One Last Thing

I can't help but think, "I did it, I did it, I did it!", as Dora would say! This was my second chance at completing this class, and I finally made it!

I am amazed at how much this class has taught me, and at how much I will still continue to learn from my day to day "playing" with all of my tools. I never felt as if it was "work" to complete all of my "things" which made it such a fun experience. I loved that it was work in the fact that it was challenging, but it was so engaging that I never realized how long I was actually spending on each of my things. That was probably the hardest part for me because of my young daughter, but I figured out how to manage it all while keeping everyone happy! (as I am now typing with a toy being pushed into my lap! ;)

I am encouraged by my peers at my school who have already completed the class and who are completing it this summer. Knowing our school community, I know we will continue to inspire each other by sharing our blogs and ideas for using all of our new Web 2.0 tools. I am off now to add my blog to my signature line for my email which will force me to maintain it, and to share my blog with my Facebook friends. I have a daily routine of checking my iGoogle and Facebook, so I will be sure to include to my routine adding to my blog at least once a week this summer and at least once a week during the school year, working my way up to everyday. I'm sure my students will hold me to that resolution! I loved the idea of answering, "What have I learned today?" on my own blog. Isn't that what we expect of our students?

Thing #20

Google Docs

For some reason this was one of the most difficult "things" for me to complete, not because it was hard, but because I could not think of an application for it as I was working on it! I have decided to create a presentation for my parents of their grandkids that my sister and I can both work on together but from separate states. I think that was why I was stumped. I was trying to fit in the collaborative piece of the puzzle. Initially when I was exploring through the templates, I immediately thought of a grade level calendar that can be created and shared among my team. I also love the thought of many of my students being able to peer edit their compositions on the laptops. (If only each student had a laptop at all times!) We do a writing assignment in the beginning of the year calling writing roulette where each student adds to an ongoing story, and I can see how it would be so much fun to do on the laptops. I also will try to use this tool for communicating ideas with my peers in stead of having a million emails floating around of everyone's responses. Another idea I have is for my students to publish their compositions in Google Docs as an easy way for me to provide feedback and a quick and easy way for them to peer edit.

Thing #23

The Ning Network

While exploring the Ning Network and Classroom 2.0 I found a discussion about the use of collaborative calendars which I found useful in making my decision to use my google calendar on my blog and using it to share with colleagues. I remember reading somewhere that we didn't need to keep up with all of the information that was on the network, and laughing as I found myself digging deeper and deeper throughout the network.
I had joined the 23 Thingsters the other day because I guess someone had sent an invitation for me and I didn't realize it was for one of our assignments. I love that we can all be connected through the Mesquite network,and I wonder how many people will continue to keep up with it. I think that is my problem, I feel like I might have too many social networks happening at one time! It will take some getting used to...I will have to spend some time trying to tailor just one of the networks to meet all of my needs personally and professionally. I love having so many people connected with just a few keystrokes. You can't ask for any better than that! I found this inspirational video that reminded me of a good friend that used to teach with me, and I thought I would share. Enjoy!

Thing #22

Social Networking

I have had both a myspace and a facebook account for a few years for the purpose of connecting with family and friends. My most recent activity has primarily been on facebook since the birth of my daughter 20 months ago so that I could share photographs of her with my family and friends who do not see us very often. I have seen the positive and negative aspects of using these social networking tools, and am still on the fence on the effectiveness of their use. I have a few friends who post information they have enjoyed reading in online magazines and newspapers, and I enjoy the dialog that occurs as a result. It is nice to have an army of "friends" who can answer a question quickly or provide advice or assistance with just about any topic. I enjoy these aspects of online social networking, but worry about the consequences of having so much information "out there". I can see how students could benefit from being connected in this manner for the positive aspects mentioned above, but so many young (and old) haven't realized the repercussions of some of their actions on these sites.

Thing #7b

I found a video from my google reader on the Learning Network blog of the New York Times that I made a connection with from an article my students and I read in one of our weekly news magazines. I remember we had a pretty interesting discussion about what my students thought about having robots as teachers. This video was found on a blog that had accompanying questions to use to guide a classroom discussion. I hope I have or can retrieve a copy of the article that discusses this same topic because both the article and the video discussed the use of robots in Korean classrooms. It will be interesting to see what happens with this concept in the future.

Thing #21

I love my iGoogle page because my email, weather, YouTube, calendar, and google reader are all right there in front of me! I just discovered that I could add my calendar to my blog too.




This will come in handy when I create my class blog to add my calendar for my parents to see of our monthly events. I also like that I can share it with others through email pretty easily.

Thing #19

Voicethreads

Well I have definitely found my answer to adding the audio to my blog that I was hoping I could do. I originally thought I would do podcasts, but I know that I am also a visual learner, and appreciate the added visual of the voicethreads that podcasts don't offer. I loved the voice thread of the students measuring volume! I can't wait to assign a photographer during lessons for students to document their learning and share it on our class blog. How great to use as a tool of assessment for understanding. This would be such a motivator for so many students. The teacher who used the voicethread for his bellringer assignment was also pretty cool. I can see how voicethreads could be used for students who need extra assistance reading text. They can just pull up the voicethread of the assignment. So many students would love to be the recorder for the class! Voicethreads can also be created for "how-tos" for solving math problems or for students to explain their illustrations from their science or math journals.

On a personal note, I can't wait to use voicethreads for adding audio to my daughter's pictures on my personal blog. How fun for her to "hear" the story behind each photograph. :)

Thing #18

YouTube

The video about the creation of YouTube was interesting. I love to hear the stories of how ideas begin and emerge as international success. What's even more amazing is that the creators didn't even make it the success that it is, we the people have!

I found a video on Lattice Multiplication that I already know I will add to my class blog to help out my parents with figuring out this "new" method instead of the "oldschool" method we all learned back in the day. ;)

Kate DiCamillo is one of my favorite authors and I love reading aloud her books to my students and discussing her writing, so I wanted to find a video about her that I could share with my students, and was really quite surprised at how "real" she was! She spent a big chunk of time "talking" about being a writer but not actually writing. I found her interview pretty interesting, but it was pretty dry to share with students. It might be effective for older students, but not for by beginning writers. My favorite part of her interview was the importance for teachers and parents to READ ALOUD to their students! Awesome~

I love that I was able to answer my question of how to put a podcast on my blog with the following video on podcasting in blogger, and it only took two videos to find the one to help me.

I am a Louisiana native, and I love singing the state song, You Are My Sunshine, with my daughter, so I chose this as my nostalgic video. :)

Thing #17

Podcasting

I have to admit, I started this "thing" by listening to a podcast from Nova and immediately felt like I was listening to the SNL satire of NPR. I chose the category of science to explore first because that is an area I hope to continue to improve in my teaching with the use of technology. I moved on to the 60 Second Science podcasts from Scientific American, and LOVED them! In this time of , sadly, fast paced daily life, I can see how these could be popular. I would love to use this in my classroom during transitions or to introduce a topic of study.

The Just One More Book site was an interesting concept of reviewing books in a coffee shop. This idea could be used in a classroom or library with students creating podcasts of their own reviews for their peers. Hmmmm, I am visualizing a mini cafe in my classroom...minus the caffeine of course!

I was just talking with a fellow teacher today about how I have started the Couch Potato to 5k running program this summer and she told me it was on iTunes as a podcast, so I am off to add that to my iPod. :)

I'm thinking I would like to start a podcast for my students to share what they are learning, incorporate book reviews, tips for other students, etc. My wheels are turning...let's see where they go! I need to figure out how to set up the podcasts to appear as links on my blog.

Thing #16

The Library Thing

I can already tell I am overwhelmed by all of these organizational tools...and I love it!! I was inspired by the 50 book challenge to create a blog for my students to create an online class reading journal. I was excited to create a widget for my blog with just my few books that I entered to my library, and I can't wait to do the same for my classroom books. Maybe the flashing book covers might encourage some of my students to try a book he may not have noticed. I know the Library Thing site has had that effect on me already with all of the recommendations I found based on just ONE book title! I can't wait to play with this tool some more to see if I can safely create accounts for my students to implement to find books that meet their interests. I have already added a list of books to the stack I have waiting patiently for me on my nightstand. The author clouds were interesting seeing such large, bold names as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Stephen King. I want to now go back and play around with it a little more to tailor my account for my classroom library and see if I can create links to my classroom blog for my students to utilize while searching for books. My struggle with this class is that I find it all so much fun, but I need some time to process it all and figure out where I should start!

Thing #15

Delicious is De-li-cious!

I literally spent probably two hours playing with my Delicious account. I LOVE the way I can tag different sites for easy retrieval later on. It was so easy to tag each site, find other sites within each tag, even adding my own bookmarks from my browser. Thankfully I didn't have too many bookmarks saved already because my netbook is fairly new because I will now ALWAYS use my Delicious account. I can't wait to get back to work so that I can add all of my bookmarks from my work computer and tag them. I think the best part of this will be the ease that my teammates and I will have with sharing websites with each other! I liked how the tags were shown in a cloud form to show the tags that were most abundant. It reminded me of the Wordle clouds that I can't wait to implement when we get back to school. In fact, I even found a great slide show by Tom Barrett of suggestions for uses of Wordle. I usually create a list of approved websites for my students, so how great this will be to be able to post it to my blog with my Delicious URL just for those tagged sites or for sites for research projects, writing resources, math tutorials, the list goes on...
*I checked the wiki to see if the site I had tagged with misd23things would show up, but it never did. I'm not sure why. I'll try again in a bit.