Thing 23-The beginning

This has been a great experience. I've become a huge fan of RSS. I always knew it would be helpful but never really took the time to learn how it could work for me. Bringing information to me instead of me going out and having to search for it gives me more time. Time is crucial in this job.
I've also enjoyed playing around with mashups and teachertube. Again, this forced me to take the time to see how these things worked. I really think the mashups would be a good way to have students demonstrate their understanding of concepts by using images and manipulating them. I'm going to play with them more this summer and figure out how to work them into projects.
I've always been a huge fan of working with web 2.0 tools. This program has just helped me identify more things to use and also shown me ways they are already being used. I plan to share this with the teachers in my building.
I think my biggest take away from the project is the confidence to continue looking for new ways to affect student learning and new ways to help teachers find ways for students to demonstrate their mastery of content.
I really hope you offer another project like this one focusing on other web 2.0 tools. It was the perfect way to learn. Thanks for your help and encouragement.

Thing 22-Embedding Video

Here's a great video that a group of FIRST graders made. I sent it to a teacher friend who thinks you can't use technology with K-2!



This was easy to do! I picked this video because it was promoting technology for girls. I've seen girls shy away from it and consider technology to be a guy thing! I really want to change young women's minds on that idea. I just thought it was a good message (and the teacher who made it is a guy!) :-)

I tried to use Zamzar but it kept telling me that the video had no file extension. I'm going to play with this a bit more.

Thing 21-YouTube

I loved it! The videos you linked to were great. I especially loved the laughing baby and the free hugs. However, there is some very inappropriate material in YouTube which shows up even when you aren't looking. I understand why it is blocked at school. However, teachertube isn't blocked at my school. I haven't had the chance to work with studenttube but I think it will be a great way to display the movies my kids were making with our new FlipVideo.
The concept is great, we just need to be careful of the forum we make available in schools.

I found a video on how to make an interactive whiteboard with a wii for $100! There are some extraordinary people out there and their work is now available to everyone!

Thing 20

I have to admit that I am using bloglines daily now. I've found many uses for work. It helps keep me organized and brings info to ME instead of me going to look for it. I love it!

Thing 19

I've been playing with delicious a while and actually have a number of accounts for different reasons. Here's the first one I set up for just myself: http://del.icio.us/morrisonmm77/website
I set this up during a training at REMC council meeting. I've had problems editing and bundling the tags on this account. It's strange because I've been able to edit the other accounts but haven't had success with this one. This one I've been working on from home and I have Vista. I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
I also have used delcious accounts in training when I working with teachers. I set one up for the math and science teachers that had recently been given smartboards. The account had three tags. One for science and math and one for the smartboard. The science and math tags had specific content area websites where the teachers could find smartboard resources for their content area. The smartboard tag had websites that had to do with using the smartboard itself. I conducted the training and gave them all the password and they have begun saving sites for each other.
I also have an all staff delicious account set up through the media center. All the teachers that attended a training session on delicious have access to the password. I'd like to see the teachers share what they find in their content area with each other to enhance producitivity and promote community.

Thing 18-Tagging

As a media specialist, I highly endorse tagging. It's what we do~we assign tags (subject headings) to books to make them easier to access in our OPAC. Tags are a great way to group like websites together to make them easier to locate when you next need to find them. This is one of the advantages. A disadvantage is you need to think carefully about how you will tag. Will you use singular and plural (smartboard and smartboards are different catagories); will you use acronyms? (ELA or english). You really have to think what you are doing before you do it otherwise you have to go back and reorganize everything (I speak from experience!)
I like to look at other people's delicious accounts and see what websites they are visiting and how they are tagging their sites, also. It gives me an idea of how to tag things myself.

Thing 17-SlideShare

This is cool! My students are always wanting to bring powerpoint presentations from home to use in class. If they had an account, they could upload their powerpoint to the account and present from this site. The problem is (I'm home now....so I'm not sure) that this is going to be blocked. I already saw a powerpoint that would be considered inappropriate in an educational setting so I assume there are more. That's disappointing because this could really make life much easier!

Check out Death by Powerpoint. That was a great slideshow that demonstrates what is bad about slideshows. It would be an excellent visual to use with students.

Thing 16-New Stuff!

I played with 30 boxes. I've used goggle calendar for 2 years to schedule my media center and my equipment with my staff but it I've had a hard time embedding into my website so I was looking for something different. This is easier to embed but I can't use multiple calendars like I can with goggle calendar.

I also played with Knowtes. I plan on showing this to my special education teachers tomorrow. This could be a great tool to help students study because it uses both text and pictures. Very cool!

Thing 15

Google docs is a great way to work with other people. The Commoncraft video gave me the idea of showing this to our yearbook/newspaper teacher. She has been struggling with a way for her students to save their work online and reach it from any computer. The student editors could then log in and edit (as could she) and the writer could then make changes. She had been struggling with papers missing and disappearing.

I think the concept is great but have personally had difficulties with finding what I'm looking for and logging into the document. I'm hoping this will all be resolved.

I did try to use this with a committee that was working on a school policy but one teacher refused to use google docs because she felt learning the technology would take to much time. I do think it will be valuable to use in this way.

Thing 14

I've been podcasting for a while now. I began with poetry. Students had an assignment to write a number of poems for a unit and those that completed the assignment and received a passing grade were given the opportunity to podcast their work. At first there wasn't a lot of interest but after the teacher played the podcast to the rest of the class they became very excited. Students who hadn't been doing their work, completed the assignment so they could podcast. It was a good first experience for both the new teacher and myself.

The next year, I began working with three teachers on doing commercials. Students read books and then working in groups wrote a commercial to sell the book to the other students. This was a great project because everyone was able to participate and we saw students who normally didn't work well in groups, actually leading the groups.

I would really like to involve other teachers in the podcasting. I'd like to see our teen living teacher have students podcast their positive message assignment. These podcasts could then be played to the entire school at annoucement time.

In addition, I would really like to see teachers using the podcasting as a tool for their students to review for quizzes and tests. Students that are auditory learners would have the advantage of having both their notes and a verbal review to listen to before the test.

Thing 13

I subscribed to the Grammar Girl podcasts. I've heard them before and always thought they would be a great thing to pass on to the english teachers in my building. I also subscribed to a podcast for Catholics; Catholic Army.

I think itunes was the easiest to use but didn't seem to have as much educational material. There were lots of language podcasts and some very strange math podcasts (rapping calculus equations!)

I kept running into broken links on the EPN. There were a number of interesting titles but the links were broken. That was frustrating.

It wasn't as easy to find podcasts as I had hoped.

Thing 12-Podcasts

This is my second year of doing student podcasts at the middle school. The first year was very limited with one teacher participating. Students working in an elective class were writing poetry. They podcast their favorite poems and we linked them to their blog in classblogmeister.

This year, I've added more teachers and we are using core curriculum. Students read the book Life as we Knew It and then working in groups made a podcast commerical to sell the book. Each time I work with the podcasting and the students I learn new things about both the technology and the type and scope of projects that students can handle.

Listening to these new podcasts, especially by elementary age students, has given me a greater understanding of the possibilities for improving the podcasts at the middle school level. I was very impressed with the St. Raphael 6th grade students. These students live in the same city in which I work and are close in age to my students. They did an excellent job of organizing their podcast before they began recording. Go here to listen: http://www.straphael-gc.org/school/school_index.html I like the way they incoporated pictures into their podcast. If students were working in groups each student could handle another part of the podcast, writing the script, illustrating or recording the podcast. It would be a great way to differentiate learning.

Another great example of your students is from Long Elementary School. Go here: http://long.dearbornschools.org/podcast/Long%20Elementary/Mr%20Lindens%20Library/312EAE78-AD8A-464B-ADA1-908B1C173725.html

Thing 11-My Wiki

I think wiki's are a great resouce for online collaboration. They are also a good way to save online information, weblinks, etc. Mine is a classroom webpage. See below:

http://gcmediacenter.wikispaces.com/

Blogging is more personally introspective where wiki's are more collaborative. People can comment on your blog but their input isn't need to have a final posting.