The End by damaradeaella

I can’t believe it has already been 10 weeks. Time sure does fly. I am amazed by all the things that I learned about Web 2.0. I feel like I have been living in a cave because I did not know a lot of things. I have really enjoyed blogging, and I want to continue blogging with my students. I would love for them to have blogs and reflect on my class and assignments they have completed. Not only is it good writing practice, but I can see what they are learning and what I need to be teaching.

My Google Reader has also been a great discovery. I have seen so many cool websites, and learned some cool tricks from reading other blogs and feeds. This is definitely a habit I want to continue.

Creative Commons was the best discovery I made. I always guessed about copyright and using things for educational purposes. Now that I understand Creative Commons licensing I will start to use things appropriately, and I will teach my students about it so they can use things appropriately.

I am so glad that I took the time to work through this class. I would recommend this course to my colleagues. The 21st century is here and our students are already living it. As teachers, we need to catch up and stay on top of things so we can be the best teachers for our students.

Talk about being overwhelmed. I just looked at the Classroom 2.0 Network, and I felt flooded by all kinds of information. Some of it was extremely useful. I had a hard time sifting through everything and trying to decide what I wanted to look at next. I think my favorite part about the whole thing was that I actually found a group of teachers that teaches the same exact thing I do. I knew there were teachers out there, but I had no idea. I started using the tags to look in the forums. The forums led me to some of the groups. There is a wealth of knowledge on this network. I did not join the group, but I will definitely return to the page to get some ideas.

We use Gaggle in my district. It started out as a safe emailing program, but they have redesigned everything and added Zoho Documents, blogging, and a social networking portion. This is what I plan on using in my class this year. I always thought it would be good to use Facebook or some other social media to communicate with my students, but I have always hesitated because it still seems like a sensitive topic. Social Networking in Gaggle seems like a safe way for me to communicate with my students, and a place where they can communicate with each other.

I looked at the Educational Networking site, but I didn’t see anything that jumped out right away. I am going to take another look at a later time. I am sure there is something there that I can benefit from exploring.

For my last Google Reader post, I found a thought provoking post on the Successful Teaching blog. Loonyhiker posted answers to the question posed by the blog Intended Consequences v 2.0,

“Could you cut yourself down to just six essential websites for an entire week?…Along those same lines, could you limit yourself to only two electronic gadgets for an entire month?”

I thought it would be neat to answer that question and get you to answer it too.

My 6 websites:

1. Hotmail- I need to be able to check my email

2. Facebook- This site has gotten me addicted to updating my status

3. iGoogle- I can keep up with my news feeds, weather, and my to do list

4. Dropshots- I would need to see pictures of my daughter

5. Google Reader- Thanks to this class, I feel connected in a whole new way. I love all the good ideas I am getting, and the new sites I am learning about

6. pasadenaisd.org- All things work related

My two gadgets:

1. My Droid X- for phone calls, texts, music, and pictures

2. My laptop- to access the 6 sites listed above

Pageflakes is like iGoogle on crack. I use iGoogle for a homepage, but Pageflakes can do way more. I am not sure that I would ever use it in class or even for personal use. I don’t think all of the flakes would work at school. I have issues with some of the widgets on iGoogle being blocked. It is a neat concept to have all your email, social networking, bookmarks, and RSS feeds all in one spot. It is like every web 2.0 concept rolled into one page.

I absolutely love Google Docs. I have been using it for about 2 years now. I tried to use it with my students, but our district has Google Docs blocked for students. For this Thing, I created a story starter. I wrote 3 sentences and then I shared the document. I left instructions for each collaborator to add their own 3 sentences, but to change the font color. I could see this being a good writing activity. This is my idea of a paperless classroom. Students just have to share their work with me, and I can grade it and leave comments all without printing anything out.

I use Spreadsheet more than Presentation. We use Google Docs for a lot of staff and student surveys, and Spreadsheet helps to organize the data. Surveys is a great way to use Google Docs. Group presentations, story starters, and peer editing are also ideas that I have for using and collaborating in Google Docs.

I don’t do a lot of uploading and downloading with Google Docs, but when I tried it with the stretch activity I hardly noticed any differences.  Since Google Docs is blocked for the students, we will be using Zoho Documents. This is a site very similar to Google Docs.

I have never been a big fan of YouTube because my husband will get lost for hours looking at silly videos. I don’t have that kind of time. I normally have a hard time looking for technology videos because it seems like by the time there is a video then the technology is out of date. I never thought to look for how to videos. Our district blocks YouTube, and we used to subscribe to Atomic Learning. Once the district stopped the subscription then I had no access to how to videos. Now I can use YouTube and Zamzar to use how to videos in my class again. I will also recommend YouTube to my colleagues when they need help with software.

This year we will be using a site called Zoho. It is similar to GoogleDocs. I found an introduction video on TeacherTube that I can use in my class.

I am adding a link to the video that I used for the stretch task. Quietube is great! GoogleDocs video

Here is a TeacherTube video I found.

Making the podcast was super simple, and it was just as easy to post to PodBean. It was also very easy to post to my wikispace and my blog. I still don’t know what I think about me creating podcasts for my classes, however I could see the students creating them and posting them for other students to hear. They could create podcasts to talk about what they are learning, reflecting on an activity, or even presenting a topic. I will consider letting the students create podcasts. I will have to invest in some microphones.

I was quite surprised to see all the podcasts that were available in iTunes. I have used it for music, but I never thought to look for podcasts. I tried not to get lost in all the choices, and I quickly found 2 podcasts that I liked. For a personal choice I chose Photography 101, which is actually audio and video. It is a podcast that gives photography tips and tricks. Photography was my minor in college, and I still love to take pictures as a hobby. This podcast gives me some great reminders and is a good review of what I learned.

I also subscribed to a podcast called Tech Chick Tips. It is two women in educaiton who talk about how to incorporate technology into the classroom. They have great information and resources.

I attended a podcasting staff development a few years ago, and I thought it would be neat to incorporate into my classroom. I never really thought of a good way to do it though. I think it would be a good thing to record all of your lessons and then make them available for students that were absent or even parents that want to know what their child is learning. Since I teach technology, I almost need a video to go along with the podcast. I am not sure that I will incorporate podcasting in my class yet, but I will keep it in mind as a resource for my teaching.

When I first started looking at the LibraryThing site I thought it was really neat, but once I got it I felt like I had information overload. I do like the fact that you can look at reviews and descriptions. I also like the book suggester feature even though it is similar to some other ones that I have come across lately. I am not sure that I could use this in my class or with my colleagues. I could maybe see the librarian using it for her book club.

I did create an account and add some of the books I have read. It was very time consuming to search for the books and then choose from the 1 billion (slight exaggeration) different entries. It was also difficult for series. I was trying to add the Harry Potter series and I had to keep going back and searching for J.K. Rowling every time. Maybe I didn’t do it correctly. I am not sure why I would want to create a catalog of everything I have ever read. I think the site is cool, but that is about it for now.

So, I wish I would have read the stretch task before writing the previous blog. I complained about the organization of my tags, but if I would have learned about tag bundles I would have been okay. I set up tag bundles to organize my bookmarks into categories. Now, when I need a particular category I just go to that tag bundle and instantly my bookmarks are reduced to a specific topic. I love it.