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.