Thing 4

explain why commenting helps create a sense of community and interaction
discuss two other points from the readings about commenting that you found important
give the names of the seven blogs (5 from our group + 2 others of your choice) you selected to read and comment on and tell why you selected them
discuss the comments that you chose to make and why you made them

I posted to Kathleen's Blog because I really liked what she had to say about MySpace. http://khamiltoniskrunk.blogspot.com/

I liked Learning Something News wiki and just wanted to encourage her with her cookbook.

Cricket's Corner gave some great websites to visit.

Parmenter's Place made me feel like I'd almost written it, it was so much like my own expierience.

Finally, I looked at teachergirls thoughts and shared some ideas on how to use a blog for the next year.

My favorite blog that I started looking into was The Movie Blog.com. I really enjoyed reading what the news in the entertainment world was. I commented on a couple of things about the Harry Potter the transition from books to movie. It drives me crazy when movie makers change the plotline of a great book to make a mediocre movie.

I've seen many other websites, but for the most part, I have avoided posting recently. Several years ago, the United States Figure Skating Association had a website with boards, similar to a Ning or the postings on a blog. I learned that often my opinions are not valued by others as much as they are by mine.

Another site? (may not be a blog) is a multi user interactive site called Xauror.com.
It's also a Harry Potter site, devoted to role-playing and addictive gaming.

Well, Now, I believe I really am finished.

Summary

I guess my favorite thing of all was animoto, turning my photos into a film. I really learned so much throughout the program. It's hard to choose just one thing when we learned so very much. I love it.

The outcomes were amazing. I love to learn. I've often said that if I could get paid for it, I'd be a full time student. One of the things I love about Mesquite is the concerted effort the district makes to help us learn new things.

I thought I was pretty technologically savvy. Wow, was I surprised. I guess it's just one more reminder that Mark Twain was right. "The more I learn, the more I know there is more to learn." So, where do I sign up for more classes like this? Let's go.

As for what I'll implement, I can't wait to get together with the other teachers on my team and put together a team blog that enables us to communicate with parents, help kids with class work and create a wonderful community of learners. I'm also thinking that we could have a running slideshow of students at work and their final products. (Of course, we'll be careful not to show any confidential information.)I'm also going to incorporate some vocabulary building products to help out our ELLs. What an amazing way to make things work for kids!

Thanks so much for providing us all with this experience. I can't wait to see the next one.

Thing 23

On multiple occasions, the instructions have included information that this class was based on Web 2.0 43 Things or other attributions For example at the bottom of Thing 21 it refers to where information had previously been published. "(originally posted on Explore...Discover...Play: Learning 2.1 and used here under a Creative Commons license)"

There have been attributions telling where images were gleaned, where ideas were generated etc. throughout the class.

One thing I know for sure, as a teacher, I can use selected portions of a show, play, novel or website for the purposes of critique, parody, or instruction. I should give credit to the creator, though in incidental cases, it probably would not cause major issues if I forgot.

It seems like that's a pretty good summary.

Thing 23

I took the time to look up some podcasts. I am a huge fan of Harry Potter, although, frankly, I've lost some interest now that the books are all out. Still, I like to keep up with the wizarding world. In that light, I chose to visit Mugglecast. http://www.mugglenet.com/mugglecast/

I listened to a few of their early episodes and several of the most recent, and found it intelligent and thought provoking ideas about the books. It was like a book club online. They get silly sometimes, but they are just college kids.

I checked several of the directories and listened to a few other podcasts. This was the one that I found that really tweaked my interests. Honestly, I just don't know when I would find the time to listen to podcasts on a regular basis. In fact, that's the main problem I have with most of the "things". When do I have time to keep up with it all? There's just so much time in the school day. During the summer, I have trouble keeping up. How in the world can I keep up in the school year? I can't see myself listening regularly. I like the fact that muggle cast has a directory of their previous episodes so you can easily look back. That way, you can go back and listen to everything later.

I personally don't see myself podcasting, but I won't rule it out. I'm too opinionated. Most people wouldn't want to listen to me get on my soapbox. Although, come to think of it, people like Chris Matthews and Mark Levin have thousands of listeners on the radio everyday. =)

Thing #21

I loved Animoto. It was so easy to do and the results were beautiful. I'd like to also make a full length piece, but I'm too cheap. What a beautiful way to make a collage for a wedding or graduation party or evenn a baby shower.

I think it would be great to take portraits of influential Texans and have it to a Texas song. That would make a great intro to the year.

I can't wait.

Beauty of Creation

Thing # 20

Obviously, I'm a Harry Potter fan. I hate the movies most of the time because the are so off from the books. I still look forward to it everytime and I'm still disappointed in it everytime. Oh well, I'll survive.

I enjoyed exploring You Tube. I know there are a lot of things that aren't appropriate for school, but I'm also going to look for some information on Texas History and maybe even something to teach Government. I was thinking that I might be able to set up my own quick lesson summaries to video and then post it to a blog the students can access at home. It would be great to film how you work a math problem like the Common Craft guys do with the technology.

I'm loving it.

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Thing #17

Love the Del.icio.us site. What a great way to keep up with sites for your research? If I'm doing a project in class, I can bookmark 30 or 40 sites that I've already checked for accuracy. The kids can easily find the information.

I can also envision this as a great way to gather information for a webquest. What an amazing site! I can definitely see this as a huge help in a library setting or classroom setting. It allows for growth and kids working together. I love it.

Thing #19

I was far more impressed with Ning than MySpace. I thought it was so much easier to use. Maybe that's because I went straight to the 23 things website, so it was easier to work with and easy to sign up and work though. Also, it helped that I was able to automatically fall into a group of people to communicate with.

I looked into some of the other social networks and I love GoodReads and OpenSource Food. I think that Classroom 2.0 Ning will be the most influential for me. Now if only I can find one on how to teach TX History. I think starting a NIng of my own for TX History is a little beyond me this year, maybe next year.

I'm still not convinced I want to get into a regular social network, but I like the idea of learning communities online like the Ning we have and the Classroom 2.0.

I was thinking this might be even more effective than a blog for parent and student communication for next year. I think I'll talk to my team about it.

Thing #18

Well, I set up a MySpace account, but since I only know one other person who has a MySpace account, I don't have many people to network with yet. I looked at the games, music and entertainment groups. I even joined a few of the different groups and added my schools to my profile, so maybe people will find me.

I have to say I'm not much into MySpace, but I'm willing to give it a try. I've heard a lot of things that make me worry about it. I can see that it is necessary to watch your kids at all times if they are on there. There are so many things they can get into without even realizing it. I It would be very important to watch them and monitor their friends.

I can't figure out how to post a link to my profile, but my screenname is Skeeter89 if anyone wants to check me out.

I thought My Space was difficult to navigate and so much geared to the younger generation that I really didn't see a lot that I was interested in until I really started digging through the mounds of stuff. Not my favorite assignment of the course, but I survived it. I'm not sure I'll ever go back after this class is over.

Thing # 16

I chose a Google start page and spent probably 45 minutes reading from my widgets and completing the NY Times Crossword puzzle. That made it so much fun. I had a great time getting things to keep me informed about all the different news and entertainment. I'm getting movie reviews, games, and political news. I chose google because I knew I would be able to get everything I needed there.

I also like that I'm using the google calendar so that I can make it all work together hopefully. I'd like to be able to add my daily calendar to the igoogle page so that when I open my page it pulls it up with all the rest of the information.

I have honestly never been good at creating and following to do lists. I am more likely to just scribble a note later so I think maybe stickits would be best for me. I read through all the differnet websites and I thought lifehacker was interesting.

One of the websites mentioned something called chalksites and that looked great. I'd like the immediacy of contact and communication it would allow. I'm so looking forward to getting things ready for the year.

Thing #15

Well, I enjoyed adding to the WIKI, but I can see disadvantages. I wasn't aware that Wikipedia was a wiki. Well, I guess since I didn't know what a wiki was, it makes sense. However, with so many students having access to it, it could easily be changed to be, well, less than factual.

Still, I can see lots of opportunities. As I mentioned in the sandbox, you could use a wiki to do a class project where everyone contributes their own portion. I think this could be a very efficient way to jigsaw big projects too.

Thing #14

Well, Bubbl.us was very easy to use. It was even easy to import into the blog. I'm excited. I can see many ways to use this in the classroom.

Gliffy was quite a bit harder to use. In the first place, there are so many different ways to do it. There aren't open instructions, so I had a hard time figuring out how to make it work. I was going to use it to do a flow chart of my nursery organization, but it really was too much trouble to work with. It would be easier to do with a mindmap. The flowchart was to hard to manipulate.

I guess one thing that is really different was that you had to have a plan in place to do the flow chart, with the mind map, it was easy to do from the top of you head. In essence, I loved bubbl.us, but hated gliffy. Oh well, one by one we learn from the 23 things.

Thing 13

Thing 13

This  is my Zoho Writer examination.  I think it seems to be very easy to use and it might also be a good way to avoid students saving to the server.  I wonder do you save to this server or do you save to your own computer. 

I think I'll check.

 

Ahhh, it works.  Nice color choices.

 

I see it works well with pictures, hyperlinks and formulas.  It seems to me this would be helpful.  If you can save it to this server, open and create at home or at school.  It would allow so many kids to work at home and at school.  I like the idea of being able to use the presentation software too.  That way you don't have to worry about whether it works with various versions. 

 

I love this thing.  I think it will be very useful.

Thing #12

I looked at all of the tools and was fascinated by notebook and calendar. I think if we could figure out a way to make sure each entry in notebook was properly documented, it would be amazing. Imagine getting rid of all those foul notecards. As a student I was never able to keep up with them all and if I kept up with them couldn't remember where I got the information. This would enable us to keep up with all the information in one place and figure out where it was.

I love calendar. I was thinking I might make a calendar public to publish homework for my team this year. That might enable kids to be able to get online and find out what the work was. It could also help warn them about projects etc. I think it's a wonderful idea. Now, I wouldn't want my personal calendar public, but a homework calendar. That sounds like a great idea. I wonder if you could merge several public calendars? For example, if all five teachers on my team published one, could kids merge the info on to one calendar?

If I was principal, I'd insist on having the school calendar done here to keep things from conflicting. What a wonderful tool!

Thing #11

Honestly, finding blogs on things I think were interesting was not as easy as I fought. I was surprised to find there wasn't much available on Harry Potter any more. There's not a This day in History site, that I could find again. I'd like to find something on teaching TX History. Some daily hints on using HOTS, things like that.

I tried bloglines search tool and technorati. I thought the technorati site was interesting. It had a lot of sites listed anyway. I may go back and look at feedster and some other sites. They were both pretty easy to use. I was shocked at how much there was on knitting.

There are a lot of unusual sites. Some seem to be usesless and others seem really great. I can see where blogs might cause confusion for students who have yet to learn to evaluate the validity of information and the difference between facts and opinions. It would require us to really focus on teaching students to evaluate sites.

There's so much potential in blogging. I can imagine setting up a blog site for my class. It might be a great way to get interaction.

Thing #10

Ok, this is a really cool way to keep up with things. I signed up for quotes of the day, Dilbert strips, About Cats, always learning and bloglines news. I tried to set up a Today in History, but I'm going to have to find it again.

I think this could be helpful in my personal life to keep up with things and I can see using the quotes in my classroom. I love using quotes as sponge activities to get kids thinking. I don't really see myself using it a lot in the classroom though unless I can find a blog on TX History. One thing I didn't see anywhere was if you can respond to the posts that you pick up in your e-mail without going to the website.

I like that the RSS allows you to just read what's new instead of digging through the tons of blogs out there. If there are indeed 50 million + blogs, even if I only choose 1 in 1 million I'd never be able to keep up. This allows you to just keep up with the updates.

Back when I was a figure skating fanatic, I would have loved this to keep up with all the latest in skating news.

I don't think I'm quite up to setting up a public page yet. Maybe some day, but not quite yet.