Summary

I can't believe I did it!! Thank you so much for an amazing class. I can undoubtedly say that I have never learned so much in one staff development class. It took a long time to work my way through the course but I found most of the things surprisingly easy to use once I played around with them. I appreciate that you gave us just enough directions so that I wasn't completely lost but you also didn't spell every single thing out for us. This forced me to play and figure some things out for myself and I learned so much as a result. I cannot even begin to narrow down one favorite thing. There are too many that I absolutely loved! I will definitely be using Delicious, GoogleReader, and GoogleDocs as staples. One of the things that I really appreciated was learning how to blog! This is something that I will be implementing for this coming school year. I will probably either reinvent this blog or create a new one altogether to keep parents updated. Hopefully I will get my students blogging too!

I would absolutely take another course like this if it was offered! There is nothing that you should change--you have created a fantastic course. Thank you for inspiring me to continue staying up with the world of Web 2.0. My resolution is to start my blog for my class and to continue looking for opportunities to integrate technology into my class through the tools we have learned here. I know I won't be able to conquer them all at once, but I am going to do my very best to weave them into my lessons. This is definitely not the end, it is only the beginning!!

Thing #23

Wow!! Ning was not really what I was expecting it to be...I had NO idea how much information was going to be there. It could quickly become information overload! I really did enjoy exploring the site. I liked the forum tab that allowed you to look at the discussions that were going on and there were plenty of them, that's for sure! I came to especially like using the tabs on the sidebar that allowed you to search by subject, tool, area, etc. I chose to focus in on blogging because it is something that I am definitely considering using in my classroom next year. I am thinking of a blog to keep my parents informed, but I am also wondering about having my students blog as well. I found a really great blog through a member on Ning. She is a teacher who has her students blog about the books they've read. It was fantastic! I tagged it on my Delicious account and will be going back to it. I was excited to find so many resources at my fingertips. The conversations were so diverse that I know that Ning could prove to be an invaluable resource to me. It is something I will be exploring further to continue sharpening my technology skills in the classroom and for advice on other topics we face as educators as well. I am glad to have been introduced to Ning!

Thing #22

I recently joined Facebook at the encouragement of family! My whole family was on Facebook and kept asking my husband and me what we were waiting for. I was reluctant at first...it can become so time consuming and sometimes seems so silly! I know this because I used to do MySpace in college to keep up with church friends and some high school friends. I enjoyed it for a while...until I realized once I started teaching that all of my students were on there and it just seemed weird, so I deleted my account!! After seeing both MySpace and Facebook, I definitely prefer Facebook. The content typically seems more appropriate. I have seen some frightening things on MySpace and it often worries me for my students to use it.

I like that you can set all of your privacy settings as you desire. I do not like the idea of the whole world being able to see my profile and photos, so it is nice to be able to set those for friends only. I like that you have to confirm before a friend is added so that you have control over what is on your page. Personally, I do not like many of the quizzes on Facebook. They seem really silly, but I guess to each his own!! Overall, I think Facebook is nice. I like that I can keep up with family and I have found a few friends from high school. It was nice to reconnect and see how they are doing!

As far as educational purposes go, I am not so sure that I am sold! I have a hard time seeing how Facebook would work for that. I know that there would be options to set up groups for a specific purpose, so classmates or group members could collaborate for homework help or projects. I don't know how often that actually happens, but I'm sure it could be a possibility. Regardless, I do think that it is important to be aware of Facebook and MySpace because our kids are definitely in the know and we need to be too!

You can find my profile here.

Thing #7b

While perusing through my Google Reader, I found something that I thought was really great and I wanted to share it. One of my feeds is Free Technology for Teachers and the author always shares great technology tips and education applications. This time the author posted a link to a post entitled Wordle in the classroom. It caught my attention, of course, because we have looked at/explored Wordle in this class. The post included a slideshow of 38 Ways to Use Wordle in the classroom. It was fantastic! I got several good ideas of how to incorporate Wordle into my class and I am noodling over how to tweak some of the presenter's ideas so they can work for me and my students. Hopefully this slide show will be helpful to others as well. Obviously, not every idea will work for every classroom, (some were way above my 6th graders) but there are a wide variety of ideas and they can also be a great springboard for new ideas. I am embedding the slideshow below in case you are interested.

Thing # 21

I had no idea Google offered so many great tools!! As I scanned the list I recognized several of them from this class or previous knowledge; however, there were many that were new to me. I explored a few more thoroughly and I already have a short list of tools that I will be going back to in my "spare" time! ha!

I worked with Google Calendar some because I immediately thought of several uses for this tool. Personally, it would be an effective way to keep up with our family's schedule and would also aid in planning family events because everyone could see each other's calendars. Professionally, this would be great just to keep up with meetings and classes for myself. Also, I instantly thought that Google Calendar would be absolutely excellent when we are scheduling grade level parent/teacher conferences. Since we departmentalize we each schedule conferences for our home room students but we all participate in each conference. It can become such a headache to call and schedule times only to realize that you have inadvertantly double-booked. This will be a tool that will make scheduling across our grade level so much more efficient.

I also explored Book Search. As a reading teacher, this tool thoroughly excites me! I am wishing I had known about it sooner. I love that you can preview the text before you purchase a book. This will definitely be useful to me when I am looking for texts to use in the classroom. I did find, however, that several books I searched did not allow you to look at the text. Yet, it could still be useful in seeing a summary of the book and reading reviews about it. Sometimes, though, the reviews aren't always of good quality. Nonetheless, I am still sure I will be able to utilize this tool.

Some of the tools that are still on my short list for exploring are Picasa and Sites. Sites looked like an easy, great way to create a classroom website, but I am not quite ready to take the plunge. I am still trying to decide if I want to implement a class blog or website. Decisions, decisions.... :)

Thing #20

GoogleDocs is something I have only become familiar with in the last few months. I have found it very useful throughout this course to be able to keep track of my progress. Today, however, is the first time that I have actually created a document of my own using GoogleDocs. It was very easy! The format is so similar to Microsoft Word and Excel so I was already extremely familiar with the tools on the toolbar. It was really quite a seamless transition to using GoogleDocs today. I did find one thing that I was unhappy with as I was working and experimenting. I do not like that you cannot see margins and where your page actually stops in terms of printing. I created my whole word document and then clicked print preview. It was completely off! Because I couldn't tell where the page stopped my document took 2 full pages instead of 1. That was a bit frustrating. Is there a way to actually see the margins and where your page stops on GoogleDocs? Despite this setback I still think that GoogleDocs will be extremely beneficial to me professionally. I thought of several ways that I could use this collaboratively with my teammates already. I am in charge of doing the weekly newsletter for our grade level. I, of course, always want feedback and contributions from my team as well as extra sets of eyes proofreading for me. This always consisted of attaching in an email to my team or printing it out and waiting for feedback. GoogleDocs will be a much more effective way to share this task from now on. Also, the end of the year becomes quite crazy for our sixth grade activities. (I know this is the case for every grade level!) We have multiple events where we are coordinating parent volunteers, donations, and keeping track of permission slips, money paid, etc. GoogleDocs is going to be a great way for us to see as a whole grade level how we are doing and to keep each team member informed easily. I love that we can compile all the important info in one place. This would also work well for teachers or students working on a project together. They can work from different places but have all of the information in one place that everyone can easily access. I know that this is a thing I will be putting to good use next year!

Thing #19

I found VoiceThread to be very intriguing. I think that there are definitely some real possibilities for using it both professionally and personally. This is the first time I have ever heard of VoiceThread and I really enjoyed exploring it. I appreciated the introductory VoiceThread example that simply explained how VoiceThread works and highlighted some of the features that are available. I like the pen feature that allows a commenter to circle a specific thing in the image or text. This would definitely be great for me as a teacher to make a specific comment on a student's work or writing. It would also be equally useful for other students who are making comments. I like that VoiceThread could be used to share students' writing or projects. One idea that I have for incorporating it into my class would be to have students complete a book review after finishing one for lit circles. Then other students can watch the reviews and get recommendations for their next reading choice. This could also be a great tool for peer editing on writing or giving feedback on a particular project. I liked the What is Bellwork? VoiceThread. This is a great idea for using focused work at the beginning of class. However, because of a lack of computer access for all students at once, this would not be a feasible option. I love the Multimedia Venn Diagram. This would be a great way for students to share learning at the end of a lesson. I will definitely be exploring different ways to use this "thing" in my class. I am especially excited to learn that you can comment on a VoiceThread by phone since I don't have a microphone.

Thing #18

I confess that I have spent way too many hours working on just this one thing. Unfortunately it wasn't necessarily fun time that I spent. Now, don't get me wrong...you can get a lot of cheap entertainment on YouTube! There are many funny videos -- my frustration came when I was trying to find school videos to incorporate into lessons. I had trouble finding things that would work with concepts with which my students struggle. I found several videos that covered topics like context clues or main idea but they were extremely cheesy! 6th graders don't do cheesy!! :) I eventually found a couple that I think I can use. One is called Literature Circles. In this video, students narrate their experiences with lit circles and the roles they played. This would be great when I am introducing lit circles to my students. However, we don't necessarily use all of the same roles so it would need some tweaking. Maybe I can make a video with a group of students specially for our class. I also found a Digital Book Talk that introduces the 2009 Lonestar Books. This is going to definitely be something I will use with my kids to promote those books and solve those "I can't find anything I like to read..." problems! As for the how to video...I had no idea that you could find so many how to videos on such a multitude of topics. I chose this video called the Fastest Way to Tie a Tie EVER. This is one of those tasks I never learned...thankfully my husband never needs my help! So, who knows, maybe I can figure it out now!

I never even knew about TeacherTube until now! I like that all of the videos have educational purposes so there is less weeding through of videos that are completely not useful for the classroom. I will probably be spending more time exploring this site for videos in the future.

The last video I will leave you with is Michael Jordan vs. CEO John Rogers. I came across this and thought it was so funny! The last line at the end of the video was my absolute favorite, but you have to listen closely! Enjoy...

Thing #17

Prior to beginning Thing #17, I had some knowledge of podcasts. My husband and I often download podcasts of sermons we want to listen to on our Ipods; however, I have never used podcasts in the classroom. I have to admit, for the sake of honesty, that I was a little disappointed with my podcast searches for this thing. I got really excited when I saw the podcast directories that were available, as I have only ever used iTunes. I tried several of the directories. One of the first ones I used was Education Podcast Network. I was completely confident that I would find some things here that could be used in my classroom. Unfortunately, I just found myself a bit disappointed. I found a couple of things that were interesting to me, but nothing I could just take right into my classroom. I subscribed to Just One More Book and Book Voyages. These are both sites that review and recommend children's books. Some of the books are definitely geared more for younger kids but some can crossover to older grades. I am a fan of using children's books to teach my sixth graders certain concepts and they seem to be, too!! Who doesn't love them? This will just expand my knowledge of books and will be a helpful resource when I am looking for books to use in class. I also tried the PodcastDirectory. I didn't find anything of value on this site for me. I really enjoyed exploring some of the educational podcasts. I LOVED the Jamestown Elementary School podcasts! I was fascinated by what the 2nd graders had done. These kids created podcasts to go along with a slideshow of famous Americans they studied. They were fabulous! This got the wheels turning in my head. My students could create podcasts to do book reviews or various other projects. So, while I was disappointed with my findings on the directories, I am not disappointed with the possibility of using podcasts in my class. I am sure with more time searching I can also find podcasts that will be of value to me.

Thing #16

LibraryThing was quite fun! I will definitely be going back to spend more time there. It seems like a wonderful place for people who love to read and I, of course, do!!! I like that there were multiple ways to search and that there were book reviews for each book that I browsed. Once again, this can be as social of a site as you want to make it. I like that you can connect with people who have similar reading interests. There are ways to join online book clubs which is really kind of cool! I am definitely recommending this site to my bookaholic husband! :) (I believe the term is bibliophile -- those 6th grade vocabulary studies are paying off!)

I can see several potential uses for this site both personally and professionally. Some of those I have already touched on above. I like that you can catalogue your entire library and tag each book as you desire. Professionally, it would be a great way for colleagues to share resources. Staff members could also have an online book club -- it would cut out the hassle of fitting in an extra time to meet. I am also always exploring ways to find new reading material to use with my students. I think this will be an invaluable resource! Students could use this to explore reading choices. Our class could also do an online book club! I like the 50 Book Challenge...we could definitely incorporate this in class to encourage and energize students to read and share about their reading!

Thing #15

Surprisingly, I had a whole lot of fun playing with the Sandbox wiki. I say surprisingly because I was terrified to begin experimenting with the wiki. I thought it would be much more difficult than it actually was to navigate. The Wikispaces Cheat Sheet was a great resource, but overall it was quite easy to use. I found the toolbar similar to the one on our blog posting. Everything went quite well and as I began adding the required information I realized I was having fun! I was excited to start adding images and some of the fun stuff we had already made in our class. That is where the fun came to a halt. I tried, unsuccessfully, to add the slideshow I created in Thing #10 to my wiki several times. It never appeared and I finally gave up. I thought, "Oh well, I will try that later...I will add some of the spell with Flickr creations I've made." That, too, resulted in several failed attempts. I followed the instructions on the cheat sheet and pasted my code into the appropriate box, but it didn't work out. Any suggestions?? I was able to add images saved on my computer without any trouble. The only thing that really annoyed me was how far down the Image Properties toolbar popped up. I didn't see it for several attempts because it was so far down. I think most of these things will be ironed out the more I practice with my wiki. All in all, I really enjoyed creating it and I think I could make one to use in my classroom now!

You can visit my wiki here.

Thing #14

I was quite unsure about wikis prior to completing thing 14. I didn't really understand fully what they were and I was quite clueless as to their purpose. I appreciated thing 14 because it enlightened me! I now understand better what wikis are and how they can be used in the classroom. I enjoyed exploring the educational wikis and seeing many different classroom applications. I liked Room 15 wiki a lot. It is one I gravitated to instantly because it is used by a sixth grade classroom and since I teach sixth graders I wanted to see how their wiki worked. I loved the book reviews that are contributed by the teacher and students. It is a great springboard for students to share their thoughts about books they've read and to find good reads that are recommended by others. I also loved the homework section -- the teacher used podcasts to communicate with parents about assignments and expectations. This instantly takes out confusion that could come from reading directions rather than hearing them directly from the teacher's mouth. I think it is a great way to stay connected with parents. I liked the Go West wiki that was created by 3rd graders. It is all about the knowledge students have gained by studying the Oregon Trail. I specifically love how there are a variety of student products showcased on their wiki. Another wiki I enjoyed was the Kindergarten Counting Book. I love that this provides concrete, real world representations of numbers for students. The best part is that all of the pictures on the wiki are taken and contributed by kindergarteners!! I know if they can do it my sixth graders and I can too!! Maybe there is a wiki in our future...I am still pondering on how to implement one in my own class.

Thing #13

Why am I just now learning of this?? That is the question I asked after reading about Delicious. This is literally the first time I have ever heard of Delicious and I became more and more excited as I read about what it does. The thought of having all of my bookmarks in one location makes my must-be organized self very happy! I was just lamenting the other day about how cluttered and messy my bookmarks had become! (I know...I am sounding a bit dramatic here!!) Delicious will be solving that problem for me just as soon as I have time to import all of my bookmarks. Not only do I love that they are all in one place, I also love that I can access them from anywhere, not just my home computer. This will definitely be beneficial!

Now, because Delicious is a social bookmarking site, I don't want to neglect the social aspect of it. I think that is another wonderful feature. This can be a great way to share resources with colleagues, even across grade levels. (There's that whole when you learn, I learn thing coming into play again.) Students could also use this when working on projects. They can share resources they have found in one central location. I think Delicious is quickly going to become one of my favorite things!

http://delicious.com/jenwest9

Thing #7a

I found several interesting things as I was exploring my Google Reader again today. One of the feeds I subscribe to is the blog Free Technology for Teachers. I have really enjoyed getting the updates in my Google Reader. I do not read every update he posts, just the ones that really jump out at me. Each month he does a post of that month's most popular content. So, today, I read his post of June's Most Popular Content. In it he lists 10 links to websites that are great resources for teachers.

One of the links that I followed was entitled, Twelve Essentials for Technology Integration. It was actually one of the author's previous posts on his blog. (Free Technology for Teachers -- linked above) I thought that this post was absolutely fabulous!! In it he discussed how his school is going to a 1 to 1 Laptop program next year and he will be a resource on campus for his fellow teachers. So, he created a guide that will serve as a launching pad for teachers starting the program. It gives 12 different suggestions for using technology in practical ways in the classroom. Many of them, I am proud to say, we have already explored in 23 Things. Some of them were new to me. It was very informative and helpful and gave me some great ideas...I actually printed off a copy to keep for myself. (He gives permission to print and pass along as desired!) One of the neat things I learned was about the program Animoto, which I used for Thing #10. Teachers can create an account which allows them FREE access to create videos longer than 30 seconds. This is a service other customers have to pay for. Yippee!! I am so excited...I am going to go create that account right now!!

Thing # 12

I chose to explore a few of the tools that were listed for this "thing". One of the ones that I am most excited about is called ToonDoo. This tool allows you to create your own cartoon strips. In my last post I discussed how I liked one of the comic strip makers, but that it wasn't something I would be able to share with my students because it had inappropriate material that was easily accessible. I asked for other suggestions, but with ToonDoo, I believe I found a solution to my problem. This site appears to be kid-friendly. I will, of course, do some more exploring before I set my students loose on this. This website has so many cool features...my students could unleash their creativity. One of the best things about it is that you don't have to be an artist to create a great looking comic strip. There are already many pre-made characters that you can tailor however you want to, as far as facial features, emotions, etc. Like I said in post #11, I often offer my students the option of creating a cartoon strip as a spelling activity and this tool will really help my students to do it well.

While exploring Toon Doo, I looked for social features like we were asked to do. I was so surprised at how many there were on this site! There is a comments feature, discussion forums, a help wiki that users can add to, and a message center where other users can send you messages. There is a feature that allows users to suggest tags for images available on the site. There are also many different contests that users can enter. In addition, there is a feature called "Fellow Follow" where you can become a follower of another user and be updated on the new cartoons they create. All of these features allow users to connect to a community if they so desire.