I am so glad that I signed up for this learning experience. It’s hard for me to believe that I had a full 6 days of technology training only 2 years ago, and yet a lot of these Things were brand new to me. For example, we didn’t spend much time with blogs at all. We made one, but then spent most of our time working on websites. All this reaffirms how important it is to continue to learn and to use the best teaching tools at hand to meet the needs of my students. While we all resist change, it’s necessary to prepare our kids for an ever changing world. My thinking has really expanded regarding how I might use technology with my kids. On my technology to-do list:
* Re-purpose this blog as a classroom blog
*Create Slidecasts of first grade sight words
*Add my classroom library books to Library Thing
My favorite Thing was Slideshare. I am looking forward to using it to make sight word Slidecasts. I also enjoyed learning about Bloglines, which I now check daily.
I was frustrated twice during this class. The first time was when I needed to put a link to my Bloglines account. Unfortunately, the directions about how to figure out my URL came in the following Thing. The second frustration was when I was trying to embed video. I was extremely fortunate that Dana Stolzman shared a solution in her post.
I would be interested in a follow-up course that continued to expand my vision regarding technology. I am interested in learning more about Odiogo and Wordle. I saw them used well in other blogs. I also plan to explore Photobucket.
The tagline to my blog was…a journey through 23 Things. I may have completed 23 Things, but my journey is far from over.
I already have a wiki for my daughter’s girl scout troop. I decided to use that and try a few new things. I added a link from the leader wiki to the parent newsletter wiki. I also was able to embed a video on the homepage of the parent newsletter wiki. Both of these were very easy to do. One thing that I have had difficulty with in the wiki environment is getting things formatted to my liking. For the daisy picture that is found on the parent homepage, I spent a lot of time getting the appearance right. I found that it might look one way in edit mode, but then it looks different after I save.
I think a wiki is a good tool when you want something to be a collaboration of minds. It can be very simple and quick. The editing page isn’t as complicated or as filled with options as the administrator pages of a blog. Although, I did find that there were more options than I realized after watching the video in this Thing. I think a blog may be more suitable for someone who is a little more technology savvy. It also works well when there is a primary administrator who is putting out information. A blog may invite feedback, but it doesn’t ask the reader to edit its content.
I think a wiki has a lot of application for students who are working on a project together. I liked some of the examples where older students collaborated to share their knowledge of a certain topic. However, my students are a bit young to do that. I do think a wiki would be a good way to have a computer lab sign up sheet or other scheduled events. It would also provide a good forum at my grade level to comment on our social studies units as we go through them. We have developed a new curriculum to go with the new GLCEs and want to revise after the first year based on what worked. We also want to put in additional resources. The one drawback is that not all of the first grade teachers would use it.
I currently use a wiki with my daughter’s girl scout troop. There are several co-leaders planning meetings, and it’s not always convenient to get together to meet. We have been using a wiki this year to plan meetings and also to do the troop newsletter. We have created a separate wiki for parents to access the newsletters. It’s worked very well for us. However, parents have not gone online to check out the troop newsletters so we continue to print them.
When I saw what this Thing was, I was excited. Maybe I would figure out what I’ve been doing wrong. However, it turns out I’ve been doing exactly what I was directed to do in this Thing and yet it doesn’t work. I am now wondering whether I’ve messed up my blog settings somehow with the customization that I’ve done, since things seemed to be going well until this month. I am very sad to not be able to complete this Thing satisfactorily.
Help came along at just the right time. After checking bloglines, I saw that Dana Stolzman had completed this Thing. Reading her blog was just what I needed to get my video embedded. It turns out I just needed to activate my plugins. So, here it is:
I was able to download the Kindergarten Graduation Song from my previous post using Keepvid.com. It was very easy to do. When i told my husband about it, he laughed at me. Apparently we have an Firefox add on (Download Helper) that will download YouTube videos with the click of a button.
After activating my plugins, I’m curious to know if that will fix the problem I’ve had with widgets. I’m off to try that.
I had a lot of fun doing this one. A fellow classmate’s husband has put videos on YouTube that I’ve watched. Also, my daughter’s school will occasionally post some of the kids’ performances. I think that’s a great idea. I tried to embed one of her performances from last year, but had trouble again. I copied the code and pasted it into my post, but for some reason it didn’t save at all. The code completely disappeared when I saved. I am pasting it under the HTML tab. Somebody please help me figure out what I am doing wrong. I would love to embed some video. Instead, I’ll be somewhat satisfied knowing that I can at least link to the video: The Kindergarten Graduation Song. She’s in the bottom row, about center with the purple cap. Anyway, I hope to make a video of a student performance this year and put it up for parents to view.
As for playing YouTube videos in the classroom, I found some nice animal classification videos. The What is a Mammal video is an excellent example. I had never thought to look for educational things on YouTube before but found plenty. As a rule, we do not have access to YouTube at school. However, our tech guy gave me full access on my computer because of this class. So I can use what I’ve found here. Because of the variety of content, it’s extremely important that the videos are fully previewed ahead of time.
Since I had already experienced Voicethread in a technology class, I thought I’d try out Slideshare. I was happy to find a host of slides that relate to teaching my students. For example, we’ve been learning about fish, birds, and mammals. I was able to find plenty of presentations about them. I love adding this as a resource.
The next thing was to see if I could share my own presentations and embed them in a blog. I noticed that only the slides transferred when I uploaded my presentation. The presentation I wanted to share has audio files on each page to speak the sight words. Those were lost in the upload. I did see an option to upload an mp3 file to make a Slidecast. So, I went to Audacity and created an mp3 file with all of the sight words. I was then able to create the following Slidecast, which is a little out of synch but similar to my original presentation. I copied and pasted the embed code only to end up with the following link: Sight Words
I’m back to edit this post. After reading Dana Stolzman’s blog, I wanted to try again to embed my video. The result is below. The slides are there, but the sound isn’t embedded. If you click on the link above to view it on the Slideshare website, the sound is there.
The next thing I tried to do was share a game made in Powerpoint. I created it using nonlinear pages. I was disappointed to see that Slideshare simply played the presentation in its linear format.
So, I have learned a little about a new technology tool. It will be a great resource for finding slides that match my curriculum. I also can use it to make Slidecasts, like my Sight Word one above. If someone can help me embed the actual slideshow, please help.
I enjoyed looking at the Online Productivity Tools. There were some very neat things. I had to try Blabberize, just for fun. However, I thought Library Thing had a lot of applications for me at school. My thought is that I could catalog my class books. I could tag the books with reading levels, teaching points, units, and themes. Then, when I’m searching for a Halloween book, I could find a plethora of titles. Looking for a great book to teach rhymes? Library Thing can help. A parent wants to know what types of books to look for at the library to fit a child’s reading level…they can look at my library. Doing this online would really simplify my life. Currently, I have several books that I keep with units that I teach. Others are in leveled reading baskets. Still others are in a teacher’s read aloud library. I once saw a teacher who had labeled hers on the back of the book with teaching points. For example, a book might be good for teaching punctuation, dialogue, and diversity. Library Thing would be a better place to label that book. Now, all I need to do is input my book information. That’s something to put on my to do list (Remember the Milk).
Another site that I enjoyed looking at was Gliffy. Again, the possibilities seemed endless. I loved the gridlines. I could make a floor plan, a phone tree, a flow chart. I thought my students might have fun making a classroom map using this program. They currently have to do that in one of our social studies units. I could make a template, putting in the correct number of doors, windows, desks, etc. The kids would then move those pictures into the correct places to create the room layout. It would also be easy to make a game board and other graphics using Gliffy. I didn’t have trouble with anything in either of these programs. They were fun and very user friendly.
Copyright! Ack! My district has been very diligent in making teachers aware that we can not just take any little thing that we see and use it in the classroom. When I submit copies to the copy center, I have to provide a release that states that copies can be made for classroom use. We’ve been told that we can not show videos to our classes for pure entertainment purposes (too many people for one viewing). Even projecting the image of a popular storybook character so I can make a larger copy for a bulletin board display is a big no no. It can make a person down right paranoid. It definitely plays a role in what I put on my web page. I’d never want to put a copyrighted song with a photo montage on my site.
I had never seen the cc before, but I am going to keep my eye out for it now. It means that there are more materials out there for my use than I realized (music, photos, etc.). They can enhance newsletters, websites, and presentations. My students would also have more sources from which to choose when creating presentations.
I never realized that my own work is automatically copyrighted. I wonder what that means for all of the teacher made work that is saved on our district’s network drive. We freely use the forms there and make modifications when needed. Should we stick a cc mark at the bottom? If we make curricular documents or assessments does the district own them or the teachers who created them? Lots to think about.
I was able to add a text widget to license my page though creative commons. Check at the bottom of my page to see it.
First up was EPN. It had a lot of drop down menus. I found Storynory under language arts. However, I think it would have been helpful to have a search box. I also would like to narrow down categories a little more. For example, if I wanted only lower elementary language arts podcasts, I’d like to be able to get those. Maybe tagging would help here. Podcast Alley was better for me as far as finding things. However, once I found a podcast that I wanted to listen to, I found directions to download an aggregator, copy and paste links and a lot of other directions that just turned me off.
iTunes was the easiest for me to use. It was already on my computer, although I hadn’t used it in a couple of years. I was able to search for, find, and play a couple of podcasts easily. As a visual learner, this isn’t my favorite activity so I didn’t subscribe to anything. I did let my husband know that he could get Science Friday, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and Car Talk though. This is his kind of thing.
I am thinking about how I can use this with my kids. I like the idea of my students posting short audio files with learning songs, short summaries of books, and other things. I’m not sure if those would qualify as podcasts though.
I am a visual learner so I was expecting to really work for this Thing. I did find, however, this one to be quite interesting. The ColeyCast is a great example of what kids can do. I like the idea of having my students create podcasts to share their learning in a unit. I also enjoyed the Vocab Minute which does musical podcasts. I have had my students record audio versions of their stories before so that parents could hear their child reading a piece of his own writing. I never thought about doing something that could be downloaded or subscribed to. That sounds like a lot of work. I am interested in exploring it a little more for my students’ use.
As far as listening to podcasts myself, I would much rather read the information. I tend to zone out otherwise. Even with StoryNory, I found myself reading the story rather than listening to it. I am going to let my husband know that he should subscribe to Science Friday though. I bet he’ll love that.
