teachers' lounge - except in cyberspace. And I mean that in a good way. The teachers' lounge can be a place to take your concerns, celebrations, questions, classroom management issues, or fantastic ideas that you need help refining. This is what Teacher Lingo seemed like to me. It could be a tremendous source of inspiration or help that reaches past the physical boundaries of the teachers' lounge on your campus.

Thing #21 - Podcasts, videocasts, PhotoStory

I had so much fun playing around with PhotoStory. I had some pictures from our trip last summer that I thought would be fun to put together in a little "video" to use for this project, and to impress my family! I played around with the transitions and the music and the order of the pictures. I have no idea how long I spent on it because I just sort of got lost in it.

I told my daughter that next time we take a trip we should make a little video from the pictures we take each day, and she said that we could put it on a blog so that we could share it with our family and friends while we're still on our trip. That would be so much more fun that just showing them pictures when we get home.

I can see so many possibilities for using this in a professional sense. For the classroom, for group projects, for workshop presentations - endless possibilities.

Thing #20 - YouTube and TeacherTube

I will plan on using TeacherTube videos for a variety of activities with my students. They are so much more tuned in to video presentations of information as opposed to getting it out of a textbook or listening to a teacher lecture on it. I think the videos can serve as a very good launching off point for discussions and elaborating on the topics presented. Another wonderful aspect of the videos is the idea of the students being able to make them for a portfolio piece or a way of testing their knowledge or as group projects. Students would amaze us all with their products! I chose this video because I think it represents the basis of 23 Things, combined with how we can use videos, such as the ones found on TeacherTube and YouTube, to reach our students.

Thing #19 - Web 2.0 Awards List

After many searches of award winning websites, I chose to use www.comiqs.com as my tool. I found many of the websites a bit confusing and I was uncertain as to how I would use them in a classroom setting. However, comiqs.com was very user-friendly and offered a tremendous amount of flexibility (use their pictures or download your own) and room for creativity. I thought that students might enjoy using this website for a different type of writing assignment - maybe political cartoons or short strips about something they are studying in a history class, or use textbook photos and create a strip about a scientific process being studied in a science class. Themes, figurative language, figures of speech, grammar lessons - all of these could be made a little more interesting to present to the class through the use of a comic strip type of presentation.

Thing #18 - Online Tools

I had a lot of fun playing with Google Docs and exploring Open Office. I watched the video about Open Office and thought it had a lot to offer. I'm glad we've got it loaded on our laptops. I searched through and saved several of the Google Docs. From a personal standpoint, I saw numerous templates that I could download and use for my finances, calendar, etc. and share with my husband online.

One of the obvious advantages of having documents such as these available online as opposed to using Microsoft Office is that other people can access the information and put in their changes. This keeps me from having to do all of the input for a collaborative document or presentation, if I'm the originator. This might be a very good way for our dyslexia support group to update presentation handouts or slides/"powerpoints" that we give. We usually work in pairs or groups of three when we make presentations and this would be very easy to keep updates circulating. It is very difficult for us to find "face-to-face" time because we are at different schools and on very tight schedules. I can also see a use for students who are working on group presentations.

Thing #17 Rollyo

I created a Rollyo for searching to find vocabulary activities and explanations about word origins. I tried searching other people's searchrolls for: "morphology", "prefixes", "Greek root words" but I guess no one had used those tags for their searchrolls so I didn't come up with anything. A good lesson that fit with the previous lessons we'd had about tagging.

http://rollyo.com/bnash/vocabulary_sites/

Thing #16 Wikis

As I was looking through the various wikis that were linked, I came across a couple of them (a 10th grade English class http://bhsenglish10.wikispaces.com/ and an AP World History class http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/~ahistory/apwhreview/index.php?titile=main_Page) that really demonstrated some great ways to use wikis for classroom purposes. I think that I can use some of the information provided in the English class wiki that have to do with writing strategies.

I followed about three different links provided in the English class wiki and they were all different formats for presenting the information. I see this as a great way to keep the kids tuned in and guessing as to how the lesson will be delivered this time! It also means that if they are unclear about any aspect of an assignment, they can access it from home and review the parts they need extra instruction on.

The AP History wiki had a tremendous number of resources for a Holocaust project. The teacher used the wiki for the group's to manage their assignments and to provide links to research sites, such as the Holcaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I was amazed with the amount of information the students had at their fingertips, and I could imagine that the students would spend so much more time learning about the Holocaust, and possibly going out and finding additional information, simply because it was available on the web.

I can really see wikis (or versions of them) becoming the syllabi and research assignment vehicles of classrooms. Thanks for providing me with a way to scratch the surface of this tool.

Thing #15 - Perspectives on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I found the writings about the future function and "look" of libraries very thought provoking. I have to admit that I really hadn't spent any time thinking about how the Web has changed the function of the library. I thought the one perspective about how people will collect librarians and rate their avatars was interesting - it will certainly take an entirely different set of skills to navigate libraries of the future.

I also attempted to use one of the article's bibliographies and found that several of the references used in the article(from 2006)were no longer available. It made me think about how sources will be used in the future, and how short-lived they may be. Will this potentially cause a domino effect of research bibliographies? Hmmmm?

Thing #14 - Technorati

This website serves an incredibly valuable purpose by organizing blogs in numerous ways. It makes it very easy to find a blog for a particular topic or subject matter, no matter how you want to look for it - blogs, tags, or using the blog directory. (I did find it very interesting that Education was not one of the categories in the Blog Directory!)
I'm still not terribly clear on how I would tag something that I find through Technorati, even though I tried it and got kind of confused by having to then log on to Delicious. I sort of got lost in the changing of the softwares. However, I think that if I start out fresh one day and play with it, I will get the hang of it.

Thing #13 - Tagging and Delicious

I had a difficult time getting my head wrapped around this whole concept. I think if the Common Craft video had come at the very beginning, I might have gotten more out of the descriptions in the first section of this Thing. I've got a grasp of the concept but the software part of the whole thing is still a bit confusing to me. I'm not very adept at having numerous toolbars and icons that take me places that change the way I find things. Perhaps I need a face-to-face with someone who really understands the software part of things.

Thing # 12 - Creating Community through Commenting

I felt that the most important points discussed in all of the blogs on making comments were to make the points relevant to the ongoing conversation and to choose your words wisely. It is so easy to misinterpret words by themselves when we don't have voice inflections, gestures, facial expressions, and body language to complement the word choices. Misunderstandings and miscommunications could be rampant. I agree with one of the sites' authors who said that he/she is sure to get in between commentators who seem to be getting out of line with each other. This author noted that he/she felt that this helped other people feel safe to make comments.

I checked out a couple of blogs on Eventing, which is an equestrian sport. I have always loved horses and used to ride quite a bit. If I were a young girl (and could afford this sport), I would love to participate in the show jumping, cross country courses, and dressage events that make up Eventing.

So that is why I chose these blogs: http://useventing.com/blog/?p=3060 and http://useventing.com/competitions.php?id=1986

Thing #11 - Library Thing

Library Thing is a wonderful place to keep track of my book club books, and find new books to read. I found a couple of historical fiction groups that caught my eye, and will serve as a good place to begin searching for that genre. I've set up the Library Thing blog up as one of my RSS feeds. It took me a minute or two to remember how to do it, but I did!!!

Thing #10 - Image Generators

This heart is from Image Chef. Really fun to play with the words and color scheme.

I've also got a new folder on my desktop full of images, mostly from Comic Strip Generator, that will be fun to use as writing prompts with my students.

I am also so excited to have my avatar finally up! Thanks for the encouragement and helpful suggestions.

Thing #9 - Library-related Blogs/ News feeds

I am feeling completely overwhelmed by all of the information out on the web, and the variety of ways in which it is presented! I'm sure this gives a big hint as to my age-range, but it is exhausting to me to try and process all of this.
On the other hand, it is phenomenal to have all of this information at our fingertips, and I can certainly appreciate the value of that. My hope is that I can remember how to get back to Library2Play so that I can get back to the incredible websites. I know, I know - add them to Favorites and my Google Reader! Right now, I'm too overwhelmed to be able to even do that.
I really enjoyed reading the postings on the Cool Cat Teacher blog and I checked out a couple of really great postings by the Edublog award nominees for 2008. I also really enjoyed the Superglu site. I can see that pictures can really make a difference in the postings.
I found the Syndic8 and the Technorati sites a bit overwhelming for me, but I promise to go back and try them on a day when I haven't been looking at so many different things.

Thing #8 - RSS Feeds

I subscribed to the Google Reader site and some of the blogs that will help keep me informed about happenings in SBISD. I think that this service is amazing in that it can really help sift through the overload of information that is now available to readers. I like the idea of being able to control the sites from which I am pulling information, since there are many sites that I might not want students to view, in a classroom setting anyway.
This is an invaluable tool for students to utilize in their search for information and it can really help them organize their information too.

Thing #7 - Cool Google Tools

I never knew Google had so many cool tools!
I signed up for a Google Alert on a topic of interest to me so that I can see how it works. I can see using this in the classroom for current events that are relevant to a topic being studied, especially in the areas of science and social studies, and health.
I explored Google Scholar to get a feel for finding a variety of resources that might pertain to a piece of literature being read. This would be a fantastic site for gathering background information or finding companion pieces, both fiction or nonfiction. It would also be very useful for current journal articles when students are studying an area of science.

Thing #6 - Mashups

On a personal level, I love the idea of using the Mappr to plot our 2-week vacation last year where we drove from Houston to Atlanta to Raleigh to Colonial Williamsburg to Jamestown to Washington, D.C. - deep breath - and then home. We took pictures of the state signs as we crossed into each state and Mappr would be great to use as the backdrop for outlining our trek!

I also love the Mosaic Maker and can see it as being helpful with mapping out stories or research projects using the big square in the middle with the smaller squares around it. The big square could be the central idea and then various parts of the story - depending on the depth of the study - could track around it. The students could use words or pictures to help them really analyze and represent the story elements.

As a graphic organizer for a research project, the various layouts of the Mosaic Maker could be utilized to keep the student on track with the research details and how they fit in with the thesis statement.

Thing #5 - Flickr

Flickr is amazing! I'm a scrapbooker and I'm thinking that I need to just set up private groups, upload my vacation pictures and let my family look at them in Flickr. I will also be sure to let my own children know about it so they can use it for reports.

We took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg last summer so I looked it up in Flickr, and I've decided that some of the pictures that I took might be cool to share with the Flickr community. I'm going to use uploading our photos as a way to teach my kids about this awesome website.

Thing #3 & #4 - Set up and Register Blog

Creating the blog took me a lot longer than I thought it would and there were points along the way where I got somewhat frustrated, but I tried to view these problems as challenges!

The avatar was fun to create and I am now longing to go to a mountain cabin to escape the Houston heat wave that is starting to roll in for the summer.

Thing #2 - Lifelong Learners

I enjoyed the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners. It brought to mind some aspects of learning on which I'd like to focus more of my energy. It's pretty easy for me to begin with the end in mind, but sticking to it until completion isn't my strong suit. Maybe that's where learning to use technology to my advantage will help me.