Thing #23

1. My favorite thing was delicious! I have continued using it as I have worked through this process!
2. I think that my head has been opened to the digital world, which I didn't realize has advanced so! I will now say I was teaching in the dark ages!
3. My unexpected surprise - I am challenging my husband and actually know more than him at this point! When it comes to technology, he assumes that I know what he does. Now, I have learned a different realm than he knows! Wahoo! I will be using some of these techniques and strategies with the teachers at my school. I have found myself wanting to talk to others face to face about this journey! I know the whole point of web2.0 is to be able to communicate without having to be face to face, but I am taking baby steps.
4. I really think that this process was a wonderful one. I was getting a little tired around item #17, but am so excited that I have completed this journey and look forward to how others are going to use it this year! I think it would be really neat to have an open blogging response of how teachers are using these tools in their classrooms or with their teachers. I think that Ning would be a great place to start this! I know that we can look through all of the blogs, but to be able to add it to my Google Reader, and then keep up with the new posts daily would keep things fresh with the possibilities of what can be done!
5. I definitely would participate. For some reason, when I read that idea, I get nervous again about the "unknown", which is what I was doing when I started this! I will get nervous for no reason, and then be so excited at the end. I do the same things with roller coasters!
6. This is an incredible eye-opening journey, that makes you realize it is time to start communicating with our students in the digital world, which is where we are going whether we want to or not! Jump on board!
7. Thank you for this project. I want to be back in the classroom to implement some of these things with the students, but I will figure out how to use it with the teachers, and in the lessons I do get to teach!

Thing #22 Ning

Alright, so I have gotten lost in all of the links again, but I found a social network called Classroom 2.0. I was able to download a webinar for

PBS & CR20: Early Childhood Literacy: Resources & Strategies

This was really neat to see how it all works. You can sign up, text on the left hand of the screen, watch the powerpoint as they speak, ask questions with your own microphone on your computer, participate in polls with A-E buttons, . . . with the economy dwindling and people cutting costs everywhere, I think this is a great interactive tool for professional development! The best part (from what I can understand) is that the presenters could plan using web2.0 tools, (NING) and live in different cities, presenting at the same time! This is awesome. I know that I am supposed to be on Ning, which I am, but I have found a resourse for me to grow as an educator!

I think that Ning would be a great place to have faculty announcements, posts, . . . I would like to talk to somebody whose school has used Ning for communication. I did speak with a high school biology teacher the other day who shlowed me her platform for her kids to discuss things. The thing I liked from what she told me was that you could monitor the students' contributions and edit if not appropriate.

I think I may try using Ning with the 5th grade classes this year, maybe to allow constructive criticism on science experiments or feedback on what they would like to see. I think that this would allow students to realize that they have a voice. I think this is a great tool we should definitely use more. I am going to try!

Thing #21 Photostory!!

I finally got it to work! Yeah! I had to use the wmv file instead of the wm3.

Thing #20 You Tube and Teacher Tube

I searched for a Web 2.0 video on You Tube. What I found made sense to me, because at this point, I had tried so many different sites, I was still confused as to what Web 2.0 still meant. This video helps me understand it much better. The idea is simple, but complex in getting all of the school to join in to the digital community.



The You Tube videos are great for the classroom! What a great hook to get the kids excited! I have used these videos when I was teaching, and it automatically created the interest in the lesson!

Thing #19 Care2

I went to the Care2 website and realized that this would be a great use for alternate lifestyles. As much as the economy is pushing to go green, and using renewable resources, this is a site full of ideas and current events. In finding causes of cancer, new species being found, healthy and green living ideas are great conversation pieces in the science classroom.

Some of the topics could also be used in the social studies classroom with citizenship. This website promotes things from community efforts, nonprofit organizations, to global warming and civil rights. Would I put an elementary student loose on this site, no; however, this is a good resource for current events in the classroom for all subjects. From personal experience, if I took a story out of the newspaper and summarized it for the kids, they got interested more than I ever knew possible.

Thing #18 Online Productivity Tools

Pros:

• you could create pdf documents for kids to fill out with their personal information to keep on file in the classroom
  
• you could create charts with the class to turn into a graph
• all of these programs mimic another Word program, so there is some familiarity when starting off.
• the presentation wizard lets you decide what type of media you are creating: paper, overhead, presentation . . .
  
• I am sure the math is useful in high school math for algebra and geometr

Cons:

• if you already know how to navigate other Microsoft programs, why use another one?
  
• time it will take to figure out the difference between the programs and all of the tools available
• more complex for elementary students
  

Thing #17

This could be a great tool to use when doing research projects. There are other programs out there that bundle websites, but they don't let you search through all of them. This is really neat, especially if you are trying to compare things. Personally, this is not my favorite site because it was a little hard to navigate after I created my own rollyo. I'm going to have to pair up with someone who really understands how this works and get them to share the wealth with me.

Thing #16

This was not easy for me, the whole wiki space idea. I don't like that you don't know who is editing and can't monitor what is being said. I'm sure this is great in the classroom to display projects, but I couldn't even navigate through the space easily. I tried to make my own, but didn't get far. I think this is going to have to be a verbal conversation with someone who sees how it can work. I saw a friend's wikispace, and she made a webquest with it. She created the links to new pages where each group completed the assignment. It was neat, but I think you should either use it all the time, or not at all. I think that there is so much to learn up to this point, like adding pictures, podcasts, videos, music...that there is a lot of teaching to be done before it can all unfold in a wikispace. I will have to research more!