One Last Thing!!

I really liked most of the activities during this class. My favorite though, would have to be setting up the RSS reader. This helps to save so much time! I like the overall idea of blogging as well. I am thinking about setting up a person blogger when I finish this class. I often feel overwhelmed with technology and my fear of messing it up. I like the way this class has let us get in and play around, but also give us a guiding hand along the way. I was really surprised at how easy most of these programs were. If I am able to figure these things out and get through all of these activities, anyone can! I feel that this class is set up to help anyone succeed. I would not make any suggestions on improvement! I love taking these online (self-paced) classes. This one almost got the best of me, but a wonderful person, sent me encouraging words just as I needed them most! I would love to take another class similar to this if one was offered! As most people in this class probably feel, I think the best part of taking this class is finding ways to incooporate more technology into our daily lessons and hopefully in turn, get more attention from the students.

Once again, I truely appreciate the encouraging words from Marnie! Although I have never met you in person, I know that you are a wonderful person and very caring!

Thing 23: Beyond Facebook: Other Social Networks

Visit 23 Thingsters

This would be a great tool to set up as a campus. Being able to share articles and transform our interactive notebook into a technology form would be great! The biggest complaint that I have heard from our campus about our interactive notebooks is taking time out of our schedule to meet and discuss. This could be done online and everyone could share their opinions during their own time. Too often, the time we had to meet interfered with parent meetings or other things that we had to get done. This could be done at a time that is convenient for the teachers on an individual basis!

Thing 22: Explore Social Networking

Facebook is something that I have open almost all the time! Even now, while typing this blog, Facebook is open in another tab that I can switch back and forth between any time I want!

Today's students are just the same as me! They are on the social networking sites any time they are able to be! This is their open line to communication with friends not only for social reasons, but I have had several of my students tell me that they were able to get help from a friend on their homework through these sites. We not only need to know what technology is out there, but we need to be familiar with the terms that they see on these sites when we emphasize the importance of hiding personal information. They can be told millions of times the danger involved in giving out their personal information, but until they meet someone who means something to them that also knows the terms that they see on the computer, they just brush it off!

I have used both Myspace and Facebook and I can say, in my opinion, Facebook is not only easier to use, but it has many more features than Myspace does. I have seen from experience, the way that Facebook has helped many people find jobs, not just in the education fields, but in corporate America as well. It is always about knowing someone, and the more connections you have, the better your chances are at advancing in today's economy!

Thing 7b: Google Reader Revisited

I subscribed to a blog called Making Teachers Nerdy. She posted a blog called Top 20 Websites No Teacher Should Start the 2010-2011 Year Without. This is definitely a page that I am going to bookmark. No, it doesn't have every website that you will ever need, but it does have a great selection. I think this would be a great resource to be able to use when you are not quite sure what different options you have to do a particular job!

Thing 21: Google's not just for searching anymore

I have always known that Google was HUGE, but never would have imagined it being this huge! Until about a year ago, I thought the only thing Google was, was a search engine and emails. Then throughout this past school year, I learned about GoogleDocs. This was a great tool for us to use to manage our discipline as a team. Then, during one of the first weeks of this class, we discovered the Google Reader. I was once again surprised at how easy these tools are to use. During this "Thing," I was able to play around with Google Alerts and Google Calendar. For my Google Alert, I typed in Dallas Cowboys. You are able to set it to the number of emails you receive a day, as well as how many articles are in that email (or alert). This could be very beneficial to use to find new things being posted about a particular topic in school. For instance, if I were to teach history, and wanted to know everything being posted about John Kennedy, I could set up an alert for that and receive it straight to my email! The second thing I played around with was Google Calendar. This could be very beneficial for lesson planning. Having a calendar that everyone has access to that gives just a brief explination of what is being taught that day, would help not only in writting lesson plans, but also in daily notes and assignments!

Thing 20: GoogleDocs

When I first started using GoogleDocs, I was really surprised at how easy it is to use. As a campus, we were introduced to it by our assistant principal. He had already introduced it to the other two principals on our campus as a way to keep up with office issued detentions. Each team leader was given access to it to enter team issued detentions that were served through the office. We then decided to take it a step further. As a team, we then started using GoogleDocs to handle our team discipline. This was my first time to set a GoogleDoc up myself. I was again surprised at how easy it was to set up and invite others to join. I think another way that we would benefit using this would be as a math department. I like to give my students a copy of our notes. If we all particpated in this, we could all put notes in here so that we all didn't have to do it on a daily basis. We could then adjust the notes as needed to fit our teaching style.

Thing #19 - Voicethread

I think voicethreads will be very beneficial to use for students who are out of the classroom for one reason or another. If they are able to access it from home, they would still be able to hear the lesson and learn the concept for the day that they were out. If they are unable to access it from home, it may be a good idea to pull them out of their accelleration class and have them watch the lesson then. They would still need the full lesson, so the teacher would need to record the lesson and post it to their page. This would definately take time on the teachers part, but this could be something that we split up among the teachers in our department and each do a part. It may actually be beneficial for the students to be able to hear a different teacher present the lesson too! If a student is struggling in comprehending the lesson, they could get on the voicethreads and hear a different teacher teach it!

Thing #18 - You too can YouTube

The first video that I found was really cute and I think my kids would really enjoy watching it. This was a class that made up a dance to the formula for finding the area of a circle. Today's students have to find a way to relate things to their real lives in order to remember it. So many of my kids love to dance, and therefore, I really think this video would hold their interest. Another video that I found (or series) was the rappin' mathematician. He had several videos on youtube. He had one for decimals, fractions, and the number line. I think these would be a lot of fun to bring into the classroom as well.

Thing 17: Podcasts: No iPod Needed!

Basically, from my understanding, an Podcast is similar to a television series. You pick and choose the ones that interest you and you pay no attention to those that don't!
One podcast that I enjoyed watching was the Math Factor Podcast. I enjoyed seeing the excitement involved in mathematics as well as the curiosity about trying to figure things out. I also watched a few segments from dansmathcast. There were so many segments to choose from on this page that it almost seemed overwhelming to choose where to begin. I chose both of these podcast from the 23Things page. I am interested in doing a lot more searching for podcasts that I will be able to possibly use in class. I would like to be able to find something that will show my students ways in which they use mathematics in the real world since this is a question that I am faced with many times throughout the year.
This is my first experience with podcasting, so at this point, I do not have the experience to blog about!

Thing #16 - LibraryThing: Where Books Meet Web 2.0

Library Thing would be a great resource to use as a principal of a campus. This could be a great way to encourage lifelong learning through reading educational books. This could be a list of the "teacher library" books as well as books that both teachers and principals have that they wouldn't mind letting other teachers borrow.
This would also be nice to use on a personal level. I enjoy hearing about different titles or authors from people with similar interests. By searching other peoples "library," I would be able to find people who have some of the same titles as me and then see what additional books they suggest.

Thing 15: Social Bookmarking and Tagging with Delicious

Playing around on Delicious is something that I think I could end up spending hours doing. It would be nice to be able to get our whole math department to sign up for this that way we could share ideas and useful websites with each other. I really like how you can look up one particular tag and will be able to see a list of websites that were tagged with that word. Then you are also able to see who posted them and can even add them to your network. I looked up math and am able to see a huge list of websites that I can then explore and see if they would be beneficial to me or not.

My Delicious page is located here.

Thing 7a: Google Reader Revisited

As I have mentioned on several posts at this point, my favorite subscription on my Google Reader is NPR Topics: Children's Health. It seems like every time I look on my Reader, there is always another recall on either childrens medication or toys or something. This time the title of the article was Johnson & Johnson Expands Recall Of Drugs With Moldy Odor. Every time I see another recall on children's medication, it makes me run to our medicine cabinet and check the medicines in there. Luckily, I have yet to find one that was on the recall list. Better safe than sorry!

Thing 14: Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

The first Web 2.0 Tool that I experimented with was 30boxes. I really liked how easy it was to add new events to the calendar. This would be a great tool to use as a family. We could create a calendar for our immediate family, but also create another calendar for extended family. This would definitely make it easier to keep up with all family birthdays, school or sporting events, anniversaries, and family get togethers.

I also experimented with Wordle. This is something that I had used before this exercise. We used this website as a class to create a different type of vocabulary list for the students to have with them at all times. I would like to use this more to be able to give students a list of vocabulary words for each unit.

Thing 13: Online Image Generator

Cute Pictures of Children




Spelling with Flickr


Creating the mosaic was a lot of fun! Think this could be really interesting to do with personal photos for family gifts. It was as simple as picking the number of photos you want to use, picking the outlining color, and then choosing the pictures that you want to use. Inserting a picture was as easy as browsing for the picture you want, inserting it and clicking on upload. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this was. I also enjoyed using the Spelling with Flickr. I would have added that to this blog as well, but I could not figure out how to get it to show up! Maybe with more time, that is something that I will be able to figure out how to do!

Thing 12: Creating a Slideshow (or Comic Strip)

I decided to do a comic strip showing what I have done this summer. I was really surprised at how easy this was to complete.

My Comic Strip




1. Potty training my son by wootam
2. Swimming by millzero
3. Shopping by jovike
4. Playing with my kids by Peter E. Lee
5. Family time by freeparking
6. Online Classes by Signature SugarArt

I thought it would be fun to find pictures to show what all I have been doing this summer! I have been incredibly busy with my boys! They are growing up so fast that this summer has made me realize the importance of doing everything I can with them now!

Thing 11: Photosharing with Flickr

jimmiehomeschoolmom

I actually enjoyed this assignment a lot. I always like to find new sites to be able to find new images to use in my lessons. One thing I found interesting was the way each image is labeled as either copyrighted or as CC. I had a hard time on a few images, trying to find out if I was able to use them or not. My idea behind finding images today was a lesson on fractions. In a class that I am taking, we took a close look at the TEKS and realized the importance of fractions and how they are started at a young age and continued through graduation. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I would really like to set up a Wiki for my students to be able to have access to full copies of notes as well as a form of communication with parents. I would like to use Flickr as a resource for images to use in doing this.

Thing 10: Creative Commons

I can honestly say that at this point, I have never noticed the CC logo on any website that I have looked at. It is probably mainly because I didn't know where to look. This is something that I am going to start looking for as I search the internet for information. I think that it is very important to discuss copyright and CC with our students. They need to know the difference but they also need to know importance of completely understanding what both of them mean. They need to understand that just because they see CC, that does not mean that the information is free reign to take and use as they want, but that it is there to use as a base for them to add to and improve the information. I have used images as well as video in my classroom. To be honest, I don't know that I have ever paid attention to the copyright connected to them. This will definitely be something that I will start paying attention to immediately though! I have shared a few of my lessons and flip-charts through the online library of flip-charts called Promethean Planet. While this CC sounds great, there are still some dangers involved. I am worried that telling my students about this will make them believe that they are allowed to copy anything they find on the internet or in books without paying attention to the Copyright or the CC symbols. Then I am worried that they will not make enough changes to get out of the gray area and could still possibly get in trouble for using it.

Thing 9: Play in the Wiki Sandbox

Creating a Wiki in the sandbox was an incredibly hard assignment for me. Like I have mentioned several times, I am always worried that I will mess something up with the technology. One good thing that really helped me was being able to look at the other Wikis connected to the Sandbox page and seeing what I needed to figure out how to do next. I still feel very unsure about creating a Wiki page, but I think that the only thing that will be able to help me with these feelings is to be able to play around more and probably make some mistakes. I am working on letting go of my fears of messign things up and just trying to take chances with my mistakes.
Feel free to visit my Wiki and share your input or suggestions as to ways I can improve it or fix mistakes that you may notice.

Thing 8: What in the World is a Wiki?

Being that this was my first experience with looking at Wikis, I was a bit surprised at the lack of information on the initial page. I guess after working with blogs, I almost expected to be able to see the information when I first got to the page rather than having to click on several tabs before being able to find things. There were a few wiki pages that did have some interesting information on the first page. I liked the organization of the wikis though.
I liked finding the wiki on Primary Math. Being that I teach at the middle school level, but have younger kids at home, I am always looking for fun ideas to do with my children that will enforce the importance of education. This gave me a few ideas of things to be able to do at home with my boys. The Kindergarten Counting Book was another wiki that I think will be fun to work with my sons on at home. Finding activities to use with them over the summer is always a hunt for me. Being that I am a math teacher, finding activities that have to do with numbers is something that I enjoy doing as well. Continuing with this same theme, trying to find activities to do with my children, Salute to Seuss was another fun page.
From the initial look at wikis, I think one way that I would really like to start using them is to have a place online to post notes and other things that are going on in my classroom. I would like to set one up with the other 8th grade math teachers as a place to post a set of our notes, a brief description of assignments, a calendar of upcoming tests or projects, as well as other events that are happening throughout the school. This would be a great resource for parents in that they would be able to know if their child has homework as well as when they need to be studying for tests.

Thing 7: Creating Community Through Commenting

I think that commenting on peoples blogs helps to keep the "discussion" going. People often blog to share their knowledge or opinions about certain topics. By asking questions or sharing your opinions with the writer, you are helping show that blogger what their readers are interested in knowing more about.
I really liked reading the blog titled : 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blogs. I often wonder what I can do to start more of the discussion type on my blogs. I often find myself just spilling my thoughts and saying all that I know to say about the topic. I like the advice of not only asking questions throughout my blogs, but also to leave some insight for my readers to add as well. I don't mean to over-talk my topic, but now looking back on previous blogs, I realize that maybe this is something that I am guilty of.
Through this "Thing," I realized how hard it is to comment on some blogs but so much easier to comment on others. After realizing that, I went back to look at the blogs that were easy to comment on and tried to find out why I thought those were easier. I then looked at the blogs that were not so easy to comment on and tried to find out why those were harder. This helped me in my blogging to make sure that I make a concious effort to pay attention to what I am writing about.

Thing 6: Feed your Reader: Find and Subscribe to Feeds

One pleasant surprise I found was the amount of time I found searching the internet. It was nice to find many of the things that I would have looked up, already in my reader. I like the idea of "somone else" doing the searching for me.

One article that I particularly liked was from the Blue Skunk Blog. I have always enjoyed listening to more experienced teachers opinions or viewpoints on the way things are done in education in the current day. I am one of the newer teachers in that I have always known everything to be done through computers and the "need for a password."

The next thing that I was happy to see came from NPR Topics: Children's Heath. It was an article called Uh-Oh: 15 Million Pounds of SpaghettiOs Recalled. My children LOVE Spaghetti-Os and we have a pantry full of them. I am so happy to have found this site simply because of being able to keep up with all of the re-calls. Too often we put trust in things that we buy that are brand name because surely there can't be anything wrong with them. Unfortunately this is not always true.

Thing 5: Getting Started with RSS

I found a website that is titled NPR Topics: Children's Health. I particularly like this site because with two small children it is helpful to have a website that can keep you updated on the latest recalls or health finds. Having subscribed to this through my RSS reader, it will be nice to be able to skim the information that is brought to me and find what is significant to my life rather than having to go out and search for it. This is a typr of technology that I never heard about before today. It is very interesting the way technology advances and we are able to sort out the information that we want to know about without having to search the whole internet.

Thing 4: Bloging Begins with Reading

Blog writing is much more informal that other types of reading. I like reading the blogs from the list provided. I liked being able to see peoples opinions on things and how they truly felt about their topic of choice. I specifically liked reading the blog written by the 2nd grade students about the missing duck. This showed that if students as young as second grade are able to blog, any of our students should be able to do it. Using technology as a way of allowing student to explore writing is an opportunity for the struggling writers to have "help." They have spell-check available to help them catch their mistakes. A great example of this is a blog written by a 5th grade At-Risk student. The technology gives them a sense of ownership and allows them to express their opinions in ways that they are do not feel comfortable doing with paper and pen.

Another blog that I really enjoyed reading was the blog on Brevity. This showed students viewpoint on the difference between quality words and the quantity of words. Too often, we set a specific number of words for our students to have in their writings. However, this shows the importance of the quality of the words rather than the quantity of the words.

Thing 2: Thoughts about Web 2.0

It is interesting to me to see all the different ways in which our students use technology. Having the opportunity to not only search for information, but to be able to post information out for the world to see is just an amazing concept to me. I really like the idea of my students being able to communicate with students all around the world to further their education and to share their knowledge with many. I would like to be able to incorporate a blog for communication with parents and students when they are not in the classroom. This could be an opportunity to share class information as well as being able to help students with their homework or assessments when they are not in the school building. I am also going to look more into podcasts and uderstanding what that consist of.

Thing 1: Reflections on Lifelong Learning

1. Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your Learning 2.0 experience?
I think that the habit that will be the most challenging for me is to use technology to my advantage. I have never felt confident using technology because of the fear of "messing it up." The technology facilitator on every campus that I have ever worked on has known me well. I have never been afraid to ask for help when I am unsure of something, but sometimes the help request come quite frequently.
2. Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for you as a lifelong learner?
The habit that will be the easiest for me to use is to begin with the end in mind. I have always been one to set goals. I set goals for EVERYTHING!! I usually not only set a goal by having the end in mind, but I also set many goals along the way of the different steps along the way.
3. Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?
The most important habit to have through this course is for me to accept responsibility for my own learning. With this being a self-paced and online course, I am going to have to find time out of my own busy schedule to complete the assignments and learn all of the processes along the way. As I mentioned before, I am always afraid of messing up the technology so it usually takes me a little longer to get the assignments done.