Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Thing 23 [Such fun these Things have been!]




Looking back when I first started 23 things I was a little frightened that I would not be able to accomplish a majority of them. I was excited that I was going to at least be able to try to learn them even if I didn’t achieve all 23 of them. I remember the first 2 things I was excited that I could do them. I can honestly say that I never got the full idea of blogging until these lessons. I used eboards a few years ago when it was free and really liked the layout of their site. Then I really thought I was good when I created a website on Teacher web. I used teacherweb for about 3 years until this year when our school gave us a district website to use. The site they gave us is much harder to manage than teacherweb and I find it hard to make the time to update it. I like the idea of blogs and wikis and plan to use them next year with my students. I was excited when they offered free to educators a free protected wiki. The part I didn’t like about the wikis was that anyone could edit them. As time went on I found it helpful to review and check out blogs from other learners of 23 Things. I spent the last 2 weeks reading over other people blogs now that I had completed the 23 Things. I learned a lot from them. I went back and added something’s to my posts. Example for Thing 19 I just listed my username and after looking at others I went back and listed the actual link to my deli.icio.us like they had done. I really enjoyed B.C. Ben Cetera. I like his idea of posting his viewers blogs that commented on his blog. Thought that next time you do this you might want to have each person post on the directions post of the thing #blog page as they completed each thing. It might be helpful to look at other blogs for help if needed.

Using RSS was totally new to me. I had never used them before.
I like the way you set up each thing and thought it went well from one thing lesson to the next. I enjoyed the photos and images and found it to be the easiest because I use the computer to do a lot with photos.
I think I have the bare basics down on the Wikis but would like to learn more and do more with them. Maybe have a hands on person teaching all the tricks and ins and outs on how to master the art of wikis. Look at B.C. Ben Cetera wikis.It is so creative. I lack the creativity and have a hard time thinking out of the box. I tend to be too traditional and not enough digital.
I didn’t have a clue to the social bookmarking. Just before I signed up for 23 things I found a site called Keep and share. I really liked this site because I could bookmark my sites and use them from home and work. I like the trialfire and delicious but I can’t use them as easily at work. I was able to get the delicious downloaded by our tech person on two computers that I often use at school.
I think that is the most dishearten thing about the use of Web 2.0. They want us to teach it and use it but they restrict it. I do understand the reasoning behind it, I just wish there was a way to filter out all the bad and use the good. I guess that is were the blogs and wikis come into play but that is only safe way to present. We need a safe way to search and surf.
Podcast really interests me. I was disappointed that we were not going to create a podcast. I really want to learn more about them so I have signed up for your in-service this summer to learn to create one.
This has been a wonderful journey and I am so glad I signed up for this online course. I would recommend that every teacher take this because the tools learned here can be used in all subject areas.
I think the timing of this in-service was great because I can work on using these things for next year during this summer while it is all fresh in my mind.
I hope you keep the site up so we can refer back to it. You might also want to inform others that you are offering a Podcast in-service to learn to create one this summer.
I am going to miss learning something new each week. I really looked forward the each lesson and it became a part of my daily routine to come home and work on a lesson each night. I am glad I took time to read other peoples blogs after I finished my 23 Things. I learned different perspectives from reading them.
Thanks for this wonderful journey of 23 Things and let me know if you have 23 more Things to offer. I did look at the 43 Things but would be more motivated to do it this way.Don’t forget to give us information on SBCEUs.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Thing 22

I picked the following two videos.
I picked the first one for fun. I thought it was funny but true about things they don’t teach you in college. I love the teacher workout out one. Some days that is so true at least for me. The study skills video I can use next year at the beginning of the school year for my learning lab. I may use it the week before final exams as well. I was able to download the videos once I put into my blog from school. I forgot we are not allowed to check any emails except the one the school gives us at work. I sent the download to my gmail account and didn’t want to give out my school account because I wasn’t sure of the spam it might create giving it to Zamzar. I am happy that I can download them from the blogs so that is a good start for me. I forgot to post a comment on the videos so I will go back and do that. I think I like that the least. While reading some of the posts that people put I found that some can be quite nasty and mean. It would be nice if there was a way to clean up the pages a little. Maybe the home page would just be simple and have a search box with out all the pictures of most viewed and all that. It would be safer to go to the sites. Probably more costly for them but safer to use at school.

The first video was embedded into my post.
My favorite funny Youtube:



This Study Skills video was downloaded into my post.

Thing 21

I only like the educational YouTubes. I am not much for TV shows and some of the stuff is just plan silly. I did enjoy a few my favorite one was the Top 10 things you didn’t learn in collage. I dislike when you do a search and inappropriate things come up with your search. And they stay on the side of the page so you would have to put the video in some other program/ blog to show in class. We are also blessed with the use of united streaming from RESA. I use that fairly often. They are a little longer than Youtube but information is presented visually.
There were a few that I found that I could use in my learning lab on study habits.
YouTube is banned from student usage in our building. Teacher can use them as of right now however this may change if students get caught trying to download them. ( They haven’t found a way to block the students only so right now they lifted the block but students have found that out yet. When the do it will be back to blocked again for all of us is my guess.)

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Thing 20

Yes I think I do have a better understanding of RSS. Since I really didn’t know much about them and would not have known what someone was talking about until thing 4. I think this summer will show me more benefits to all these things. I am pushing right along to get this done by June 20th. The Month of May is so busy for me getting all the Seniors on their way and all the senior events not to mention all the IEP meetings. I do plan to go over these things and spend so time planning to use them next year. I do remember to check them when I have time. As well as checking the comments on my blog. It is not a habit nor an obsession yet but I am working on it.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Thing 19

My Del.icio.us link is: http://del.icio.us/stackandrews
I use to highlight copy and paste into word the Urls of the sites I would find that I enjoyed or used in my classroom. I also subscribed to educational emails that would send links to educational sites. I would pick the ones I enjoyed the most copy and paste into a word document to create a handout of useful sites. I would pass them out to my co-workers. I will upload one example in google docs.
This would be a new way to tag favorite sites for my co-workers to see. Also could use it with students for a reference list to a webquest or research assignment.
I am having difficulty getting access to del.icio.us downloaded onto my computer at work. For me this might only be a service on could create at home.
I really like my keepandshare bookmarking site. I use it more for my personal resource but you can make it public. There are no tags and it is really easy to use. I did find some new sites on del.icio.us that were interesting so I will continue to use this site however I did bookmark my sites from del.icio.us onto my keep and share site.
This would be great to book mark a number of sites you might want to show your students during a class period. Easy way to reference them quickly.
I thing one can get lost or overwhelmed using too many sites like keep and share, trailfire and del.icio.us. I plan on doing more this summer to see what I like best.

Thing 18

My thoughts about tagging are mixed. I think I am one of those amateurs that may over tag or not tag enough. I am one of those file savers that have difficulty remembering where I save what. I have to say I just started this year with using folders to organize my pictures and document files and for the most part it works at least when my memory works.
Some advantages are that it is a way to organize and group subjects together. If you pay attention to the way others tag it can give you some insight on how to expand your searches. Some topics may come up when searching that you might not have linked to your subject.
Some disadvantages are that there are so many different ways to tag and we don’t all think alike so we will not all tag the same. If sites have limited tags one might not find them in their search because they didn’t type in the right tags. This will take some practice and creativity. You have to try to think outside the box. How do others thing?
This can be a great tool to simplify how we create references to resources.
When making a tag you have to think of several things: The tag can be unique but memorable. It should identify your purpose without being vague. You can tag it so it goes to friends and Coworkers. (For:username) I have to practice this one more.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Thing 17

I found several useful presentations and love this site. I can’t wait to try to make and upload a presentation to add to my school blog that I plan to create this summer. I uploaded my favorite one that could be used at the beginning of the year to motivate students and creating a more positive outlook.

You could use these as introductions to lessons or to reinforce lessons.
I found one on Study Skills but some of the slides were hard to read. It gave me an idea to create one of my own for my Learning Lab Class.
Also could use it to create important information/ notes for chapter reviews.

I don’t know if this is the place or time to share ideas from other sites but at the beginning of this year I found this site which also has PowerPoints free that you can use in the classroom. The site is called Pete’s Power Points. http://www.pppst.com/index.html

Friday, May 2, 2008

Thing 16



I have to be honest I reviewed all of them and signed up for all of them except the Library one. I don’t see me using that one right now. I spent the most time on the zoho show site. I could use thing in my blog for classroom notes and assignments. I think I could use it on our school website as well.

There were a few down sides to this site. I couldn’t find a spell check and I had trouble moving things around on the slides. I couldn’t copy and past form other sites onto the slides. Like when I was doing the links I couldn’t paste them from the urls like I normally do to make sure the links are correct. Downloading pictures if really easy, however moving them and resizing them is difficult at times.

I also like Trailfire which I found this site earlier on a podcast. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be and I couldn’t use it at school because we can not download any programs onto our computers. We are blocked and therefore I could not use it on school computers. There is a site that I found at the beginning of the year that I use and you can share calendars, documents, to do lists, bookmarks. It is easy to just copy and past urls into the bookmarks and type the titles in. The site is keep and share. http://www.keepandshare.com/. I posted my zoho show for you to see. I know is needs some work but I was just playing around with the site.

Thing 15

This would be great to store memos and notes that you use each year. Example: Conference/grade letters we use to inform parents about parent/teacher conference that give students grade and requests if the parent plans on attending conference or do we need to call them. Syllabus could be created and stored here. We are lucky at our school we have a shared drive that we can use to communicate and store shared documents. However you have to be logged on in the district server to pull up any of these documents. So we end up emailing stuff if you want to work on it at home or store on a flash drive to take home. This is a way you could use to be able to retrieve it from anywhere.
You could use this with teachers who teach the same subject with pacing charts.

Students usage would be more challenging because of the email issue. And control over document content. But this would be a good tool students could use to work on any group projects they might have to do. We require 2 page papers each semester in every class and this could help students pull up and print their papers without having to save them on disks or flash drives. Also would help with not being able to open the disk document because it was created on a higher version of word than our school computers. So maybe if they had their own account they could use it that way. ( there is still the issue with emails and opening up their accounts at school. Not sure if that would be an issue for this or not?)

Not sure if you are aware of this but there is a site that students can use to destroy files so students can have extra time to do their assignments. It is called File Destructor 2.0. Here is the link: http://www.xnet.se/fd/ . If students were told to use google.docs then they would not be able to have any excuses as to why they can’t pull up their completed documents.