One Last Thing

Now actually this isn't one last thing. I still have to go back and get my slideshow done tomorrow, but I wanted to do my reflection in peace. I must say even though I did my share of whining, or really a lot more than my share, I had a BLAST! I loved the format of the class, but it really helped to take this with friends nearby...sometimes to help, sometimes to calm each other down, sometimes just to listen to frustration.

My favorite discoveries were Library Thing, Googledocs, Wordle,and my blog. But if I could only use one,it would definitely be my Google reader with my RSS feeds. It keeps me up to date on everything I care to know about.

The program has reignited my love of learning and probably fired up some new dendrites. It made me realize I've been getting stagnant and I appreciate the push from Richard and Deryl.

The biggest surprise for me was that I could do it. I have a certain reputation for being technologically fragile...I think I'm beginning to feel a little braver.I would absolutely do another program like this. In fact, in a week or two,I'll probably even miss Mary releasing the next 5 things to do!

This class will definitely influence my job. I have told my facilitators to enroll so we'll all know the same cool tricks. I think it can only improve our communication with teachers and administrators. I will keep up primarily by using my reader. I have several feeds about curriculum and about technology that should keep me going.And I plan on going back over the 23 Things materials for some further exploration.

Mary and Debbie, thanks for everything. You have been wonderful and the materials were great. Loved the Common Craft videos. It's like 2.0 for dummies.I began this journey as The Terrified Traveler. I leave it as The Adventurer. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe Captain Kirk!!

Thing #20

I had already attended a workshop on using Googledocs, but as usual, I didn't start using it right away so I forgot about it! I played around very briefly in this exercise with a document about New Teacher Camp. I will really use this to collaborate with my facilitators to begin making plans. It will save us so much time, especially since they don't work during the summer. It's like a conference call without the phone. They'll be able to offer input and changes and we can do it all from different places.

I also played around with the presentation tools. Loved them! Not only can we plan New Teacher and lots of other staff development but we can also collaborate on the slides we'll use during the presentation. I loved the slide layouts for organizational purposes. They will be of service to me as my layout skills are right up there with my slideshow skills!

There are as many uses for Googledocs as there are things to do, to organize, to plan, to study, etc. I'm sure as I begin to use Googledocs more, I will begin to think of all kinds of applications for it in my personal and professional life.

Thing #12

OMG! Will this assignment ever end??I have really struggled with this one. While selecting the photos was easy,getting them into a slide show with links and attributions was something else. I looked on with envy as I saw others post slide shows and embed them into their blogs. As I write this post, I have been working for 4 hours trying to figure this out for myself. And this is the 4th time that I have devoted so much time to this same task. But alas, I will have to ask for help tomorrow. I WILL finish this class on time, even if I have to get tutoring. I'll start a new trend...slide show acceleration. I'm going to close this blog for now. Perhaps someone will rescue me before that infernal countdown clock on the 23 things Ning beats me.

Thing # 14

Okay, I'm definitely going to spend more time on this one later. I had a blast playing around. I did a wordle using my son's name and some of his personal characteristics. What a great idea for a project when kids are studying characters... puttting words that really describe the character more than once so they're bigger. I love this! I still haven't figured out quite how to save my work and show you, but I'm going to figure that out. Just you wait.
I also played with ToonDoo...another fun one. I made a single frame cartoon of me flying through the air saying hooray for me and tagged it with 23things. Imagine!! Really had a lot of fun with this one. I'll be doing lots more in this playground!

Thing # 15

I have set up a delicious account. http://delicious.com/sedonagal At first I didn't see much use for it because I was perfectly happy with the list of bookmarks that my browser kept for me. But after spending some time with delicious I can see some definite advantages. First of all, the fact that I can keep one list of bookmarks and access them from any computer. That's a big help. Also the tagging is a great help. I hadn't thought about using tags so much, but as I discover more sites and join more groups, it will be very helpful to tag things so that I don't have to bring up the whole list of bookmarks when I'm looking for just one topic.Lastly, the social component. It is interesting and could be enormously helpful to share other people's bookmarks who share some of the same areas of concern at work. I personally have used Mary's sites more than once to find new directions to look for things. That is primarily how I see using it for work...tagging and sharing.

Thing # 21

Just want to go on record as saying I love Google. It has so many amazing free features. I did set up Googlecalendar as an experiment. The only problem is that it keeps reminding me of all the things I put on it when I was just playing around! I can see that it could become a very useful tool. I also set up an iGoogle page and added some recipes , news alerts and a Spanish word a day. I still need to spend more time here. Another participant said his iGoogle page is his home page. I might have to try that.I also spent way too much time on Google Book Search, looking at all the great classics you can just start reading, right there on the computer. It really is amazing!

Thing # 17

I previewed several different podcasts. My favorites were Just One More Book and the NPR Books Podcast. I loved Just One More Book for keeping up with children's literature and was excited to see that it lists books by topic, author, illustrator, almost anyway you want books to be organized.I checked out Grammar Girl but thought it was more high school tips than elementary. I love all things NPR and all things about books, so duh! I loved the NPR site.I'm going to try to follow the Reluctant Blogger's lead and listen while I'm in the grocery store, but I'll probably never get through shopping! I am intrigued by the idea of podcasting. I think it has many possibilities for staff development and communicating with teachers. It is so difficult now to reach all teachers with specific information. I'm going to try it out. I already had an iTunes account, mostly for listening to music, but now I have added several podcast subscriptions. I really feel buried with all the new ones automatically posting to my iTunes. Yikes!

Thing # 23

Oh my! Ning and all its accompanying sidetrips could take forever! I did see many groups that link technology to the classroom and saw several groups who discuss literacy issues. It's almost too much. If I was feeling information overload when we created our RSS feeds, just imagine how I'm feeling now. I do see possibilities for making contact with other professionals to discuss issues of importance. But I'm really going to have to fine tune my search and discovery skills to make this useful and usable to me.

Since I completed this blog entry, I have found a Ning I love, thanks to MAry W. I joined the English Companion Ning and have alredy joined several of the groups on this site. I even found a discussion thread about persuasive reading and writing using children's literature...one of the items on our new language arts TEKS. Oh happy day!

Thing # 22

Well, I now have an account on Facebook. It was very easy to set up , but I'm still learning to navigate all the twists and turns. I do feel, as some other bloggers have commented, quite exposed...like anyone can know what I'm doing. But I suppose I control how much other people know by how much I post. I have had a couple of good laughs and find there are all kinds of inane quizzes with which to waste my time! I am connected to my son and daughter-in-law as well as 1 brother and several friends from work. I'm sure this will grow as I gain more experience. I haven't found too many old acquaintances...forgot or otherwise.

I think it is important for educators to know how these sites work, if for no other reason than to be able to know what our students are thinking and talking about. Perhaps we should be addressing safety too...although it is one of those issues about where the parents' job ends and the school's job begins. I'm still thinking about educational applications...I probably haven't played with it long enough yet to see classroom applications. More time will tell!

Thing # 13

I was frustrated by some of these image generators...I couldn't get them to do what I wanted and I was having trouble saving images I created. I tried Spell with Flickr, Custom Sign Generator, Flickr Color Pickr. I went to other participants' blogs to see which ones they had used with success. I finally found image generator salvation when I revisited the Reluctant Blogger's site. She suggested a site to create motivational posters . At last, success! This thing will require some remedial work for me. I can see that it is cool to use these different mash-ups to create fun and interesting images so I think it will be worth my time...but later.

Thing # 19

I was totally unfamiliar with voice thread, but I can see some possibilities with its use. I explored the Going and Coming and thought it was an interesting way to have students comment on a specific work of art. I could see doing that in a classroom cooperatively solving math problems, or doing peer conferencing. I enjoyed the kindergarten presentation about the library and thought it was an interesting way to do a presentation. Conversely, I did not enjoy the Industrial Revolution one. It was a boring, unengaging presentation done with a computer.
I can see what the 23thingster was talking about when I watched the Web 2.0...about wanting to read ahead, go faster than the presenter and even hearing recorded for all posterity deep comments like , "Well, my slide isn't showing up." Powerful stuff! The applications I see as most effective were the ones of a cooperative nature. After all, that's more what 2.0 is about, isn't it? Engaging others in meaningful dialogue?

Thing # 18

YouTube is an amusing adventure...I viewed several short videos about teaching writing. They all had the same woman in the same outfit and she proclaims to know everything in the world obviously! She says she is with Young Writers Wrokshop.com group, a group in India. Interesting, but not very worthwhile. I also watched a video on how to peel hard boiled eggs...fascinating!I visited teacher tube and watched a hilarious but informational video on how NOT to do a power point presentation.I truly can see some advantages to using teacher tube for education. Teachers could videotape presentations for students who were absent or needed to hear the presentation or parts of it again. And I really see potential for staff development on short topics...how to administer TPRI,teaching for fluency, etc. Now I'll just have to learn how to make one.

Thing # 7B

Well, now this class is costing me money! I read a blog about a new book called The Book Whisperer and absolutely had to have it after reading just this blog...very persuasive writing! Perhaps this topic just resonated with me because I see so many children and adults who don't know the joys of reading that I do. Even in our class, at least one friend of mine has confessed to not being a reader...at least reading for pleasure and entertainment. My goal is to get every teacher to become someone who loves reading, who feels passionatley about it as I do. Who is in a better position to convert all the students they see every day than the classroom teacher? A teacher, unfortunately is not who made me a reader. It was my mom and dad. They were constantly reading and I always got 2 new Nancy Drew mysteries for Christmas and my birthday. When I ran out of Nancy Drews I had to find other books to read and so I did. But today we have so many students who will not get that love of reading at home. So that leaves just one place-school and one person-a beloved teacher. We should never underestimate the power we have to change the lives of the next generation by modeling for them what we value.

Thing # 7A

Boy can I sympathize with Andy in this blog!He is a perfectly capable and well-informed leader, but lacks knowledge of many 2.0 tools. Sound familiar?? The point of the article is that unless we as leaders are aware of the capabilities of technology, how can we expect our teachers to use them in today's classrooms? I am really working to at least acquaint myself with the tools in this class. Some of them are very difficult for me , particularly the ones that deal with the visual images...the slideshow, the image generator and even Delicious. I need to quit whining, but some of this is really hard for me...something about an old dog and new tricks keeps running through my mind. But I'll muddle through. It is important work for me to move myself forward as a role model for facilitators and teachers.

Thing # 16

I really enjoyed playing around in Library Thing. I did join up but only with a free account. This is probably my favorite "Thing" so far. I love listing books I've read and seeing other people who share my taste in books. I went to some of the groups and explored a little. I can definitely see myself going here for book recommendations and new authors to try out. Perhaps I'll stretch into some different groups as well to broaden my reading interests. I tend to love the mystery, thriller genre because the books are so fast paced. Maybe later I can cultivate a deeper appreciation of literature, even some of the classics I need to reread or read for the first time. I laughed going to the Zeitgeist area and looking at all the statistics about Library Thing...so much trivia, so little time!

I can see some really practical applications for the classroom. We're always trying to get our students to develop the lifelong habit of reading, reading both for information and for pleasure. This could really help our kids to find like-minded individuals who might steer them toward new books or authors. I think the kids are more likely to read books recommended by peers than by teachers. Setting class challenges would also be great. Teachers could also find books to read as a class or to read aloud...that search bar allows you to enter partial titles. I didn't try entering topics. I'll have to go back and try that!

Thing #11

Sedona twilight
Originally uploaded by ga clicker

Flickr was an interesting experience for me...frustrating but very interesting. I loved exploring and looking for photos of my favorite place...Sedona, Arizona.My frustration came when I tried to get the photo out with the attribution and the link back to the picture. I learned how important it is to bookmark the exact location so you can find it again when you go back to look for it again. Trial and error is a painful way to go when you're not very adept.I can see many applications
for its use in the classroom...slide shows for content, clarifying setting, photos to represent characteristics, all kinds of things.I will definitely keep exploring. My curiosity has been peaked.