Thing 20

Subscribe Free  Add to my Page

Thing 23

The 2008-2009 school year brought many changes. I moved from a high school setting in one district to a middle school setting in another district. My plan of attack was simple - get acclimated. This class was something I signed up for last school year when I had no idea these changes would come about.

Personally, there are a million things I can think to use these tools to assist me. I love the picture editing but as a teacher I am always hesitant to post anything on the internet. I am always afraid that personal things will end up in the wrong hands. The picture albums would be wonderful, but again, I hate the idea of having to review each picture with a fine tooth comb searching for anything that might be offensive to someone. Possibly, I am overly concerned but it is something I worry about.

Professionally, I have found some things that I could quickly add to my curriculum. The videos from youtube, though our building does not allow youtube, is a nice sidestep. I also had no idea how simple it would be to create a podcast! Cool! I would like to get involved with a blog group that focuses on language arts curriculum at the middle school level. This is an area I would like some support in.

Pedagogically, I appreciate having this new information and a way to practice these skills. I would like to improve my ability to work with the wiki. For some reason, I really struggled with this "Thing". Other resources will be useful once I get into regular use of these tools.

I would like to introduce my colleagues to some of these tools but I am still wondering how to achieve this goal. Some of the "Things" immediately made me think of specific colleagues and how useful they would find these "Things" in their classrooms. I wonder if they are not already using them. I really like that Mr. Dornberg has offered us the "more things" to continue our learning process. In my opinion, this "to be continued" idea will help us to maintain a PLN.

Thing 22

I like the opportunity to participate in online learning but I lack the motivation to complete assignments in a methodical manner. Unfortunately, I need an imposed deadline to work in a timely manner. I would use the online learning as a means to maintain my requirements for my teaching certificate.
That was a major motivating factor in signing up for this course. I would hate to see this option taken away.

Thing 21

I have chosen a youtube video addressing the abuse of women in Afghanistan to further support my ELA curriculum. Using video pieces is wonderful. This helps maintain student interest in a topic and presents information in a variety of ways.

Thing 19

I listened to Dan's Mathcast, NPR, and National Geographic podcasts. What I don't like about podcasts is that I have trouble staying focused when there is only talking and no video to follow. I know for certain that my students struggle to stay on task when just listening to information. I prefer the "vodcast" as it is easier to follow. Some of the educational podcasts consist of curriculum information introduced in a song to help students memorize facts. This is useful but you have to be comfortable singing in your classroom in order to get the students to sing along. You have to model what you expect of the students and that means my horrible voice singing in front of the entire class.

Thing 17

I have really struggled with wiki. At this point in the game, I am considering throwing my keyboard at my monitor! I do think that wiki would be useful if you were able to master this tool. I would assume the wiki would differ from the blog when the audience is not so interested in the author's opinion and thoughts but instead in finding resources for a topic. Bergman's Science wiki was wonderful! These students truly appear to LOVE science and how excellent is that?! It is a perfect example of how to use wiki in your classroom and how to effectively involve the students. The difficulties that I foresee include mastering the use of the wiki. I have struggled so I would guess that my students would also have difficulties. Possibly I am being presumptuous

Thing 13

This is a picture I edited using the picknick tool. I didn't think the free frames on dumpr were very cool compared to this so I made an executive decision and used this photo. I hope Mr. Dornberg won't mind! These tools are a lot of fun! Again, I can see that my students would also have fun playing with these edits to pictures. If I were to set up a classroom theme related to a curriculum area and then asked students to upload and edit pictures on topic I could see this being useful in the classroom. I'm still thinking this one through. I think kids would buy into it and so I would like to think of some practical uses in my classroom. This could be turned into a fun project.

Thing 12

Flickr Photosharing! Well, it doesn't take much imagination to know how useful this could be on a personal level. I think this would be a great tool in the classroom because it is so personal, students would buy into learning how to use this site efficiently and effectively. I think my studewnts would love the idea of using photos of their own and sharing them through a blog as the one teacher had his class do. Kids like to use these kinds of personal things to make learning interesting and meaningful to them. I think this is the greatestadvantage to flickr, how meaningful it would be to students. The disadvantages would include monitoring student use to be sure this tool is used appropriately and gaining the access to the computers for enough time for students to really get comfortable with this tool.

Thing 11

Slideshare is certainly a useful tool. The main disadvantage I can anticipate is time to really research the site and see what is already created and available to use in my classroom. Obviously, it is an awesome tool to publish powerpoint presentations for both students and teachers. I am not the biggest fan of power point and I think I would use this for notes to provide students on specific topics. You can see I downloaded a slideshow presentation describing muslims. We are working on a novel titled The Breadwinner and I think this slideshow is short and to the point to provide students with some background about who muslims really are.

Slide Share to Support The Breadwinner

Who Are The Muslims?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design fonts)

Thing 10

I am loving the google docs! I like the templates that are already there for easy use. The directions walk you through how to use the docs so that even I was able to create things and navigate my way fairly confident. There is so much to the docs. I am filled with a million ideas of how to use this tool professionally and personally. I'm not sure my students would pick up on the uses so much as colleagues would see the uses to edit student assignments and provide timely feedback to assignments. I love the ability to upload things currently on my computer to use later but also to ask colleagues to review things and possibly edit for better use. Sharing writing prompts that I use with special education students with other special education teachers might help me to tweek these prompts to get better production from my students. Writing is such a huge struggle for my students, it would be great to get input from other educators. It could even be used for us to create a uniform method for teaching the writing process within the southwest region so that as teachers we could provide uniform instruction and have a basis to discuss struggles and successes. Incredible tool! Privacy seems to be the major disadvantage with the google docs. I don't think the simplicity would be a concern for myself or my students since we would be using these tools as beginners. Possibly, if I were to become extremely skilled with these tools I may desire more sophisticated software but I don't see that being a concern in the classroom.

Thing 8

Social bookmarking would be useful in the middle school classroom. At this age level I see it more as a way for the teacher to search out quality websites and then students could add these bookmarked sites to there library. This would help students learn to identify quality sites and discussion in the classroom could center on why specific sites were tagged and how they could be useful to student learning. I see the social bookmarking most useful to the teacher as an opportunity to learn of quality sites from colleagues. I still think this is a great deal of information to manage. Granted it is not the vast quantity of the entire web but it still takes time to go through all of the tagged sites of members on your network. I teach all curricula areas so I do not have the luxury of only researching one content area. I am responsible for all content areas which means a lot of time filtering through tagged sites.

Thing 5

What is "Web 2.0"? From the articles nd presentations I would say it is the evolution of the uses of the computer. It is no longer a way to simply retrieve information; it has evolved into a means to retrieve many pieces of information, synthesize this information, share your thoughts and understanding of the information, receive input from others about your understanding, and then converse about these ideas. The computer is now a very interactive tool. It is no longer an encyclopedia it is now a forum for discussion. The new twist is that these discussions can occur with countless individuals. The only drawback I see is the question of credibility. It would be important to teach students strategies to determine a credible source.