Thing #23: Summarize Your Thoughts

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I enjoyed playing with PhotoStory, Rollyo, Wikis, online image generators, and mashups.

1. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

This program has helped me to realize that I am capable of learning about and actually using cool programs and tools of the internet for my personal life and for my professional life as a teacher.

1. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I did not expect to want to bring blogs into my classroom, but I am determined to bring more technology into my language arts class. Students will have tons of fun and probably not even realize how hard they are working!

1. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I really can't think of much; you guys did a great job providing us with videos and other web resources to explain each thing. I especially loved the videos from the Common Craft guys!

1. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

Yes, I would probably participate. I enjoyed the fact that I could work on this program from home over the summer, even after having a baby!

1. 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?

I explored 23 "things," but I left with a million ideas to use in my classroom!

Thing #22: Nings

I'm glad that I read the 7 Things You Need to Know About Ning because I went into this thinking that a Ning and a Wiki were the same thing. Obviously, they are not! I had a little bit of experience with a Ning when Cheryl had HawkSpace up at SWMS for students to talk about books. I explored some of Ning in Education and read a discussion about Nings in middle school. I would use a private Ning in my language arts classroom to have students discuss books and characters. However, I will be teaching sixth grade this next year. One of the posters on the Ning asked how to get around COPA as most of the students are under 12 years old, and I know that with HawkSpace, students had to be at least 14 to join. Some of the other posters on that particular discussion mentioned using other platforms like Moodle, but maybe it is best to just stick with a blog and Wiki for my younger students.

Thing #21: Podcasts and Videocasts

I like playing with PhotoStory! I had taken a class on how to use this back in September of last year and had hoped to incorporate it into my curriculum while working on poetry with my students, but I was advised to work on other projects and therefore didn't get to use it with my students. :( I'm determined to get it in this next school year though. I think it would be great for the students to use for short stories, poetry, songs, etc. Here is a PhotoStory that I made with pictures of my son, Trip.

Embedding videos

Let's try to embed a YouTube video...

Hmmm...for some reason, when I view my blog on Internet Explorer, the videos work! When I view my blog on Google Chrome, they do not play at all.

Thing #20: YouTube, TeacherTube, and Zamzar

I thought that I would have a lot of fun with this thing, but I was actually a little aggravated while searching for videos, especially on TeacherTube. I would really like to incorporate educational videos into my classroom. This past year, I used the Discovery United Streaming videos while working on our Holocaust project. I thought it was great a great resource that is already in the district. It also was very easy to search for videos that were actually relevant. I used Blinkx to search also, but it brought up the most random videos ever, so I don't think I will try using it again. I guess I'll just give it time when searching for videos on TeacherTube and YouTube. Here are some videos that I liked from TeacherTube:

This one is inspiring for teachers who want to use blogs in the classroom:

This is one that I could use to inspire students to write:

Okay, something is not going right when I embed these videos. I copied the code for the embeddable player and pasted it in the Edit Html portion of my post. What else should I try?

Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards

I enjoyed exploring this thing. Some of the sites were not free, but they sound like they would be incredibly useful. Mango would be great for me to learn (or re-learn) conversational Spanish in order to better communicate with some of my students and their parents. I know that there are free podcasts available on iTunes, so I may try those instead. Also, Backpack looked really neat and would be great to use with a team of teachers. You could keep all of your meetings, schedules, documents, and reports in one place for the team to view and use instead of having to e-mail or call each other.

I currently use Twitter as a status updater. I have been on Facebook for years to keep up with friends from elementary, high school, college, and work. My husband set up a profile for me on Linked In, but I have never really used it. He tells me that it is more like a professional Facebook to use to network. Also, I just used Zillow yesterday after my mom told me about it. It was neat to be able to see what your house and others in the neighborhood were being appraised for.

Several of the resources that we have already played with in 23 Things made the list. However, I explored three others that could be beneficial to my own needs. I liked .docstoc a lot. I will definitely use this in my classroom next year. I was able to find documents for character analysis, plot diagram, and a really helpful document with writing prompts- 501 to be exact! Lulu was another site that I visited. There you can create and publish your own books of writing or photos and then sell them! My husband's Memaw and I have been working for a few years on a book that she wrote about the family's history. I have edited it for her, but she has just kept it sitting on a cd. I can use Lulu to print up her book and distributed among the relatives. The last site that I visited that is helpful to me personally is MothersClick which I can use for my new parenting needs.

Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

I played with Google Docs in Thing #7 and didn't really enjoy it at the time. Now that I took some time to play around with it, I like it a little bit more. I also played around with Open Office Writer. It is fairly easy to use, and it had a lot of neat features that I don't think you can use on Microsoft Word unless you know all of the secrets. For example, I was able to easily draw pictures and add symbols to my document. (I'm sure you can do that on Word, but I just have never figured it out after years of use!)

I really don't see too many disadvantages to either platform other than the fact that you may have to take some time to explore and use tutorials to create documents, drawings, spreadsheets, etc. I think there are many advantages to these platforms:

* You can send people to a link of a document or presentation instead of having to remember to attach the document to an e-mail.

* Ease of use

* You don't have to spend outrageous amounts of money on Microsoft Office.

* People who don't have Microsoft Office (or maybe have outdated versions) can view your documents and presentations. This is especially helpful in my situation. Many of my students have a computer or access to a computer, but they do not all have the Microsoft Office suite, as it is very costly. They can create documents or view documents from me without having to purchase expensive software.

Here is the very basic presentation that I made using Google Docs.