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."