Thing # 23

The Final Thing...

This was an awesome experience for me and I look forward to using what I have learned this next school year. Hopefully, I will be able to continue my learning and there are definitely "things" that I want to go back and explore in more detail. I can't wait to get started on my new adventure in Web 2.0 integration. In response to the questions posted on the Library2Play blog please see my posts below.

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I really liked the mash-ups because they provide great opportunities to showcase science topics to students in a variety of formats. Also they would be a great way to have the students summarize their learning. The nings are interesting to me because I can see some personal applications as well as following a few educational nings. Another thing is the image generators because I can use them to show concepts to students and teachers in new and exciting ways.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

It has inspired me to seek out ways to learn more about Web 2.0. After finishing my Masters degree in Educational Technology I have had a thirst for technology learning and integration and look forward to helping express my love and passion to the teachers on my campus and beyond.

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I learned some cool things, but that is expected when you are looking at new information. I really liked getting to know how to include a hyperlink in text by using the html code (I learned it while digging through blogs). This new knowledge was unexpected. A take-a-way was that I am definitely interested in some new things that I will be exploring in more detail in the near future.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I really like the format of the program. I enjoy taking online courses and this was set up similar to my graduate courses. I like the fact that the learner controls their own pace and learning. The added face to face interactions are a nice feature so that if you do have questions or problems you can meet with someone to get help. I would not change any of the format of this learning experience.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

Most definitely! I am already comtemplating of tackling the Library2Play 2 thing over the course of the rest of the summer (I ahve to weigh the options of being able to complete the 11.5 things in the amount of time left).

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

An adventure into new technology and learning in a fun and interactive way!

I look froward to posting my thoughts on other players blogs over the next few weeks and will definitely keep adding to this blog in the future so that I can keep it as an electronic journal into Web 2.0 and beyond.

Thing # 22

Nings

WOW! I never knew I could start my own social network. I will definitely have to look into this in more detail when I have time. I can see so many possibilities out there for various applications. We could start our own church network, a network for my wife's business, a elementary science teachers network. The possibilities are limitless. One ning that I found that I am definitely interested in is Classroom 2.0. It is a ning about web 2.0 applications in the classroom. I have really enjoyed reading it and have joined it too. I think that it will be a valuable resource in working with teachers to integrate technology into their teaching. You can check out the Classroom 2.0 ning here.

Thing # 21

I really enjoyed creating podcasts and videocasts for this assignment. I had not spent much time with PhotoStory before this assignment. I had spent a lot of time using Audacity to create podcasts for graduate school and personal use. My PhotoStory is one that I helped my teaching partner and our group of students create this past week at summer school. It was a great experience and I really learned a lot about PhotoStory and how to put multiple projects together into one collaborative PhotoStory project. Check out my videocast!

Since this was a student created PhotoStory (with teacher support) I can 100% see the implications for classroom use. Students enoy creating technology rich projects and this is a great way to show off their learning and summarize what they know.

Thing # 20

You Tube, Teacher Tube, and Zamzar

The following video from You Tube shows the history of educational technology from the past 100 years. It is a great reflection into where we have been and a look at where we are going in the future. Check it out!



Teacher Tube is a great resource for content specific videos created by educators for educators. I have used this site many times in my work to demonstrate a topic to both students and teachers. I have included a video on the water cycle that I have used with students in the past.



I did not know about Zamzar until recently. A friend of mine and I were working on a project and we needed to convert a file to a format that we could bring into another software application for editing purposes. She suggested I use Zamzar and I was curious so I checked it out. What a cool resource. I no longer have to google file conversion applications to find one that I can use to convert. I have been using Zamzar for all my conversions since. One drawback is that sometimes it takes a while for them to notify you that the conversion is complete - plus the limit on the size of the file is annoying. I am not to a point though where I am willing to pay for the site yet (I just don't have the need to convert that many files).

Thing # 19

Web 2.0

I decided to discuss two networking applications. The first one is LinkedIn. I discovered this networking site about a year ago while in graduate school and I have built an online portfolio with my skill sets, previous employment history, and aspirations. In today's ever changing job market you never know when you could use this information to benefit the advancement of my career. Also I have found other specialists throughout the US that have the same interests as myself and we have connected through my network to share technology and science ideas.

On the flip side, personally I have enjoyed using facebook to reconnect with old high school friends that have moved away. It is a great way to catch up and explore what is going on in your friend's lives. I have also posted links of interest that I have found as well as videos I have created. I do not waste time with all the games and other things that facebook users can access, but rather use it as a way to stay in touch with old friends and current ones. Who knows where this may lead?

As far as classroom and educational uses of these sites - I have already mentioned the use of LinkedIn as a way to network with other professionals that share the same interests as you and can also serve as a way to market your skills to other educational entities. I am not sure what the educational benefit of facebook is, but I know that personally I have posted links to things I have experienced in regards to educational technology and several of my friends are teachers and I have shared resources with them in the facebook environment.

Thing # 18

Google Docs

Some of the advantages to Google Docs are that you can work on docs from any computer with internet access. It allows for collaboration (multiple users can edit simultaneously). Another advantage is that edits you make are see by everyone immediately and it automatically saves so that you do not have to worry about losing your documents. You can also "revert" to previous versions of google docs if you experience trouble with the current version.

One major disadvantage is that you have to be on a computer with internet access to work on your documents.

I have had experience in using google docs for collaboration projects while I was in graduate school. It was a great way for my teams to share the editing responsibilities on projects and to work together. We have also started using it for planning at church. We have a google log-in for our children's ministry that we put up a basic outline of special events in google docs and then all of the leaders log-in and share their thoughts and expertise on the subject and when we are finished we have a document that sums up everyone's collective knowledge in a usable document.

I would like to use this next year with the science SISs in the district to collaborate between meetings on staff development or topic ideas. I think this will be a good idea that will improve sharing among us.

Thing # 17

I am not going to comment on Rollyo because I already have a way to quickly search my sites that I frequently visit. If you are a Firefox user there is a plug-in called speed dial. You can find it at Speed Dial

Within Speed Dial you can create different tabs that allow you to quickly switch between websites that you have added to speed dial. Within one click you are taken to the website. I have utilized this feature to set up tabs for my blogs, social networking, personal, and weight loss. In the near future I plan to create a page for science where I can add my favorite science sites that I use in teaching.

Check it out to see what I am talking about. I have included some pictures from my speed dial so that you can see the tabs and what this feature looks like.

Tabs

Sample Speed Dial Page

Thing # 16

I believe that wikis are are great way to house vast amounts of information! I have had many experiences with wikis and can see their value in the classroom. Teachers can post information for their students on a wiki along with uploading documents and images.

I currently post on several wikis and if you would like to check one out visit the latest wiki I contribute to at: PBL Team 2 Wiki

Students can share their collaboration on wikis and use it as a common space for projects and ideas. It can be an interactive share space for documents, images, and thoughts.

Thing # 15

The perspectives on Library 2.0 were interesting. I especially liked the comments brought up by Dr. Wendy Schultz about the library being the community. I agree with this point 100%. I remember growing up and my mother always used to take my brothers and I to the library to read and participate in activities while growing up. We would spend hours and hours there reading, listening, and having fun. Even though the books may change to computers and people may visit the library for different reasons it will still remain a vial part of the community. People will still venture there to research and collaborate and hang out.

I see school libraries as collaboration stations for groups of students to come together and work on projects. I have witnessed this first hand this summer while participating in the problem based learning pilot. Groups of students sharing their knowledge, working together to solve a common problem and using the resources located in the library in both electronic and print forms.

Thing # 14

Technorati

I had a little bit of difficulty navigating around their site when I first visited Technorati, but the mor etime I spent there the easier it got. I liked the fact that you can search blogs and like MHS Broadcasting said in his post I did a search for CS4 information since I recently loaded this software set on my laptop and found some cool blogs about hints, tips, and personally created shortcuts to performing operations in Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash. I wil definitely be spending more time here as I venture out in learning all of the CS4 applications that came in my bundle.

I am still not sold on the whole tags thing. They are growing on me, but I still have difficulty with the randomness of people's tags. Some individuals do a really good job of tagging and others simply use it as a blanket category for anything having to do with a particular topic. This is frustrating at times.

I have not claimed my blogs yet on Technorati and I am still thinking about it. If anyone would like to share their thoughts on this and if they have done it yet I would greatly appreciate it!

Thing # 13

Tags

I have mixed feelings about tags and social bookmarking. I can see the benefits of it. It is a great way to move form computer to computer and across different platforms and still be able to access your bookmarks. I know I have spent many hours reinventing the wheel when I have changed computers or had to reimage a machine. The ease of the tags is another benefit that can help focus research and channel sites for student use.

Some of the concerns I have is that if you do not tag a site correctly it can waste time while searching. Say you are researching a specific topic - you are going to look for tags about that topic, but if someone has incorrectly tagged a site it can become frustrating if you keep pulling up sites that do not solidly connect with your topic. Also sites that you may find, tag, and add to your list at home that you know your students would benefit from may be blocked when you go back to campus. Some people may argue that you could use the VPN to check them since the same filters are active through that login, but that can be more of a hassle to log in to the VPN and search.

I can see the benefits of using tags - it would help the younger students focus when doing research. If I had created some tags on weathering then the students in the lab or in their classroom would be able to use my delicious tags to research the topic without having to filter through all the muck on the internet.

Thing # 12

The two most useful things that I found by reading the articles were how to embed a hyperlink from Cool Cat's blog and the question posed on the Blue Skunk blog about "Are You Contributing to the General Discussion?"

I often post to blogs I follow so it is useful to know about embedding a hyperlink. I have often seen it done I just did not know how to do it. It provides a much cleaner look by the hyperlink displaying text rather than a URL. I will have to start using this from now on when I reference something in a post. I have included a picture of what I am talking about below.


The other thing that really stood out for me is the point about contributing to the general discussion. I know that I am guilty of this, but it is annoying as a blog writer when someone comments on my blogs with one word like "yes" or "I agree". I would like to know more like why do you agree with me or what are your thoughts. It would just add to the whole discussion if we have more discussion.

I comment and post on several blogs. The three that I would like to discuss are my own blog about my weight loss called "Transformations" where I write about my successes and struggles as I continue my journey into getting healthy and shedding weight. Another is my brother's blog on recovery and life after a stroke. It is a great blog and I am a regular contributor to it. The last one is "Capturing Beauty". This is a blog that my brother started where each month we have a theme and we capture beauty (to us) based on that theme through pictures. Being a shutterbug that I am I am naturally drawn to this blog and enjoy posting to it (even though it is not as routine as I would like).

Thing # 11

I spent some time checking out Library Thing and at this time I do not see a need for it in my current occupation. I only have a few books that I will use next year in my science lab so it is easy to view them on the shelf. I have no need to catalog or search through my titles for various books.

I did spend some time looking at the groups and I found a few that I would look into on a personal level, but not for anything having to do with my job.

If I find another way to use this site and the resources there I will definitely use it in the future. I will revisit this at a later time.

Thing # 10

Cool stuff!

OK - I had some fun with this one. I checked out all the different image generators and I really liked Dumpr, Comic Strip Generator, Happy Face Generator, Big Huge Labs, and Wordle. I have already discussed Wordle in a previous post so I will focus on the other three. I have included some samples of things I created in this post.

Dumpr
http://www.dumpr.net/

I created a rubiks cube on the water cycle and it's really awesome. Even though it is a virtual cube I can see the kids really getting into this. If I paid for the upgraded subscription I could print out high resolution graphics and buy blank rubik's cubes and stick my graphics on for a cool activity in the science lab.


Big Huge Labs
http://bighugelabs.com/

I have used this application before and loved it. I have created a magazine cover on Texas caves and am interested in using Motivator to create posters for the hallways in our school using pictures that are relevant to the students, jigsaw to create interactive games for primary students with science and math concepts, and mosaic maker to introduce teachers to each other. I would have included my magazine cover, but it is saved on another computer. I will have to upload it later.

Comic Strip Generator
http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/

It was just a fun way to leave notes for kids or to remind them about science lab safety. I completed a fun one just because. I will definitely post some of these around my science lab next year.



Happy Face Generator
http://www.happyfacegenerator.com/

Making signs for the lab and notes for students with a smile are neat ways to use this application.

Thing # 9

Which Search tool was the easiest for you?

The search tool that I found to be the easiest was not actually a search tool, but rather the blogroll off of the Cool Cat Teacher blog. I really like the resources that are available there for educators and I added several of them to my RSS feeds in google reader. After that I liked Technorati. The ease of the search tool was nice.

Which was more confusing?

I did not like the search tool Syndic8.com. The layout was ust kind of there and I did not like the way that the search engine located blog feeds. The appearance was not appealing to me.

What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?

I added some more blogs on educational technology to my feeds. There were some great ones that focused on practical applications in the 21st century classroom that I liked. I also found some techie ones which will come in handy when dealing with broken equipment on campus.

Some of the unusual ones were just random posts by individuals that did not seem to have any rhyme or reason to them. It just appeared that there were a bunch of random posts that were thrown together that didn't seem to have a flow to them. Some of the reading ones that were on the blogroll were weird and unusual. Even though they had a unified theme to them some of the posts and stories there were odd and I felt like a few were not appropriate for children even though they were teacher blogs.

Thing # 8

I used the RSS subscription with Google Reader to subscribe to 4 educational technology feeds and four elementary science feeds. I like the fact that I do not have to go and find all of the blogs and bookmark them to check the updates, but rather I can just use google reader to look at all of my subscriptions in one location. This really simplifies things and saves a lot of time searching or pulling up various pages when it is the content that really matters.

This was really cool! Because of this I have learned some cool tips and tricks that I can share with the teachers back on my campus. I have enjoyed reading about the current trends in educational technology and what is happening in other schools to improve educational technology.

In the area of science education I can keep up with all the latest and greatest and I even found a cool link that updates free science downloads (software, tools, and gadgets) in the area of elementary science.

I believe that readers allow for simplification in subscribing to RSS feeds. Like I mentioned before if all the feeds are in one location you could publish the list for teachers, staff, etc. to be able to view the feeds on a regular basis and it simplifies the process for them. This might encourage them to utilize the technology more and ease them into trying new things.

Thing # 7

The two Google Applications I have used are Google Docs and Google Earth.

Google Docs was introduced to me about a year and a half ago by my graduate school companions. We were looking for a way to share our projects among each other and we would email them back and forth with revisions and changes and it was getting annoying because it was hard to keep up with the most current version. One member of my group suggested Google Docs - amazing. We started to do all of our collaboration on this and it was awesome. We would start the document and then everyone could log in and edit our group projects. It was a lot easier and the collaboration increased tremendously. I could see teams of teachers using this as a way to share lesson plans or ideas with each other and sharing documents across walls and even buildings.

Google Earth is a cool and exciting way for students to view places that they will never have the experience of traveling to. I have used it to take kids to various ecosystems, habitats, and landforms around the world. The kids can zoom in on the ice caps and the Sahara desert as well as exploring our galaxy above.

Thing # 6

My mashup is Wordle. It can be found at the following link: http://www.wordle.net/

I like this because I can take a science concept that I am going to teach to students and put all of the vocabulary for that topic and put them in a Wordle. Then I can display them and gather prior knowledge or use it as a post assessment or review piece to see what the kids can tell me.

It is also a cool way to introduce staff to a new concept as an introduction. Plus they are a lot of fun to create and display - (Thing 7 1/2) - PLAY!

Thing # 5

The following two pictures were taken from the Creative Commons on Flickr. Both pictures deal with science and since I am a science specialist at PSE these types of pictures will come in handy during the school year. I can see this area of Flickr beign helpful because I can find examples of science concepts that my students might not have the opportunity to experience in person. This may aid in solidifying learning for my students.


Clouds and sky by kapacha
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kepacha/3633120785/





Earth Formations by Roxanne
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johiscar/3633124639/

Thing #3

Well my blog has been set up and we are up and running with the 23 things. This was not a new experience for me since I already publish and contribute to several other blogs so the process was quick in setting it up. As you can see on the right of my screen I have created an avatar that best represents me. This was a fun process that allows for one's creativity to shine through. I'm a pretty "plain jane" kind of guy so therefor I am in a t-shirt and blue jeans. The only thing I would change would be to place myself in a pair of shorts - now that it is in triple digits during the summer heat!

Thing # 2

7 1/2 Habits of Effective Learning

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach / mentor others
Habit 7 1/2: Play

The most significant thing that I got from watching the video entitled: 7 1/2 Habits is that all of these habits are extremely important and beneficial to all. If I had to select one that stands out to me it would be Habit 6. In my day to day operations on my campus and in my life I am constantly faced with challenges and problems that have to be solved. By using technology to my advantage I not only can complete a lot of these problems more efficiently, but also more effectively. I try to instill in others the drive to utilize the technology to their advantage even though it falls on deaf ears sometimes. Often I have found myself looking up things online that I do not have an answer for and have quickly found the answers to my questions and often more than I was looking for.

The second one that I feel is important is PLAY! I know that we don't take the time to enjoy and have fun with our students or as ourselves as much as we should. We get too wrapped up in being adults and with paperwork and need to take a page out of the recess book and just get out there, have fun and play!