Thing 23

Oh the places you'll go! I started with thoughts of Dr. Seuss, and I end with thoughts of Dr. Seuss. I really do feel like I have been on a journey because it has had its ups and downs, its good times and bad! I went back to one of the bad times - Thing 5, before beginning this reflection, and when I went to subscribe using Bloglines, got the message that it was down and would be back shortly! So this just reminds me to keep things in perspective. As wonderful as technology is, it is not perfect, and won't always do what we hope it will do, so we need many ways of instructing and reaching students. That being said, I have so appreciated this course. I am not nearly as daunted by the internet and what it has to offer. I want to explore and learn more! Before I thought others would do it, not me, but I feel so much more ready to use what I have learned to reach students, parents and my peers. I really do feel that all educators need to move into the world of technology. We need to stop teaching the way we were taught and start taking some risks in order to reach our students, because you know what? They are bored! The flip side of this however, is that we can't just have our students sitting in front of computers all day, we need to make sure they are moving, so that still lends itself to a different way of teaching. I do plan to have a blog next year that will connect me to my students, the parents of my students, and to my peers. As a Teacher Consultant, I do see the need to have a "place" to bring it all together. I never thought of a blog as being that place before, but I do now. I love putting things into the blog, images, videos, links, that will be my goal as a blogger, to keep it interesting and relevant by using these tools. I will be practicing all of the things this summer. I am hoping the blog that has been created through this course will still be a blog we can access and work on. Every one of these things has taken a great deal of time, and to learn new things that stay with you, one needs to revisit! So I thank you for this opportunity. I do feel that I have been successful in my attempt to "learn new things," but I also know that I need to realize the journey is not over. Oh, I especially love wikis and see such a use for them. These I want my peers to know about and I will tell them!
Rosemary

Thing 21 and 22

Well I must say, I am pretty proud of myself. Learning about wikis in Thing 21 did really make me want to create one. I thought Hanalee Book Wiki was fabulous with its reader's theatre. When I went on Educational Wikis I found Lord of the Flies and was so impressed with how much can be done so that student learning is enhanced. I played around quite a bit and I guess the biggest hurdle is just finding the time to explore, to learn, and to create. Obviously what would remove this hurdle would be to find the time! I think collaboration would be key to this and wouldn't a wiki be the perfect way to collaborate on finding wikis on certain topics or on getting the needed help to create one? So on to my creation.

http://growingvocab.wikispaces.com/

I had to continually go back to the video to figure out how to get the link, the image and the video, but I managed to get all three. I like the idea of my wiki and I like what I have done so far. It really is fun, and the idea of others adding to the wiki is appealing. It differs from a blog in the fact that others can make changes, not just comment. Obviously a blog is more appropriate when you just want others to share opinions, to reflect, or to create something that can be responded to, but not in any way alter what others have posted. I think a wiki is the most appropriate way to collaborate on projects, to keep track of things and organize as a group, to teach and learn from each other by changing and adding to what has come before. A wiki is an amazing thing really and well worth the time.
Rosemary

Things 19 and Thing 20

I am not sure I understand enough about pod casting, but I have spent a grueling amount of time on Thing 19 and 20. I really like the idea of pod casting and think it is fantastic for today's students, but it seems to take so much time! EPN was not user friendly and I didn't like podcastalley at all. It just seems like on both of these sites I had to play "go fish" too much. I tried to search for pod casts using yahoo and again did not find it easy. I did stumble upon Videomathtutor.com which I think could be useful for some of my students having difficulty in their math classes. I also found LearnOutLoud.com which would be helpful for some of my students who need things read aloud. I went to Mystorynory.com and think this is very good, seems elementary but it did have Greek Myths which I thought played well for a middle school student. I was much more successful using ITunes. I subscribed to PrincetonReview.-VocabMinute I really, really like this site and I know I will pass it along to my colleagues, my students, and my friends! I am not a classroom teacher so I think what I would find most beneficial about pod casts is just helping my students find some that will help them with what they may be having difficulty with. There is a teacher in our special ed department that puts information on pod casts, so now at least I know what she is talking about!
Rosemary

Thing 18

Homework in K-12 Education

View more presentations from Suzanne Jackson.

I think slideshare is fantastic. I mean why reinvent the wheel? If you need a presentation on a subject and an excellent one is already done, and it can be shared, why not use it? I chose the one I did because homework is an ongoing debate. As for classroom uses, they are numerous. Slide shows could be used to prepare, instruct, review, to preteach, reteach, to present different viewpoints, to use as a pretest or post-test, because you could design questions to go along with the slides. The following one on The Crucible would be an excellent pre and post assessment.

The Crucible and Puritan Informational Show

View more presentations from guestbfcd47.

I don't know why nothing happens when you click on the TV, it didn't work on Slideshare either, but I still find this presentation highly useful. I think Slideshare is the best thing so far and I will share it with my colleagues. As for personal uses, I will share it with my adult children who are teachers, parents, trainers, film makers, and students (most are more than one of these, I don't have 5 children, only 3, although I am also counting my daughter-in-law). I will certainly look for slide presentations to use on my personal blog because it is just such fun!
Rosemary

Thing 17

Online productivity tools are good to know. Bubble.us reminds me of Inspiration which I used often as a middle school resource room teacher, both as a means of instruction and as a way for students to work their way through the writing process. I didn't spend a lot of time on the site as I don't know how I would use it in my present position and I didn't find it to be user friendly. ZohoShow reminds me of PowerPoint and I love it! I looked at many very cool presentations and this would be great for students. It was easy to navigate and though I did not take the time now to prepare a presentation, I think it will be a simple and fun process. Remember the Milk is a way to be organized in every aspect of your life but I think I will stick to my sticky notes! Sometimes I think we can be way too planned and pressured to remember too much. We need to simplify. 30 boxes is an on-line calendar and would be a fun way to remember important dates and things to do. Others can access it and add their info. I can see this being used by a classroom teacher to post important due dates, field trip info, instructional resources like speakers or TV shows, yeah I like it! LibraryThing is a fabulous site for people who love reading and want to encourage others to read. This is another site I didn't spend as much time on as I could because I felt I would get lost forever, so I will be returning. Trailfire I really didn't get and Knowtes was unavailable but seems useful. My students often make flashcards as a way to prepare for tests, so I am hoping this site will be available soon so I can check it out. All in all, some very good info in Thing 17.
Rosemary

Thing 16

I do work on spreadsheets and we e-mail it back and forth and back and forth, this will be much more efficient. It has also happened when two people were unknowingly working on a spreadsheet at the same time, and one had to completely start over! So this will take care of that problem. There are many templates for organizing information and I am normally on information overload so again this will be helpful. I can certainly see how much more fun any assignment would be knowing everyone in the class could work on the same document and then share it. It must be remembered though that not all students have internet access at home. Using Google Docs could be a disadvantage for the already disadvantaged. It is becoming clear that all persons in education need to be tech savvy, so much more will happen with technology in schools when every player can demonstrate proficiency with what can happen with a computer! I do also see an isolation factor though. Kids today are less able to dialogue with there peers and problem solve together, and now this allows more work in isolation. People skills are vital to success and I fear we are finding ways to spend less and less time in face to face collaboration.
Rosemary

Thing 15

Everything I do is a bit of trial and error. Is RSS becoming easier to use? Yes, a bit and I do see how useful it will be. I have not been checking my feeds regularly, and I am not sure when it will become a habit. I am glad to have cleaned up my bloglines account it is certainly less cluttered now. I think I deleted things I never put in though because I didn't recognize the sites when I went to them, and did not have any use for them. I do need to remember to use bloglines when I am exploring the web as I know I will come across things I want to subscribe to quite often. It will be interesting to see how I actually utilize all I am learning when I begin a blog for my role as a Teacher Consultant. Having a personal blog already, I can tell you that just finding the time to share what I am thinking is often difficult, let alone putting in all of the bells and whistles. I know it is the bells and whistles though that will make the blog appealing and therefore successful, so I am glad I took this opportunity to learn 23 things! Just so you know, the posting time on these last few posts is incorrect, but I don't know why.
Rosemary

Thing 14

I do love delicious, but that took a very long time. I think I would have liked it better if over the course of the next couple of weeks I could have tagged 10 or more websites instead of having to find all 10 now. I wanted to choose sites with relevance to me, and of interest to others doing 23 things so I wanted a variety but all within the realm of education. I know I will use delicious to explore what others have found and to continue to tag to share what I find to be useful. My user name is rosemaryschimmel, not very creative but oh well! I can see delicious being useful to tag articles that parents might find helpful, or to provide articles to give background knowledge to students before a particular lesson is to be taught. I could tag sites that might help with homework, or test prep. I might look to tag sites that would be helpful to a student experiencing high school angst as often my students will share what is going on in their lives with me. I can see using it to tag sites to perhaps give fellow educators a chance to see things from a different perspective and help them change their ways! It will make searching for sites on a particular topic faster and easier, and I like that we can click on the person and get all of the other sites tagged by them. By the way, I want to change my user name and just tried but can't figure out how, help if you can.
Rosemary

Thing 13

I certainly like the idea of anything that is going to assist with organization. Since I bookmark lots of things, or add to favorites, I know that a way to tag, or use folders will be useful to me. I am curious about delicious.com and am ready to go explore. Like so many of these "things", it isn't until I actually do it that I understand it, or at least begin to understand. The videos and articles help of course as a starting point, but like so many, I am a hands on learner, I have to do it to learn it. I think most kids learn best by doing as well, even high school students, so I don't think pure lecture has any place in any classroom until college, even then I question its value. I mean how many of us have been to workshops where we were talked to for hours on end, did you learn anything? So on to doing with delicious! I love that name.
Rosemary

When I put this on my personal blog, but accidentally posted it here as both blogs are listed on my personal blog, it worked! Didn't mean to have it show up three times, but each time I edited I pasted again because the link didn't show. So I really am learning new things! Anyway, enjoy Sarah again and again and again!

Thing 12

I have just gained much experience because I have made many mistakes trying to embed code for Voki and other widgets, this is the only one that has worked for me so far. That's alright though because this I would probably use the most. After pasting the others and posting I get this error message; "Your HTML can not be accepted." If anyone can help, please do. I will email the good people at RESA for their assistance as I really like Voki and would love to use it. Anyway to continue, I do belong to Facebook. I don't remember why I first got a page, but I know I didn't intend to be on it much, but I do go on quite regularly. It is a good way to see what family and friends are up to, however it does not compare to face-t0-face meet and greets! I don't write too much I mostly just check in to see if anything is new or interesting. I think the reason kids like places like MySpace is because it is a way to be constantly connected to what is going on, and that is good and bad. It is good because kids need to have connections, they need to feel a part of something and that they belong. It is bad though because how one interacts in person is very different from the way one interacts on-line, it is as if the social rules no longer apply and one can say anything one wants! I do think young people today are lacking in social skills, and can't appreciate the art of conversation. Advancements always have an up side and a down side, and it is important to recognize what is lost by what is being gained and if it is important to not lose it, then we need to make sure we continue to teach it!
Rosemary

Thing 11

I like to leave comments on blogs. I think that others really do want to know how their thoughts are received, so I feel like they are just waiting to hear from me! And, I love receiving comments, it is after all what we blog for. When I got my first comment on my personal blog I was so excited and it is disappointing when comments are not received. I want people to read what I write and have an opinion. Students definitely want feedback. They also want to supply feedback, we just need to make sure we help them understand the rules of commenting. To be able to post an idea, relay a fact, instruct, offer an opinion, and put it out there for the masses to read and comment on is powerful, and to be able to read someone's post and then give feedback is an opportunity.
Rosemary