Thing 23 Final Reflections

This class has been a technological adventure . . . very time consuming since I always have to go over and beyond, somewhat frustrating but excitingly challenging at the same time, and very worthwhile for both my professional use and personal use.  At first I could not see how I could put one more “thing” into my curriculum without increasing the already overloaded amount of time I put into grading and proofreading for my English and social studies classes.  Now I can see how I can revamp my program to not only relieve (or at least not to increase) my time commitment but to also add more variety to my lessons and assignments.  I am concerned about what this kind of writing will do to the correct forms of the English language, but for myself and my students, I can still use this new technology and set up my own methods of assessment.  Fortunately, I feel my administration will be supportive of whatever I want to try as long as I am accountable for “our” learning.  I’m excited to continue my next steps in continuing on this technological adventure with my students.   It will be quite interesting to see what the 21st Century brings.

Thing 18 Podcasting

Since I wanted to record a poem I had written last year for the podcast, I realized after reading Suzanne’s blog that I would need to use Audacity due to the length of the poem, so . . . on to tackling more than was what was required, which is a bad habit of mine since I then complain about the amount of time I spend trying to figure things out on my own.  Oh, well.  I figure problem solving is learning.  I installed Audacity and then ran into a roadblock trying  to download the Lame encoder, which involved several hours.  I did not know much about zipped and unzipped files and found out that Vista calls these compressed files.  The confusion came when the directions wanted me to save the file without unzipping it, and I could find nowhere that said “save.”  I finally found a help video to watch that was somewhat helpful but not exact with what I was seeing on Vista.  I finally had to quit after an afternoon of frustration and went back to it another day to finally get it downloaded and where it is supposed to be . . . I think.  At least Audacity finally worked  today on the third day I was able to return to it.  I have discovered how to use all of the Help tabs on most programs to help when in a glitch, and nine out of ten times, they have been helpful.  My poetry podcast is over four minutes, and now I need to figure out how to edit it.  I read on TechTips that you can delete a portion of the podcast, but the re-recording directions were not as clear . . . another someday challenge for me.  I wanted to go ahead and finish this “Thing,” so I will have to edit later.

Podcasting will be very beneficial to my Open Mike creative writing program. Since the students are required to present their stories and poems, it will interesting to let some of them podcast their writing.  I may have just the poems be podcasted to begin with this year.  The students might even be able to create some visuals using Flickr to go along with the poems and then have the podcast embedded on a visual page to show during the presentations when the parents are invited.  Some”thing” new to experiment with this year!!

Thing 20 Google Docs Reflections

In my initial experience with Google Docs, I found the print preview not to match the document, and I could find no way to adjust the mistakes.  The document I made is one that I shared with my teaching partner to preview/edit to use this fall with our sixth graders.  However, the final product is a sign-up sheet that would need to be printed, and therefore, my frustration.  I went to the “help” section and could not find an answer to the question.  Actually, I just realized, we could have students sign up on Google Docs.  This is still a new way of thinking for me since I still like a printed copy.  I am changing though!  This kind of sign up sheet could also be used for my Open Mike program as the students sign up for their presentations.  I’ll still have to work on resolving the print preview problem.

I continued on and made a slide presentation for my first English assignment called Summer of 2009.  I have some version of this assignment every year, but this year I decided to see what computer/presentation skills my students already have. My presentation includes a title slide, directions, pictures from my own Summer of 2009 to share, and a slide showing how the students will be evaluated.   I will give my assignment presentation and then be able to attach the direction slides to my homework website instead of printing them for the students, which is another advantageous use of Google Docs.

When we have the sixth graders work on a  project together, as we do when we have each class create a teaching bulletin board for our Egypt unit, I can see where using Google Docs will allow the kids to collaborate more and easily help each other edit their writing and projects.

Last spring we used Google Docs to share a sign-up sheet for Parent Conference Day, and then we easily shared it with our administrators.   Next, I want to take a poll using Google Docs to have a questionnaire for the sixth graders to fill out relating to their computer habits and knowledge.  I started playing with one, but need to work on it some more.

All in all, Google Docs will add a beneficial element to my organization and to my teaching.

Thing 22 Social Networking Refections

Once again I am feeling overwhelmed by every”thing” that is out there for educators to use and join.  The Classroom 2.0 is an educational site for teachers to learn about new technology, share ideas, and communicate with each other, and I would like to join at some point.  However, my concern is having time to keep up with all of this new technology when school starts again.  I spent another summer afternoon reviewing the Classroom 2.0 and other interesting social networking sites, but at least I do have the time right now.  I had been focusing on searching for ideas for writing so far and decided to search on Classroom 2.0 for more on social studies.  One idea I found was in using Edmodo, a micro-blogging site for private communications built for teachers and students.  An idea from a blogger responding to the original posting had the idea of using this site for students to be able to respond to Current Events, which I could adapt in my social studies class.  I also checked out the “Groups” and found one for elementary education and one for middle school since teaching sixth grade in my private school falls in-between the two.  The videos section had a video on Social Networking in Education that was very informative.  I checked under members and found Shelley and Debbie.  Also, I was interested in Classroom 2.0 Live which posts live “shows” that will be coming up soon.  One of particular interest is Telling Stories with Digital Threads.  Maybe I need to add that time and date to my Google calendar!

The Ning networks list was again quite extensive and mind-boggling.  I added Teaching Digital History and  I Teach Social Studies to my Delicious account to use for my social studies class and found another site where you create online flashcards or use ones that are already created called Flashcard Friends.  I would use this site to let the students create flashcards to practice grammar lessons.

My goal for social studies this coming year is to try and incorporate some kind of social networking for my class to be able to communicate with students in other countries, especially in Egypt, Greece, and Italy since we study ancient history.  Finding a network that I feel would most benefit my sixth graders could take me some time since there seems to be so much out there.

Thing 7c Reader Reflections

I seem to spend about ten minutes a day just on the Larry Ferlazzo’s website feed in my Google Reader.  He has the most interesting information about “The Best of” lists, and I am always wanting to check into many of them.  He has lists for everything, it seems, but I first subscribed to this site due to it being about “English.” It is beneficial to have someone else who has the time to find “The Best” websites and share them, so that I can quickly review them through Google Reader and pick out the ones of interest to me professionally and personally.  Google Reader and Larry Ferlazzo, a high school teacher in California, help me stay in touch with the latest websites and save me time.

Thing 21 Pageflakes Reflections

I spent an afternoon playing with Pageflakes but was having troube with Firefox, which has been acting funny ever since I installed Skype.  I switched to using Internet Explorer but am still concerned since I have everything bookmarked for this class on Firefox.  I don’t know enough to run all of the configurations to see if I can fix Firefox, and right now I can’t even get Pageflakes to open with on either site. Always something! 

Anyway, I can see how using Pageflakes could be very beneficial to me and to my students.  I could set up a page full of resources for English and/or social studies, and I could also see having each student make a personal page with supervision.  As I looked through all of the flakes, I was concerned about what the students could get into, so I think setting up a personal page would definitely have to have some limits for school use.  I do like the ease of adding flakes and editing, and I was impressed with how many flakes were listed under Education.  For some reason when I copied the K12 Learning template, the Grammar Girl feed was missing, which is something I might want to be there for English.  I did figure out how to get it back though.  In general, I found Pageflakes to be easy to manipulate and even changed the theme of my page.

Thing 19 Tube Reflections

I found YouTube to actually be easier to use and more informative than Teacher Tube.  On Teacher Tube I was interested in the Six Traits of Writing videos since I do teach this before beginning my creative writing program.  However, I could only find the individual traits sporadically here and there, and nowhere were they listed all together in a series as they should be.  I also didn’t like the way TeacherTube took me to a list of websites sometimes instead of to the videos.

On YouTube I did find two videos that I would use as inspirational previews for writing.  One video showed Stephanie Meyer talking about the way her Twilight book series began. These books seem to be so interesting to the sixth grade girls right now.  The other video was viewing John Lithgow talking about and reading his new picture book called Mahalia Mouse Goes to College.  He was being interviewed by a girl who looked to be about eleven years old, which my students could relate to.  As far as the “how to” videos, I watched “How to improve your creative writing” and “How to write an interesting story” to use in my English classes.  For fun I watched a Golf Pro Lesson called “Your Golf Machine” since I have been out practicing on the driving range this summer.  I did also save all of these videos to Delicious.

I can see using the videos to let the the students read their Open Mike stories for English or present group dramatizations of ancient civilizations for social studies, which could then be embedded in newsletters to parents or published in a wiki or blog.  I already publish some of the Open Mike stories in an English class wiki, so videos of the presentations could also be included.

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Thing 17 Podcast Intro Reflections

As I wait for ITunes to find my old registration information to download the new podcasts I subscribed to, I will reflect on what I have researched so far.  I finally did figure out how to make the Grazr widget work, and listened to two “How to” podcasts.  One was about how to clean up the Gmail inbox since Gmail is new to me, but I found it difficult to just listen without seeing what he was telling me to do with the filters and labels.  I have always known that I am not an auditory learner and do have a “leaky auditory filter,” so it is twice as hard for me to learn something this way.  However, I do realize that many of my students are auditory learners, so I need to catitalize on the use of podcasts even if they are audio.  The other “How to” podcast I listened to was about how to improve a PC’s hard disk response since I did know about defragging and had not completed one on this laptop that I have had for over a year.  I was thrilled to hear the guy say that Vista, which I have, is much better at minimizing clutter than XP, so I won’t worry about it for now.  I also listened to “Teaching the New Writing” under Ed. Technology, which I found very interesting. I was able to minimize the 40-minute podcast and listen to it while I went to Barnes and Noble’s website and ordered the book that the podcast was based on.

I had already subscribed to Grammar Grater on my Google reader which is a weekly podcast about English words, grammar, and usage for the Information Age.  Then since I already had iTunes on my computer, I subscribed to Grammar Girl and downloaded twenty previous lessons to use with my English classes. Then I also subscribed to teacherspodcast.org.

Later: IPod’s downloading of the podcasts is complete.  Very cool!!

Thing 16 Library Thing Reflections

What fun this site would be if I was able to read all of the time.  Being an English and social studies teacher along with assigning Reflection Journals, I seem to only have time to read my students’ writing during the year, and now this summer all of my reading time is spent on this 23Things class.  Then whenever I do have any “free time,” I have to decide between reading and rug hooking.  I do have a book I’m determined to finish on a road trip to Indiana in a few weeks though, which is New Moon that I am determined to read just to keep up with my sixth graders as the movies come out.  However, my mother was a librarian and is still an avid reader at 85, and both of my daughters are avid readers, so I have sent the Library Thing site to all of them hoping they will be interested in using it.  Many of my sixth graders in my classes last year were avid readers and would have liked this catalog adventure.  I can also see where our reading teacher or librarian would love to have her students involved in the Children’s Literature discussion groups.

Thing 15 Delicious Reflections

“Things” were going well until I could not get the RSS feed to show up on the wiki page.  I searched and searched the Delicious site to find somewhere that said “shared” tag after I thought I followed the directions, and then I read most of the help section on the site.  After more than an hour, I found a help section that said they only update the feeds about twice per hour.  However, what I “shared” the first time for the wiki at 4:49 finally showed up about 6:45.  I had been very determined to figure out the problem by myself since this was the first stumbling block I had hit in all of these “Things,” but I hate that I wasted so much time trying to figure it out when I did it correctly the first time.  Oh, well, now that I have that said . . .

I did find Delicious to be a better way to save bookmarks for school.  Before, I would find websites at home, add them to my favorites, and end up emailing them to myself at school.  I like the idea of having the list always available online.  While I was adding bookmarks to my Delicious account, my eyes went blurry since I couldn’t stop, and I ended up with twice as many as assigned.  I was searching under “middle school creative writing” for my sixth grade English classes.  I kept going since I knew there would be even better and more interesting sites to find.  There is just so much out there!  I finally had to stop before I went blind, but I know I can return to page 15 though.  Now I need to research “ancient history” for my social studies class.  I can see why you would want to share your sites with colleagues.  As soon as I went to the wiki, I bookmarked one I saw there. I have spent a whole afternoon on this, but it was worth it.