Web 20

Our whole society and how we communicate has drastically changed over the years. In years to come this change will accelerate more rapidly. We must be constantly look at how students are linking in the real world, be familiar with the tools they already have in their hands that they are using, and use those tools within education to keep students focused, interested and growing in their learning.

While I haven’t finished all the lessons, I have gained some very valuable insights into what our teachers need to have access to in order to keep pace with our students. I am hoping that the 23 Things will be available to us throughout this school year so we can have a reference to go back to when the class is over.

This is one of my favorites!

I found an interesting article in my reader on “footprints” we leave on line and how to relate this with our students. I didn’t have time to read it in depth right now, but as I look at what we need to communicate with our students and parents on Internet safety I will definitely be visiting this site.

This seems like a great way to engage students. I can see teachers putting lessons on podcasts and allowing student access for review or if they missed the class. I can see students jumping in with both feet to create podcasts for projects assigned or just for fun. I also see this as a great way to give mini training instructions for learning or review of learning in staff development courses. I may try to implement this with our Google Apps training.

I found one podcast on bullying and thought that would be good since this seems to be so prevalent in our schools today. I also subscribed to Hubblecast HD which is the latest news about atronomy, space, and NASA. I thought that one sounded very interesting, and I know my husband will love it.

This is great. I will use this personally. I have series of books that I used to keep on a database on my computer, but now I will be transferring them all over to this place. Since exploring this site and doing searches by authors, I have found a wealth of information about the authors and book series they have written. This will be another builder for me. I did create a Library Thing account and have added one of my books to it. Now I will bookmark this site in my Delicious Account.

I can see where this tool would be a great advantage when you are traveling and don’t have your laptop with you that has all your bookmarks. I think it is a great way to keep all your bookmarks, both private and public. I have set up a few bookmarks in my delicious account and did put one privately. I will continue to add more bookmarks and explore to see what else can be included here.

I put some information in my Post12 on an interesting article I found for slide shows. I have copied it here because I thought it was worth mentioning again.

I just checked my Reader and found an article called Top 10 Sites for Creating Slide Shows by David Kapuler.  I will most likely look at some of these sites and do another slide show before the course is over. I didn’t see this link on the K12 Learning assignment so I thought it might be good to add it to this blog. That way anyone who reads this blog will have another reference for slide shows.

I found another one today on Easier Resizing of YouTube Videos. I noticed on some of the sites I went to, videos took forever to load. If they take too long, I just go somewhere else. If this is something teachers and students will be doing more and more then they will need to know the material contained in this post.

Another one from yesterday was a how to on making simple flip books. I thought this seemed like a fantastic way to engage students in and out of the classroom. The article even listed applications for education for teachers who have those non-thinking days. Here is a link to a page that walks you through making a flip book.

The Google Reader is a really great way to skim and learn about what’s new in any area you want to to be informed.

I am beginning to feel the same way I did when I got my new cell phone. After a half hour of being told about a hundred different things I could do with it, I thought, “All I want to do is make and receive calls. I really don’t care about the hundred other things I can do with it. Yes, there may be one or two of these I would like to use, but I could never absorb enough information to use all the features on a consistent basis effectively.

I guess if I can learn how to use a few of these tools effectively out of the vast array that are available, I will have been successful in this course. I will admit that some have grabbed my attention more than others. For example, Blabberize was pretty cool. I could see making special occasion animated cards to email to people. I think they would really enjoy them. I know students would enjoy using this tool as well.

Another one I particularly liked was wordle. It reminded me of collages we used to make with pictures, only these were being made with words. One that caught my eye was the “US Constitution” by Jonathan f, and I thought it was a great example of how a teacher could incorporate this tool in the classroom. The one called “I have a dream” by Anonymous was a great way to express all the concepts that represented this cause and Martin Luther King’s speech.

I  thought any site that would allow students as well as teachers to make aids that would help with memorization and test taking was an especially useful site. If students were introduced to Quizlet, they wouldn’t need to worry about having the right size cards or remembering to bring them to class if the teacher wanted to check them. They could direct the teacher to their online work and vice versa.

I did look at some of the others just to see what was available, but I didn’t play on these sites at all.

I found a session dealing with Google from 2008. This was particularly helpful as we are introducing Google Apps to our school in the fall. I learned a great deal about Google Docs, setting up iGoogle customization and adding all kinds of gadgets.   I would pause the presentation, go to my Google account and work through what he was teaching. Some times the interface was a little different and it took me extra time to figure out where to do the things he was talking about. The video was rather fuzzy which made it more difficult to read what he was clicking on and the audio was very low. It helped me a good bit that what he was saying showed up in words at the bottom of the screen. Also there were times when things didn’t open in a new tab, and I would lose the tab with the presentation. This was most frustrating because then I would have to start over. I couldn’t just pick up where I had left off. While it has been very time consuming working along with the presentation, it has been the most valuable way for me to learn a good many aspects of what Google has to offer. I have yet to finish the presentation as after a couple of hours and 4 or 5 times of having to start over, I needed to call it quits for the evening. I will be finishing it tomorrow, but I did want to get some of these thoughts in this blog while they were fresh in my mind.

I will be doing a good bit of training with our staff in Google Apps, so this has been a very helpful session. It has laid a foundation for how I will present the different aspects of cloud computing in Google.

Well, I have to confess I slid through this slide show assignment just to get caught up. That means I did the bare minimum just to get through. I will probably go back and do more with the slide show when I have a more time. I did learn quite a bit about how to do some of this, but I know I need to learn more to dress it up, add captions, and put in credits. For now the credits are above in my wiki.

I just checked my Reader and found an article called Top 10 Sites for Creating Slide Shows by David Kapuler.  I will most likely look at some of these sites and do another slide show before the course is over. I didn’t see this link on the K12 Learning assignment so I thought it might be good to add it to this blog. That way anyone who reads this blog will have another reference for slide shows.