Thing 23
Whew! I made it! At one point I thought that I would have to drop out of the course because I just had too many other professional commitments, but fortunately I was able to make up a whole lot of ground over the last four weeks. I’m so happy that I was able to finish because doing each “thing” gave me some good ideas for activities to use next school year, and now I have time to play around with some of the tools we learned about over the summer.
We explored some really wonderful tools, but I think that my favorite activities were finding photos on Flickr and creating a slideshow in Bubbleshare. There are so many beautiful photos on Flickr, and I found better photos on that site than I expected. Putting them into a Bubbleshare slideshow was so easy, and it really helped my students envision the setting of a novel that we are studying. So of course I will continue to use both of those sites again.
I also plan on creating a class wiki space and linking it to the class blog that I currently have. My best and most unexpected find was from Thing 22, where I found some great discussions on Classroom 2.0 and Ning in Education. I will definitely go back to those sites, and I think that I will actively participate in some of the discussion groups.
My absolute favorite part of this class was that NO PAPER was involved! I have a nasty habit of creating towering stacks of paper piles, and doing everything on the computer really saved my sanity!
Thing 22: Classroom 2.0 and Ning
Wow! Both of these sites are great! Out of all the social networking tasks we have completed, I feel like this one was the most worthwhile. My intent was to browse around Classroom 2.0 and move on, but I immediately found two discussions I was interested in and added them to my Google Reader (I even participated in one of the discussions). I actually joined a laptop learning discussion group on Ning in Education and am excited about sharing ideas with other teachers who use laptops in their schools.
I like both of these sites MUCH better than most of the blogs and podcasts I have subscribed to. The reason for this is because I can immediately participate in a discussion about which I am specifically interested in at the time (and when the material is no longer relevant, I can delete the feed from my reader). Judging by the quality of the responses to the discussions I viewed, the member pool seems to be much sharper than other social networking sites (educators are responding to educators). I would feel very comfortable posting questions on either Classroom 2.0 or Ning to receive feedback.
Thing 21: Pageflakes
This task by far was the most challenging and frustrating activity for me. I spent a great deal of time creating my Pageflake, and I am really not satisfied with the end result. I found this site difficult and confusing to use, and I am not really sure why. I could never get my YouTube video to embed properly, even after watching Shelley’s awesome help video.
I think that the idea of Pageflakes is a good one. I tried to build my page around the topics that we are studying in my reading and social studies classes (a novel set in Cornwall, England and ancient Rome) to give my students further resources (bookmarks, a slide show, a YouTube video). I also kept some of the flakes from the template like the Wikipedia and Google searches, the calendar, and notes option (to add announcements). I don’t know if I will continue to use my Pageflake in the future…I think that creating a class wiki and using Edline are really all that I need.
Thing 19: YouTube and TeacherTube
After exploring YouTube and TeacherTube, I found an incredible amount of information on several of the topics I researched. Due to the “geek” factor of my topics, most of the videos I found were appropriate to show to my 6th graders. However, I did run across some that contained inappropriate language and questionable content. Interestingly, I found more relevant videos under “Related Videos” than I did with a new search. I’ve never thought of using YouTube as a teaching tool before…however, one of my searches was Cornwall, England. This is the setting of one of the novels that I am currently teaching, and it is pretty unfamiliar to most of my students. Because they have little or no prior knowledge of what this part of England looks like, I thought that it would be helpful to give them some images of the area so that they can better visualize while reading. I found many brief but beautifully done videos and slideshows of the area, some even with narration. My search on TeacherTube gave me some good ideas as well. I searched “book talk” and found many of these briefs overviews on several novels I have taught in the past. I even found additional support materials for one of our summer reading books under one post! Most of the book talks were done by adults (English teacher, media specialist). However, I thought that having some of my more creative and outgoing students produce a book talk on the novels that we study in class would be a great project and a better learning experience for them. posted by Ticketyboo:
Thing 18
Using Evoca to record a podcast was incredibly easy and fun! In fact, my family had a great time helping me play around on the site before I completed “Thing 18″ (we created a Happy Mother’s Day song and sent it to both grandmothers). Here is my podcast: Three Ways Podcasting Can Support Student Learning
Thing 17: Podcasting
I listened to two Podcasts: Grammar Girl’s Quick Tip, “Listen You Will, Grammar Padawan” and MythShow.com 11 - Fairy Tales, Movie Review: Enchanted. I appreciated that Grammar Girl offered brief advice about a worthwhile topic (does Yoda really speak proper English?) and MythShow offers information about mythology, folklore, and fairytales (one of my passions). I found more podcasts of value to me on The Education Podcast Network and really liked that they were grouped according to subject matter on the left side of the page and were very easy to find. I had more trouble finding podcasts that I wanted to listen to through iTunes, although I did find a number of audio recording of books that I would like to purchase.
I do see a place for podcasting and iTunes in my classroom. Having students listen to portions of podcasts would be a beneficial way to introduce or reinforce material. I also think that having students publish their own podcasts would give them a sense of pride and ownership of their work. At my school I have heard students read their creative writing stories and explain art projects on podcasts. Podcasting faculty and PTA meetings for members who cannot attend would also be a great use of this tool. There are several audio recordings on iTunes that I would like to purchase for my classroom and say goodbye to cassettes and CD’s with scratches on them!
Thing 16: 43 Things
I really like the idea behind the site 43 Things. Whenever I create lists of “things” that I either need or want to do, they always get done much more quickly. I guess that it is just easier for me to prioritize when I have something visually out in front of me. However, the idea of making my life goals public is a little unnerving, although I guess I can hide behind a user name. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist, so I joined the site! I’m not really sure if I have time to check regularly on my “cheering” section, but maybe I’ll receive some good advice.
Although goal setting is an important part of our curriculum, this is not a site that I would share with my 6th graders. There is just too much out there that is not appropriate.
Thing 15: LibraryThing
I very much enjoyed my time spent on LibraryThing. I found several of my favorite books and read some member reviews. Because I couldn’t resist, I joined and added several titles to my profile. Personally I can see me using this site to look for a new, good read. I can also see using it to help me select books that my 6th graders will enjoy reading. The group option is also neat. I personally don’t have time to join a group now, but I will recommend this option to several of my students who have already created their own little tutorial book club. Being able to effectively discuss what you are reading is the ultimate goal!
Thing 14
I just explored del.icio.us today, and I must admit that until I played around on the site, I was a little skeptical as to how I was going to use it in my classroom. However, after tagging several sites, it became clear that the list I was creating was saving me a great deal of time (no more wasting precious planning periods searching for that “one” site)! I also felt that I got a much more relevant list from my search results as opposed to when I search for a particular topic on a search engine.
I chose the topic of Ancient Rome simply because we are studying the Roman Empire in my social studies class. The list I created can now be posted on Edline, and I can control the sites that I want my students to explore for their Ancient Rome project. Link to my list: http://del.icio.us/jrbroad I plan on using del.icio.us again next year for our Egypt and Greek projects.
Thing 20: Google Documents
I just created a spreadsheet in Google Documents today, and it was pretty easy to use. I am the supplies coordinator for our church’s vacation bible school, and all of us on the planning team use Google Groups to communicate. Since I was going to create a spreadsheet of all the necessary supplies anyway, I thought that it would be even better if I did it on Google Documents. That way any member of the team can edit the spreadsheet at any time. This will improve my situation dramatically since I was the only one last year who had the “master” Excel sheet, and I had to constantly update it every time someone e-mailed me with a new supply request. I did several of the suggested tasks like formatting text and uploading a previously saved document to Google documents (I uploaded last year’s spreadsheet and just made changes).
