My initial expectation for this class is that I would go through this class quickly without learning anything new. I have to say that was not the case. Most of the technologies we addressed, I have used but we approached them in a new way. I enjoyed broadening my horizons. The most impactful thing for me was to get a holistic look at Web 2.0. I am not sure that was the intent, but several of the tasks and some of the studies that were attached helped me get a better outlook of how to approach my 6th grade Technology class.
As we move on into the future, an important step we as educators must take in looking at each new technology that comes our way is how does it further our curriculum, how long will it be around, and is it compatible across multiple platforms. It is no longer an option to say will technology impact the classroom because it is obvious that it already has. We as trained professionals need to make the decisions to find the right technologies that will further our curriculum, enhance student learning, and engage the student. We do not need to be afraid that the student will know more about the technology, but we will know more about the content and guide the student to use the technology effectively.
I have two immediate next steps. I particulary enjoyed the Creative Commons activity. My first project for my 6th grade students will be to learn about Creative Commons using the video used in our learning, and to download pictures from Flickr using Creative Commons that describe their personality. They will create a slideshow using their pictures. Students at this age do not understand copyright and feel comfortable taking pictures off the internet. I think this will be a great start to the year and will include many important activities. The second next step for me is to implement my wiki. I have had one for more than a year, but have not done anything with it. I would like to have a wiki that has a page for each chapter which includes videos, sample work, and lessons related to that chapter for my math class. I would like to also include pages for my Math Club, Tech Class, etc. This sounds like a good summer project.
Social Networking has exploded with adults and teens. With all the sites LinkIn, Facebook, Twitter, Classroom 2.0, Pageflakes, and NCTM Ning. Who has the time to keep up with all of this? I recently read a book title, which I am paraphrasing, maintaining relationships in the face of constant distraction. I think that is my first thought after exploring Thing 22. I think as professionals we have to find which sites provide the most value and will be around for more than six months. Prioritizing seems to be the key for me. We can spend all this time on the internet without actually doing anything productive.
The item that made the most impact for me was the Final Report of the National School Boards Association. I agree with Shelley’s comment that we need to model constructive and productive uses of social networking tools. Depending on what Ning chooses to do with their pricing structure with education, I think creating small, private networks for students to practice these skills is an excellent place to start. Students often begin using these technology tools without being taught the proper ways and uses of these tools.
I loved the Ning networks related to education link. It had many of the resources all in one place. I spent a lot of time browsing the sites. I think on many social networking sites you tend find that you lose a large amount of time without even realizing it so I think this is a productive use of social networking. Having dedicated sites where people such as International Teachers can go to find resources is a great way to use these tools. NCTM has the Unofficial NCTM Ning. I don’t think NCTM has jumped on board with Web 2.0.
Sharing ideas and learning from each other seems to be the best use of these tools.
This quest started when I viewed a Multiplication article in my reader. The author gave his thoughts on multiplication, which I actually cannot remember because I became enthralled with the links in his blog entry. The links were from Devlin’s Angle which is on The Mathematicians Association of America site.
The Devlin’s Angle is written by Keith Devlin, who is a mathematician. He is a college professor and does not claim to be an expert on K-12 mathematics teaching, but he is an expert on math. He is frustrated by the fact that K-8 teachers teach multiplication as repeated addition because in fact it is not. His analogy is that we are teaching in the horse and buggy days when we are in the automobile age. For students that get to the high levels of math in college this philosophy is hard to undo for college professors.
The idea of multiplication as repeated addition does not work with negative numbers, fractions, and decimals. It only works with positive whole numbers, and he argues that it is still not a good case for calling it repeated addition. He believes there is three main operations addition, multiplication, and exponentiation.
I frankly want to read these articles again and digest them because I need to understand this better. I know that I am not giving or explaining to give the author justice. Please see the links if you are interested in learning more on this topic.
Pageflakes has compatibility issues. I am a Mac user, and it would not allow me to log-in with the password I created. I reset the password and tried again with no luck. I tried uploading the K12learning20 template with many problems. After battling with Pageflakes for awhile, I realized there was compatibility issues with a Mac. I then went to a Windows computer in the house and Pageflakes would only load with errors. I finally was able to complete the task with my husband’s Linux computer after he loaded Flash onto Linux. Pageflakes lost all credibility for me with its compatibility issues.
For a program to be valid it must be able to cross platforms. When looking at our students and teachers, you have Mac and Windows users. There are computers that are brand new with the latest technology as well as computers that are three to five years old. This program will not work without significant barriers under these circumstances. To me this isn’t worth the time.
After I did get Pageflakes running and installed the flakes and pagecasts, I did not see anything relevant. It was cool, but it seemed very redundant to everything we had done before. Yes, it maybe able to put everything in one dashboard, but I did not see much value in that.
I am sorry to post a lackluster review of Pageflakes. However, we implement a number of projects with technology at our school. There are enough barriers that come along with working with students and technology to add compatibility. Pageflakes is not a well-written program.
Google Docs has several advantages. The primary advantage is accessibility from anywhere. You don’t have to have your computer because you can access your documents from the internet from anywhere. I have used Google spreadsheets to plan out a long-term project/lesson plan that includes multiple teachers. By allowing collaborators, they can make adjustments and also see the progress of the project at any time. I like Google Docs for anything that requires collaboration. When working on projects that have many pieces to them, like a parent letter home to announce the project, a rubric, where several of us need to collaborate, a timeline for the project, and a research worksheet during the project, these are great items to use Google Docs. You can share the workload, minimize the time you have to meet face to face, and still have input on all parts of the project.
One challenge we have is students carrying around flash drives. These are handy pieces of technology, but students never seem to have them when they need them. I know there is technology that allows “locker” spaces for the students to use instead of a flash drive, but that does cost money for schools. Google Docs could provide that same option free, however, they would need an email account.
The downside to Google Docs is formatting when you need to import them back into Microsoft Office. There has always been a gliche of some kind trying to get the formatting to work smoothly. I choose not to use Google Docs on anything that the final product will need to be in Microsoft Office.
You Tube provides a plethora of information both educational, fun, and material that one doesn’t need to waste their time. TeacherTube seeks to be the alternative for the educator, but I did notice that many videos from TeacherTube also show up on YouTube.
We have used PSA videos from YouTube to give examples for our students to use when creating their own videos. A colleague taking this course found Kahn Academy that gives instructional videos in a variety of subjects. I have watched a number of their math videos, and they are very good. One is posted below. I would like to incorporate those into my class next year as study guides or review for the students and parents.
Personally, my husband has found YouTube too helpful in learning how to cook Indian food. My house has yet to be free from curry and other various Indian Spices I have to say he can cook quite well.
Thank you for showing us how to embed the videos into our blogs or wikis. Showing them from YouTube can be a gamble. Our students have created videos for various projects, but we have only shown them internally. We have never posted them on TeacherTube. That is something to consider.
I do use United Streaming, which is now Discovery Education, quite a bit in class. I know this isn’t part of our discussion because the school has to pay for a subscription, and you cannot upload video to that site. However, I find the quality of the videos are quite good from an educational standpoint. However, YouTube has its benefits as well you just have to weed through a lot of material to make sure the content is accurate. I realize we are looking at the sharing benefit that YouTube and TeacherTube provides.
Following are a few of the videos I found. I could not resist the Indian food how to video since the spices are ever so prevalent in my daily life.
I realize this cannot be a love fest for a Mac, but this activity reinforced why I love Mac’s so much! Creating a podcast in Garageband and then sharing it to iTunes is so easy. This activity was much easier than I thought it would be. Adding background music was a snap in Garageband. Ok, enough with the Apple commercial. I choose to create a reflection podcast on our recent Pi Day at our school. The podcast is titled Pinominal Day.
The substance of the where podcasts are applicable in my classroom is where I struggle. I love podcasts as a resource – to learn languages, practice yoga, or catch my favorite radio shows. My colleague is creating a podcast on the Legend of Iguazu Falls. I do see the application in reading. I cannot wait to listen to her podcast. We were on the same trip and saw the beautiful falls between Brazil and Argentina. I cannot wait to here her version of the legend because she is a fabulous storyteller. I teach math, and cannot see where podcasts fit. We could create raps or jingles to remember formulas or algorithms for fractions. My question is would the students ever go back and listen to it. It takes time to create these projects, and to receive value the students must reflect or come back to them for it to be worth the while. I guess we would have to try it and see what happens.
I selected the online conference Digiteens and Digital Citizenship because we are working on a similar project with our 6th grade students in their Technology class. The students are creating a Public Service Announcement on social networking, cell phones and text ting, or email and blogging. This has been an eye opener for us as teachers. The students have shared all kinds of issues they have been facing.
This conference video validated the method in which we are doing this project. The students completed their own research. We guided them where to go, and helped them with the research, but then they are going to teach their peers on the important issues they found on their topics. This was the main point of the conference was to have the student learn and create on the own. Their learning will be more impactful. The students in the video collaborated with students around the world with their project.
Certainly, this form of professional development is more cost effective and convenient. I will go back to this site as time permits and see what else the conference has to offer. I have also bookmarked the site links for the video conference I viewed. I am interested in continuing this Digiteens type project again with the students next year. After we finish our projects this month, I will come back and see how our students final project compare, and make adjustments for next year.
Personally, I have enjoyed both video and audio podcasts for a number of years. For a trip to South America two years ago, I downloaded Spanish language courses to listen on the way to school. Samantha Brown has great travel shows on iTunes to download as well. My own children still enjoy watching them.
When I can, I enjoy yoga, but it is difficult to get to a real yoga studio. I enjoy YOGAmazing video podcasts. I can watch them on my iPhone or on my computer. It is a free weekly video podcast and each session is about 15-25 minutes. This has been my favorite podcast find over the years. I am also a fan of NPR and try to catch Fresh Air and I enjoy Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me so they have been in my podcast subscription for awhile.
I have added Grammar Girl to my Google Reader and my iTunes podcast subscription. Since I teach math, I don’t gravite to the language arts. I think I could use a dose of grammar tips on occasion
I have not used podcasting in my classroom or in our 6th grade Tech class. I believe that if we do a project the students must have an opportunity to reflect on the project, and I have not found the project that will allow that. That is not to say that there is not a project to be done. We have used VoiceThread and Photostories, but not Podcasting. I think Podcasting is a neat idea for the classroom, but I need to identify the right project, the audience, and reflection tool for the students.
My first impression of the Library Thing is overwhelming. My second impression is that this is a summer project. I did create an account and put about 5-7 of my personal reading books into my account.
This is a time commitment upfront, but if you do keep up with it, I do see a greater advantage to this site for book advice and recommendations as opposed to Amazon. It is like an on-line book club for those that don’t have time, or want to supplement their reading club.
I watched the movie The Reader last summer. It was such a moving experience. I bought the book to read and see how different or similar it is to the movie. I see the Library Thing as an opportunity to get others opinions. At the time, no one else had watched the movie or read the book. I couldn’t get it off my mind and wanted to talk to someone else about it. I see this as the avenue to do that.
Professionally, I would like to put all of my teacher resource books on the site to catalog. It would be an excellent way to keep track of your books as well as get recommendations for other resource books.
This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.
I have to say he can cook quite well.
