Thing #23

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I guess my favorite part of this learning journey was to see how easy it is to set up a blog and to subscribe to other blogs. I'm inspired to get my students involved in blogs or wikis this fall. I will have to keep a blog for the Power to Learn grant, as well, so this was great practice.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? This program has reminded me that we never stop learning and that I have a long way to go to understand all the technological developments and opportunities that are out there for me and my students.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or concept? I don't think there is much of anything to improve the format and concept. I think it was about as well-organized and user-friendly as you could make it.

Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I wasn't really surprised by the outcomes. This program has actually had the desired outcome. I was exposed to quite a bit of what is out there in the world of educational technology and it has made me want to learn more and try more.

If we offered another program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Yes

How would you describe your learning experience in one word or in one sentence? Every teacher who wants to learn more about technology but has been afraid to try it alone should sign-up for 23 Things.

Thing #22

I read the article and looked at all the Nings that were listed. When I read the article about Nings, it said that the educational benefit would be that students could have a MySpace or Facebook type experience, but without feeling like teachers are infringing on their territory. I was hesitant, at first, to find out more about Nings because I thought they would be just like blogs, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this might work better than a traditional blog. I started an Ning for my class, and it seems like it will work really well. I have more thinking to do about it, and I'm going to talk to a colleague about it, as well, but this could turn into something very exciting for next year!

Thing #21

I've just finished my Photostory! Thank goodness! It's 7:40 p.m. on the night of the final deadline. I really know how to push my time limits, huh? I did a book review of The City of Ember for my Photostory. I chose to do a book review because this is something I could ask my students to do. I chose The City of Ember because I just finished reading it (I can't believe I'm just now reading it!), and it was fresh on my mind. I think this would be a pretty easy project for my students. I had to get creative to compensate for a few of the options it doesn't have, but for students, too many options might make it too complicated. This is perfect for them. I even think they could handle the music or podcast part of it without too much trouble. I'm excited about trying it next year!

Thing #20

Thing #19

I looked over the list and checked out several sites. I subscribed to Twitter (finally), but I'm not sure if I want to go down that path. I know it's THE big thing right now, but I'm just not feeling it. If anyone had suggestions on educational applications for it, I'd love to hear them. I checked out Last.Fm. It has music and videos available to listen to/view online. I could see that connecting to certain lessons/activities in my classroom. I also saw several fun non-educational resources.

While skimming the list I saw several award winners that I'm already familiar with such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and PBwiki as well as ones we've been working on during 23 Things such as Del.icio.us, Rollyo, and Technorati.

Thing #18

OpenOffice has advantages such as the fact that it can be downloaded for free and it can be used by as many people as you want. It's easy to learn to use for people used to other office software. I guess I'm just wondering why anyone would ever need to use it. Doesn't everyone already have office software? I guess if you were trying to do a project on different computers (maybe some people do not have compatible software) and you wanted to quickly merge the different parts, then this would be a helpful option. I'm just not seeing why I would need to use this option right now. I guess it's good to know it's there.

Thing #17

Rollyo is a great idea and easy to use. First, I watched Bruce's video about Rollyo. He did a great job of explaining the benefits of Rollyo and how to set up an account. Then I started the process by signing up for my own account. Easy, right? It was easy. The time-consuming part came after that as I decided what I wanted to include on my searchroll. As usual, as soon as I start surfing on the web I go down one path into another and then another. I start reading articles, watching videos, clicking on podcasts, clicking on links that take me to other links, etc. I found some really good stuff, but I really didn't want to spend two hours on this one thing considering that I have to be finished with this entire staff development by Monday. I'm not sure, but I think Delicious might be a better option for my students rather than Rollyo. With Rollyo, there is still so much searching they have to do. Yes, the searching will result in quality sites, but many of my students still have trouble finding the right one. It might still give them to many distractions. With Delicious I can actually provide all the possible websites. I guess it depends on the project and the students I am working with. The good thing is that now I have options and can make informed decisions when the time comes.

I completed Discovery Exercise 1 on the SBISD library wiki. Here's what I said about my experience with 23 Things:
I'm having fun with my 23 Things Training, but it is also a little overwhelming. I guess it's like any other training. You find things you are really interested in, but instead of being able to dive into those and master them, you have to move on to other things. I really want to make strides with technology use this upcoming school year, but I know that if I try to do too many things I will not be able to do any of them well.

I joined a district wiki for Language Arts last year and also started one for my department. Unfortunately, after school started, I never really went back to them. I loved the idea, but without buy-in from others, there's not much point. I think I could have more success with a wiki in my classroom. I know there is plenty of potential, but I just need more time to think about my plans. I guess the other thing I'm wondering is would a wiki or a regular blog serve my purposes better. That's something to think carefully about, as well.

Thing #15

That video made me think of my own college experience. I graduated 14 years ago, but I was feeling much of the same frustrations those students were feeling back then. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for them now with all the technological advances to be stuck in a classroom like the traditional one shown in the video. I don't want students to feel that way about my classroom. I read several of those articles. I think Library 2.0 is needed. The world is changing. If librarians and teachers don't get on board to make decisions about how to move into their classrooms and libraries into the 21st century, then someone with different goals or agendas may make these decisions for us. It's a little scary to think that in the next 5-10 years, libraries may not even have books on their shelves (they may not even have shelves), but I guess we all have part of ourselves that holds on to the past.

Thing #14

I could not find anything when I typed in "school library learning 2.0". Did I do something wrong? I think that tagging is a great idea and Technorati provided me with many different ways to search for information. I put in some key words that related to my curriculum and found posts, blogs, and videos about the topics. When I looked at the popular blogs, searches, and tags list, I was very surprised. It was a combo of tech terms and celebrities (although some of the celebrities were not A list). I'm not sure why that was.

Thing #13

I had no idea Delicious existed until now. I feel like I was really out-of-the loop. Delicious seems pretty easy to use and the tagging concept makes sense. The Common Craft videos always make technology concepts so easy to understand. I set up a Delicious account and am in the process of waiting for my Bookmarks to be imported. Then I can organize them and tag them. I plan on using Delicious for my personal bookmarks, for organizing Language Arts and educational technology websites for myself and my team/dept. and for organizing sites to share with my students for research purposes. I wish I had known about this last year!

Thing #12

Most of what I read in the different articles about successful blog commenting was common sense, but they were all good reminders. Blogging etiquette is basically the same as the etiquette you would use for carrying on a conversation. It should not be all about you. I was reminded to ask questions and present ideas that will inspire others to want to give their opinions or to comment back. It is also important to show that I heard the blogger that I am commenting on. Those reminders seemed natural enough. I guess the reminder I was less comfortable with was the one that said to draw attention to my own blog. I'm not sure if I'm able to self-promote yet. Maybe if I had something in my blog worth promoting, it would be a different story.

I went to five Library2Play blogs and made at least one comment to each. That was easy to do because I felt like I shared a common bond with these people since we're all in education and we are all working on the 23 Things right now. I even ended up on the blog of someone I know. That was cool.

After reading one of the Library2Play blogs, I went to YouTube Book trailers because the blogger I was reading recommended it. I commented on a book trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Then I started looking at other book trailers, as well. I just couldn't bring myself to make any more comments, though, because many of the people who comment on YouTube do not follow commenting etiquette. Sometimes they would curse or insult people or they often would comment even though they didn't even seem to pay attention to what they just saw/read. When the comments were positive they would often say things like :) or "cute." I enjoyed some of the trailers, but I just did not get much out of many of the comments. I think teens may be making many of these comments. It just reinforced my belief that my students will need to be taught how to blog and comment appropriately and meaningfully. Based on what I read today on YouTube, "meaningful" commenting does not seem to come naturally to some people.

Ahh... I feel better now. I went back to Library Thing to read comments in a YA lit group that I had previously joined. Then I answered a question that was part of a thread. The comments on this site were definitely more thoughtful than on YouTube. I'd like to go back and keep participating in this group.

Thing #11

I created an account at Library Thing and added 5 titles to my list. I'm a huge fan of books, but I don't know if I will continue to add books to this account because I already have an account on Visual Bookshelf through Facebook. I've posted 40 something reviews on Visual Bookshelf, but that's about all I've ever done on it. I went to the trouble of posting reviews, but then I've never really ever read anyone else's so it hasn't exactly been the interactive experience that it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if I want to post all my reviews again to Library Thing and then not use it like I should. Now if I could make this part of my classroom with my students, then that would be a different story. I'll give that some thought. I did look at the groups and saw many that were interesting. I joined the YA literature group and added the blog link to my Google reader.

Thing #10

This is an image I generated with ImageChef. http://www.imagechef.com/ It matches the name of my blog, so I thought that was cool. It was very easy to do. I'm not sure I would want my students getting on ImageChef in my classroom, though. Some of the options are not school appropriate, and I'm not sure what the academic connection would be here.

I looked at Wordle and thought it had some possibilities for use in the classroom, but I was unable to get it to work. I actually designed an image in Comic Strip generator and in Happy Face generator, but I couldn't figure out how to upload them without having to pay money. Kid-Friendly did not seem like it had much to offer. Dumpr was cool but I didn't create anything because it didn't seem to have an academic purpose that I could see.

Here's one I designed from Trading Cards: http://bighugelabs.com/deck.php

I designed a trading card for Kino from The Pearl which is a book we read in my class. I thought students could design trading cards for a main character in a book they are reading independently. The only problem with Trading Cards is when you import the image, it doesn't always fit the way you'd like it to. I can see 8th graders losing patience with that part. I'd have to experiment with that a little more to see if anything can be done to improve the situation.

Overall, playing with these images is fun but a little bit of a time sucker. I want technology to be fun for my students, but I need it to connect to what we're doing academically. If it doesn't improve their reading or writing skills, then I really don't have time to use it. I'd be curious to see how other teachers use Image generators in their classes.

Thing #9

Wow. Even though search tools make it easier to find blogs of interest, it is still VERY OVERWHELMING. There are so many blogs out there that look like they could be interesting, but how am I ever going to have the time or focus to really get into all of this? I'm excited by the prospect, but also feeling uncertain. After looking through all this over the last hour, I can see that it could become very consuming, and I'm actually feeling a little woozy after the experience. The Cool Cat blog helped me when it talked about "How do you create your circle of the wise". I'm thinking that going to my Google Reader and looking through all the updates on the blogs I subscribe to might be a good thing to do while I'm eating breakfast or lunch. As far as choosing the blogs I follow, the tips about looking for "people who inspire you" and "conversationalists, not egoists" were good tips.

As far as search tools go, School library blogs on Suprglu was the most confusing. The easiest search tool was the Edublog's award winners. I looked through many of the nominations for classroom blogs, teacher blogs, and social networking. I couldn't find a place to subscribe to many of the classroom blogs (maybe they don't make that available since it's for their students?), so I bookmarked those instead. I want to go back and share these with the teachers on my team so that we can use these as models for setting up our own classroom blog. I did subscribe to some of the teacher blogs I found here, though.

Thing #8

I think Google Reader is a super tool because it brings information to me from many different places. Since I am an 8th grade Language Arts teacher, some of the sites I subscribed to are sites about Young Adult literature. I will definitely use these sites to keep connected to the books my students will want to read. I can also use these sites as inspiration for developing my own classroom blog for students to write about the books they are reading. I also subscribed to sites about and educational technology. This will help as the 8th grade Language Arts team starts incorporating the technology into our classes that we received from the Power to Learn grant.

Thing #7

I think the Google tools that would be most useful for me would be Google Scholar and Google Advanced search. I found some interesting articles in Google Scholar that would assist me when planning my lessons for my first Unit this year, and I'm sure there are plenty more that would connect to Units throughout the year. I used Google Advanced search to find Power Points. I've already found one on suspense that I could tweak to fit with a lesson I will need this semester. There were other Google tools such as the calendar that I'm curious to try, as well.

Thing #6

I went to Big Huge labs and found some interesting apps. I think apps like Trading Card or movie poster could be interesting ways for students to advertise a book they are reading independently. They could design a movie poster or trading card about their book (or the trading card could be about a character in the book) and they could then share these with other students. I also like the captioner idea. Students could take a picture to act out a scene from a book we're reading or from something they've written and then write their own captions. This could be a fun way to use technology in a different form.

Thing #5

There were many interesting pictures in Flickr; however, I had trouble finding anything I wanted that was available in the Commons. I searched using all kinds of key words that connected to areas that we study and research my students conduct during the year, but could not find anything of use. I was a little disappointed. It seems as if I can find more pictures in Google images than I was finding in the Commons on Flickr. I'm including a picture of Abraham Lincoln since his pictures were actually available in the Commons. We study the Civil War in connection to the novel Soldier's Heart, and we will read a speech made by Abraham Lincoln, so this picture does connect. I'm not sure if I'd want my students searching in Flicker Commons if the choices are so limited. I think they would get very frustrated and would be unable to find much they could use. I do like the overall concept of Flickr, however.

Thing #3

It was easy to set up the blog and fun to create an avatar, but I had trouble getting the avatar to appear on my blog. The original directions did not seem to work. However, after looking through people's comments, I found a suggestion that worked. Phew!

Thing #2

The easiest habit for me is "teaching/mentoring others." I find that I learn the best when I'm having to help someone else master a skill. The habit I need to develop is to have more confidence in my ability to learn new things. When I get busy, it is much easier to do what I'm comfortable doing instead of having the confidence to try something completely new.