Week 9, Thing #23, Thoughts

I can honestly say that by taking this course I now know a lot more about resources on the internet than I ever thought possible. The only problem of course will be remembering how to access and use all of them. There were some truly amazing things on the internet, and I do not know that I can choose one as my favorite; however, the ones I liked most and am likely to use the most is Zoho and the audio books. These were the two I found easiest because they are easily accessed and did not require lots of information to set up or use. Both will not only help me but will help several of my students as well. I really enjoyed taking this course and hope to implement much of what I have learned in my classroom.

Week 9, Thing #22, eBooks

Wow! Who knew this type of site was out there?! Being a teacher of the deaf there are numerous times throughout the year when I wish that I had access to audio tapes. Having them online is even better than having to find a hard copy, because the child can access it both at home and at school. Students could even have the opportunity to preview material that they will be covering in class. Just being able to follow along and move through a book at a steady pace is a great advantage. Having the ability to listen to a book on their provides students with the opportunity to go at their own pace and review material when they want. It also allows them to hear words pronounced correctly and this is of the utmost importance for hearing impaired children.

Week 9, Thing #21, Podcasts

Finally, something I have had some experience with. I was beginning to think that I was totally out of touch with today's technology. Before today I had explored iTunes at great length - What else do college student's do? I enjoyed exploring some of the other podcasts that are out there. Seeing that the only time I really listen to the news is the car (which you can't really call news b/c on most FM radio stations it's mainly updates on celebrities) I decided to look mainly at the news podcasts. When looking at some classmates blogs I found a link to the NPR podcast website, and I found that to be a great place to learn about current events. I must say though that I did spend a lot of time looking through junk on the sites before coming across more reliable information.

I found a link to the New York Times on which they summarize the front page daily. The actual NY Times site itself has tons of podcasts & RSS feeds on it, unfortunately I am having trouble locating the RSS feed for the summary page, so for now here is a link to it.
http://podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=19341#

Week 9, Thing #20, YouTube

What an interesting website, being a recent college graduate it is shocking that this was my first YouTube experience. There definitely is "a lot of stuff not worth watching" but I did find some comical things, and am sure I could find useful clips for in the classroom as well. Below is the link to an old coca-cola commercial. I chose the clip becuase at first I had no idea what to go looking for and I had just recently recieved an e-mail from coke. So, coke commercials is what I ended up looking at first. Some were quite entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ0FRW1W3yA

Week 8, Thing #19, LibraryThing

This website is way more fun than typing all my books into Excel like I usually do, and it actually organizes everything for me! It couldn't be any easier. I only added a few of the books in my classroom library for now to save on time; however, I fully intend to add of the books to the site. I think it is a great way to keep track of all the books I have in the classroom.

Since the books I added are all children's books, and very popular ones at that, they were all very popular out of the ones I added Little Women was by far the most popular. I anticipate that the other books I add will be popular as well, because it seems as though there are many educators on the site. I like that there are postings/ratings about the books, because it is a neat way for students to read about a book before selecting it. It also a great way for them to share thoughts about a book.

Here is the link to my LibraryThing catalog http://www.librarything.com/catalog/canyouhearmenow

Week 8, Thing #18, Zoho

That was my favorite activity thus far! My previous post is what I wrote on Zoho, and sending it to my blog only took one minute...I love that they have a place a the top of the page where you can just click and export to your blog. It couldn't be any easier!

Week 8, Thing # 18, Zoho

Just from reading through the introduction I am very excited about this program! Being a new teacher I don't have my own classroom let alone my own my computer at work. I am constantly going from computer to computer and hoping that all of my files come up ok. I can't wait to try this out and not have to worry about formatting from one place to another. What a wonderful idea this is!

Being that my computer is now a few years older I was amazed at all the option this program has to offer in terms of formatting. My computer doesn't have half that stuff. I love the ease of generating charts, lists, and graphs right on the page. There is even an easy way to add exponents! This program is going to be a great asset to me because I am constantly spending hours writing math sheets and now it can be done with ease all within one program.

The organization at the the top of the page is wonderful - it is so easy to find everything that you might need when writing a document. I really like that there are buttons for things like the thesaurus, comments, end notes, and footnotes, because when teaching writing these are things that are often hard to locate especially for first time users. I could see this program being a great resource for student projects, because it would be an easy way for them to do work both at school and at home without worrying about a disk or thumb drive.

Week 7, Thing #17, Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki

After a little searching I made it to the right page...is there a link for a MA sandbox wiki? I know under the MSLA blog it says to make a post to the learning 2.0 sandbox wiki, but there wasn't a link. So I went back to the 23Things and found a link there. There were a lot of interesting things on the site and I enjoyed browsing through other people's posts. I like how easily you can make a post to the site, especially the easy log-in process. I hate having to put in all kinds of information to create an account or comment on something I see.

Week 7, Thing # 16, Wikis

I absolutely loved exploring the various wikis. I went through several of the different links and found lots of great ideas. The Book lovers wiki was my favorite out of the ones that I explored. This wiki had a large variety of different postings that were all categorized in a way that made it easy to find material. My favorite part about the site though was the link to create your own wiki. Under this link there were numerous resources about creating a wiki the types of things that could/couldn't be done, the benefits, links for educators, and the best part of all FREE teacher materials. There were also some great ideas from other educators about how they have used wikis in their schools. Another bonus was the resource/help section, and for someone like me that is a big bonus because I often know what I am doing when I begin something but a few minutes in I find myself lost on the internet. I think that setting up a classroom wiki is an excellent idea and a wonderful forum for students to share ideas and thoughts about the books that they have been reading.

Week 6, Thing 15, Perspectives on Web 2.0

I read through the first two perspectives "Away from Icebergs" by Rick Anderson and "Into a new world of librarianship" by Michael Stephens. I found the first article very intriguing. I really like how Anderson related the libraries to boats, and discussed the various obstacles that libraries are currently facing. The world is rapidly changing because of technology and more and more people are turning to the internet rather than a book for reading material, whether it be for research or pleasure in our fast past world it's easier for the majority of people to get online than it is to get to the local library.

What he said about there no longer being a need for "the 'just in case' collection" really struck me. My last year of college I worked as a helper in the library and I spent the majority of my time clearing out the "just in case" material that had been stored for years. Unfortunately, not all material made it to the recycle bin and much of it landed in a closet "just in case" someone needed that outdated article on hearing devices from 50 years ago.

I must agree that if libraries are going to make it in this new technology driven world, they need to change "one little boat-at a time". They need to find a way to keep up with the needs of their patrons. One thing that many of my local libraries are doing is making many of their resources available to patrons via the internet.

Week 6, Thing 14, Technorati

I thought this site was very similar to de.lic.ious, and thought that there was similar information on the site. While searching "school library learning 2.0" it was interesting to see the different results based on where I was searching. I also was surprised by the "popular" blogs, searches, and posts. Many of the searches were things I haven't even heard of or at least had never heard that abbreviation before. I didn't realize how out of touch I was with what is "popular". It was also interesting to notice the similarities and differences between the popular blogs, searches, and tags -only a few things in were more than one of the popular categories. I would have thought that if a lot of pople were searching for it more people would be at least blogging about it.

I like the idea of tagging and think that it could come in very handy when trying to mark material/resources for future use, but the same time I also feel like I could easily get lost in the overwhelming amount of material. I do like that with tagging you can quickly get an idea of what the resource is like.

Week 6, Thing 13, Del.icio.us

I really liked the delicious site. I thought it was very easy to navigate and could easily find information about the resources thanks to the posts of previous veiwers. I really like that it tallies the number of people who have saved the site, because typically if a site has been saved by numerous people it is more likely to be a good site. I liked the short blurbs about the sites, because they made it easy to get a quick idea of what that resource contains. While searching the site I found a really neat web page called the Logo Creator http://creatr.cc/creatr/.

I think this would be a great tool for a research assistant, because like I said the blurbs about the resources make it easy to quickly find out if the site has what you are looking for. I also think it is a wonderful resource for anyone who uses multiple computers, because it is a fast easy way to access bookmarks from anywhere. Being a teacher of the deaf I am constantly changing rooms, and have different sites on every computer and the site I am looking for is hardly ever on the computer that I am using at that moment in time.

Week 5, Thing 12, Rollyo

I liked this site, and could see it being useful as a way to lump together some of my favorite resource sites. The site was easy to navigate through and made it extremely easy to set up my own roll. If you were to save certain websites into rollyo and then have students use only that search roll it could also be helpful in controling the sites that they are searching through.

Week 5, Thing 11, Award Winners & Ning

I looked at a book website, biblio.com, and I thought it was pretty good. Being a recent college graduate I am familiar with lots of book websites, especially those with discount textbooks. This site had numerous books all for reasonable prices and even a variety of very cheap used books. Sites like these are great for new teachers, like myself, because it is a cheap way to begin building a classroom library. If you are in need of books and do not have a lot to spend I would definately recommend biblio.com.

I also looked at Ning, and while it looks like a great way to connect with people, it didn't really appeal to me personally. I am not someone who likes to be a member of every group online, especially when it involves posting personal information or pictures of myself. The site reminded me a lot of facebook and myspace, and I believe that an account at any one of such sites is enough. They all have their numerous groups you can join and way to post your thoughts which can be very useful and addicting at the same time. I think that if I were to become a more active user of such a site I could easily find myself spending hours doing nothing but reading other's posts. I also see the positives of such sites - it is an easy way to keep in touch with others. I have definately used facebook as a way of keeping in touch with many of my high school and college friends and I think it is great for that.

Week 5, Thing 10, Online Image Generator

I made my image at FDToys (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/). I had some minor difficulties uploading the image...it would only let me do it "small" so the words are difficult to read. The motivational poster says: HUNGRY? Why eat healthy when there is cake?! The cake is actually from my wedding and only the very top fit into the poster, but it still look delicious!

I really like the image generators. I find them very easy to use and I like that you can easily make changes/edit your work. The thing that I do not like about having visited all the different resources out there is that I have a million usernames & passwords and I can't remember them all. I have tried to use the same ones, but on a few I have been unable to get back into them. These generators would be great for students to make visuals for projects of all kinds.

Week 4, Thing 9, Useful blogs

I found all of the search engines to be useful and easily navigated (I must admit that I clicked on all the links). Of all the search engines, I really enjoyed looking through the edublog. The others all seemed to be more tied to my personal use for blogs, but this particular search engine provided me with ideas for the classroom. On the edublog site there is a blog about polar bears that is really amazing. While looking at that blog I realized the amount of creativity that students can put into a project like the polar bear blog. I also thought about those shy quiet students in class and how blogging could be a way for them to share their ideas, and respond to others ideas. I found the google method to be the easiest to use, but that is a search engine I am familiar with and I think that helped a lot.

Week 4, Thing 8, blogroll

Before today I had not a clue what a RSS feed or blogline was, but after spending the last couple of hours navigating through the different sites I can understand why so many people use them. I was able to find out a lot in a short amount of time. Setting it up was easy with the simple steps provided by Bloglines, and I was amazed at how quickly I completed the process. I really liked how in the set up it allowed to choose things that interested you and then automatically added those feeds for you.

I could definately see myself using this technology in both my school and personal life. I think it would be a wonderful and convenient way to keep in touch and up to date with friends and family. I could easily see students using this type of technology for discussions and projects. The only potential problem that I see with such technology is addiction. I could see myself spending endless hours looking for information and findinglots of new things to post about.

Week 3, Thing 7, Technology Post

This poems sums up how we are currently feeling, as we sit here after school trying to catch up. The work is a lot of fun & very exciting, but these computers ....well they aren't always the best.


A DRAGON IS IN MY COMPUTER

A dragon is in my computer,
It's there when I turn on the screen,
It stares at me, fierce and unfriendly,
Through eyes of maleovolent green.
It hisses and spits little fires,
It flicks its preposterous tail,
I've tried every trick to erase it,
But all of my stratagems fail.

It's there when I'm doing my homework,
It's there when I'm playing a game,
My mouse does it's best to erase it,
That dragon remains all the same.
It may disappear for a minute,
But always comes slithering back,
Appearing on top of my program,
Resuming its nasty attack.

I have no idea where it came from,
Or why it keeps picking on me,
Examining me like a morsel
It's thinking it might fricassee.
I wish I could douse it with water
And bop it on the snout,
A dragon is in my computer -
I hope that it never gets out.

Source

Prelutsky, Jack. The Dragons Are Singing Tonight. Greenwillow Books, New York: 1993. p33.

Week 3, Thing 6, Mashup

I found navigating the sites very easy, except when it came time to actually creating my very own magazine cover. I think the school's internet was blocking me. The actual exploring of the sites was a lot of fun, and I could think of numerous ways to use them in countless lessons. I hope to post my magazine cover from home later.

Ice - Week 3, Thing 5, Flickr

Ice, originally uploaded by Katka S..

Ice is nice
Ice is cool
We wrote this poem after school

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Week 2, Thing 4, Registering Blog

Successfully registered!!!

Week 2, Thing 3, Creating a blog

This was the most fun I have had online in a very long time!! I stayed after school with several teachers to work on creating our blogs, and not only did I get to colaborate on how to go through the process but I was able to meet several new teachers at the same time.
Creating the avatars was hysterical! I had no idea that you could actually create something to look so realistic. There were so many options that I spent over two hours just looking at them all.

Week 1, Thing 2, 7 and 1/2 Habits of Successful Lifelong Learning

I really enjoyed learning about the 7 and 1/2 habits of successful lifelong learning. Many of the habits I was familiar with, but watching the video reminded me of how little I actually do them and how much more I could encorporate them into my teaching. The step that really described how I learn was step 7, teach/mentor others because it is the best way to learn. I have always found that when taking a course I do not fully understand the material until I have to explain it to someone else, yet when I am teaching a class or in a class assisting the teacher I find that mostly the teacher is teaching. I would love to find more ways to get the students teaching eachother.

I fully agree with step 7 and 1/2! It is so true that if I am not having fun learning something I am not motivated to do it, and typically only do what I have to do to complete the course rather than taking the time to learn the material. In fact one of the reason that I took this course is because the teachers I work with are, and we planned to all work on it together after school. So, instead of it being something I dread going home to, I am enjoying staying after school and being with coworkers learning new things. This is also very true of the students I work with. I am team teaching math to a very chatty 5th grade class, and all year it has been a struggle to keep them at a dull roar. Well, the other day we did a lesson where they had to draw and for the first time the entire class was quiet for not a few seconds, but the entire period. Not only were they enjoying what they were doing but they were learning!

I will definately be sharing the 7 and 1/2 steps with other educators!

Week 1, Thing 1, About

I enjoyed reading through the frequently asked questions, because it answered many of my own questions.