Wrapping up!

It has taken two session, but I have completed 23 Things. I know my family is glad this course is complete so that they can have some computer time. I have learned a great deal. I am going to continue to blog. I found this to be a wonderful stress reliever. I will continue with my reader also. There are a few tools that I enjoyed previewing and will make a note to study those more indepth after the holdiays. I must admit that I was very nervous about an online staff development. I wanted someone standing right here beside me to give me step by step directions. I am not a big risk taker. I had to relax and make myself try some new things. I only had to call a friend one time during the whole session. This has been a great learning experience and I will implement more technology in classroom. I found tools that I can use with lessons and helping other teachers.

Thing #23

I had no idea there were so many social networking sites out there. There is a site for anyone and anything. Since I had been looking at educational blogs and wikis I decided that I would take another route for this particular thing. I looked around at the non-profit groups. The first one to pop up was about Autism. There were forums for parents who are new to autism, dealing with teenagers and autism, along with suport groups. I briefly looked at some other topics before moving on. These networks seemed to be more formal than facebook and myspace. I did like that it is more private. The main thing I guess that I learned from all the social network sites is that if you have something to share you can start a network group and get others involved in your cause. I have not tried twitter yet. I have friends that post to Facebook and twitter all the time. I read where twitter could be a good resource for staff development and some secondary classes. Personally I have enjoyed posting blogs so I want to continue with that tool.

Thing #22

I have been on Facebook for about 18 months. It has been nice reconnecting with friends from high school and college. I do not post very much on my profile, but I love reading about everyone else. I also enjoy playing the games. I have tried to be careful about who I friend. It is amazing how many people will send a friend request and they don't even know you. They are just trying to get as many friends as they can. As educators, we must constantly be aware of what we publish on Facebook. I have heard of some teachers actually creating a page just for school purposes. They can post things going on in the classroom and send out reminders about assignments and projects. I think it is similar to the blogging we read about earlier in the course.

Thing #7b

I got to catch up on a few sites from previewing my reader this evening. I recently attended a Debbie Diller staff development. It was a great session on Vocabulary development. I have also purchased several of her books and led book studies at my campus. There were several updates from her blog on my reader from the past few days. I enjoyed seeing pictures and hearing about her other session that she taught. There was also information from the session I attended and some extension activities that she had added.

Thing #21

So many things and so little time. That is how I felt about all the Google apps. I did feel pretty good about this particular "thing." I have seen and used several of these cool tools. I actually have Google Earth downloaded on my iphone. At first we (my family) just enjoyed playing around with the app, but now we use it to locate destinations and use it for a map while we are out and about. My husband uses this app. for his business. He is the one who introduced me to it. I think this would be something that teachers could use to look up historical places or to teach mapping skills. I am familiar with the google calendar. Two teachers that my own kids have use this app to keep us informed of projects assigned and due dates. I have downloaded Picasa. I have not used it because I already have pictures downloaded on another application. I do have family members that have shared their albums with me through Picasa. My son would really enjoy the Sketch up. He loves creating things and building. I'm sure we will soon have that fun application on our desktop. The tool I loved the most was Google Books. I could have spend hours looking at all the books. The ideas for using this in the classroom are endless. I could put in any topic I could think of and books would pop up. The unique feature of Google Books is that you can preview a large portion of the book on your computer. I will remember to check out Google books before I head out to the bookstore.

Thing #20

This was easy and very helpful! I can share so many things with teachers on my team and not worry about making paper copies of notes and activities. I like that I have control of sharing items and keeping items private. It seems very similar to backing up documents on a server. If my computer crashes then I can access my documents from another computer. I will use this "thing" more often. I did create a spreadsheet to go along with the word document. I have spreadsheets for everything from grocery lists to Christmas cards lists that I could download to the google documents. This is a good way to communicate with parents as well. Several secondary teachers I know have documents and calendars on google to keep parents informed of assigments and events. It's easy to just bookmark these sites and check them weekly.

Thing #19

I will be researching this topic more in the future. I enjoyed listening to all the comments and stories on the sites. On a personal note this could be great for sharing pictures and stories with family that live out of town. Instead to talking on the phone or emailing we could send pictures and comment on them. My brother-in-law is helping my son with a science project and this would be great for them to collaborate on pictures and drawings for the project. I can see using this in many classrooms. Children can create books and read them and then other classes can enjoy the stories when time permits. Also students can plan and present group projects and share with other classes at their campus or another campus. This is a great resource for everyone. I also thought the idea for staff developement was a good idea.

Thing #18

I have spent the last two hours viewing videos. There is some interesting stuff on you tube. I viewed two teaching videos first. I did find these helpful. I work with teachers everyday to plan and create lessons . I now have another resource to share with them. These videos will be a great teaching tool for new teachers and others who want to try something new in their classrooms.
I have been wanting to get new kitchen counter tops for awhile. My husband I have looked around and new granite counter tops are very expensive. I looked on you tube at how to paint my counter tops to look like granite. I am so excited. There are some simple and easy to follow videos on how to redo your kitchen. If I continue to blog after this class is over I will post pictures. The best part is that it is not near as expensive as replacing the counter top.
The last set of videos that I viewed were the I Am Second clips. I've been wanting to see some of these so I thought this would be the perfect time to sit down and watch a couple. Almost an hour later, I think I viewed 10 or more. Everyone has a unique story to share. When I would finish one video there would be suggestions to other people's stories. I have enjoyed a relaxing afternoon watching youtube.

Thing #17

I don't like to listen to talk radio so I thought I would not like podcasting. All the podcasts that I had heard of were about an hour long and were about things that did not interest me. Last year my daughter came home with an assignment to create a podcast. My first thought was, good luck with that one. A couple of hours later she came in the living room and said that her assignment was complete. She and her group had collaborated through texting and email and then created their 10 minute podcast and submitted it to the teacher through email. Wow! Then I became interested in podcasts. Since I love books I found the Authors on Tour Live and the Just One More Book podcasts my new favorite pasttimes. I can't wait to go buy some new books after listening to a few of these podcasts.

Thing #16

I mentioned before that I am an organizer. I am also a reader. I have tons of books. I will definitely utilize this site. I like how I can organize my books by title or author. The 50 book club will help me remember how many books I have read in a year. This would be a wonerful site for teachers to bookmark. When you are studying a particular author all the books are listed there on the site. The kids could also keep track of what has been read during the year. This is another great organization site.

Thing #15

I finally got it to work. I have not put all my current bookmark on the acount. Since I am a person who likes things organized this was a great tool. Delicious was easy to navigate and understand. It was also helpful when trying to find information on a certain topic. I could see what were some popular sites to visit. I am constantly searching the web at home and looking for ideas to use in my classroom. The next morning I have all these notes to take to school with web addresses written down. With delicious I can bookmark the sites and then access my account at school from any computer. At home everyone can have their own account and we won't have a long list of bookmarks on one computer.

Thing #7A

This past summer I became a fan of My Dallas Mommy. If you love coupon shopping and finding great deals this is the blog to read. The blogger is featured on Good Morning Texas each week. Since I am not home to watch the show in the mornings I just read the blog. Each day people will comment on the blog about great deals they received at stores, on-line, resturants and entertainment places. Not every post is something I am intersted in, but I jsut keep searching until I find what I'm looking for.

Thing #14

I am one of those people who loves to organize things so I found "Thing #14" very interesting. I looked at three different areas for the learnin activity. I found the to-do list and the phone reminders in 30 boxes. I am a person who loves to make a list and then see things crossed off that list. I was wondering why I had never found this site before now. at my house we have quiet a few phone books laying around. We have the yellow pages, the white pages, and personal phone directories. One of my organizational projects is to consolidate all the addresses and phone numbers of people and companies we need into one place. I am considering using something off the 30 boxes to do this.
I also enjoyed the Jigzone and Wordle. I had learned about Wordle this past summer in a workshop and have seen how it can be used in the classroom. I have seen many teachers at my campus use Wordle. The kids love it.

Thing #13

I spent quiet a bit of time on Thing #13. I enjoyed the website, "Image Chef" and this is where I found some interesting things to create. I even posted an image on my facebook page and received a few comments on it. My own children became interested and began creating images as well. We can't wait to use this on a project that one of them will have to complete in the near future. We created hearts and crosses with out names and Bible verses in them. The sports jerseys were a big hit with my son. These would be great for creating invitations for birthdays or football parties.

Thing #12

Here is the comic strip that I created from pikistrips.com. These are not my pictures. I downloaded them from flicker. I am trying to post a link to give credit, but I am having trouble doing that step. I will keep working. This was fun and I think my own children will enjoy using this site for some of their school projects. I plan on visiting the site some more over the holidays. I did look at the slide show sites and they will also fun to create projects with all our holiday photos.

Thing #11

photo provided by: kamomebird
I created two links for the photo. One is directly from the picture and the other is from the username. I wasn't sure I could link from the picture, but I gave it a try. I spend quiet a bit of time looking through photos. You can get distracted because there are so many themes and topics. I did find that when I searched for a specific topic that there were some pictures I wasn't expecting to find. As always you would have to pre-select pictures for students to view. There are great pictures to use for sorting and classifying objects. Many pictures could also be used as great writing prompts. I have all my personal pictures in files on my computer. I am looking forward to downloading them on Flickr to share with friends and family.

Thing #10

I thought the creative commons information was very interesting and useful. I did not know that creative commons existed. I am always worried about copyright laws. Even when my daughter is working on a project I tell her to check about the copyright. I will now start looking for the creative commons logo on websites. The only things that I have used from the web are photos and clip art images. I will now look for other media sources are creative commons. This will be beneficial to students when they create projects for classes. Many times different types of media are required for certain projects. With the web being a major source of information, students need to be aware of copyright laws and creative commons.

Thnig #9

Three hours later I have successfully created the wiki. I was on the right track and followed all the instructions (I thought), and then I realized that I had created a whole new wiki instead of creating a new page on the 23things sandbox page. Talk about frustrating. I had included all the information on the direction page. I had edited the text and even looked around and studied some features of the wiki. I was doing great. Of course, my kids were coming in and out of the room asking questions and I took a couple of phone calls during this time. All in all I was pretty proud of myself. Then I went to link it on the home page. That is when I realized my mistake. I kept telling myself not to panic there is probably an easy solution to this problem. I sat there and stared at the screen. Then I read the directions again. I couldn't find anything. So I called a friend for help. Thank goodness for great friends! Thank goodness for copy and paste!! I created a new page on the right wiki (the sandbox wiki). Then I went to the wiki I created and copied the first page I created. I went back to the sandbox wiki and pasted everything on my new page. It even pasted the links (we weren't sure it would do that). So I learned more that I had originally planned on learning about a wiki. After I was sure that the link would work on the sandbox wiki I went back to the first wiki and deleted it. Now you can go and read All About Me in the wiki sandbox.

Thing #8

I enjoyed reading the wikis in the Discovery Lesson. I was amazed that these were being used in so many ways. I have heard about a wiki through the school librarian. She uses one to set up a weekly library schedule. I was not aware that wikis were a tool for classroom learning and students were managing them for projects and homework. This gives a whole new meaning to "study groups." Two of the wikis I looked at, Primary Math and Room 15, were for younger grade students. The primary purpose of these seemed to be to publish some type of work/project. There were lots of photos in this wiki. The third wiki was from an eleventh grade class. I wanted to see how older students were managing the wiki. This one had more student generated topics in essay or note form. The teacher used this wiki for a variety of topics, a calendar, instructions for projects, class discussions and assignments. I believe that students could benefit from using a wiki. Vicki Davis stated in her blog, Wiki Wiki Teaching, that her students set up a study hall. After reading this post I have started thinking about how I can implement a wiki for staff developement sessions that I teach. I want to also use this as I plan with different teachers and grade levels throughout the school year. It is difficult to get a group of teachers together to plan when everyone has different schedules. With the wiki we can still share ideas and plan lessons together.

Thing #7

It makes sense that there are some "rules" about commenting on blogs. Since it is a conversation, society needs to follow some etiquette guidelines when posting and commenting. In the post How to comment like a king (or queen), the author states that one word comments are not enough. We need to state why we like something. We need to share our opinions. People want to know what others are thinking. This is what makes blogging differ from a personal journal. Blogging gets your thoughts out there. If we didn't want to hear from others then we would keep our thoughts private in a journal. When commenting we need to think about how our response will be taken by the author of the blog. we need to use the rule " If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Thing #6

I am going to start by adding the link that I should have added in Thing #5. As I began Thing #6 I read the post from cool cat teacher about creating our circle. This article is one i will need to refer back to many times. I tend to get overwhelmed with so much information when I am learning something new that I get off track. This article was well written and to the point about choosing blogs to add to your reader. Now off to find some blogs to follow! I'm back to finish the post. I have searched the google blog search and found some blogs to follow. I actually took some advice from others in the class on great blogs to follow. As I find blogs to follow it leads to more blogs. I have spend all morning reading blogs!

Thing #5

I have spend a great deal of time looking at websites to find things to add to my google reader. I'm still not sure I understand all that is involved with the reader. I guess I will learn in time. I have not found anything interesting to link to on the blog from an article on the reader. I mostly have news feeds right now because they were easy to find. I have enjoyed reading other people's blogs more than reading through the feeds on the reader. I have been reading the newspaper and catching up with the morning news shows on-line so I guess I can add those to the reader and scan articles and news stories easier each morning. I can see how my daughter will benefit from using the reader for research this next year. She can find websites that she will use for a topic and then scan those quickly for the information she needs. Also this feature can help with students "surfing" the web. As a teacher, I can add the feeds that I want students to read.

Thing #4

I'm a little late in getting thing#4 posted. I did read 5 of the posts from the lesson. The posts I read ranged from a reflection on research to a personal entry. Two of these were written by teachers/adults and the others were entries from students. One of my favorites was the post on SSR time. I can see where reading blogs would hold the students interest and want them to continue reading each day. Students could connect the blogs to real people. With all the social networks out there people are very interested in the lives of other people. For many, blogs have taken the place of a personal journal. I also liked how another teacher used the blog to explain to parents about his views on homework. The blog can now take the place of the weekly classroom newsletter. Parents also have the ability to reply, make comments, or ask questions and get a quick reply from the teacher. The other posts I read were student created. These posts were maninly about class assigments and writing activities in class.

Thing #2

I think I am a little overwhelmed after reading the article. There was a lot going on as far as technology was concerned. So much can be accomplished by using the podcasts and blogs. There is really no reason that students and parents can say that they don't know what is going on in the classroom. Parents can actually listen to classroom discussions and lessons. Even when a student is absent he/she can have assignments and notes from class. Classrooms have come along way from 20 years ago. Twenty years ago when I began teaching, computers were used to supplement to curriculum or used as learning stations. Now computers/technolgy are the classroom. Classrooms from around the world can be connected at the same time and learn from each other. I liked some of the quotes that described web 2.0 as connecting people and ideas. Students today have so many resources to connect with and expand their learning environment.

Thing#1

I've created a blog. This is something that I have been wanting to do for awhile. even though this blog is for a class I am still excited that i know how to set up a blog. I will be setting up a personal blog for my family in the next few days to share with family and friends that live out of town. The only thing that "scares" me about blogging is that eveyone can see what I post. I have been reluctant to share my ideas and thoughts so freely with the world. So I am stepping out of the box and sharing with everyone about my learning experience through this class. I heard about this class last summer while some friends were taking it. I thought I need to catch up in the technology world so I decided to sign up. one of the challenges that I will face will be viewing problems as challenges. I tend to view a problem as a crisis. I know I will not be able to complete most of the "things" easily or quickly so I must be patient and do some research and learn by trial and error. Being a busy mom, I will not have hours to spend playing around so I must stay focused and get my assignments completed and then play. I am a person who makes lists and likes to cross things off the list. So setting goals and accomplishing them will be easy for me. I like that the class is very organized and I know what is expected in each week. As I go through the next few weeks I need to remain confident that I can achieve the goals I have set. I am in control of my learning and I am able to revise and edit goals as needed.