Thing 23 – Where Do We Go From Here?

The overall course experience for me has been one of great discovery. Many skills were reinforced and many new things learned along the way. When it comes to Web 2.0 and 21^st century learning it is important to understand that not everything can be mastered and usually our students will be more adept than we are.  However we don’t need to be masters, just willing to participate and learn along with our students.

The next step is to just continue learning and incorporating the ever-changing technologies into our instruction and embrace the literacies that our students are using outside the classroom. The challenge is to balance this with the foundational learning needed and figuring out how to integrate the two. You can’t just use technology for technology’s sake, but at the same time you can’t ignore its power in today’s world and exclude from instruction. Educators have always and will always face challenges when it comes to best practices in this classroom. We owe it to ourselves and our students to be a part of this current learning shift and be relevant, in order to prepare them for a future that we cannot even imagine.

Thing 22

Classroom 2.0 was also something new to me. I checked out the Forum and Groups tabs and searched around but didn’t really find anything that I connected with. However the Media/Video tab was the place where I struck gold. I found several videos that inspired me. They gave me ideas for projects I could use in my class. I definitely plan to go back and do some more searching at this site.

Okay so now on to “Ning”. I have been seeing Ning everywhere and just really didn’t get it and didn’t want to take the time to get it. I thought, “Oh one more thing that I don’t have time for”. In November I went to the NCTE conference and kept seeing prompts to go to the NCTE Ning, which I ignored. Now thanks to this class I know what a Ning is. I actually went and explored the NCTE Ning. I get it now. Being part of a Ning specific to your interest would really help to filter out some of the information overload and put you in touch with those people that have your same interests. Who knows? I may actually find a group I want to contribute to and participate in. I certainly plan to explore that possibility. Saw some really interesting ones when exploring.

Thing 21

Pageflakes is something I have not heard of. One of the things I did like was the one-stop-shopping feature of being able to put my frequently used sites, podcasts, and RSS feeds on one page. I can definitely see applications both personally and professionally using Pageflakes. There is some redundancy with my blog (the one I use in my class, not my K12learning 20 one) and my tool bar and my dashboard on my laptop. It would be nice to have a page with all my favorite stuff I could access from any computer. I have customized my laptop tool bar and dashboard, but when I am somewhere else I detest having to search for a site that is normally available in one click on my laptop. For the classroom I can see various applications. We could just have a Pageflakes page to house all of our favorite sites. I could also see using a Pageflakes page to place items to be readily available for a particular project or theme. For example having a poetry page with favorite resources, sites, podcasts, videos, and RSS feeds. I think it would also be great for students to create their own Pageflakes page with resources they could use for school.

Thing 7C

Found a great site through my Google Reader: TED: Ideas worth spreading. The site states that it provides riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. There are all kinds of topics by people from all kinds of disciplines. I have listened to one on how creativity is being stifled in education and one by a woman with autism who had used the special gifts autism provided and overcome the challenges to be quite successful in life. I hope to be able to tap into more of these. It is nice you don’t have to have a ticket, drive anywhere, and you can leave when you want.

Thing 20

I use Google Docs routinely and have dozens of files. I love the collaborative aspect of Google Docs and how it allows more than one editor. This is so much easier when working with someone on a document and allows for fewer errors when editing. There is at least one big downside for me and that is when a Google document is transferred to another program like Word, often the formatting is so wacky it takes a little while to restore the document to a usable form. This also happens when transferring from Word to a Google doc. This formatting distortion also sometimes happens when I open an email attachment as a Google doc to view or print.

While I use the documents feature regularly I had never explored the spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, or forms. I normally just use Excel, Power Point, etc. However I can definitely see the potential for use when collaborating with others, especially with the spreadsheet. Of course we have seen this in action already through this class and the spreadsheet for documenting our progress.

Throughout this class I have used a Google doc to keep my notes and to write my posts before putting on my blog. So I have one document that houses the notes that I have been able to access from any computer, which has been quite handy. Regularly I use Google documents for creating lesson plans, rubrics, worksheets, etc. because I can create them at home on my laptop and then easily access at school, without having to email an attachment or use a flash drive. One idea I have for the future would be to create a spreadsheet with all the topics I try to cover in my class each year, for example, the different literary devices. Then I could check them off as I do them. I would collaborate with the writing/grammar teacher because on occasion we have both covered the same topic unknowingly.

Thing 19

I am getting ready to have my students write Mother’s Day poems. I really want a product that is more than just some rhyming couplets. I want them to come up with some creative rhyme schemes and to really develop the use of metaphor. So I am going to teach them about lyric poetry and I found some great videos to help me do this.

One is an example of lyric poetry which is a version of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Then I found a quick lesson about lyric poetry by Professor John Barrett and a clip on how to compose a song lyric (which is just a poem put to music). I also found some examples of mother’s day poems done by other sixth graders. I think these videos will really enhance this lesson. Wish me luck we are starting this on Monday!

A lesson on lyric poetry by Professor John Barrett

Thing 18

I really had a lot of fun doing my podcast. I recorded a legend about Iguacu Falls in Argentina. I plan to add music and photos, but I am still learning how to use Garage Band and it may take me some time. The plan is to use as a read aloud to start my class. I might also use as a model and then have my students create something similar with their favorite legend.

Thing 17

Okay, here goes. This is the lesson that I will have to push myself on to master. I have tried to embrace podcasting in various ways from personal (subscribing to NPR podcasts) to the classroom (using as a vehicle for teaching storytelling) and I have to admit I am not quite there. I still feel fuzzy and I am not comfortable with the process yet. I have an IPOD and an IPhone, and even though I have downloaded podcasts have as yet to listen. (Newbreak: was on a long bus ride yesterday and finally listened to some episodes of Fresh Air that I had downloaded from NPR).

As far as use in the classroom I have experienced some difficulties with recording which has me a little gun shy. Just this week was doing a VoiceThread project and kept having trouble with the microphone connection. This can be extremely frustrating and eat away at your class time while you are trying to trouble shoot the problem. Last year I attempted a project using podcasting as a medium for teaching storytelling. Overall it was not successful on several levels and because of that experience I haven’t pushed myself into doing any other projects using podcasting. Even though at one time I had big dreams of establishing a school-wide student podcasting project which was going to be an audible newspaper of sorts and I even invested in several books on the subject.

So where am I now with podcasting? Rethinking the possibilities is where I am. Maybe I will work on the podcasting news project? Listening to some podcasts doing this project I got other ideas for classroom application. One inspiring site was Grammar Girl. Maybe I will have my students come up with clever ways to remember specific homophones and homonyms and have them do podcasts on them? Maybe I will attempt the another storytelling project using podcasting and this time perfect it? Maybe I will download an audio book and listen to it? Oh the possibilities!

I do think that there is a future for me and podcasting both personally and in the classroom, and now just might be the time to embrace this useful tool. Stay tuned.

Thing 16

Love it! I opened an account for LibraryThing before I saw that it was a stretch task. I have been looking for a better way to organize the lists for books I have read and books I want to read. At the present time I keep a list on a Google document of books I want to read and then highlight them when I have read them. Works okay, but I can see so much more potential using LibraryThing. I love that the tag feature and it looks like I can organize my books by sets. I will now have separate lists for books to be read and books I have already read. It is really nice to be able to do a search for a book, especially when it is one someone has mentioned and you don’t know the author and sometimes don’t have the title exactly correct. I have only entered two books at this time, but that is now on my project list is to transfer over book titles to LibraryThing. I can also generate lists of favorite books of my students to help them when they are looking for something to read. So much potential for this site; it is exciting.

Thing 15

I have been a user of delicious for a couple of years now (http://delicious.com/lmenger) and love that I have a place that I can store sites and access from any computer. I have to admit (one more confession) that I have not used the social aspect of delicious and (wow I could have had a V8) have not used delicious as a search for sites to use with my class. I have been limiting myself to old habits and relying for the most part on Google. I did a search for “Odyssey” and was surprised at all the different tags given and the wealth of information available. There is so much potential for the sharing of information. Math teachers in a school could share sites to be used with students. Sites to use for research projects could be shared with students. The list goes on into infinity.
Additional but connected thought: Like Shelley Paul I also have had the urge to jump ship for Diigo, but can’t bear the thought of one more project at this point, and I have collected so many sites on delicious. If anyone is using Diigo at this time and really, truly swears it is better I would be interested in hearing why.