Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Using the Things
Today I took my fifth graders to the computer lab and had them go to stripgenerator. Because Flash hadn't been updated in the lab we were a little slow getting started, but once everyone was able to use the application they had a ball. Each student was asked to create one comic strip that had something to do with our studies of American history--most chose the Boston Tea Party or one of the tax acts--and then a strip of their choosing. They printed their creations and gave me one, which I trimmed and posted on our classroom bulletin board. My students were very proud of their work (and had never been more focused in computer class) and other students who saw the work were suitably impressed.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thing 23 I Made It
We have covered a lot of material in a relatively short time. Some of it I cannot see myself using, partially because I couldn't see a meaningful use for it (Twitter), and some because other tools seem better.
Now the time comes for choices. If I want my elementary age students to do research using sites I know are reputable and age appropriate, will I set up a wiki with links and explanations, or should I set up a class delicious account? Should I change from doing a daily blog, as I do at present, to a classroom wiki page? Should I plan to have students present their research projects next year as slideshows that can be uploaded to whatever type of website I decide upon? Will I really enter most of my library into Librarything? Would that site be more useful if I just joined a group, or read reviews? Do I want to remain a member of two Ning groups, or would it be more efficient to stay with just one, but be more active in it?
Of some things I am certain. I am certain that my students' brief time in the computer lab each week will be more profitably spent. I am certain that my students will be posting examples of their work to a website next school year. I am certain that I will make better use of the resources available to educators on the web, so that I can better integrate technology into my classroom.
I am also certain that I will be frustrated with the limited amount of time my students can be on-line during the school day, with the lack of Internet access in my students' homes, and with the limitations of our aging hardware.
As far as how I will continue to learn about web 2.0 tools? I suppose someone will explain them on plainenglish, or someone will make a post about a great new tool on a blog that I've subscribed to, or maybe someone will even Tweet about it and I might listen in.
Even if each of us decides to become adept at just one or two of these "things" we will be making progress. I have a feeling though, that becoming skilled at one web 2.0 application will actually just serve to whet our appetites for the next new development.
Now the time comes for choices. If I want my elementary age students to do research using sites I know are reputable and age appropriate, will I set up a wiki with links and explanations, or should I set up a class delicious account? Should I change from doing a daily blog, as I do at present, to a classroom wiki page? Should I plan to have students present their research projects next year as slideshows that can be uploaded to whatever type of website I decide upon? Will I really enter most of my library into Librarything? Would that site be more useful if I just joined a group, or read reviews? Do I want to remain a member of two Ning groups, or would it be more efficient to stay with just one, but be more active in it?
Of some things I am certain. I am certain that my students' brief time in the computer lab each week will be more profitably spent. I am certain that my students will be posting examples of their work to a website next school year. I am certain that I will make better use of the resources available to educators on the web, so that I can better integrate technology into my classroom.
I am also certain that I will be frustrated with the limited amount of time my students can be on-line during the school day, with the lack of Internet access in my students' homes, and with the limitations of our aging hardware.
As far as how I will continue to learn about web 2.0 tools? I suppose someone will explain them on plainenglish, or someone will make a post about a great new tool on a blog that I've subscribed to, or maybe someone will even Tweet about it and I might listen in.
Even if each of us decides to become adept at just one or two of these "things" we will be making progress. I have a feeling though, that becoming skilled at one web 2.0 application will actually just serve to whet our appetites for the next new development.
Thing 22 On Line Video
I have watched YouTube once in awhile in the past. I get a monthly newsletter from a book designer and she posts how-to videos to YouTube. When I taught high school students, they were always suggesting videos that I "really ought to see." Though I had heard of teachertube, I hadn't really looked closely at it before.
Our school does let us access both teachertube and schooltube, though we cannot go to YouTube. I looked at several videos on both those sites and some of them could be used in my classroom. The visual quality of some of the videos left much to be desired, but the brevity of the films was definitely a plus. The videos on schooltube appeared to be primarily student/teacher made, but some of the videos on teachertube are more professional in appearance. Since I am attending a TAH grant workshop that AIHE is partially presenting, I was particularly interested in the videos they have on teachertube. Certainly many of these videos could be used to introduce or reinforce information in the classroom. They might also be inspiration to students to produce their own films, or at least slideshows, of content material.
I watched a couple presentations on TED and though they wouldn't be useful in my elementary classroom, they are great thought provokers for those of us who need to escape the world of ten year olds on occasion.
Our school does let us access both teachertube and schooltube, though we cannot go to YouTube. I looked at several videos on both those sites and some of them could be used in my classroom. The visual quality of some of the videos left much to be desired, but the brevity of the films was definitely a plus. The videos on schooltube appeared to be primarily student/teacher made, but some of the videos on teachertube are more professional in appearance. Since I am attending a TAH grant workshop that AIHE is partially presenting, I was particularly interested in the videos they have on teachertube. Certainly many of these videos could be used to introduce or reinforce information in the classroom. They might also be inspiration to students to produce their own films, or at least slideshows, of content material.
I watched a couple presentations on TED and though they wouldn't be useful in my elementary classroom, they are great thought provokers for those of us who need to escape the world of ten year olds on occasion.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Thing 21 Twitter
At least I knew roughly what Twitter was--for the tv ad that says a certain percentage of people don't. I looked at the links and videos and tried doing searches on Twitter, but I think I need more convincing on this web 2.0 application. Most of the twits (tweets) that showed up on my searches made little sense to me and seemed to consist of links to other short posts or other websites. Maybe this is something that one just has to plunge into to appreciate.
I suppose keeping up a running commentary with someone with whom one was working on a project would make sense, though I'm not sure the immediacy seems that vital--wouldn't email or blogs work. This first look at Twitter just struck me as a lot of people who either felt their every move was so important that they had to broadcast it to the world, or that they were so lonely they were trying to reach out to anyone who would listen.
There have been reports on the news of employers who check the Twitter posts of potential employees as part of their selection process which would suggest to me that one should be a bit cautious about what they decide to share with the virtual world, implying that perhaps taking a little bit of time to consider how one might be perceived based on their cyberspace persona would be prudent.
Maybe in time I will appreciate this application more, but this introduction to it has not convinced me that it is anything that I really need to focus upon.
I suppose keeping up a running commentary with someone with whom one was working on a project would make sense, though I'm not sure the immediacy seems that vital--wouldn't email or blogs work. This first look at Twitter just struck me as a lot of people who either felt their every move was so important that they had to broadcast it to the world, or that they were so lonely they were trying to reach out to anyone who would listen.
There have been reports on the news of employers who check the Twitter posts of potential employees as part of their selection process which would suggest to me that one should be a bit cautious about what they decide to share with the virtual world, implying that perhaps taking a little bit of time to consider how one might be perceived based on their cyberspace persona would be prudent.
Maybe in time I will appreciate this application more, but this introduction to it has not convinced me that it is anything that I really need to focus upon.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Thing 20 Continued
Del.icio.us really works! I uploaded all my favorites from home very easily--didn't even have to do the export step--and tagged them on Monday. Yesterday I was able to upload my bookmarks from school! It was very easy even though I used the export-import method for the second group. Once I have tagged the school set my life should be much easier.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thing 20 Bookmarking with del.icio.us
Under the user name of rebeccast I uploaded all 100 or so favorites from my home computer to the del.icio.us site and edited each to add a tag, deleting some that are no longer of use to me. I then added a few sites that I had not bookmarked before, but could not do so automatically even though the buttons appear on my toolbar. Maybe after I have logged off and then back on again they will be fully functional. I used the copy and paste method to add the last few sites.
Now instead of scrolling through the mishmash of favorites I can choose one of the many tags I used to find the site(s) I want.
It was interesting to see that some of my favorites were already bookmarked by thousands of people and others by none or just a few. Unlike the information in the tutorial, my imported sites were all private until I unchecked a box in the editing window.
This would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers. All the teachers attending the TAH grant workshop that I am in could set up a single account for the group to use to add useful websites we have found. In our own schools we could set up accounts by subject matter or grade. I think having one account for several of us to share would be simpler than sharing user names or searching all the bookmarks in del.icio.us. Since it is so easy to add sites and to add descriptions, sharing resources by using this social bookmarking would be as easy as bookmarking for my own use, and more accessible because of the tags. Groups setting up accounts could agree to certain tags they would use, adding others as needed. I could see suggesting to one of the learning networks that I joined that we set up a del.icio.us account for the group to use.
Why does it seem that these later tools are more useful than some of the earlier ones? Does that mean we're learning?
Now instead of scrolling through the mishmash of favorites I can choose one of the many tags I used to find the site(s) I want.
It was interesting to see that some of my favorites were already bookmarked by thousands of people and others by none or just a few. Unlike the information in the tutorial, my imported sites were all private until I unchecked a box in the editing window.
This would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers. All the teachers attending the TAH grant workshop that I am in could set up a single account for the group to use to add useful websites we have found. In our own schools we could set up accounts by subject matter or grade. I think having one account for several of us to share would be simpler than sharing user names or searching all the bookmarks in del.icio.us. Since it is so easy to add sites and to add descriptions, sharing resources by using this social bookmarking would be as easy as bookmarking for my own use, and more accessible because of the tags. Groups setting up accounts could agree to certain tags they would use, adding others as needed. I could see suggesting to one of the learning networks that I joined that we set up a del.icio.us account for the group to use.
Why does it seem that these later tools are more useful than some of the earlier ones? Does that mean we're learning?
Thing 19 Social Bookmarking
Adobe Bridge has allowed users to tag photos for quite awhile, and though I haven't used that feature, I often regret that I haven't. Tagging websites though seems like a fabulous idea. I have a list of favorites at school and a list at home and invariably the site I need is listed on the other computer. Add to that the frustration of wading through the disorganized list of phrases that comprises my favorites list, looking for the one I vaguely remember, and using tags for social bookmarking looks better and better.
The feature that allows tags to be sorted with a + sign would allow me to refine my search of marked websites to separate the photography tutorials from the photography stores, and the social studies sites for teachers from the ones for students to visit.
As long as I overlap the tag lists of others at least some of the time, I can benefit from the research done by others and hopefully avoid some of the dead end, useless sites that come up in a search. I don't know yet how much of the description of the site will show, but it looks like there would be enough to let me know if someone else's photography or social studies site would be useful to me without actually visiting it first. Since the tag names can be edited, I should be able to make my list more useful to others and at the same time make other lists more accessible to me. This really looks like it could be extremely useful.
The only drawbacks I can wonder about are the possibility of someone tagging obscene material with innocuous tags, or some telemarketer somehow targeting people who tag sites in particular ways. I don't know if the second is possible, but some of those programmers seem to be able to do just about anything, and more junk mail is not what I want.
The feature that allows tags to be sorted with a + sign would allow me to refine my search of marked websites to separate the photography tutorials from the photography stores, and the social studies sites for teachers from the ones for students to visit.
As long as I overlap the tag lists of others at least some of the time, I can benefit from the research done by others and hopefully avoid some of the dead end, useless sites that come up in a search. I don't know yet how much of the description of the site will show, but it looks like there would be enough to let me know if someone else's photography or social studies site would be useful to me without actually visiting it first. Since the tag names can be edited, I should be able to make my list more useful to others and at the same time make other lists more accessible to me. This really looks like it could be extremely useful.
The only drawbacks I can wonder about are the possibility of someone tagging obscene material with innocuous tags, or some telemarketer somehow targeting people who tag sites in particular ways. I don't know if the second is possible, but some of those programmers seem to be able to do just about anything, and more junk mail is not what I want.
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