Notes from the Chalkboard

One Last Thing

2010-07-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-22T07:25:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-21T16:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-21T16:45:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-20T18:18:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-16T20:03:00.002-07:00

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

2010-07-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

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.

Thing #14

2009-07-15T06:41:00.000-07:00

Wikis

I haven't yet decided how I feel about wikis, but do think they could have a big impact on the learning of our students as far as collaboration with others goes. I can see potential for their use for students to post their compositions in writing for peer revision and editing. I need to figure out how to use them a little better to see if their work would be able to be traced back to original form if editing and revisions are made.

I love how the students in Vicki Davis' blog took off with the "study hall" wiki idea. I am hoping that through my knowledge of these new Web 2.0 tools that I will see my students running with ideas as well.

My least favorite wiki was this one beacause I didn't find it visually appealing enough for me to want to explore it any further. I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I am guilty as charged. I think many people are the same way.

The kindergarten wiki brought hope to me, because I thought at first, "Oh my goodness, this is going to be a nightmare to try to implement in my class." If they can create one, so can 9 & 10 year olds!

I can see how a wiki could break the mold of traditional projects, so I truly hope to learn more about how to use them so that I can try them this year with my students. Oh, I also like the idea of having a class wiki because I feel like the students would have more ownership of it versus my class blog page. It's something for me to think about as I begin making my plans for the new school year.

Thing #13

2009-07-13T18:27:00.001-07:00

Thing #7a

2009-07-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Google Reader

I have been following the blog of John Schinker from Taste of Tech because of my love of travel, teaching, and working with people in different cultures. This particular post resonated with me. The following is a quote from his blog,
"Despite all of this, there are some surprises. Many of the people working in the townships have very nice cars, for example. Cars are a status symbol more important than housing. Those who have some wealth show it through the cars they park outside their meager dwellings. Cell phones are also very common. Electricity may be spotty (though it is generally available). Practically no one has a computer at home. But they all have cell phones. And most of the people are remarkably happy. In general, they’re more optimistic, cheerful, and hopeful than most North Americans I’ve been around."
That last sentence encourages me to work even harder to inspire others and to be a ray of optimism, cheer and hope.

I've been completing the class using a netbook with a 5x7 screen because my laptop fizzled out a few weeks ago. It's funny that while reading through the articles in my Google Reader, I learned something to help me out with my problem of struggling with reading the text on this tiny screen. This article taught me to use Ctrl + to increase the text size on websites. This is probably something I should have already known, but I've just never had the need for it in this age of gargantuan monitors.

Thing #12 note to self...wiki

2009-07-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

created at Wordle

I had seen wordles before and was excited to be able to create my own! The coolest thing about this was that I was able to submit the URL for my blog for Wordle .net to pull words from to create my wordle. How great to be able to do that with websites that you may be using for webquests, to introduce new topics and content. I can also see this being used for new vocabulary and also for a simple assessment. Students could also use wordles to brainstorm during prewriting.

Thing #11

2009-07-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

Trading cards can be made at Big Huge Labs. These would be fun to create in the beginning of the year for students to introduce themselves to their classmates and collect each others' cards. Also, students could create trading cards for their favorite book characters, historical figures, even places.

Our school's theme next year revolves around "Stars" so this image could be used on our class blog or on individual student blogs. It was created at Image Chef.

I created the "Inspire" word with Spell with Flickr. I had used this one before on my Myspace page. I think students would have fun with this.

Thing #10

2009-07-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

Animoto and Flickr

I created this slide show as an example of how you could use Flickr and Animoto to create an "ABCs of..." video slideshow. I have used a paper and pencil version of using the alphabet for my students to tell me everything they have learned about a topic. How fun to be able to show me using photos from Flickr.

Welcome to Texas Sign, I 10 by Martin Labar
Sunset in Texas by swisscan
Battle of the Alamo Monument by adiffererntryan
Dallas, Texas by ragingwire
Big Tex, Texas State Fair by StevenM_61
Bluebonnet Field by StevenM_61
Armadillo by brothergrimm
texas our texas by jmtimages

Thing #9

2009-07-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

Flickr

I am truly inspired! I've had an aha moment after completing the exercises is Thing #9. This whole time I've been thinking about setting up my class blog as basically a communication tool for my students' parents. After reading misterteacher's blog about using Flickr in the classroom, I've begun brainstorming ways to kick it up a notch. Following are just a few of the things I thought of while exploring Flickr...class blog...problem of the day with Flickr, journal entries, displaying student work, not just communicating "events" with parents, good for portfolios, principal access to student work, student of the week, photo story starters, photos describing books we read, character analysis, emotions, setting, theme...wow, the possibilites are overwhelming.

It's funny because just the other day I was thinking about how my blog posts on this blog are pretty boring visually compared to my personal blog and I kept thinking how I needed to go back and add some pics to this one. Now I have just the tool in which to do that.

Some of my searches included "Louisiana", "Louisiana_architecture" (because of my love for my home state), and many Texas themed searches as well because of teaching Texas history to my fourth graders. I couldn't help but think of a Texas ABC book and the endless possibilites with using photos from Flickr. Even a photographic field trip would be fun...or comparing point of view of photos...or even having students take on the point of view of the subject of a photo to write a short story...still brainstorming...

and off to add some photos to my previous posts...

Photo credit:
Inspire by Mark Brannan

Thing #8

2009-07-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Creative Commons

I had never even heard of Creative Commons until this class. I am curious to know how many other people had not heard of it either. I'd hate to think I was the only one living under a rock. I never have seen the CC logo on any websites, probably because I didn't know to look for it. Now I am sure I will see it all over the world wide web.

While browsing through the content directory of Creative Commons I stumbled across a few sites that gave me ideas for use in my classroom. The first was sketchory.com. I will need to explore it a little more for content, but I thought maybe I could try using some of the sketches as story starters for my fourth grade writers or even allow those artists that I always have each year to upload their own sketches to the site as a reward for completing other assignments. My students could even create their own sketches to add to our database of story starters.

I can see how students could search for work that is already part of Creative Commons and figure out ways to change the work to fit what they have learned. It might be a tool for guiding students to create games based on content that they have learned.

How great to be able to share and build upon work with others. What a great way for students to learn about collaboration and the way work is done in the "real world".

Thing #7

2009-07-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Commenting

I am a "lurker"! I admit that I enjoy reading blogs and comments of others, but when it comes to me sharing a comment...no way! I read this blog and some of the comments helped me to realize just how important commenting is. Already during this class, so many blogs have been beneficial to me, and in the "real world" what do I normally do when someone helps me? Say "thank you" and explain why and how they helped me. I suppose I can start there with my comments and then just maybe begin to express my own opinions and thoughts on certain topics within the blogs I read.

I'm off to some commenting...

I'm back from reading and commenting and realized how addictive it was to comment on others' blog postings. I began to find myself reading the blogs of other people who had left comments and wanting to comment on their blogs as well. Blogging truly is a network of "conversations" (and learning).

Thing #6

2009-07-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Google Reader

After cleaning out the 500-600 blogs, articles, and podcasts from my feeder (yes, overwhelming!), I have really enjoyed having my Google reader set up and can't wait to continue using it! I found a few interesting things that I may not have heard about if I had not begun using my Google reader.

The first two articles were"presidential" related items. The first was an article about George W. Bush and a "prized possession" from his term in office that may be included as an artifact in the Presidential Library at SMU. It was pretty interesting how the article described how he was so proud of this particular item. What a huge part of history.
The next "presidential" article caught my attention as a new mother struggling to balance work and family life. I think it did a great job describing the same battles being fought among the workers in The White House.

The next two items that caught my attention gave me ideas for lessons in my classroom. I teach 4th grade writing and want to learn more about Kidswrite which is what this article described. This blog led me to lessons on using Google search effectivley.

Then just for fun (and because I am a reality t.v. junkie) I found an article about the new show "NYC Prep". I've not watched this program and probably won't thanks to this article.

I've been checking my Google reader everyday and it does seem to get easier to steer away from trying to read everything!

I did set up a news search within my reader for "LSU", my alma mater, but haven't found anything that struck a chord with me...yet!

Thing #5

2009-06-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Using My Google Reader

I am just now coming back to this post (after many days) because I had spent so much time using my reader after to subscribing to our required blogs that I truly did feel overwhelmed as was warned to us by our facilitators. I have a hard time reading the newspaper as I would like to every day to find items to share with my students, so maybe this will help me out just a bit as well as keeping me connected with other educators and the most current information in the education world.

One good thing was that I was able to listen to some of the NPR broadcasts at the same time as reading through the blogs.

This blog is one of the ones that grabbed my attention because of my own past experiences with working with other teachers in a foreign country. I hope to continue to follow his work and learn more about the things he is doing to help teachers acquire technology to use while working with their students. It is very similar to this process of going through the "23 things" class and using what we learn to benefit our students.

Now that I am back in the swing if things with my reader (and after reading what was expected in thing #6), I am off to tweak my reader and "read" some more...

Thing #4 The Reading/Writing Connection

2009-06-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

I have a ton of work to do to update my blogs to even remotely come close to being as good as some of the ones I just read. I see many hours of exploring, adding, expanding and playing in my future.

I chose blogs that peaked my interest based on the titles and subject matter that was listed for each one. I started with dy/dan (Mr. Meyer): Why I Don’t Assign Homework
I was impressed with this blog because of the content as well as the format of his blog. How wonderful that there were so many comments on a topic one may not expect to be so controversial!

Next I tried to read Mrs. Edmison's Class: Questions for One of Our Favorite Authors: Grace Lin
but unfortunately it would not open. I wanted to see this blog because I wanted to see how the 3rd grade class used their blog to connect with an author (I'm making a connection for future classroom use) I'll have to see if I can google this one to see if I can find it to read it later.

Mark’s Edtech Blog: Is this SSR 2.0? was absolutely my favorite because of the simple and practical use of blogging in the classroom. This blog helped to awaken my thinking in how I will redesign my SSR time in my classroom next year. I can't wait to blog about my own experiences with this.

CoolCatTeacher (Vicki Davis): Spies Like Us was the most thought provoking and eye opening blog that I read. Wow to think of how technology is used in such harmful ways. It goes to show how we as educators really should stay abreast of all of the latest tools and the ways in which they are used. Better yet, we should make it a priority to engage students in constructive ways to use these tools.

And how great was Patrick?? Patrick's Update: 5th Grade
I can already see the benefits of this type of blog. I would love to hear this child's update in ten years or so. I am thinking of a student from my past class that could have benefitted tremendously by creating a blog similar to this. What an outlet for kids!

Duck with a Blog: Second graders Write About Our Missing Duck I loved this one! I am already thinking of how I can create a section within my classroom blog for my students to blog about books we have read, science experiments, math concepts, new topics in social studies. The possibilities are endless....

I hope I will make it all happen!

Thing #2

2009-06-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

Thing #2

So here I am trying out Writeboard for the first time and am already so excited about the possibilities of using it as a Web 2.0 tool in my class to motivate some of my more reluctant writers in my fourth grade classes. How great for my students to be able to type in a composition and be able to have their peers go in to their work and revise and edit with them, and then be able to see their progress throughout the whole writing process. Very exciting! I am looking forward to this tool being one of my “3” tools that I begin to implement this year in my classroom. (I’m beginning to think I will be using more than just 3!)

Web 2.0…wow, I can’t wait to learn more about the “23 things” that can be used now that I am over my initial fear of “Can I handle this?” and “Will I be able to implement these tools efficiently?” Imagine the excitement of our students in our classrooms who already so fearlessly live in this time of technology. We might as well dive in…our students are waving us in from the deep end.

Thing #1

2009-06-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

Thing #1

o Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your Learning 2.0 experience? o Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for you as a lifelong learner? o Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?

Thing #1
Yay! I am a competent, effective learner! Here I am again using Writeboard to gather my thoughts for my first blog on my new blog “Notes from the Chalkboard”

I began and began again while trying to put my thoughts down about the above questions. I finally decided that ONE habit basically answers each of the three questions.

Habit #6 (Use technology to your advantage) of the 7 1/2 Habits of Successful Lifelong Learners is the one habit that, for me, answers all three of the questions posed to us in Thing #1.

It is THE most important habit to employ during this course because that is exactly what this course is all about. I must overcome any fears of attempting new Web 2.0 tools in order to learn how to use them successfully and efficiently in my classroom. I use technology to my advantage on a daily basis and will continue to do so (as I have already) while making my way through this “23 things” journey. Of course along the way it will be easiest to employ Habit 7 1/2 (Play), and in the end I can’t wait to teach all of my new “skills” to my students (Habit 7).