Thing #23 - Reflection

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I am so glad that I participated in this course! Some of my favorite, new things that I am taking away from this journey are Delicious, learning more about wikis, and discovering how to create Animoto slide shows using images from Flickr! 


I was surprised at how many of the "things" I already knew how to do, but never knew efficient ways to incorporate them into my classroom. This class really helped me work though some of my technology frustrations. It has also encouraged me to get back into blogging, this time with an educational focus that I can put to work in my classroom. There is a vast amount of educational information out there via blogs, twitter, and other social networking avenues that I hadn't even begun to explore before this course. I remember last year as a first year teacher, there were moments when I felt like was grasping for information and didn't know where to look. This course has opened up so many possibilities for me!

Thing #22 - Social Networking in Education

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Classroom 2.0 is one of those resources that I will have to visit several times and will discover something new with each visit! I love that it is a network of educators, all looking for ways to better teach their students. I do think that it is important for us as teachers to include a "professional learner's network" in our toolkit and sites like Classroom 2.0 is a great resource to do just that!


I really hadn't ever considered social networking as an educational tool before this course, and that is something truly valuable that I will take away from 23 Things. In another course I am taking this summer, I also had to explore a site called Edmodo. It is a site very similar to Facebook, but much more secure. You can set up groups for your classes and give them the code, and there's even a way for parents to log in as well! I have learned so many things to work with and consider using in my classroom this Fall, and I am excited about the possibilities! 

Thing #21 - Twitter

So I've had a Twitter account for awhile now, but I am definitely more of a "lurker" than a "tweeter". I hadn't really ever thought about using it for educational purposes, but by reading the articles listed on the Thing #21 page and browsing through some of the educational Twitter page suggestions, I found a wealth of great information! I even came across another educational Twitter page where she had been working on a "Professional Learning Network Starter Kit" complete with other educational "tweeters" and educational blogs! Go check out Library Girl and follow her!

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Thing #7b - Personalizing the QOTD

One of the edublogs I have discovered during this course is RAMS English; a middle school English teacher with lots of interesting and informational posts! I especially like this post from the other day. He shares how he assigns each student a day (throughout the entire year each of my 150 students should all get a chance to participate at least once) to choose a quote and write it on the objective board to be seen throughout the day. He has a book for them to choose from, and will allow them to bring their own as long as he pre-approves them. Sometimes they spur quick-writes in the journals, other times a class discussion, and some are humorous while others are serious. 

I loved that it gave each of his students a chance to express themselves in a small way for that day, in a way that all their peers could experience as well. I think this is a great idea to get my kids talking, thinking, and expressing!

Thing #20 - The Glory of Google Docs

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In addition to taking the 23 Things course, I opted to take 2 more online courses this summer to help me implement technology in my classroom. One of them, which I completed last month, was ALL about Google Apps! Many of these things I already knew how to do, but learning how to use them in my classroom is pretty valuable!! 


In the course, we created newsletters, spreadsheets/rubrics, slideshow presentations, forms, and even drawings to show/label the different regions of Texas! I can truly see how using Google Docs in the classroom would be highly successful! It allows students to pull up work from any class and make changes, without needing the hard copy physically in their hands. Something like this can really eliminate any need for paper! Save a tree!


One way that I MOSTLY excited about using Google Docs in my room is when we are writing. Students can draft in Google Docs and share it with me... I can revise, edit, and offer suggestions for change right within the document. This is amazing to me... one of the things I really struggled with last year was finding time to conference with all 31 kids in a 50-minute class period on their individual writing. With Google Docs, I can add comments from the comfort of my couch and they can see the suggestions the next day when they log on, or from home if they are doing it for homework! This will also work well for peer revisions... they can share the document with their peers who can offer suggestions of their own! I love that we can accomplish all of this without 3 written copies of drafts and various colored highlighters... just the computer!


The only thing I did find is that perhaps my version of Word is a little more sophisticated on my personal computer than the one in Google Docs. I uploaded a newsletter that I had made, and it took away quite a bit of my formatting. I had to go through and mess with it quite a bit until I was satisfied with the overall look. In my opinion, though, that's a small concession considering the other ways I can use Google Docs to my advantage!

Thing #19 - Conversations in the Cloud

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When viewing the required videos about VoiceThread, I immediately recognized the format from Thing #1 where we looked at the "7 Habits". In thinking of using this with my kids, I think they would enjoy being able to record audio comments versus having to "write" a comment. While I DO want to encourage them to write, I know I have to get creative to get them to express themselves so we can write about things. I also like the fact that they could include their own slides from power point presentations... it's just another way for them to share information with me and each other! I love the idea of having another source in which to help "capture" my student's voices in such a unique way!

Thing #18 - You too can YouTube!

Fortunately, navigating YouTube is one of the 23 Things that I am actually pretty familiar with! Woo hoo! I use it whenever I can to pull videos in class... my kids LOVE it! I used the video below (and a couple other similar ones) to help tie together figurative language devices and pop culture... it was one of their favorite lessons all year!





"TheMrWasko" has several similar videos like this on YouTube to use in the classroom!


We also used YouTube just the other night to help us in the kitchen. We were making teriyaki chicken for the July 4th holiday and my husband and I had never broken down a whole chicken before... YouTube to the rescue!





When browsing for this "Thing", I also came across the following video about middle school that I thought was cute and a little bit funny...





I didn't know much about TeacherTube until today, so it was fun spending some time browsing around in there. I loved that I could search for something like "writing" and it would give me all sorts of videos to browse through related to teaching writing. I saved TeacherTube on Delicious so I could revisit it later! It seems like it will be a great source of information for my classroom!

Thing #17 - Podcasting

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Before this course, I had very little experience with podcasting. I use iTunes regularly, so it was pretty easy for me to navigate finding new podcasts that way, and I also enjoyed exploring the examples on the 23Things Wiki page. I have to admit, thought, listening to podcasts has NOT been my favorite objective in this course. I am more of a speed reader, someone who  prefers to scan an article to find the information that I am seeking. I really didn't enjoy listening to strangers drone on about things that I may or may not even care about before getting to the point of their podcast. I obviously found a little more common ground and interest in the English/Reading podcasts. I enjoyed Just One More Book... a site where a couple reads children's books and then shares their reviews in their podcasts. I also found value in Merriam Webster's word of the day podcast. I don't know how often I will actually listen to podcasts, but I did subscribe to several in my Google Reader. Maybe I can try playing them in the background while I do other work and see if that works better for me!

Thing #16 - LibraryThing

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I have always intended to catalog my seemingly endless collection of books. In fact, it is even one of the things on my 30 before 30 list to accomplish! While I have the best of intentions, short of creating an Excel worksheet, I wasn't quite sure how to approach such a daunting task. It appears that LibraryThing is the answer to that question! It was very easy to get signed up and even easier to search by author, title, or ISBN number and simply click on the link to add it to my collection! I only added about 5 books just to start with, and it immediately gave me recommendations to other books I might enjoy. This will be a valuable tool when I want to give students new reading suggestions based on books THEY enjoy!

While it will still be a labor intensive project to get ALL of my books cataloged (I am sure many other language arts teachers will have this same problem - SO MANY BOOKS!), at least I now have a resource to make the task quicker and more efficient (plus easy to update)!

Thing #15 - Delicious!

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Where has this site been all my life? At least I am only going into my 2nd year of teaching and can use this resource to my full advantage from this point on! I can't wait to get back to my school computer so I can upload my bookmarks... I have TONS that I try and organize into Bookmark folders as best I can, but it's pretty ridiculous. With Delicious, I have all of my bookmarks saved in one place and can access these amazing sites whether I am sitting behind my school computer or not!


Delicious actually came in very handy this week in my Training course that I am taking to teach Pre-Ap English next year. We are interacting with the training website, so many of us have our laptops out to use. There have been several occasions when a colleague would suggest a site and the instructor would put it on the board while everyone scrambles to jot down the web address. Instead, I simply pulled up the website and hit the "save on delicious" button... DONE! Website saved for later use. It is quick, efficient, and it makes an OCD girl like my very happy. :)


My Delicious Account

Thing #7a

I am definitely a Pinterest enthusiast (that's the nice way that I like to put it - although my husband would argue "obsessive" better describes my Pinterest habit). So when I came across another one of Vickey Davis' amazing posts in my reader titled, Pinterest Resources for Educators, my heart did a little happy dance. :) I have mostly used Pinterest for home decor inspiration, recipe ideas, and photography ideas in the past, but I was missing out on a whole other side to this site! Through her post, I was directed to other Pinterest lovers who pin educational blogs, resources, and even lesson plans that I could browse through! Love it!

Thing #14 - Discovering Web 2.0

I was pretty pleased to scroll through the list of Web 2.0 tools and find that I was familiar with several! I LOVED Picnik (since I also use Picasa) and was really sad to see it go (April 19th of this year, Google shut it down)! It was a great site to customize photos, add filters and text, and share photos (think of Instagram, except for your browser instead of your phone). I also played around a bit with Wordle! I have actually heard fellow teachers refer to a "wordle" and felt silly that I didn't know what it was! Now I do! I loved that not only could I create my own, I could save it to a gallery, share it with friends, and view other people's creations as well! JigZone was also so much fun!! I loved being able to upload my own photos and turn them into a puzzle! I was even able to take a photo of my nephew and I, turn it into a "photo postcard" for him, and them email it to him for him to open and complete on his birthday yesterday! How cool is that? You can even compete with other users to see who can complete a puzzle the fastest! It's obvious just looking at this small list that there are so many ways that Web 2.0 can benefit me personally AND professionally!

Thing #13 - Image Generator

These image generator and mash-ups sites can be lots of fun to play with! In addition to this post, you can check out my Thing #11 post for a couple more that I made using Spell with Flickr and Mosaic Maker. 


I also had some fun with this Sign Generator website!

I can see using sites like these to personalize my lessons and to make them fun and visually engaging! I am sure my students would enjoy being able to create things like this as well! 

At Image Chef, I was able to take a quote from my wall at home, "Music expresses the joy of the soul" and turn it into the image below! The possibilities are endless!

Thing #12 - The Wonder of Reading

I created my slideshow using Flickr photos of READERS. I wanted to show that with reading, there are no limits to who, what, where, when, or how it's done. JUST READ! 

I humbly present to you, "The Wonder of Reading".

Make your own slide show at Animoto.

Photo Credits:

Janchan

Saikiishiki

Carolyn Hampton

Pichead

Fer Gregory

Paul Ngan

SuperPipo2010

Emily Golitzin

CelesteRC

ronaldo_f_cabuhat

Thing #11 - Flickr and Photo Sharing

                                       

            

...and photographers unite! While I do not have much experience with Flickr, photo-sharing is not a new concept to me. In the past, I have used PhotoBucket to view and share photos and currently use Google's Picasa to share and tag photos. I did enjoy playing around on Flickr, though. The above image was created using Spell with Flickr and the one below was generated using my own photos and the Mosaic Maker.

As an English teacher who hopes to instill my personal love of reading to ALL my students, I searched "reading" on Flickr and found some lovely images! Here are a couple that I enjoyed:

MintLips

Saezuru

Thing #10 - CC: Confusing Copyrights??

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Really, it stands for Creative Commons. Confession time: Before today, I knew absolutely nothing about Creative Commons. I have honestly never noticed the logo on any website I have visited. I would suppose that's pretty bad news coming from an educator and a blogger that often uses free images in my posts. Well, consider me educated! Although it is still a bit confusing to me, at least I have a place to access the information. And look, here's another great example of how the internet can work for you if you know how to use it properly!

Since I have yet to incorporate technology the way I would like into my classroom, I can't say that up to this point that I have used audio and video clips in my teaching... but I definitely plan to. Since I DO often use images, however, the Flickr: Creative Commons section will be a good tool for me to use! When collaborating with other teachers, so many things get passed around that were created by colleagues, found on the internet, tweaked by someone else, and then it eventually makes its way to me. I can see how it can be difficult to track the original document and give them proper credit. While the concept of what is allowed under copyright is still confusing to me (I consider the fact that I can barely understand it a HUGE negative), having a place to access the information and keep me in line is a huge relief. It isn't something I want to stress over as a teacher (I have plenty other things on my plate that accomplish that), but knowing is half the battle. :)

Thing #9 - My Wiki Page!

Go check it out over here!

Thing #8 - Wiki Wiki

After viewing the YouTube Wiki video, I was pretty excited about the possibilities. I even emailed a girlfriend about it because a crew of us are going camping later this summer and  the chain of incessant emails had already begun!


I have to admit, though, after scrolling through almost every wiki listed, I was almost disappointed. Many of them had not been updated in awhile. On some of them, while the topic sounded interesting, the Wiki itself fell short. Visually, I wasn't attracted to many of them at all. I guess I was expecting more links, photos, or other elements to keep a reader's attention. If/when I try out a Wiki in my classroom, I will have to keep these things in mind!


I did enjoy several of the concepts addressed in these Wikis, though. For example, my favorite of all the ones listed is definitely The Great Debate 2008. It was organized very well, and I love the idea of having a single forum where students can face-off on controversial issues. The Flat World 1000 Tales Project had potential as well - I like the idea of giving a single prompt to my students and allowing them to use it as a springboard to develop their creative writing skills. The concept of the Thousands Project is intriguing - what a great way to show students the far-reaching impact of the internet! How cool would it be for my students to get feedback on their work from international students??


Overall, Vickey Davis' Wiki post and all of her links within were probably the most inspiring. Hopefully by the end of this course I will feel more comfortable with wikis and can explore the possibility of creating one for my classroom!

Thing #7 - Questions? Comments? Anyone?

As an avid personal blogger, logging into my dashboard and finding new comments just makes my day! To me, it shows that people not only read what I have to say, but sometimes it resonates enough with them to speak their piece in response. Blogging is about building an online community, and "neighbors" talk to each other. Commenting on each other's blogs is just another form of collaborating with peers and colleagues, which is a very important part of growing and learning!

I also HAVE to share the post I came across while commenting on a few blogs. If you don't follow CoolCatTeacher's blog, go there NOW! She has great posts and her post on 10 Ways to be Terrible Teacher is a great reminder for us all. Some of the "ways" may be hard for you to hear, but they are all TRUTH!!

Thing #6 - To blog or not to blog?

How appropriate that one of the first articles in my Google Reader this morning was titled, "How to Start an Amazing Class Blog", considering I was pondering this very issue in my Thing #4 post! I really do love that I now have this wealth of information at my fingertips that I can organize into one place. I am sure that the more blogs I follow, the more intimidating the Reader can become (if I allow it), but for now it is exactly what I need!

One thing that really stood out to me in this article is the fact that they address the issue I think most of us are struggling with... how do I find time to make a class blog work with everything else I have to do? According to the writers at LearnBoost, for all the reasons you can come up with NOT to start a class blog, it is for those very same reasons that you SHOULD! By putting more and more of the administrative tasks online, it allows me as a teacher to spend more time engaging my students, connecting with parents, and creating meaningful lessons. Sure, there is a learning curve, but if I can overcome that then blogging can only help me!

Thing #5 - 9 Ways to Assess...

...WITHOUT standardized testing.


On the heels of our first year with the STAAR test, I found this article on Tech Learning to be quite interesting. While there are many arguments for and against standardized testing, I think it is still important to find new and creative ways to assess our student's understanding. I believe this goes hand in hand with technology. 


One of the 9 ways mentioned in this article is using a "Badges and Points" system similar to Foursquare. Points would be awarded when an activity is completed and badges awarded to students who excel in the activity. This reminded me of an article I recently read where a teacher turned his sixth grade classroom into a role-playing game, complete with experience points, achievements, and level-ups based on classroom assignments. He was amazed at the excitement it started with his kids. He had an overwhelming amount of students turning in OPTIONAL written essays for experience points and students who never spoke in class volunteering in order to gain achievements. It gave the teacher more opportunities to assess learning, and engaged his students in a way that he had never seen before!


While something like that may not be feasible for me with 147 students versus his 25, the idea of finding alternative ways to assess understanding and get kids excited about school through technology is important. I still think standardized testing has it's place in education, but that alone is not enough to engage and understand our current students today. 

Thing #4 - Reading!

It's easy to lose yourself in these blogs... a good comment from a reader sends me looking for their blog to read more about them, which links me to another blog they follow, and the next thing I know I have been surfing the Blogger net for hours! I spent most of my time over  here reading about why this particular teacher doesn't assign homework. The comment feed was AMAZING! I love how such a controversial subject can spur discussions like this online and can direct me to other "like" thinkers. We learn from each other, and doing that in the blogosphere is a pretty cool thing. 


I also spent some time looking at Patrick's blog. As an avid personal blogger, I am very interested in how my students would benefit from being able to express themselves in this type of forum, as well as comment on each other's writing. I know it would also give me the opportunity to give feedback to my students directly, which is very exciting to me! It is so difficult to give one-on-one feedback to my students about their writing with 30+ kids in a 50-minute class period. Having 147 students to work with becomes much easier when their newest writing pops up in my Reader to view whether they are sitting in my classroom at that moment or not.

Thing #2 - Why Web 2.0?

As a new (and relatively young??) teacher, I have all these hopes and dreams of a dynamic classroom that uses technology to engage students. Yet as I reflect on this past year (my first year of teaching), I see that in many ways I am far behind on the technology train concerning my classroom. Personally, I use a smartphone to do MOST of my social interaction (including texting, facebook, twitter, and instagram). I have a family blog that I enjoying sharing recipes and photos to, and I also use Google Reader to follow other blogs of similar interest. I KNOW that I have the potential to use technology in my classroom in a similar way, and my goal throughout this course it to do just that... find ways to engage my kids and figure out the most effective way to IMPLEMENT it in my classroom THIS FALL.

Reading the article by Warlick made me feel like my own classroom environment is archaic! Whether teachers are ready to jump on the wagon or not, technology continues to grow at a rapid rate. Our kids grow right along with it, and in order to give them the opportunities they need, I need to be a learner on my own. I need to commit to do the research, the extra work, and the extra planning it will take to flip my classroom into the tech-savvy place it should be in 2012. :) I know it will be a journey that takes patience and determination, but it should be a fun one!

Thing #1 - Lifelong Learning...

• Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your Learning 2.0 experience?

The most challenging habit for me will probably be using technology to my advantage. As much as I would like to think that I up to par with advances in technology, I am obviously a little more behind than I had originally thought. This is exactly why I am taking this course, though! I have no problems asking questions and trying to find the answer, so I just need to commit to using technology to my advantage and not let it frustrate me!

I also will need to remember to view problems as challenges. I have to admit that frustration has really been the name of the game with me, especially this past year in my own classroom. I felt that every time I tried to incorporate technology and bring the laptops into the classroom, I dealt with more problems and headaches than anything (the kids were pretty frustrated as well). My goal is to find ways for technology to make our work more effective, efficient, and engaging instead of shaking my head and walking away. :)

• Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for you as a lifelong learner?
  
  I believe it will be easiest for me accept responsibility for my own learning. As a lifelong learner, I must have the desire, passion, and dedication to continue to better myself and absorb knowledge. Without that, I cannot teach and engage my students in a way that will make them successful in life. With an online, self-paced course, it can be easy to procrastinate, but I know that I will only take away from this course that which I am willing to put into it. As long as my objective is to do my best and LEARN things that I can incorporate into my own classroom, I will stay focused.
• Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why?
  
  The most important thing for me to remember as I work through this course is to have confidence in myself so that I can teach and mentor others. I have a tendency to feel a confidence in front of my students that sometimes eludes me in the company of colleagues and peers. I need to remember that as I learn, I am bound to come across questions and issues that others share and they may be able to benefit from my input.