Thing #23 ---- FINALLY!

I would have to say that this experience was worthwhile. I wished that I weren't taking two other courses at the same time because I really could have explored more. My explorations were limited due to lack of time to commit. My favorite "things" were Photostory and Open Office. I think these two were very beneficial to my needs. Although I had technical difficulties with Photostory, I still enjoyed the process and results. I plan on trying to download Open Office onto my computer at work if I can get access to do so.

I think that some of the tools that I learned about during this process were things that I would have never known about if I hadn't taken this course. I am glad to have had them introduced to me. I might participate in another one of these if I don't have a time limit attached to it. I need to work at my own pace when time permits rather than with time restrictions.

If I could sum up this project in one word, it would be INFORMATIVE. The information that I gained from participating will undoubtedly help me in my teaching career and my career as a librarian in the future.

Thing #22

I visited some of the Ning sites involving teachers. I thought it odd that some of the teachers were talking about being excited about the 4th of July and drinking beer. Not that teachers don't drink beer, but the heading at the top of the page says, "An educational community to connect teachers from every level." What kind of education were they tweeting about?

I think these Ning social networks would be a great place to share ideas with other educators around the country. A Ning network could be set up for students at school. Of course there would have to be some strict rules involving what could be posted on the school Ning, but I think it would be a great place for students to social network.

Thing #21

Yay! I finally got it to work!

Photostory was by far my favorite "thing" in this whole project! I have seen photostories and love watching them, but never knew how to make one. The last Photostory that I saw was created by my son's awesome first grade teacher as an end of the year gift. While watching it I cried and cried because it was so good. I had a lot of fun creating my photostory for this "thing". The only difficulty that I found was trying to find some free royalty-free music to download. There's something about watching pictures slide by with music that gets me all emotional! I am glad that I now know how to create a photostory.

Thing #20

TeacherTube and YouTube can be very beneficial tools to use in the classroom when just the right content is found. I watched a couple of videos on YouTube about the library. One of them entitled The FUNdamentals of Book Care in 5 Easy Lessons was a humorous video that showed the right and wrong way of handling books and materials in the library. After navigating around YouTube, I searched on TeacherTube. I did a search on reading since that is the subject area that I teach. I found a video, Gotta Keep Reading, that is an educational take on a Black Eyed Peas song. It was the video that I chose to embed on my blog. The only problems I have with TeacherTube and YouTube is when the video stops in the middle to buffer. I'm sure if one has a super fast computer then this is not a problem, but it was on mine. I've had this same type of issue using United Streaming at school once or twice before as well.

Thing #19

The Web 2.0 Awards List is awesome! I have always heard of people going on craigslist to buy stuff but never visited that site myself. We are in the process of trying to sell our house right now and so I am going to look into using craigslist and some of the other real estate award winners that were on the list. I might be able to owe the sell of my house to this class! I was surprised to see that Twitter beat Facebook on the list. Maybe the surprise came from me not knowing anything about Twitter. I added Web 2.0 Awards List to my favorites and will add it to my del.icio.us account as well.

Thing #18

I had previously been introduced to Google Docs and found it very useful. For my other technology course, one of our assignments was to upload a two page paper that we wrote and share it with someone else in the class. That person then read the paper and left comments for us. I also read a little about Open Office and fiound this program very beneficial as well. There have been so many times that I have created something on my school computer and saved it on that network instead of a flash drive. I then got home and realized that I wanted to do something with it and couldn't. I think the idea of saving documents on the web is a very smart thing to do. The only issues that I have with this idea is someone hacking into my documents and deleting them or editing them. I know that in order to share a document with someone you have to invite them, but there are obviously people who could figure out how to get in there without the invite. I think it would be wise to save to a flash drive and Google Docs or Open Office just to be safe. Overall, whoever came up with these programs are geniouses!

Thing #17

I had never heard of Rollyo before this activity. When I first saw the name on some other people's blogs, I thought maybe it was a game of some sort. I kind of got excited thinking that maybe we could actually play a game on Facebook for one of our things. No such luck!

I created a specialized search for shopping. I know this is not educated related, but the search I did was for backpacks and backpacks are for school, right? I can see the benefits of a search like this, but think it would be more beneficial to someone who truly only visits certain web sites. I tend to just browse. As far as the school related part of this "thing," Rollyo could be used on student computers so that only certain sites could be accessed by students. This would make searching the web much safer for our students.

Thing #16

Before last fall, I had never even heard of wikis before. Kay McBride was the first instructor to introduce a wiki to me. I have not created one of my own, but know that there are many ways to use one. I think a great wiki space would be to set up the different genres that we study in 3rd grade and allow students to add books that they read for a particular genre. The students could also explain why another student should or should not read that particular book. I actually tried a concept like this last year but it was in paper format. We did not keep up with it very well, but using a computer might be a different approach. Students could use the class computers or computers at home to input this information.

I have to say that Common Craft videos with Lee LeFever (sp?) are very helpful. He explains the concepts in such an easy to understand fashion.

Thing #15

Out of this entire "thing," the part that I liked the most was the video. The messages that the students gave were very true and eye-opening. I think it is definately a great video to show teachers who are hesitant to get with the times. In fact, I am going to bookmark it so that I can share it when I become a librarian.

As far as the articles, the information that I found the most interesting and applicable was when Rick Anderson said, "No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves." I think this is very true for successful programs.