23 Things

Well, it has been a long but wonderful journey this semester. I look back at all that I have accomplished via 23 Things and LiveText and cannot get over the amount I have learned. I have been introduced to so many new tools and elements of technology. I use to think myself very tech savvy but now..... I compare it to waking up one day and realizing there are 6 more continents on this Earth to explore!
I have enjoyed the class, Dr. Wall, and my classmates. I hope to see all of you around in the near future. This is a class that I think every education major student should take. I am confused as to why some people are not required to take it. The benefits of this type of class are endless.
I know that there were a couple of things that I learned that I might not use in the future but I would say at least 75% of everything I learned will be used. I realize that this is all apart of the process of being a lifelong learner. In order to continue learning I am going to need to always be up to date on the resources and tools available to me. There are really no excuses for not knowing what Web 2.0 is!
I think the best suggestion was to give ourselves 15 mins a day to explore and maybe take in a webinar. I think I could listen to a podcast, read a blog or tweet or comment in a chatroom. This is important, this goes to us continuing our education and continuously better educating ourselves. Interaction with colleagues and the community will keep us connected, especially if we work with little kids, we will need as much adult conversation and interaction as possible!

Thing #23 Yay!!!!!

Dr. Wall's 23 Things is loosely inspired from 43 Things I Might want to Do this Year and the 43 Things website that is a goal setting social community network. When you go to the 43 Things page you are presented with tags for all these things that people want to do. The only thing I noticed was that a few of the tags should be combined. I believe if they were there would be only.... 43 things on the page when you view it. There were tags for "lose 10 lbs" and "lose weight", these could have been combined. The 43 Things I might want to do this Year website is more directly related to technology. I believe that a lot of these items we have covered. I think that it would be a great website to send or forward on to friends and family that you know "thing" they are tech savvy. Then maybe they can have the same eye-opening experience that I have had this semester. I look at the list and see it as a general guideline for all things technical that we should be ensuring that our students are capable of doing. The list should be broken up into the items that all elementary school students should know and be able to do and then the middle school ages... that by high school our students would be masters of these tools and be more fully prepared to enter the read world where these tools are very much so at use.

It was kind of funny how we started the semester off with Creative Commons in LiveText and are just now ending the semester with Creative Commons in 23 Things. In all honestly I believe that it should have been much further up on our list, like #5 maybe? Thankfully we had the class lesson on it, otherwise I may have been at a high risk of copyright infringement throughout the 23 Things project, outside of the Fair Use policy. This is a very serious issue that should be addressed immediately with students. I think that once they understand it they should be held responsible for it. My only other thought was to limit the search abilities on school computers strictly to the Creative Commons Search option.

Thing #22

I found the Educational Podcast Network to be the most user-friendly. I was listening to the HeartBeat Radio podcast. I was amazed that it was produced by elementary students. I realized that students are so much farther ahead than I have been thinking. These students created podcasts that were interviews. The were interviewing each other about their favorite parts of classes. They had a continuous very intelligent dialogue going on. I believe that if these were played for students they would be interested. Kids will listen to other kids before they listen to adults. I know that in my LiveText project I referred to the possibility that I could record a podcast if I was going to be absent. I know see that the podcasts can be for the students to record too! I think that it would be great to start with student reading aloud their favorite book, poem or short story. Then teaching them to add the music and introduction would create a higher level of learning.

Thing #21

Animoto was very easy to use. I immediatly saw the potential application for this. I ended up using it as a possible project for my WebQuest. I know some kids are more creative then others and some are more technical than others. I had the final product of my WebQuest be a visual element that could be a video, powerpoint or comicstrip with mash-up images. Animoto, like a majority of the other tools we have learned about would be great in the classroom. The more that I am learning the more I can see myself using it in the classroom and realizing that I potentially could have a really great class and one of those rooms that students "love" to go to,
I think that Animoto goes well with learning about YouTube. If I ever wanted to create a nice photo montage and put music to it I could create this project and then upload the final product to YouTube.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thing #20

I like YouTube. Before I made myself a Facebook account I had used YouTube to upload videos so our family and friends could view them. From the Ning Network I discovered Dr. Walls posting about YouTube having an educational part. I think that is great. I know that a majority of the students will be familiar with YouTube, but showing them the educational side of it will help them. They will be able to find and discover videos that will be helpful to them and to their projects they may be working on. I think that if students create their own videos for a project they should upload them on YouTube and share the link with friends and family, show them what they are learning and doing in school.

This is a video that I took on a Whale Watching cruise a couple of years ago. The show we saw was amazing and I was told a once in a life time experience. The cruise narrator said that in 12 years of working she has never seen such a show. Of course we wanted to share it with our friends and family.

Thing #19

At first I found it amusing that I had never once considered that there might be a social network or community out there other than Facebook and MySpace! I really need to learn to think outside the box and out of my comfort zone. I googled and found PictureSocial. My hobby is photography. I originally started my undergrad with a minor in photography but have long since pushed that to the back burner. My husband actually is getting interested in it lately and has resparked my interest. I found this site to be a great source for diving back into the Photography community. Seeing as photography is a visual art, being able to see other photos that have others have been taken, learning their techniques and tricks of the trade is great. Being able to ask questions and seek out help from people that are more knowledgeable than me and those that are amateurs like myself is great. I believe that whenever I am teaching and getting into an area that I may not be familiar or comfortable with it will be important to search out peers in these type of social networks.

Thing #18

This "Thing" was so funny to me. This was about the only Thing that I was able to think "Oh... I got that!" I started with a MySpace account about 6-7 years ago when it was first popular. Then when Facebook came out I was very resistant to changing over to it. Eventually I created an account because my little sister, my dad and my mom had created accounts. At first I found Facebook to be boring because there was not the same opportunities to make it unique and personalized with color and graphics. Eventually though, I realized that it was more professional, user friendly, and I found that I was using Facebook more and more. I am now a full-time Facebooker and I rarely check my MySpace account anymore... maybe, every other week? What I love is that Facebook does a better job of putting you in touch with old classmates and co-workers, even family! My grandma has officially joined the Facebook community at Christmas. I love it, she still lived in Michigan and she came down when my husband and I first bought out first home. Now she is able to keep up and follow all the things we are doing to make the "house" our "home. I do wish that she had been a part of this sooner, like when we were over in Japan, there were so many things I was posting on a daily basis to keep in touch with friends and family in the states and to share our new lives with them.
I would see this as being a social tool for the classroom. If a group was created for the class, then parents and even students that have accounts could join in. I believe that even more so than a blog, this would be a good place to post pictures of activities in the classroom or just a quick daily update on how the school day went.

Kate Newsham's Facebook

Thing #17

My first reaction to Del.icio.us was that I almost wish when we did our Diigo class account we had used it. I really do like all of the information and great websites that our Website of the Day provided. I just felt that at times it was difficult to scroll through all of the posts. I know that there were tags that we could look up but I like the visual presentation of this site. I immediately added it to my Google Reader. I was not able to find the "socialbookmarking" tag though, when I typed it in it told me there were no bookmarks with this tag. Can anyone help me here???
I believe that this ties into being useful if I had a classroom blog, wiki, homepage or chatroom. I love how all of these pieces are tied together and just assist in making one another work better. I think that this website itself is possibly to fair advanced for my hypothetical "fourth grade reading class," but then again, who knows? Children are so far advanced and tech savvy compared to myself these days!

Thing #16

I really enjoy most Google Apps. I created the iGoogle home page for myself. I immediately was showing it to my husband and telling him he should make one. He has a similar function on his MacBook where he can put a lot of widgets or apps on his dashboard, so when he views it he can see a calendar, the weather, news, etc.


I also used the MSN Calendar. I liked that it already had US Holidays marked on it. I think it is an important tool because I am becoming a very busy person! Between school and working two part time (although thankfully flexible) jobs, I need to stay on track of where I belong and when.

I found Zamzar to be a great tool, it converts almost any file into another format. Especially since I work on PCs and my husband works on a Mac. We are often having problems when I want to send him a file, especially if it is a video clip. When he is deployed and gone for a long time I like to send pictures of everything going on while he is gone. Now that I have a new cell phone that takes pretty good videos, I like to send him video clips, like of our puppies playing together, the storm we had blow through last weekend, etc.

Thing #15

I found the Wiki experience to be great. It was as exciting as when I first learned about blogging. I have often referred to a "classroom blogspot" in my LiveText project. I use it in reference to it being a place for students to post homework, comment on each others work, etc. I believe now that this whole time I should have had a classroom wiki. The students should have been uploading the images they created, the poems the wrote and their other assignments into a class wiki. I like that we had a wiki already set up for 23 Things that we were able to jump into and just start working with, editing, and exploring.

I am taking the challenge and using Wikispaces to create the Wiki I would have had my students submit their work to. Kate Newshams Reading Class Wiki

Thing #14

Here is a Mind Map I started with Bubble.us. I found this site to be amazing and really wished that I had discovered it much sooner. I believe that bubble charts or concept webbing is a great visual way to brainstorm. This can be used when trying to take a lot of pieces of information, like standards being taught, and seeing how they might connect and relate to each other, what can be taught together, etc.
I liked Gliffy too. I found Gliffy to be another source that I wish I had discovered sooner. The ability to create a flowchart is till there, I do not believe it to be as easy to accomplish as with Bubble.us though. What Gliffy does offer is the ability to also create a floor plan, as we created out classroom drawings. You do not have the option to give as much detail, such as texture or fill effect, but it is a very quick, easy to use, way of creating a layout or floorplan.