Thing 23: reflections

This has been quite a journey! I have to say that I was a bit apprehensive about starting the 23 things. I love reading about changes in technology, but I am worried that I will make mistakes, so I don’t always try new things. But, I jumped in and began. When I made a mistake, I tried again. I learned a lot of useful skills that I will use in both my professional and personal life.

Here are my thoughts on some of the topic we covered:

I enjoyed creating this blog. I will be looking into creating a blog for next year to communicate with my parents. I am unclear on the district rules as for how much student work I can post, and how much parental involvement I can have, but I will research this over the summer and decide how to proceed

Many of my friends from Darien are using blogs to support their classroom instruction. They are linked directly to the school’s website. Some are as basic as posting daily homework while others post student work and link you to useful websites. I also explored other teachers’ websites and the age groups that they were directed at. When I mentioned what I was doing to my fourth graders, I was amazed at their response. They asked, “When can we post?”

In exploring Google Reader, I was astonished by what Google had to offer besides g-mail. Although I still find this function overwhelming, I can see myself editing the number that I subscribe to and deleting the content that I don’t need. One of the great things was exposure to new terms. I now know what the RSS symbol is and how to use it as well as many other previously unfamiliar symbols.

I have to say that the most useful blog was Mr. Skip’s. Thank you for encouraging me and showing me that this can work. Even though I have not met you, your blog has encouraged me to continue when I wasn’t sure I could finish.

I am already a member of Picassa (through Google) and Shutterfly, so I’m not sure that I will use Flickr as much because it is linked through a yahoo account. I don’t know if I will maintain all of these e-mail accounts, and I think the yahoo account will be the first one to be neglected. I have also created a family share site through Shutterfly, so this is interesting. I do, however, like the use of tags in Flickr, so that might be worth exploring. I also like the number of pictures I was able to find that other people shared. This is not possible through the other sites. I was even able to find my favorite beach.

I like the mashup function, and I think my students would enjoy exploring it even more than me.

I was familiar with YouTube in the past through Facebook posts from friends, but I had not spent a lot of time exploring it on my own. I thought it was mostly for silly videos that may have been funny, but were not appropriate for elementary school students. I was amazed at the number of posts that were educational! Not only have I found several that I could show students, but I have even found ones that are appropriate for my three year old. I also talked with my mother in law who is a big fan of classical music. She was able to watch opera pieces on YouTube performed by different singers.

I am still working on embedding video and getting past the ads when sharing these to students.




I enjoyed exploring Delicious, but I haven’t used it a lot yet. Maybe in the future?

Google Docs, slideshare, and some of the online productivity tools are a few of the things I introduced my husband to. I think it would be useful for his company because it is such an international company. I’m not sure how much I will use these in my classroom, though.

I did like exploring the Power Point presentations, and I am going to use some of them for social studies instruction. They were much more professional than the ones I am able to create with tools in my classroom, so I will try to create a few of these over the summer.

My husband introduced me to podcasts through our itouch. Some of them are offered directly through the itouch, so I started by exploring these. Then, I heard about a podcast from the International Reading Association and I joined that. These were the starting point, and then I explored many different educational offerings.

I wanted to know where this was going, so I asked around. I already knew what my students wanted: more technology and more ways to communicate with each other through the computer. I asked the high school intern if her teachers used podcasts or blogs, and she said it varied. One teacher recorded all of his lectures for students to listen to, but she said that few did. She said one teacher was very good at using technology while others didn’t even use the Smart Board except to post assignments.

I want to be one of those teachers who is innovative and allows students to express themselves in a variety of ways. I have already seen the difference it can make in small ways with special education students. I want to continue to increase these opportunities.

Thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to learning more with the Wilton technology community in the future.

Thinks 21 and 22: Wiki

I think wikis are something that I would like more staff development on. I created a site where you could look at pictures and post comments as well as adding your own. But I think this would be similar to flickr, so I want to try other options with this. How are wikis similar and different to blogs? It's great to see all of the new options that we have on the internet, but I wonder which ones will be next. I will continue to take the staff development offered, and I thank Matt for offering so many new options. This has been a good experience for me because it is self guided.

Podcasts#2

I enjoyed listening to the different options of podcasts for educators. But, even more than that, I enjoyed seeing what students had created. At first, I wondered if this tool would be useful for me because my students are so young. But, then I explored several classes that were 5th graders, including my former coworkers in Darien. They had their students record personal memoirs as a way to share their writing on their teacher's blog.

I like the idea of taking a podcast with you on an iPod or mp3 player so I can listen to it in the car or on the train. I like the idea of listening to books on CD/ ipod, so this would be very similar to that. I think the idea of podcasts with power point presentations is very helpful when you are using a computer instead of the mp3 player. On a computer, students might have a harder time just listening to the podcast because we live in such a visual world. But, if a student is visually impaired, what a great way to have them participate in lessons!

Is there a way to get past the ads that are at the beginning of the podcasts when listening to these with students?

slide share

Here's a brief one on the revolutionary war that I could see using in the classroom. For my computer savvy students, I could see several of them wanting to try this on their own as a final presentation.

Events Leading Up To The Revolutionary War

View more presentations from Michael Doody.

This year, I have had two really struggling special education students who have been pulled out of the classroom for almost every subject. They are only in my classroom for social studies and writing. Because I have been focusing on learning technology and helping students apply it, we have been using Power Point for a lot of our research projects. It has been wonderful to see these 2 boys excel on technology. They have even helped some of the stronger writers improve their technology skills!

Thing 18: Slide Share

I started looking at the information on slideshare and I viewed the "Shift Happens" slide show. Then I remembered Dr. Richard's beginning of the year presentation (was it last year?) where is used virtual software to present from his daughter's college to the faculty. This was part of his presentation. I always wondered where he got the information from!

Now, time to explore. I typed in "historical fiction" because this is what my students are currently working on. I was amazed with the graphic that you could use on slideshare. It looks much more professional than any of the presentations that I have done with Power Point. I could see using many of these that people have already created in my classroom, but maybe I'll be ambitious and create some of my own!

Historical Fiction Kate Messner

View more presentations from tkmess.

Thing 17: online productivity

I have started exploring the different online productivity tools:

1. bubbl.us looks a little like some of the tools we use in the classroom such as Kidspiration/Inspiration except that it is online. I wonder if it is also similar to draft builder, a new special education program that we were introduced to at my school this year. I played around with the mapping without becoming a member. I would be interested in seeing what else it has to offer.

2. zoho show looks like a great way to share power point presentations I think it would be a great use for my husband's international education company. It would be good to use in my classroom if we had international, or even national pen pals. I wonder if there is a way to have schools connect through pen pals, and what the district's rules would be about communication?

3. Dabbleboard, skrbl and scriblink look very similar to what you can do with smartboards. Could it be used as a part of smart technology?

4. I LOVE the idea behind rememberthemilk.com! Right now, I have a very basic phone service with verizon. But, I have an iTouch and I love the functions on it. This summer, Verizon is supposed to have access to the iPhone, and I would like to try many of these applications when it become available. I use a calendar at school and at home, but I would like to start using a reminder system in my phone so I don't forget anything! I have already started using the birthday reminder function on Facebook. My only problem is that I worry about becoming too dependent on others services to remember things for me. I guess I'll have to practice memory tricks elsewhere!

5. I have explored librarything.com for book recommendations in the past. It was nice to revisit this and look for new book recommendations for my book group.

Thing 16: google docs

I just created my first one to share, so I will continue to try this as an option. It looks like it has a lot of potential! Right now, students often ask me to e-mail their school work home. Then, they e-mail it back and I re-save it into their classroom folder. It's a lot of extra work! Or, they bring a flash drive and do exactly the same thing. I also do a lot of group research in school, but it is hard to get everyone on the computers at the same time because lab time is limited. I think google docs could help with this, but I would have to play with it a bit more. I'm still a little confused about what the final document looks like and how others can change it around.