I thought this course was wonderful! I have learned so much new information that can be implemented and shared with my staff at school. I plan to share immediately Google Documents. This tool can be used immediately with my admin and teaching staff to set the school calendar. Throughout the year, I plan to work with blogs, Flickr, and Podcasting with my staff and students.
As a media specialist I must work with literature, information and of course technology. I feel that sometimes I spend too much time in front of my computer and not interacting with students properly. Students want to locate information only on the computer instead of looking in books. We must teach students there should be a balance.
Technology is changing the way we teach and the way students learn. We need to be careful that we do not incorporate technology so much into our lessons that our students forget how to write complete sentence, communicate verbally and become frightened when the power goes out. We are human beings with immense intellectual potential, computers are tools to help us, but they are just tools. We need to be the ones to think and create.
I had never heard of Classroom 2.0 or Ning in Education. I explored Ning but could not find tags for librarians, or media specialists. I did find something under the Role of Technology that was interesting. When I looked at Classroom 2.0 I found several interesting groups for young adult novels, middle school science and professional development that I will look at again. Classroom 2.0 I found to be the easier of the two sites to use.
Social Networking sites are all over. My school district just announced you can follow along on Twitter. The AJC had an article this morning giving the opinions of an Archbishop from England who feels that social networking is causing an increase in teenage suicide and a breakdown in society. I do not have statistics on suicide or other crime rates related to social networking but I must agree to a point that social networking and emails can get out of hand. Administrators at my school have commented on bullying taking place by our students via Bebo.
When I first started teaching face to face meetings were held to communicate ideas, now I send an email. We ask students to turn in assignments via the internet, contact us via email but when do we speak to the students? We assign tasks to be done in the computer lab, but what about directly instructing our students? Are we helping our students by communicating in this way? I rely even more on spell and grammar check because I write so many emails that I have lost some skills. I do not have all the answers, but I believe that we need to be careful how we work with children. We need to provide a balance that is appropriate for their maturity and intellectual levels.
I have enjoyed my Google Reader during this course.I have added, deleted and changed over half of my feeds during these last few weeks.However, I have kept the wonderful feeds from my fellow classmates which I have enjoyed very much.They have been so helpful and provided a different viewpoint on how to use some of these tools we have learned.
I have had a wonderful vacation this summer.I may have been all over the United States this summer but a teacher is always a teacher.I was constantly looking out for items that could be incorporated into my school’s curriculum.I am the media specialist but also the partner liaison at my school and work with our school partners.With this in mind I subscribed to several craft feeds that I could use as projects for my partners to do with the students and that students could do as a gift for the partners.I found several that I liked, but I really liked Craft Bits.The site provided a wide category of projects to choose from and they did not require a lot of time, money or resources.
At first google reader seemed a bit overwhelming. I realized I can subscribe to everything that interested me, so I had to be selective. Now it doesn’t seem so bad.
Perhaps I am still so excited about Google Docs, but I did not like Pageflake. I attempted to customize my page by putting pictures of my pets and it was difficult. When I attempted to edit the picture portion, it was deleted permanently and I have not figured out how to reinstall or add that section. I attempted to reload the template but to no avail.
I can see the pros and cons of this tool in education. This tool could be used to create individual class pages highlighting accomplishments and information on exams, homework and upcoming events. This tool would help with parent involvement by making the information available via the internet to everyone who is interested.
While the directions provided were easy to follow I did not find the tool easy to edit and personalize. I instead used some of the subcategories to update my igoogle page that has been growing more and more important to me throughout this course. I have not yet figured out how to add the pictures of my babies (pets) yet I feel confident I can do it.
I prefer my Gmail account to my yahoo or even my school account, I love my Google reader and Google Documents is awesome. I love Google!
I didn’t want this to sound like a commercial. Sorry.
No more multiple emails to merge and complete the school plan, the school’s monthly calendar of events and needs assessments for work. Now everyone can take ownership of a work instead of relying on only me to put it together.Because it can be accessed through the internet, I will no longer hear “it’s on my flash drive at home.”This is wonderful.
As the supposed technology guru at work, I am often given the tasks of organizing information into a presentable format for others to read.The document is due on Friday and Friday afternoon I am still waiting for necessary information to be provided to me.The added feature of allowing only some to edit and others to view will work great for the school plan, and the monthly calendar of events.The excuses are now all gone because APS has given every certified staff member a computer.No more, “I didn’t get a copy of it.”It will be up to date and available at all times.
The document I sent Jerrie was a start of the monthly staff calendar for 2009.I included those items I know start out the school year.The administrative team and I will be able to add those important dates without having to give it the school secretary to be added to the weekly emails sent out.People will be able to look ahead on the calendar before scheduling events to prevent confusion.I also sent it to my principal with a brief note.He will also love this.
Each of the admin team members could create their own Google documents that can be shared with their disciplines.I know the SFA (Reading) facilitator and the MIM (Math) facilitator will love the opportunity to place files, data, and important information into folders for access by their staff.
Everyone has heard of YouTube and the wide range of video topics it covers. I had never heard of TeacherTube before today. I was able to locate several interesting videos on both sites. On YouTube I found a series of videos on Information Literacy by B. Baker. This series while for college students could be adapted to work with my eighth graders in writing a research paper. I located a video entitled Book Hooks created for middle school aged students to peak interest in books.
In TeacherTube I found Decimals in the Library that could be adapted for all Language Arts class’s study of the Dewey Decimal System. For my how to I found a video entitled How to make a Google Doc Presentation which is the next Thing in this course. I also found on YouTube a video on how to machine quilt a quilt. I usually pay someone to quilt my quilts but this video gave some helpful hints to me.
For my nostalgia video I looked up my high school – Waukesha South High School and discovered that the marching band has traveled to Beijing China and watched a clip of them playing.
While it would be great to just download any video found on YouTube and TeacherTube, the educator must look at each critically. The entire video may not be age appropriate for your situation. The Information Literacy Series could be downloaded and made available as a resource to students on the school web page for students as well as staff.
Podcasting covers a wide range of topics for personal and professional use. I can see podcasting being useful in the classroom as an independent activity for students to engage in at their own pace. The teacher would need to locate the appropriate podcast and make it available to the students. The first podcasts I looked at were audio only. While the information was interesting – Grammar Girl and One Minute How To – they were not as interesting as ones that were visual podcasts. While my students enjoy their music they are also very visual learners and I would need to guide them towards video podcasts.
I liked the C-span classroom podcasts for use in the social studies classrooms and the Nova podcasts for the science classrooms. The idea of the Grammar Girl podcast was wonderful if only it had visuals to go with it. I subscribed to the David Warlick information skills podcast and plan to look at it to see what ideas I can glean from it.
My ideas for podcasting could be to use on the school’s website of weekly or monthly events, part of our school’s Concept Based Units, communication between other schools across the world. The possibilities are endless.
As with all the tools that have been presented in this course, I think that podcasting can be a beneficial tool when used in cooperation with other tools. Time once again will be a determining factor in how it will be used. Also of concern is my school systems policy on podcasting and will it be blocked?
This is another wonderful tool for me to use. I do not know how I will decide which tools to use first after this class is over. I see Library Thing as being very useful with reading classes and reading groups as the participants can share what they reading. The suggester will help middle school students as well as teachers to find other books that may interest them. My teachers are often looking for books in a specific genre. This site can help them to locate books for their students. The 50 book challenger interests me and I may join in on the fun if I can find the time.
The idea of being able to access all of my “favorites” from any computer with internet access is wonderful. I use several computers to complete my work depending on where I am at the time. This new tool will assist me when I am running around my school building assisting teachers and staff. However, at this point in this class and the summer it is a bit overwhelming. I like the capabilities of using other people’s bookmarks, but right now it is too much. I’m still enjoying the newness of Flickr, Google Reader, Creative Commons, blogging and contributing to wikis.
The tagging of a bookmark helps to categorize the site for easier retrieval, but I need to work on developing my own tags that will work for me. Delicious offers suggestions for tags which is very helpful, but I will need to practice tagging more.
I think that all the tools that have been presented to us in the course will be a great help in my professional practice. I just need to look at all of the tools and prioritize which ones I will continue to use personally, which I will share with my staff and which ones I need to explore more thoroughly before I can share. I have now experienced informational and technological overload that my staff accuses me of doing to them.
I think I am getting a handle on the RSS reader. While I may not check it daily, I do at least every other day and this is helping to keep my number of new items to a smaller number to check. My scanning skills seem to be getting better.
I found a site entitled Science 4 Kids. It is from the USDA and offers interesting trivia, activities for students and teachers and even short quizzes. The site references many other sites and provides links for Science Fair projects and other class activities. I gave my husband the scientist and my father who is knowledgeable in farming a quiz and they scored 2 out of 5 correct. I was first drawn into the site because it discussed that scientists are studying cattle using GPS. I read later on that GPS is also being used to help track beehives. This began a discussion within my family of how “big brother” is not only watching us but now the animal world as well.
