Thing 23

All of the different material that was presented to me over the course of this class, shows me that in the world of education things are constantly changing and will always be changing as something new becomes available. It wouldn't suprise me if some of the stuff we learned here will be obsolete in a couple to five years, having been replaced by something even better. I think that my thinking from Thing 1 to Thing 23 has not changed very much, except that I now know which of the 23 things I will be sure to use in my classroom and which of the "things" I will use from time to time. I also still think that technology is very important to use in the classroom. I think the one trend that Hargadon mentions in his blog post, which sticks out to me that most is from expert to facilitator. I feel that as technology becomes more readily available and easy to use for students, it is vitally important that educators understand all of the technology too. It will become my job to show students how to find the appropriate information and what to do with the information once they found it. Whether they are to create a blog or a wiki, I need to be able to answer their questions and assist them in their endevours. I also feel that the trend from passive to passionate learning could take place through the use of blogs and wikis. By allowing every student to have an opportunity to contribute to a discussion through using a blog or wiki it allows the students to learn from each other as well as myself. I feel that I will need to make sure to keep myself up-to-date on the latest and greatest technological breakthroughs, so I can stay ahead of or on pace with the ever changing Internet and the digital world. I know realize what a great tool the Internet can be for learning, when students are properly guided on their path to knowledge. I think the first way that I will use these new tools in and out of the classroom, will be to set up a class wiki. Next, I will use a daily blog to update my students and parents as to what is happening in the classroom and what is for homework. I will also check Slideshare for more interesting projects to use in my lessons. I like how delicious allows me to save multiple websites on one single website. I will continue to learn about Web 2.0 tools by reading blogs, listening to podcasts, and talking with my more tech-savvy colleagues. Overall my big takeaways from this experience are Wikis, blogs, Google Docs, and embedding videos. Finally crossed the finish line and it feels great!

Thing 22

Well here it is finally closing in on the home stretch. I still do not feel comfortable yet using the wiki. There are many things I'd still like to do, but I'll have to seek out someone who is more tech savvy than I am to help me. I also tried to embed a video from YouTube on my Wiki, the way the video showed me to do, but I had no luck getting it work :( . I do like the idea of using a wiki, but as I've stated before I need to work with my wiki over the course of the next few months to make myself comfortable and familiar with using. I will need the time to make it something I am proud of and want to use regularly. I feel that Wikis are more appropriate for large scale group projects or papers which require collaborative group work. I think a blog is more appropriate when used for brief reflections or comments based on the original post. An example would be reading a book for a book club and you can post what you thought about a certain chapter on your blog and then your other book club members could respond to your comment. Here is a link to my wiki: Mr. Vokal's Wiki

Thing 21

I enjoyed looking at Mr. Armstrong's US History Wiki which I found under the Educational Wikis Link. I enjoyed his wiki, because it was his class website. I like how he had posted study guides,extra worksheets, and had a place for students to submit work. I like the idea of putting the extra worksheets on the website so if a student loses something then it is their responsibilty to get on the website and print one out. As opposed to having to run around and make numerous extra copies. One major hurdle that stands in way right now is the lack of time I have to create a wiki and make it something I am proud of. However, with summer vacation on the horizon, I can see the much needed time coming shortly. Another hurdle I see is if I want to post extra worksheets on the site I would need a PDF printer or scanner to be able to post the worksheets, which I do not have. In order to remove the hurdles, I would have to seek out people who are much wiser about technology than I am to assist on my long way of creating my envisioned wiki. I think it is definitely worth the fight, because I think wiki's would be a great tool for doing an online review for and upcoming test or quiz. I also like how in order to be able to change anything you have to be registered with the wiki site to be able to change or modify anything on the wiki, which would allow me to keep track of potential mischief.

Thing 20

I found the various search tools a bit confusing at first, but once I played around a bit on the sites I was able to find what I was looking for. Unfortunately, the EPN site was down so I did not get to explore the website. I did explore Podcast Alley, and found it was a decent site and offered numerous podcasts. The only thing I did not like about Podcast Alley was the fact that some of the podcasts could be inappropriate for school use.

I preferred using I-Tunes over Podcast Alley because it tell us whether or not the podcasts are "clean" or "explicit," which allowed me to select appropriate podcasts to listen to.

I subscribed to the K-12 Greatest Hits: The Best Ideas in Education. I found it had many useful podcasts (71 in total to date)on topics including, classroom management, instructional strategies, news updates for educators, and how to deal with parents to name just a few.

I also subscribed to Podcast for Teachers (Techpod). I like how it keeps you up-to-date with what is happening in technology in education.

Thing 19

I found the Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast to be an interesting podcast.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/

I believe it could a very useful tool in the classroom, by making it a beginning of the class activity in our Language Arts classes. Increasing our students' vocabularies will help them to become more knowledgeable learners and thus hopefully increase their abilities to read and understand text, by having them be exposed to unfamiliar words.

Another podcast that visited was the LD Podcast.

http://ldpodcast.com/

I chose this podcast because I am interested in Learning Disabilities and am hoping to get my Masters in Special Education with a focus on Learning Disabilities. I will use this podcast as a way to help me understand the needs of my student's who possess learning disabilities.

Podcasts are indeed a very a interesting and useful tool to help educators increase their knowledge on a variety of topics.

Thing 18

Rocks And The Rock Cycle

View more presentations from Mr.Thurston

I liked the above presentation about the Rock Cycle because it covers rocks and the rock cycle which is a unit for Science. I felt that it contained alot of useful information and visuals to help the students understand the material better. I feel that Slideshare could be a very useful tool just like You Tube in the classroom. I like how it has presentations that have already been created and allows us to either use the presentation we find on the site. I also like how we can create our own presentations and share them with our fellow teachers. Outside of the classroom this could be a useful tool because of how you can create a photo slideshow to share photos with family and friends. I will definitely be sure to use Slideshare in my classroom.

Thing 17

I explored http://flashcarddb.com/ I found it to be a great website, where you can create your own individualized flashcards. I feel it would be a great way to help my students learn new vocabulary. You can set it up so the students can study the definitions and then click show answer and see what the word is. Also, on the site students can review the words and have to remember what the definition is. The site also allows you to give quizzes to the students as well and let them practice their understanding of the words. It will even give them a percentage of right and wrong answers for both the study and quiz parts. I think this is a very useful tool which will work well in my professional life.

Thing 16

How might you use this tool in your personal and professional life? What issues come to mind about using this tool with students (ie, they need email addresses to log-in)?

I think in my personal life I might use this tool when I am traveling and do not want to have to worry about losing a flash drive, I can just create my documents and save them to Google. In my professional life I feel like I could have the students work in groups on a paper or project using Google docs. I like how they can all be able to write and or make changes to the document at the same time. I also like how it allows students to be able to save their work on Google and not have to worry about forgetting to bring their thumb drives. The one issue that might come up is that possibly not all students have email addresses. However, if we could think of a way to give them school email addresses like we get in college, then we can make sure they have access to email. I like working with Google docs, the only thing that I do not like about it is that everyone can make changes to the document (meaning accidentally delete something). Otherwise, I think Google docs is great.

Thing 15

RSS is becoming a bit easier to understand, however I still feel like I am able to to quickly go in and search for what I want as opposed to reading all of the feeds, because I know what information I want to get. I understand the benenfits of using RSS because its supposed to put everything we want or need to have in one convenient location. But, to me it is too much going on. I do not remember to check my feeds regularly and no it has not yet become a habit. I will try to start checking it more regularly.

Thing 14

My Delicious username is: http://delicious.com/dvokal

I think that social bookmarking can be a valuable tool in my teaching by allowing me and my colleagues to share useful resources quickly and efficiently with one another. If one of us finds a great website to use in class we can quickly add it to Delicious and then tell our fellow teachers to look on our Delicious website for the tag/link to the site. It can also be useful for our students if they missed seeing a video we can send them the link to our Delicious site and they can find it and view it. We can also fill our Delicious site with extra help websites for our students to use. I think Delicious is a great way to enhance my productivity by adding in the right tags I can eliminate the search time to find what I am looking for in my normal favorites file. I will also allow me to have everything at my fingertips as well as my students.

Thing 13

I have always used the bookmarks/favorites tab to organize the sites I want to remember or frequently use. After seeing tagging, I now will use tagging to keep track of my favorite/ most frequently used sites. I like how you can assign it a tag and then be able to quickly click on the tag to find the related sites, as opposed to the favorites menu where you have to create individual folders and then search through the folders to find your desired website. I feel that ease of use is a major advantage to using tagging. I also like how it is easy open up the tagged sites and search by an individual tag. I can't at this time see any dissadvantages to tagging. The most important thing to think about when assinging tags to bookmarks is what to name the tag or under what tag does a certain page fall into.

Thing 12

I picked "This Day In History" widget because I enjoy history and learning about the past. I thought this would be a fun way to keep me coming back to my blog each day to learn what happened in the past. I am starting to feel pretty comfortable with embedding code. It is not as hard as I thought it would be. I do not think that relationships built online are strong as those built in person. Online relationships can be nice for people who have had friends move away and want to keep in touch with them via the internet, however you still have that personal connection from knowing them in person before they moved. I think that Facebook and other social networking sites are so popular with kids today, is because of how easy they are to access and send information to their friends. I remember growing up the biggest rage was Instant Messanger. Now not only can you instant message on Facebook, but you can also view pictures and other information about the people you are chatting with.

Thing 11

I found leaving comments to be fun and enjoyable. I like how you can leave a quick note (almost like texting) to someone. I am always intrigued when I receive a comment, to see what it says and who published it. I feel that commenting is so important, because without leaving comments you would not be able to have the online discussions that blogs are supposed to encourage in online communities. I like the idea of students sharing their writing online. I feel this could be a great tool to have for students to get their papers proof read. By having their papers online it allows many people to offer students feedback on what to change and how to make their papers better.

Thing 10

Here is a video that I was shown at conference on student behavior.  I thought this would be a great video to share with everyone, about why its important to look beyond the students behavior to why they are acting the way they are.  I hope you enjoy this video and find it helpful.



Video is published by Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, AK.

Also, I was able to download a video using Zamzar.

Thing 9

I like YouTube it contains many useful videos to help us with our teaching.  There are many videos that you could use, but maybe you only want to use a short clip of a video, more likely than not YouTube has the short clip.  There are many videos on YouTube which are useful, you just have to sit down and sort through them until you find a useful resource (This is when you don't have a particular video already in mind).  The one bad thing about YouTube is that sometimes there are issues with video's taking forever to load and can make for some frustrating moments when you have a class full of students and the video keeps freezing.  All things considered I really enjoy using YouTube in the classroom and will continue to use it in my teaching.  At the beginning of the year it seemed that YouTube was restricted, but by the beginning of Novemeber or maybe even a bit before it has seemed to be working just fine.

Thing 8

I enjoyed using the Memory and Sudoku games, they were fun and easy to work with.  I also liked the site where you could create different magazine covers that is a neat way to create someting personal for someone.  I also thought that map creator was a good idea, especially for Social Studies classes.  However, I did not like how I had to individually save the letters for my above creation.  Otherwise this was overall an interesting thing to check out and it definitely introduced me to some new things on the web.

Thing 7

I uploaded some of my photos from my trip to Washington D.C. during the winter of 2010.  I thought that these photos of D.C would be school appropriate and help to show how humans have interacted with their environment (Human Enviornment Interaction, which is one of the 5 Themes of Geography). 

I think that Flickr could be useful in a handful of ways.  First, it would be a great way for us to assemble images and present them to our students.  Second, we could possibly give quizzes using slideshows on Flickr as the slideshows plays through we could show them images and have students identify the location by the image in the picture.  Third, some of my students have expressed interest in creating a powerpoint or picture show of the year, this would be a great way for all of the students to be able to access the photos without any cost.  The problem as Pete mentioned in his post is that we will probably need to get waivers and permission slips signed so that the students images could be posted online.  The last way Flickr could be useful is that we could assign students a photo project and they could take photos around town of different things and then post them online for us to look at and grade.

Thing 6

I chose this image in honor of Bowl Season and my hopefully successful completion of this task after I spent two hours trying to figure out how to get an image off of Flickr.  I am not positive that I like Flickr and I find it a bit confusing especially when it comes to the licensing issues.  I think it could be a big headache if we try to have our students pick images from this website if they run into licensing problems.  Licensing issues aside Flickr does have a wide variety of images.

(I do not own this image and nor do I claim that the author of this image endorses my work) Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/avinashkunnath/