It is so hard to believe that this course is almost over. I have learned so much! Of course, I’ve been frustrated a few times as well, but that is to be expected and is a natural part of learning anything. I definitely think the world is changing for our students. In fact I think in a few years time, teachers who taught just a few years ago won’t even recognize schools today. These students live in a high-tech world and they need to learn in that same environment. I am so appreciative of Woodward for supplying so much technology and more importantly for providing the training for that technology. Everyone in the IT department is so incredibly helpful, and that has been the key to our success in integrating any new technology.
The question of how we can teach students to be responsible and effective users of these tools is a very important one. I certainly don’t know the answer, but I know that we have to figure it out and soon. It will definitely involve a joint effort from the school, home and the students themselves. I think sometimes we just assume that they won’t make the right decisions and then they live up to that assumption. And another thing that schools tend to do is punish the group for the actions of a very few. Perhaps we could come up with a more creative way to teach and discipline responsible behavior of technology. Whatever the method, the more practice the better.
To explain what tools I found most helpful will be hard. I found so many to be very valuable. I will probably definitely keep my Pageflakes page going as I like the organization it provided. Googledocs will be excellent for departmental uses as well as personal use. For my students, I plan to use podcasting as I can see many areas for the Social Studies that that would enhance – lots of projects and assignments come to mind. I enjoyed learning Animoto, Bubbleshare and Rock You as well and will definitely utilize them for student benefit.
This has been a great and productive course. Thank you, Shelley, for all of your wisdom, help, and most importantly your patience!
I enjoyed this task very much. There was a lot to learn from both Classroom 2.0 as well as from Ning. I found a site that had Games That Teach History which included lots of topics that teachers had submitted in the form of games such as “hangman,” “walk the plank,” etc. Some of the games were far too advanced for middle school but I liked the whole concept as most students learn really well through games. Also, I liked that teachers from all over could join and contribute.
From Ning, I happened on a notice from NBC News that is partnering with hotchalk.com to provide archival video footage specifically for schools to use. I found some of the same videos that You Tube has but without the ads. That is a big plus, as is the fact that I can be pretty sure of searching through appropriate material - very helpful if ever doing spontaneous searching during class if a topic arises. I joined that group and look forward to lots of good things.
I really am not much of an online social networker as I much prefer the face-to-face kind of networking. I’m sure that is a product of my age (old) and personality (maybe slow to trust?), so I don’t know how much I would really use the site for that kind of thing. I did enjoy reading some of the posts going back and forth though, so who knows? Maybe I will become a real social networker because of this course.
OK - Another great tool that we’ve learned is Pageflakes. The organizer in me really loves this one. I love the idea that I can put everything on one site. First I played with the theme and layout, and I chose “flowers” as my background design. Then I put the weather, my edublog, and a calendar at the top. I also have my gmail account, national news, local news, the market report and a daily comic or two. Driving directions, some news feeds, and a news podcast were also added. I named it “Paula’s Page.”
Basically, for now I have decided to use it for me personally - mainly to organize a lot of my internet use. But I can definitely see classroom use for this tool. I liked Will Richardson’s page about the Crisis in Darfur, and I think that is a great way to use pageflakes in Social Studies. I will definitely consider adding a project using pageflakes.
I love, love, love the idea of Google Docs. How wonderful to be able to upload files and view them/work on them from anywhere! I can see so much potential for this. One example that immediately springs to mind is exams. Every semester, our department works on and edits old exams, and the amount of documents I end up with in my email inbox is ridiculous. This will take care of that and will be incredibly helpful. I found uploading files really simple, too. I also created a word document - a test for my 8th grade on the Vietnam War. Interestingly, I found that a bit more difficult to work with. When I printed from the Google Docs page it was a disaster - nothing lined up well at all. And when I copied it into a Word document, I still had to clean up the formatting a bit, but still this is an incredibly helpful tool.
It will be helpful too when you want to start something here at school and then work on it elsewhere, but you don’t want to use a thumb drive or you just want to be sure it is “out there” then why not upload it to Google Docs and there it will be. I absolutely loved the “form” document that is able to be created. I can think of many many uses including surveys of department members, students, etc. That is probably one of the uses I’m most excited about. In fact, I created one for this course to give Shelley feedback (as if she doesn’t get enough from reading all of these blogs!!) I sent it by gmail to several class members, but here it is if you’re interested: k12learning20 survey.
On a completely different note, when I worked on Thing 19 and embedded my you Tube video, it completely changed the face of my edublog. It moved all of my sidebars to the bottom and changed the layout of earlier posts. I have spent countless hours on the edublogs home page and gone back through our class instructions and cannot seem to figure out how to correct that. (I did add a voki though, but I wish I could make it a side bar/widget and not a post but oh well, I learned a lot.) If anyone has any advice on how to fix that I would really appreciate it. (Sorry for the distraction from thing 20…)
This was one of the most enjoyable tasks I’ve completed, I think. I really love that we now have access to You Tube here at school. I’ve already used it to show the Zapruder film when discussing the JFK assasination. (For years that was a very hard thing to find due to copyright laws.) This week, I found the MLK “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington as well as performers singing “We Shall Overcome” - both of which will be very helpful when covering the Civil Rights Movement with my 8th graders. In addition, I found several of FDR’s fireside chats that were recorded, and those will be helpful when covering the Great Depression. The beauty of these recordings is that they can be shown so quickly without having to show an entire documentary or full-length movie. That allows for more time for discussion with the students.
As far as the how-to assignment, I found many that interested me. For example, I found lots of organizational videos, my favorite being “How to organize your kitchen.” Also, I found “How to sell on ebay” that interested me as I would love to get rid of/share much of my “stuff.”
In my opinion, Teacher Tube has a lot of catching to do. When I searched for China’s Boxer Rebellion, it gave me 0 results compared with about 30 for You Tube (now I did have to weed a lot of those out, but at least there were some.) The same was true with “Opium War” and “Empress CiXi.” There might be some things I would consider posting to Teacher Tube such as group projects or some dramatizations we’ve done with the Great Depressions, the Integration of Central High School, the Vietnam War, etc.
The thing I am most excited about though is that I have finally found an episode of the Andy Griffith show that I’ve searched for for a long time. I’ve spent lots of time on Amazon trying to purchase this episode, only to find that for some reason that season was not available. Now I don’t have to buy an entire season just to get a few minutes! This is something I plan to use at the beginning of next year when I’m covering the Constitution. I have my students learn the 6 goals of the Constitution as outlined in the Preamble. So here is Barney Fife “reciting the Preamble.” I hope my students will enjoy it as much as I do (doubtful) but I hope YOU enjoy it:
Wow - Shelley is right - this was really one of the simpler tasks. I found the Evoca site very user-friendly and easy to navigate. I hope to use it more in the future.
Wow - I never dreamed how many sources for podcasts there would be. First I listened to Dragon Page with Class but it was really too much like a SNL skit - the parody of the NPR women - and I found it a real snooze fest. I found one called One Minute How-To that I did like (there’s my short attention span again!) The one I liked was on organization -How to clean out a Junk Drawer - and it was right up my alley.
There were tons with educational purposes. I am amazed that so many universities share their curriculum - and for free! Amazing. I downloaded into i-Tunes a Stanford classSkip the Tuition - The Geography of World Cultures. It was a bit long, but I enjoyed it a lot. I listened to Mongol Success while I put up a bulletin board, and it was great to be able to multi-task. I subscribed to NPR podcasts and I think that will be helpful as well.
There are many uses I can see for the future of education with podcasts. As we saw earlier in this very course, many teachers are already listening to podcasts on their way to work and then using things for class. It is a great way to stay very current. One idea for my students would be to create a current events newscast, a travel guide, or even a brief segment on any of the areas we study.
I am a goal-setter, and I try to encourage my students to set goals as well, so the site 43 Things was pretty interesting to me. At the start of each school year, I have students list some academic and personal goals. Then again in January at the beginning of the New Year, I talk about goals again and show a powerpoint to motivate them. (They then design a “t-shirt” with their New Year’s resolution printed on it and save it until the end of the year so they can look back and see if they achieved it.) So this site could be helpful for that, and I may consider incorporating it for my students.
Because I’m more private though, I’m not sure I would really use this for myself. I can definitely see where it would be great for someone who needed outside reassurance or cheering on to reach goals. And for those involved in changing some habits (eating more healthily or quitting smoking), it appeared that the accountability factor was important and very helpful. I just don’t know about this total stranger interaction that the internet is driving us toward. I don’t even know why it really bothers me, but for some reason it does. And some of the sharing borders on the narcissistic - including this very blog at times.
Well as an organizational junkie (or if you look at my life, maybe an organizational wannabe) this Library Thing looks great to me. I could not resist joining even though I swore I wasn’t going to sign up for one more thing, but this was very quick and easy. And I thoroughly enjoyed perusing the site. When I’m on Amazon I always check out the “customers who bought this item also bought…” and this is like that times 100. I cataloged a few of my books but it would take me a while to do all of them, but that could be a summer project maybe…
This would be a great way to organize a reading library, lending library, etc. for personal use, but I can see many uses for here at school as well. Reading and English classes would benefit for sure as would any discipline really. I might come up with a “suggested reading list” for my World Cultures course as many of those 7th grade Honors students are voracious readers and would probably love this. I could post age-appropriate historical fiction and they could read and chat about them. My one fear is that some of the group chats could pose a problem as the students would be exposed to strangers, but that could be true on so many of the sites many of these students already visit. This is definitely something to be explored further. What our history department could really benefit from would be a “Video/dvd Thing” type of site as we could then catalog much easier all that we have available. Perhaps that is coming up in another “Thing.” One can always hope…
