Thing #23 A new beginning

Whew!! I did it. I completed the Library2Play Learn 23 Things challenge. It was set up to be completed in 9 weeks, but I busted my buns and finished in less than a week (I found out about it late) It was such a wonderful adventure. I learned so many new things that I will take to my future classroom. I encourage any teachers to also take the challenge!!!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

• All of the great tools I can use in my classroom. I really excited to bring all of this technology into my future classroom!
  

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

• I was planning to go for my masters in education technology, this challenged reaffirmed my love for technology and my excitement to bring it into the classroom.
  

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

• As silly as it sounds, I am so impressed with myself for creating a podcast. I did so many cool things!! If I'm this excited, imagine how excited my kids will be.
  

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

• I wish I had known about it sooner. I had to really hustle to get through it all. I thought everything else was great though! What a fun challenge!
  

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

• Of course - sign me up!!!
  

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

• Amazing, Incredible, Rewarding, Fantastic!!
  

Things #21 Poscasts

I made a podcast!! I can't believe I made a podcast. It's cheezy yes, but I wanted to try it out and see how they work. I am so excited to be able to use this in my blog and possibly in my classroom. I will admit, it was a little bit of a challenge to figure out. First things first, you have to have a microphone of some sort. Luckily I had one from my Spanish class I took online. I downloaded a great program (for free) where I created my podcast. You basically just hit the record button. The name of the program is audacity. From there, I exported what I recorded and put it on an online site called, switchpod. This allowed me to provide a link for you to hear my podcast. I will play around more with podcasts - I just hate hearing my voice back. :) But there are so many cool things you can do with podcasts - I can't wait!!

Thing #20 YouTube & TeacherTube

Video websites are such an important tool for teachers. Like the old saying goes...pictures are worth 1,000 words. Sites such as Youtube and Teachertube are great ways to share information with students in a whole new way. They aren't just good for students to see, but it is a great project to actually create videos. You can find videos and tutorials on almost any subject you can think of! Below are videos for new teachers (like me)! And if you like what you see, check out YT and TT, there are so many resources out there.

Thing 19 Web 2.0 Tools

Here are some other cool web 2.0 tools that I have found from the web 2.0 awards

fixya - is a great tool that can help you fix and troubleshoot things. There is tech support and manuals at your fingertips. I'm not sure if it would really come in handy for your classroom,  other than to fix things around the room without having to call tech support :) But it is a super cool tool!

lulu - is  a cool tool that allows you to upload your documents and publish them. This could be a cool idea to write a book as a class and have it published. It does cost and I found it a bit confusing to know what the exact cost to write a book would be. However I did find quite a lot of great teacher resources available for purchase, and you have the option to download or purchase a hard copy. 

live mocha - is a wonderful language tool. Teachers can brush up on their 2nd language or they can prepare for their extra certifications! The best part it's free!! You can enroll in free classes, chat with others, and so much more. They even have flash cards to help with your language journey. I know I will be adding this site to my del.icio.us  bookmarks! What a great tool. Teachers can also use this to aid students in learning a new language. 

Thing 18 Open Office

I think open office could be a great tool for students. Office can be very expensive! Open office is an alternative solution that is free and gives students access to basic document creation, such as spreadsheets, presentations and documents. I think it being free and having the ability to share the documents easily is a great plus. I don't really see any cons, other than the extra fun stuff that comes with office will be missing - but it's FREE!!! (I already have office on my computer, so I didn't download this program, so I might have missed some other cons that aren't apparent until you play in the program.)

It wasn't discussed in this exercise, but I recently found scribd. You can upload your documents and share them over the web. I love it!! It's a great way to share resources that I've created, without having to take up space on my website. Try it out - it's GREAT!

Thing #17 Rollyo

Love it!!! Have you ever done a search in places like google and you get tons of websites that don't interest you? Well Rollyo allows you to create searches that are searched from the website you designate. This is a wonderful tool for classrooms. Bruce created this great video showing how you could use it in your classroom. I am always searching for specific ideas for my classroom, but when I use other search engines, I get tons of crazy sites returned (most not having anything to do with classrooms). So I created a Rollyo search that searches some of my favorite teacher forum/blog sites (teacher lingo, pro teacher, a-z teachers stuff, teachers corner)   It's called Teacher Ideas Mrs. E - I hope you will check it out!! 

Thing#16 Wiki

Wikis are so much fun and can be use for so many things in the classroom. Think of them as a webpage that allows anyone to update or add to it - they are usually on a certain subject. The most popular wiki is wikipedia. I use this site quite often just to find quick answers.

In my multicultural class our teacher had us create a wiki about a mc author. We chose Ezra Jack Keats, and I'm proud of the way it turned out. Before we could create our wiki we did have to get organized and give out who was going to cover what topic, this way everything was covered and nothing duplicated. I would suggest you have set jobs if you are going to use a wiki in the classroom or allow students to sign up for what part they would like to take care. For example, if you are having students create a wiki on an author, separate the topics like biography, books written, awards won, etc. I think it's too chaotic otherwise.

Library2Play has some great suggestions for wiki on the blog:
· Idea #1: Collaborative note-taking. Everyone pitches in and adds a fact or two about a topic. Teachers can encourage students to include opinions, challenges, and appropriate criticism. Students would then write essays using only these notes. Make sure that each addition includes a citation to website, book, or database, including page numbers so that it can be checked.

· Idea #2: History. Students can compile a wiki of famous artists, architects, writers, and other key historical figures from a city, state, or country.

· Idea #3: Create a "top 10" lists and supporting material. This could include scientists and their discoveries, top writers and their books, ... you get the idea.

And there are tons more ways you could use them for. Again just be organized!!! Here some great links to ideas to use wikis in the classroom
Wiki in K-12 Classroom
Wiki Ideas for the Classroom

Thing #15 Library 2.0

I think web 2.0 and library 2.0 are all things that we as teachers should be thinking about and how to bring this technology into our classrooms and teach it to our children. Sometimes I think our children are more advanced than us in technology. They are sponges and are ready to absorb everything. Have you ever seen teenagers figure out a new cell phone or how something on the internet works - they do it in a matter of seconds. We need to give them access to these tools and guide them in their learning. As the article To more powerful ways to cooperate suggests - we (students and teachers) can work together and create new and exciting things. If you give them the tools, just imagine what they can create. I think librarians can serve this purpose too and can help facilitate the knowledge to patrons of the library.

I also think that tools are going to advance the way we teach and educate our children. There is so much functionality with these types of tools. I am excited about the future of technology in the classroom!!

Thing #14 Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I'm in love, no seriously in love!! Where have all these tools been hiding. Today I have been introduced to del.icio.us - what a cool tool. I can't wait to use it. Have you ever found a really cool website and bookmarked it to your favorites, but when you think about using it again, you can't find it in your thousands of bookmarks. Well I have, actually it happened just the other day. About a year ago I found a really cool idea to use a mailbox in my classroom. I wanted to give credit to the teacher who had the original idea, and I couldn't find it among my thousands of bookmarked sites. This is going to be so nice!! del.icio.us takes bookmarking sites to a whole other level. You bookmark sites, but you put tags on your sites so they are easy for you to find. But they aren't just on your computer, you can access these bookmarked site from work, school or wherever! Also you can share your list of bookmarks with other uses. Here are some ideas I think this tool will be useful in and out of the classroom.

Research projects - As students research projects at school they can bookmark their sites they have found on a site like del.icio.us - then they have access to everything at home they have found so far. No duplicating work or having to have students print out the websites they have found. I'm sure parents will love this!

Teachers gathering ideas for classroom - Let's say you are working on a unit. You can find ideas and resources and bookmark them on del.icio.us - you can search bookmarked sites by other teachers and double your info! Also you can switch between work/school. No need for separate bookmark lists. And other teachers can access the links that you have found - making it easier for them to plan their lesson.

I am so excited to get my bookmarks tagged. I already downloaded them to the site, now I just have to update tags so it makes it easier to find them.

Thing #12 Comments

I think commenting is very important to blogs. I think when you comment on a blog that you are justifying that person, whether you agree or disagree with them. Bloggers want to know they are being heard by someone, anyone. I really liked what Drape's Take said regarding comments. I think the blogger should interact and respond to comments. I try to respond to everyone who sends me a comment or email. It's why I created my blog in the first place - to help and let others know some tips/ideas that have worked for me. I also agree that sometimes we won't agree with someone's viewpoints, but we should never bash or take our commenting to extreme. We should be courteous with our comments!!

With that, I will follow up with this post as I find some blog to stalk.

Library2Play blogs

• The Comfy Reading Corner made an excellent point about using some of the tools like magazine creator due to the inappropriate images.
• Love, Laugh, Learn was having a little bit of trouble with wikis, I offered some suggestions.
• Crazy Prek Man had a great suggestion for leaving comments.
• Belle of Books completed the 23 things as well
• Information is Bliss made an adorable photostory
  

Other Blogs
Days of a New DC Teacher
Elbows, Kneeds dreams

Thing #11 LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a great tool to catalog you books, chat with others who have read the same books, join groups with other that have similar reading interests and review the books you've read. I had fun on this site. I love to read books and I love reading books that others suggest to me. I can use this site in so many ways. I can share books that I loved and find out what others are reading. I could make a classroom assignment using this site where students could have accounts and review books. When I was browsing through the groups, I saw several teacher who grouped together so each knew what books other teachers had in the school that could be shared between classrooms - what a great idea!! I even found a widget for my blog that shows everyone what I am reading currently. I also found 2 groups to join. Multicultural books for children and Picture books. I was hoping to find a teacher group or an elementary group to share ideas, but the ones I found were specific to a school or weren't exactly what I was looking for. Maybe I should create one :)

I did love this site. I think it could be a very powerful tool in the classroom. I don't think I will catalog all of my books just yet. Last year I found amazing software that creates a database for my books. It's called bookcollector. But I would be willing to do double entry if the teachers in my school decide to create a group so we can see what books we can borrow from each other. For now I will record the books I'm currently reading so I can continue to use my blog widget!

Thing #10 Image Generator

This was such a fun exercise. I found so many useful tools to use in and out of my classroom. Here are some of the fun things I made.

Image Chef:

This site has some cute tools to use. You can create an image with a message on the beach or create a baseball jersey. How fun is that! This is a fun tool for kids. Here is something fun I created. Enjoy!

ImageChef.com Flower Text!

Custom Sign Generator

There were so many great tools on this site. You can create magazine covers, add your face to a funny body, and so much more. I created a magazine cover. I know the kids would love this. I thought this would be a great tool for an autobiography project. The funny body one was cute too and would make cute Christmas gift for parents. 

Big Huge Labs

This site also has some great tools. I had fun playing with the motivator tool. I thought this would be a great way to give out awards in class. I also loved badge maker. This would have been prefect for my comic book class that I held this summer. But teachers could do all types of things with this for themes throughout the year. I also found the palette generator to be really cool! You upload a picture and it will tell you what colors coordinate with that picture. What a great tool for scrapbookers.

I spent all morning on these sites. They really are a lot of fun. So many possibilities with these tools.

 

Thing#9 More RSS Feeds

Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?

• Right now, I'm very interested in teacher blogs - and specifically about teaching. Honestly the best method for me to find new blogs is by finding a great blog and looking at their blog roll. I also found teacher lingo, which is just a community of other teachers. So for right now, this seems to be the best method. If I'm looking for something in particular then I think that I will use search sites.

Which Search tool was the easiest for you?

• I have to say Google Blog Search, it truly was the least confusing to me. Plus I'm used to Google.

Which was more confusing?

• I would say syndic8, it was very confusing to me. It was way too busy.

What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?

• I found some great feed on education technology. This is the field I think I want to go for my masters, so I'm excited that I found a few blogs dedicated to it. I also found some more teacher blogs that I look forward to exploring.

What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

• Not news feeds but rss feeds, Teacher lingo - it's a great community of teachers and their blogs. I love that allows people who already have a blog to still join the community.

I'm still learning RSS feeds, I don't want to overwhelm myself with sorting through news as well. I will adjust this as I get used to just reading the blogs in this setup.

Thing #8 RSS Feeds and Readers

Don't you just learning new things, I DO!! I had always seen these little orange icons on websites I frequent. I wasn't quite sure what they are, but now I know!! They are RSS Feeds and they allow you to collect all your websites, blogs, news, etc into a reader. No more checking out 10 different websites, it's all there for you. Like a Google tutorial said, "It's an inbox for the web". And I love it!!!

I decided to go with Google reader. As you know I love Google and I thought it would be much easier to keep track of all my new learning tools if I kept them all in the same place. Here are the items listed on my reader, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!


Thing #8 Excercise:

Q:What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

• I love that everything is right at my fingertips. I am becoming a blog junkie. I love that I can put all of my favorite blogs in one spot and read them when I'm ready. No more having to go surf through 10 different blogs. I also like that I can add them to folders. The more organized you are, the easier it is to find the things you are looking for!

Q: How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?

• In my personal life, I will be able to skim through my favorite sites quickly. As far as school goes, I'm not quite in the classroom yet, but I think this will help me keep a step in the latest trends. I know life as a teacher is busy, busy, busy, so this will definitely come in handy once I'm in the classroom, so I can stay up to date with my teacher friends.
  

Q:How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

• They can keep themselves and students up to date all in one spot. I was thinking this is also good because the teacher can limit what to share with students. Say for instance the teacher is signed up for a news group and she shares her reader with her students, if an article is not appropriate for the classroom, she can just remove it.
  

I know I will be using RSS feeds and readers! My question is - how do I add a RSS feed to my classroom website. How cool would it be for parents to get news from the classroom through their readers, vs having to go through and check the different links to my website. :) Pretty nifty! (BTW this is on my list of things I want to learn)

Thing 7 Googlemania

I love GOOGLE!! It is by far the webpage I visit the most. What I love even more are the extra tools Google offers.

I tested out Google Notebooks. GN allows you to save links and info into one spot. I love this tool!! What I usually do is just create folders on my computer and try to put a great description for the file name. I love how you can add labels so you can find things easier in GN. The only thing that I wish it had the capability was to save images. I know I could just list links, but I've run into trouble by just bookmarking and saving links. (I love to search the web for ideas for my future classroom. I had hundreds of teachers website bookmarked with tons of great information. I lost a lot of this great info because the teacher no longer has their website going!) I would suggest if you do use Google notebook to copy and paste all of the information your are wanting to keep and not just links. So for my first notebook I created one for all of my safari theme ideas. I was able to create labels such as "bulletin boards", so that I can easily find all of my notes on that subject. Here is my safari notebook. There are so many possibilities with this tool. Students could use it when doing research projects to keep track of all of their resources. It's great for teachers to keep track of ideas or themes within the classroom. I love this tool and I know I will use it in my classroom!

Another tool that I hadn't heard about was Google Docs. This tool has several templates for many common documents you use everyday. Some great ones I found while looking through it where attendance and grade books. There are so many templates that students and teachers can use. Very cool!!!

Thing #6 Mashups

WOW!! Who knew all of this stuff was out there!! Too much fun!

So a few of my favorites:
musuemr - you can take an image and make it look like people are at the museum looking at it. This would be great for a bulletin board, maybe student of the week. Also could be used for colleagues or someone retiring. Would make a cute send off card!

Mappr - Allows you to put pictures on a map. There are so many things you can do with this one. Maybe a geography project and the students put images of famous sites on the map. Or maybe it's a travel map where the kids can show places they've been.

Trading Card Maker - Wouldn't this be a cool tool for kids to use during an autobiography project or a author study. They have to create a trading card with the author and let everyone know about them in a trading card.

I'm truly enjoying this adventure. I apologize for all of the post being in the same night, but the deadline is a few days from now and I want to finish before then. I just wish I had found this program before tonight :)

Thing#5- Flickr

I had heard about flickr, but had never really used it before. In my comic book class that I recently taught, I allowed the students to use images from Google images. I know have another resource to use that allows for the correct way to use images. I will also be teaching my students the importance of abiding by copyright laws.

I found so many amazing pictures, but what a great resource for teachers. I did a search on classroom libraries and found some wonderful pictures and great ideas!!!

In the spirit of "Shark Week", I wanted a picture of a shark. I found this fabulous picture. The person who took it ran into it while snorkeling - can you imagine? What a beautiful image.

I love Shark Week!! I get so excited when I start seeing the commercials for it. Of course I've been watching it all week :) I have been catching for at least the past 13 years. I think this is it's 21st year on the air. AMAZING!! So far my favorite has been Cash Cab - Shark Week and Survivor - Shark Week.

Thing#3

I have my blog up and going now. I also created a new avatar - isn't she cute!!! That was so much fun! I recently cut my hair, this was the closest thing I could come to it :)

Even though I already had my blog set up, I learned quite a few new things about blogs that I didn't already know.

Thing#2

I have decided to play along with the Library2Play of 23 things to learn. So far it has been very interesting and I am very excited to participate. Come play along with me!

Thing#2
The hardest of the goals for me is to begin with an end in mind. I'm a very creative person and my mind goes a million miles a minute at all times. When I come up with something new I want to learn, or something I want to create, I get overwhelmed because I start thinking about 200 other things I want to learn or create. It's very hard for me to focus on just one thing! Have you ever seen that Gwen Stefani commercial (I think it's HP) she has all these pictures flying around her and it's what she says is constantly going through her mind, that me!!

The easiest habit for me is teaching and mentoring. I had already created a blog before beginning this journey, but I created it to share so that others can learn from me. I love teaching others!! And I firmly believe as the video stated, "the best way to learn something is to teach someone else." I also think that using technology comes very easy to me. I am very attached to my computer and the internet. So much so that everyone in my family call me first when they need to research something whether it be deals for Disneyland or to look up medical symptoms they are having.