Thing #23

I enjoyed the 23 Things program. My favorite discovery during the program was the mashups. There are many different possibilities, and it is easy to incorporate Flickr into the activities. I know my students will love being creative while designing their mashup that coordinates with our lesson! I also enjoyed creating a rollyo. I will use this tool multiple times during the year to help monitor and limit the material that my students find while researching on the web.

Incorporating technology into the curriculum is something that I am very passionate about, but I was starting to feel that I was using the same technology and activities each year. As a lifelong learner, I wanted to learn more this summer, and this self-paced online program allowed me to do this at my own convenience this summer!

I was surprised at how easy it was to create a blog, and I even created a personal blog from this experience. Each activity is something that I can take back to my classroom and use with my students this year. I thought that we needed a lot of external technology to use in the classroom, but this program showed me several different things to do with my students with the computers that we have in the classroom.

This program was designed very well. I think the only thing that might make it better would be to encourage students to comment on each others' blogs more often. I have not taken the time to read through every one's activities except for the discovery exercises that required us to do so. I learned a lot from reading other people's blogs, so it might be beneficial to incorporate more opportunities to do this.

I hope that more learning opportunities like this are available in the future. I would love to continue to learn more. My learning experience with 23 Things was beneficial to me and ultimately my students since I learned so many amazing, interactive activities that will allow me to incorporate technology into my classroom!

Thing #22

I've never heard of Nings before, but it is very clever to be able to create your own social networking site. I've recently moved to a new school, and my past coworkers and I email each other all the time. They have questions for me, and I am always asking them questions as well. I think that Nings would be great for teachers to share ideas and answer each other's questions. We always learn more when we collaborate, and social networking allows us to collaborate with teachers everywhere.

Thing #21

I use Photostory a lot in class. It is very user friendly, and it is very quick to create a videocast. I've used this program to make an end of the year gift for my students. I make a video using pictures from everything we've done throughout the year. My students have also made a video about heroic people we were studing in social studies. They created a living statue about the person, took pictures of each other, added a caption to their picture, and then narrated their part of the video. I also gave my students digital cameras to share during our class field trip. Students took pictures of anything they thought was interesting, and then we turned the photos into a video that the students narrated using Photostory. The video I'm including here is a videocast that my class created one year in December. We were studying word choice in writing, so my students chose a specific holiday item they wanted to describe with words. We used image chef to turn their words into a picture of the item. Last, we uploaded the pictures and each child narrated their creation to form our class video over holiday word choice.

Thing #20

Since I am a visual learner, I try to find short videos that talk about the concepts we are learning in class. This is especially important for my ELL students to see exactly what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, YouTube is blocked from our campus computers, but I am interested to see if TeacherTube is blocked. I did enjoy learning about different ways to still show the videos on a blocked server.

When I searched YouTube, I found a few neat videos on earthquakes from National Geographic. We always study forces that change Earth's surface, but since my students haven't seen an earthquake first hand, it is great to allow them to experience exactly what an earthquake is and does by video.

I searched TeacherTube for a video on capacity. I found this video that students made describing their experiences with volume and capacity. I thought this video was wonderful because it also shows teachers the different ways that technology can be used in the classroom to reinforce a lesson. I a student was absent or the teacher wanted to review the concept, this video would be an excellent tool to use.

Thing #19

There were a lot of neat sites to choose from, but I enjoyed Picnik. Taking pictures is a hobby of mine, and I loved this photo editing site. There are a lot of editing tools that are free with the program. It is amazing seeing all of the different creations that can be made with pictures. Some of my pictures even look very professional after editing them on the website. I think that in a school setting, this would be a wonderful website for students to add text and edit pictures that have to do with concepts they are learning in class. Students could maybe even keep an online photobook of pictures that coordinate with the concepts they are studying and could then be used as a quick review for the students. I also like anything that has to do with pictures since I teach ELL students.

Thing #18

Using Open Office and Google Docs was pretty easy. I think a disadvantage would be just getting everyone used to it and comfortable with the programs. I can also see some teachers that have just gotten comfortable with the newer version of Microsoft Office not wanting to learn something else. I do like how user friendly and compatable the programs are. We have the newer version of Microsoft Office on our teacher computers at school, but the older version on our three student computers. Since my students use all of the computers in my classroom including my teacher computer, sometimes there are programs opening projects that were saved using the newer program on the older computers. I know that the students can change the file type to be compatable, but Open Office and Google Docs would be compatable everywhere. I also like that it is FREE software!

Thing #17

I was amazed by creating my rollyo. I had no idea you could create your own search engine for students to use. This is amazing! It was very easy to create, and now I can post a link to my rollyo on my classroom webpage. This is a wonderful way to control the amount and type of information that students can get to using the internet. I think this is very beneficial for elementary students since a lot of search engine results are not always appropriate for younger age students. I started my rollyo with just yahooligans and ask for kids websites, but as different projects come up during the school year, I can add more websites to my rollyo.

Thing #16

Wikis are very easy to use. I searched the Teacher/Librarian wiki and found a lot of useful resources to use in the classroom including audiobooks. It was also very easy to edit the sandbox portion of the Spring Branch Library Future wiki.

Allowing students to edit wikis will encourage students to socialize and collaborate to share information. I think that giving students the opportunity to write their thoughts will also increase their reflective writing skills.

I would like to have a classroom wiki for books that we are reading. Students can respond to reflection questions about the books as well as post their own opinions and thoughts about what they have read. Students can also use a wiki to post discussions or summaries about concepts that we learn in class. This will be a wonderful way for me to check their understanding of the concepts in a way that is fun and interactive for students. I could also split the class into groups to add their groups job to the wiki. For example, if we are studying the water cycle, I could have an evaporation, condensation, and precipitation group. They could each add the information about their part to the wiki. In the end, we would have a class description of the water cycle.

My only concern with wikis is the capability to edit anyone's comments. With strict monitoring and ethical descussions, I hope this won't be too much of a problem.

Thing #15

I believe the video A Vision of Students Today is priceless. It is the truth about the students we teach and the changes that need to be made in education not only to reach these students but to also prepare them for life out of the classroom.

In the article "Away from Icebergs", I agree with the point that libraries don't need to be a "just in case" collection anymore. Most of the information that students obtain comes from electronic sources. A lot of people would argue that libraries are still needed for children's books and novels, but these items are now available through electronic sources such as Kindles, iPad, and the Nintendo DS. While I do see the importance of teaching students library skills to find hard copies of books, students also need to be given the opportunity to interact with electronic forms of information as well. A few of my Master's classes required textbooks. Instead of purchasing a hard copy of the book, I downloading an electronic version of the book for a specified period of time at only a fraction of the cost. Where was this at when I spent thousands of dollars on textbooks in college that I never looked at????

I also like the idea that "Into a New World of Librarianship" mentioned about Library 2.0 transforming the library setting into a "social and emotionally engaging center for learning and experience". People learn from social interactions and young children need to learn how to socially interact. They should be able to get excited about the information they gain from the library and have the opportunity to share their opinions and views with others.