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.

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