Thing 23... the end!

Wow. I can't believe it's already over! (and that means next week is coming... aaaah!) This has been an incredibly valuable experience. I almost wish I could have taken it during the school year and incorporated tools as I learned about them, but then, I don't know if I could have experimented as much because of regular classroom duties. So, I guess it all works out. I am going to go back through the things and make sure I have all the links I want to remember and explore further. I have to start thinking about the first things I do in class and decide which tools I will introduce to my classes this semester. I hope to incorporate a couple in the fall, maybe google docs and wikis, and point students to some of the great things I learned about- social bookmarking, sticky notes, organizational tools... I think I'll find ways to actually use them in the future, but I'm going to try to take it slowly so that I don't get in over my head- unable to maintain projects I've started :)- and so that I don't overwhelm my students with too many new toys!

Thing 22

I looked at creately.com and clipmarks.com. Creately.com allows users to make diagrams, flowcharts, etc. online; collaborate, comment, save in various formats- great tools for students to make concept maps or organizational flowcharts. There's even a section of k-12 graphic organizer templates. The program is web-based, so there's nothing to download, making the tools easy to access. The options for adding, moving, changing colors, and so forth are simple to use. Only glitch? There's a waiting list! So, you have to sign up and wait till they have space for you. Hmph.
I am SO excited about clipmarks! It's about the greatest thing ever. You can select portions of a page, save it, print it, put it on another something (facebook, delicious, twitter, etc.) As are most tools we've learned about, your clipmarks can be private or public, depending on your choice. This is a great way to point students to specific parts of a webpage or mark the section you need to remember. They even mention the ease of selecting the portions you want to print instead of having to copy them to a word document. Who hasn't had to do that to try to save paper?

Thing 21

I really think I could enjoy Pageflakes, once I figure it out! I'd like to make some pages for various topics like the example about Darfur/ Sudan, but I can't figure out how to get news feeds specific to a topic yet. The sticky notes and message board are things I'd really like to use with my classes, so this is just one more chance to tory it. Of course, I'll have to pick one and stick with it so it won't confuse the little munchkins, but that'll come. I created a pagecast to see how that step works; I'm still working on ideas for class. Definitely useful to point students for searches or to help with current event articles. I think it would be a useful place to put together webquests, although I haven't decided- for things I already do- whether pageflakes or wikis would work best.

Thing 5d

Once again, my favorite ideas came from Free Technology for Teachers. This time, it's about several places to do online sticky notes. Three were mentioned with different capabilities, so I'm hoping to explore those and see what works for me. I'd like to play with them enough to make recommendations to students since they would be great organizational tools. One is a sticky that you set as the homepage with up to 3 items. Then, it's the first thing that opens when you get online, so you can see what you need to do. Pretty cool. I marked 2 of the sites in Diigo, but one, Stixy, wouldn't work with Diigolet. Hmph.

Thing 19

Making the podcast was pretty simple. I think the biggest pain for me was the time in downloading and uploading everything. My computer is poky today. I embedded the player on my wiki page just to see how that worked. Not too bad.
I read a Dr. Seuss Book about reptiles for my podcast. I stumbled across a couple books from the Cat in the Hat Learning Library in my kids' collection- the books had been passed on to us from a friend. My son brought me a book about plants to read and, as I read to him, I realized the book had pretty much everything I would include in a lecture about plants. And since it's Dr. Seuss style, it's probably much more interesting to listen to than... well, a lecture on plants. So I started hunting to see what I could find, and there are several science topics covered. I'd love to buy them, but I'll have to find them used somewhere (with no shipping costs!) if I am to get all of the ones I want. Anyway, I discovered that the Gwinnett County Library has a bunch of them, so I checked them out and read some to my students. Remember, these are high school students. They mostly loved it- probably because they didn't take notes- but that was one of the problems. It's hard to substitute something like this for a lecture if they don't remember it or can't look at the pictures. So, unless some kind soul buys me class sets of all of the books, I'll have to come up with something else. I'm leary of scanning everything with all the copyright issues- though it would make it easy to present using an LCD projector! But if I could record them for the students to listen to, maybe that would be a start.
I stumbled a couple times in the recording, so I'll have to practice sound editing to complete the Dr. Seuss project. I've used Audacity a teeny bit, but it was a long time ago. So, on to learn more stuff!

Thing 18

Well, I'm having trouble actually viewing the podcasts. I listened to some, subscribed to a few, but haven't viewed any of the videos yet. I'm attempting to download quicktime and itunes to see if that helps. We'll see.
As for use in the classroom, definitely could be useful once I sort through the options and choose some that will be useful to my students. Shorter than a video and easier to get! No traipsing to the media center only to find out the mystery teacher hasn't returned it... and doesn't remember he checked it out.
I looked briefly at the Education Broadcast Network, but most of the ones I checked hadn't posted anything new in over a year. I added a couple from PBS- the first one has a podcast of nudibranchs. I can't wait to see it. They're sea slugs, and absolutely gorgeous. (Unlike their land dwelling cousins. ugh.)

Thing 17

While surfing around Classroom 2.0, I ran across a group for Web 2.0 technologies for teachers from the university where I recieved my Bachelor's. While I was there, we had to learn how to use a thermofax (which I'd never heard of), a slide projector, an 8 mm (?) projector... there were very few computer programs. This was in 1993.. yes, the dark ages. The campus was networked; we had computer labs in every dorm and several (all?) buildings. And we, the new teachers, had to practice making overhead transparencies without using a copier. Hmmm... It is exciting to discover that the (new) professor is actually teaching the students something useful! My professor's argument for requiring such training? "There are schools out there that will have these things and you'll need to be able to use them." (oh, and we had to have several hours practice documented on each "technology"). Nevermind that the instructions were printed ON THE SIDE OF THE PROJECTOR!!! anad my aunt, who taugh 2nd grade in one of the poorest counties in West Virginia (one of the poorest states in the nation) said she hadn't use those things in years! Hmph. Sorry for the rant. It's always been a sore spot. But, it's so incredibly exciting to see how the program is embracing the new technology and training the teachers to use it!

Anyway....
I think Ning would be a very useful tool for my classes. It would be a great place to have discussions. I was thinking about that before I even got to the Twitter in the classroom video. We wouldn't be able to do it in class, but it would be a great resource to use.
I checked out a few discussions in Classroom 2.0 and saw several content-related ideas I liked. Very cool.
I'm now on Plurk- hopefully you've noticed. I tried to find everyone. My husband is my friend. how cute :) (it's getting late. I'm beginning to ramble)
I'm not sure how much Plurk will fit in for me, but we'll see.