Thing #23!

YIPPEE!!!! I am at Thing 23! What an adventure!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
My favorite things through this experience were:Google reader, wikis, creating a blog, and learning about Library Thing - I love that!!!!!
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I have felt rather guilty the past year or so because I knew there was so much I DIDN'T know about technology! This was a great way to push myself to learn some new things in an area that is a bit overwhelming to me.
Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I was amazed at how much I could use personally! I use Google reader EVERY day now and had so much fun creating a wiki for a book club that I love.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I think this was a great program - very organized!!!! At times I needed help with a few things, and luckily I have a fabulous librarian that would email me/call me over the summer to lend support! It was A LOT to learn, so maybe having "mini sessions"? All in all - I am amazed at how you put this together!
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? YES!
How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities? Challenging, rewarding and applicable!

Thing #22

I spent some time on the Teacher Ning - and again I was amazed at how much teacher chatting is going on out there in cyber world! I thought it was interesting to "peek in"and see what others are thinking (and venting) about!
One benefit of Nings, as mentioned in the article, was that it looks like a way for educators to communicate with students, and students with students, in a more "business related" fashion. I know some teachers that have MySpace and Facebook accounts that they invite their students to view and I've always felt a bit uncomfortable with that...it seems a little too personal...although I do believe that this is the way kids are communicating nowadays and maybe Ning is a way for us to meet them where they are, without getting too personal. Hmmm...will have to continue thinking on that one!

Thing #21

Ok - I am going to come back to this one! I have emailed my super fabulous librarian and she is sending help!

More later... Here we go! My LMS sent me information on photo story and it was pretty easy after that! However, I don't have a microphone for my computer so I am not sure you will be able to hear my voice! Which may NOT be a bad thing!!!


OOPS - well it looks like it will not let me upload my video! It goes through the motions and then gives me a message to contact "support"!

Thing #20

I had lots of fun with YouTube and TeacherTube. I had been introduced to YouTube by friends showing me silly things on the site, but I didn't even know there was TeacherTube! There were lots of neat things that I could see using with my kiddos - especially a cute dinosaur project that a 2nd grade class has created. I love the idea of having all of these new ways in which kids can share their knowledge with the world! Wow! I love using video to teach. I know, I know...kids spend too much time in front of tvs as it is, but truly, short videos can be very effective! Probably because it is a familiar format! Personally, my favorite things in this technology adventure have been those videos that explain the new technology simply. I think they are called common craft videos. In any case - I love them and can understand them! I think kids feel the same way when we take a difficult concept and present it in a way that is familiar and friendly. This is just a silly Muppet's video. I loved the Muppets as a kid and who can resist the vocal stylings of the Swedish Chef?

Thing #19

This was an interesting search! I spent the majority of my time at Craigslist and Lulu but I also LOVE that there was a Spanishpod site where you could learn Spanish online, for free and at your own pace! I really have no more excuses now for not learning this...
In any case, I looked at Craigslist simply because I had heard about it but wasn't quite sure what it was all about. It was very easy to use and is a great tool to find local listings for all sorts of things in a variety of cities. I loved that is was very user friendly. They also had a link to the "Best Of" Craigslist which was hilarious, but certainly not appropriate content for students! Lulu was a great site in which you can publish your work and then sell it online! After taking NJWP training a few years ago, I remain mindful of the need to find creative ways for my students to be able to publish and share their work. This is a great tool for writers to get professional looking published works. I am not sure how user friendly it is, but it appeared to be fairly simple. Great activity!

Thing #18

Ahhh...Google to the rescue! For some reason (I am sure it is just the format) all things Google seem so much easier for me to understand! I played around with Googledocs. I wasn't quite sure why one would need these products if you had the good old Microsoft Office Suite, however I read several of the reviews and it became clearer! I guess the obvious advantage is it is free! I do get frustrated that Microsoft (and other software companies) update and change their products every year or so and you are forced to buy the new product which does not seem to "read" or be compatible with the older product. The online tools seem to be updated instantly without one having to make any more purchases. Another advantage is that it is all online - so there is no need to worry about storage issues or access from other computers. To be able to access your work from anyplace and anytime seems to be a recurring theme with all of these new online tools. Also, it appears from reading the reviews that folks love being able to read, publish and edit their docs in "real time" - I can certainly see it being nice for documents to be able to be shared easily on the web versus trying to email everything. These are a great alternative.

Thing #17

All I can say is, "huh?" I don't understand how to actually use Rollyo. I understand the concept of creating your own search engine and I even created my own account and added some other folks' searchrolls into mine, but I can not figure out how to actually use them or how to link this to my blog. I am so confused. I searched other people's blogs to see what they did fot this posting but am still at a loss...any ideas?

Thing #16

WOW! Wikis are pretty easy! I was amazed at how simple it was to edit and save on the sbisd sandbox wiki! I love the idea of using these to coordinate things with a group of people! So many times my email mailbox gets filled up with 10,000 forwarded email chains - especially when it is just my family trying to all get together for dinner!!! It seems a bit silly to create an entire website just to avoid a bunch of forwarded emails back and forth...but then again it is so much easier! It would be great for team planning - especially when we are planning big events, field trips, and units of study. I think kids would love it - though I am not sure how exactly it would work with little guys...any ideas?

Thing #15

I tend to be old fashioned and the whole Library 2.0 thing freaks me out a bit. I imagine walking into a library without books and that completely sends me over the edge. I'm just getting over the loss of the card catalog. However, knowing that most of our young learners are much more technology savvy than I am, I do see the need for libraries and librarians to be able to assist them in navigating through all of the information and search engines that are out there. Honestly though, isn't this what librarians have ALWAYS done? We come to them with our questions and they help up to find the information we need - in whatever shape of form that may come in. So maybe this whole Library 2.0 thing, in its essence, isn't anything that good librarians haven't been doing for centuries. I did appreciate a point in one of the articles that warned against "technolust" - technology for technologies sake. I think we are very guilty of spending millions of dollars on programs and licenses that only a handful of folks really use and that may or may not truly impact student learning.

Thing #14

Technorati was fun to play around with...I continue to be amazed at the sheer mass of information on the web as well as all the varied ways to search and label it all! It is all a bit overwhelming. Yes, I can see how all of this can be wonderful and helpful, but I do think that we need to educate our students on how to be conscious consumers of information. Just because you find 100 blogs on something that you are researching doesn't mean all of that information is accurate or worthy. "Popular" sites/blogs are not necessarily accurate or more valuable that others and I think students tend to gravitate to the ones with the most traffic. Don't get me wrong - I think all of this free information is wonderful...we just need to be thoughtful as we discover it all.

Thing #13

At first I wasn't quite sure that I really needed a place to "house" all of my bookmarks, but after watching the commoncraft video I certainly began to see the light! What is nice is that I can access my bookmarked sites from any computer, anywhere. For now, I think this will be just a place for me to organize my sites and remember why I saved them! However, I can see this as being a great tool for teachers and students that are researching similar subjects. So many times when my team is planning we think, "Surely someone has already figured this stuff out!" ...and it would be great, especially within a district, for teachers to be able to share their favorite sites and online goodies.

Thing #12

I love manners! As I tell me students, "Manners are magical!" I find it so interesting that as we develop new ways of communicating, we have to learn new types of etiquette! After reading several of the posts on commenting, these two stick out in my mind. #1 - contribute to the conversation vs. just making a random "right on!" type comment. We are always trying to be specific in our praise to children and I think that this is just good practice anywhere. It also raises the level of communication. The second point was in being respectful (or not being a Darth Commenter). Blogging, email and texting can be so quick that we sometimes write things without taking a second to reread our words before hitting send. I've done this in my own blog posts and had to go back and rewrite once I see how it looks on the blog page!
For my 2 outside comments, I have been commenting this summer on several blogs that I have found listed on friend's blogs. One is by a mom who does these great story time activities with her kids and the other is an old colleague that I had lost touch with over the years. It certainly can be a small cyber world sometimes!

Thing #11

This is by far my favorite thing of all of things thus far!!! This is just too cool! I've noticed those neat lists of book covers on some of my friends blogs and never knew what they were all about. I will use this ALL THE TIME. First of all, I have been trying to record all the books that I have read for the last few years - but I sometimes forget authors or what the books were even about as many of them I borrowed from friends or libraries. This is much better and I love that they show you the books with the covers. I also love that you can see how many other people have read the same book and see what they think about it...now I do that by just reading reviews on Amazon, but this is much better. I also love that you can get suggestions for other books you might like! This is the best!

Thing #10

Hmmm...it seems I totally forgot how to add a picture to a blog posting!!! Oh well - I guess messing things up and learning how to fix them is all part of this process. These are really cute...I can see kids LOVING these cartoons as well as making their own magazine covers, signs, etc. I used www.comicstripgenerator.com and it was fairly simple, even for me!

Thing #9

WOW - Today was a little overwhelming. I THOUGHT I understood how to import RSS feeds, but I am still having difficulty unless it has one of those big RSS buttons on the site!
In any case, I did find some challenging and interesting information on today's treasure hunt!
* The easiest ways to find feeds was through using the easiest search tools! For me this was Google Blog search. I think it was easy for me because the format was familiar. Once I found a blog I liked, I would search all fo the blogs that were linked to that site and so on...that can keep you busy for quite some time!
* The School Library Blogs by Superglu was a little confusing for me...I wasn't sure if this was just a list of blogs or if there was a search option available that I was just not seeing. I really liked the edublog award winners, but again, I couldn't figure out how to search for other blogs from there. Obviously, I am missing something here! I will check with my school librarian! She knows all of this good stuff!
*I did find some blogs that I absolutely loved, and that I believe will be useful including:"Mr. Kindergarten", "Kindergarten Tales" and my favorite name for a blog, "Kindergarten Chaos: because blogging is cheaper than therapy". I love these sites because the teachers have great ideas but also are very real in their approaches. They are also just hilarious!
*Another search tool/site that I really liked was called "clairvoy". It had all kinds of teacher blogs including one called "Teacher Questions and Answers" in which teachers can write in questions for answers from other teachers. A little teacher "Dear Abby" interactive sort of thing. I love this!!!
One news feed that really challenged me was the edublog's winner for most influential post titled, "Is it okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher?" This was a very challenging and thought provoking article! It certainly challenged me in a new way!

Thing # 8 - Readers

I love Google Reader!!! I love it for the same reason I love my DVR - I can skip through things quickly and avoid all the advertisements! I appreciated the "Discover" section on Google Reader as it allowed me to search blogs and websites and subscribe to them quickly. It was also nice to learn that you could subscribe to certain sections on websites, versus the entire website. For instance, on most of the news websites you could subsribe to just the articles on politics, or sports, or whatever interests you.

Personally, I love the reader as it allows me to skim things quickly. It will also help me to stay focused on what is important to me versus searching a site at random. Which leads me to question #3!

I can see libraries and classrooms using readers for all sorts of things! One of the greatest challenges for students (myself included) is learning how to search effectively for information and knowing what information is true, accurate and useful. I can envision setting up a reader based on a certain topic or subject area (i.e. information on the upcoming election) that students and teachers could use to scan through the latest information from a variety of quality sites that are preselected by a librarian or media expert. I also think readers would be especially helpful for those students that are easily distracted. I know that pop-ups and advertisements drive me bananas (and are often a little dodgy) and I can imagine them being a serious distraction for some students.

By the way - I never knew that these things were out there in cyberland! How do you find about all of these savvy things???

Thing #7 - Google

I thought I was fairly Google savvy, but I had no idea that Google had all of this cool stuff! I spent most of my time with Google calendar, Google docs and Google notebook. I LOVE the calendar!!! I am not making it public as it is not very exciting but I am planning on using it! It would be great for older students to map out assignments and all of their various activities. I can see myself using Google notebook as a place to record and organize all of the various bits of cool things I find on the internet in the summer, but can never relocate once I am back at school and actually need it. I always find fun games, pictures and songs but ususally I just keep surfing and forget to print them out or bookmark them. Good stuff.

Thing #6 - Mash ups

These things are really neat! At first all I could think about were the many and varied opportunities to make silly gifts for my friends! Especially the "make your own motivational poster" website! That being said, all of the different ways to play with media would be a virtual dreamland for some students! Forget the old school dioramas - kids could make their own magazine covers, puzzles and virtual trips as culminating activities to showcase their new learning. For those students that struggle with writing, I love the idea of making a mosaic of pictures to express their ideas and to compliment oral presentations. Too cool! I also loved the Yahoo! Trips website in which you can use pictures of locations from Flickr to create a trip journal. My student teacher from this past year is going to study abroad and I can see this as a great tool for her to communicate with our class and her family about her adventures. Mashups are smashing!

Thing #5 - Flickr

Once again, I must say that I am so very happy that this course is being offered in the summer! As was true with the Avatars, I have spent entirely too much time looking at pictures on Flickr. One thing is for sure, I am going to need lots of more time learning how to refine my searches! I began looking for pictures of different types of homes and shelters, as we do a big unit on "wants and needs" and "homes". It is difficult for the kids to imagine different forms of shelter and having pictures of various types of structures would be great! I found some cool igloos that the kids would love! However, searching did take me a good deal of time, and I still need some practice on how to access different groups and use tabs. I ended up with this picture as I have the 4th of the July in my mind and we do a study on American symbols at the beginning of the school year. After learning about the flag, the kids seem to find it EVERYWHERE! I also thought this little pup was too cute not to post. By the way, it drives me nuts that Flickr is not spelled "Flicker". Oh well.

Thing #4

My blog is officially registered and I am ready to play! Yippee! I am amazed at how organized all of this is! You go kickball captains! :)

Thing #3

Well, I did it! This is certainly the most productive thing I have done this summer! Plus, my avatar is much cuter than me! I am glad that I am doing this in the summer - which allowed me to change my avatar clothing and backgrounds 6000 times. If I had attempted this in the school year I would certainly not have discovered all the cute accessories! :)

Thing #2

For me, the easiset Lifelong Learning Habit is "play". I love to play, read and be with friends! THe most difficult is "view problems as challenges". For instance, when I get a flat tire, I could care less about being a lifelong learner and learning how to change a tire in the rain on the interstate. All I care about is how fast AAA can get to me!