Final Thoughts

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

Although the Animoto was tough to get started, I liked the concept and Nick's idea of using as a looping video between classes or as students arrive to class.

• How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?

I guess maintaining an open mind to technology in general is an adjustment for me.  I have not been exposed to most of these exercises before and will work to remain as current as I can.

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

A lot of information to process and maintain.  I will take this as filling my "tool box" for educational success.

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

I don't know if changes are really necessary.  This was a great exposure to a lot of different sites and information.

• How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher?

Added tools which will increase the effectiveness of teaching.

• How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.

The RSS feeds to various sites provide updated information.  Also, I would gain a strong working relationship with my fellow teachers as well as applicable blogs within my field.

Thing #23

Learning 2.0 - 23 Things 

Above is a link to learning 2.0 23 Things.  Please note below, I copied the credits used on the linked page for your larger print viewing pleasure.

Credits

Learning 2.0 is a discovery learning program created by Helene Blowers and adapted by the California School Library Association, Shelley Paul of K12 Learning 2.0 and others. Content and style for Learning 2.0 - 23 Things has been borrowed and duplicated with permission, under a Creative Commons License.

I think that with the increasing use of technology in the classroom, Creative Commons License needs to be covered an an earlier grade.  Perhaps as early as when gathering information via the computer in utilized.  

Thing #22

Math Binder
I made three binders: 1. Math sites, 2. ADHD sites, and 3. Language Arts sites.  I have attempted to embed the math binder.  This can be very useful in consolidating information during group projects as well as consolidating information to build a student or teacher "tool box".

Thing #21

Cozine's Animoto Video
This is a video of some pictures of one of my tours in Afghanistan.  I first had to up load into Flickr, which took a while.  Then since I didn't tag them so I could choose a selection, I ended up saving to a folder on my desktop and uploading into Animoto from there which worked out good.  I struggled a bit on re-arraigning the order of the pictures but got it in the end.  I would like to have the pictures displayed a little longer, but guess that comes with the upgraded versions.  This is a good site that I may use again, good way to share experiences.  I had trouble with the embedding feature and ended up adding as a link instead. 

Thing #20

This is a You Tube video about teaching Special Needs Students.  Since I plan to teach Special Education, I thought this was appropriate.  Along with this video there were several other related videos, and when you click on those, you get several more related videos. 

I think you hit it on the head when you said some of the videos are not worth watching.  That said, since anyone can post anything, you really need to decide for your self and do additional research if this is a valid post.  Many things may be "common sense" but I think you should use discretion when using for other than personal reasons.

When I have time on my hands (which is not real often), I do look at some videos.  As a High School Wrestling Coach I have found that there are many training videos, techniques, and even some high profile matches.

Thing #19

Well, I do not have a face book account and frankly, don't want to get one.  As if I am not busy enough already.  I really don't want to become consumed with my "status".  As the genre of the website suggests (social networking) rather than say (professional networking) I may become a bit more interested.  I do understand that you can focus your searches and form groups etc., but in my opinion, there is just way too much hype wrapped around the social aspect of some of these sites.  I registered for the Teacher Pop, still waiting for approval to actually do anything on that site.

Technology is good, I encourage and welcome advancement, but feel that there are different approaches to teaching, learning and communicating and there should be a balance to this approach.  There are already many discussions directed at the use of calculators in school:  have we lost the art of mental computing, or learning the process of radicals?  Additionally, many schools are no longer teaching cursive writing.  In a sense, the arrival of the computer, social networking, text, etc., have in some ways improved our level of communication, while in other ways pushed us towards losing part of our written language.  Will our great descendents one day look at an archived cursive written piece and have to study for years to interpret much like the Egyptian hieroglyphics?

Thing #18

Why is it important that educators know how social networking works?
Let's face it, social networking is rapidly taking over most forms of communication.  Maybe this is part of the reason that I can not talk to a human sometimes when I try to make a phone call. Some people choose to make this their primary means of communication and we may be loosing the true art of a physical conversation.  That's my venting.  Well, as an educator, we must be aware of the current and popular means of communicating as well as the good old fashioned face to face conversation.  Being able to reach out and communicate to a student in their type of environment may very well be what that student needs to be successful in some classes.



What new insights did you gain about these popular sites?
There is so much information out there.  I am really dragging my feet on joining facebook, primarily because I see it totally consume some people.  It definitely has positive qualities in posting information among other things.  I did join Twitter, mostly because it was involved in another "thing"  I have followed a few special education sites and some people that I know.  I refuse to allow twitter to consume me though.  I will not post on a regular basis.  I see some live TV shows in which some people have to tweet while even on the show.

What did you like or dislike about each of the sites you explored?
I think that one of the most positive aspects of these sites are the accessibility.  You can virtually access anywhere.  Most smart phones have the option during the initial set up to link to your phone.  The biggest disadvantage that I see is the overwhelming consumption of time that some people allow.


Which site had the most useful features?
I can appreciate the features of twitter to follow a specific topic.  I am sure Facebook has very similar features as well, but I do not have an account and did not preview it. 


Can you see a classroom or school application for any of these sites?
Classroom applications are merely limited to the user.  The sky really is the limit as to what these sites may be able to provide to the effectiveness of the classroom.




 

Thing #17

I can see great potential in this site.  Granted, I have not really had time to master this site, but the initial impression is good.  I like the collaboration opportunity to share thoughts on tagged sites.  Also, it is a great way to narrow a search for new information based on other tags that are closely related.  I will definitely give this a chance.

As far as use in the classroom, there are numerous ways that this cite can be implemented; sharing research sites, teachers sharing sites with other teachers, guiding students searches for additional information, etc.

I think the most useful purpose for me is compiling all the sites that I have obtained from teachers that I have observed.  I have made it a point to ask each teacher for websites that they have found useful.  I have added them to my bookmarks and created folders to sort by topic.  This site can greatly assist through the use of the tags and the public features.

Thing #16

I like so many others, chose to use iGoogle as a home page mostly because I have had to create so many sites already that require google access including this blog.  I think it is very similar to the APSU website as you can pick what information you want to be displayed.  The Army Knowledge Online site was also very similar.  I can not say at this time if I will set this as permanent or not, too soon.  I will give it a chance as there are some qualities that could prove useful.  I already have an RSS feed to Iowa Wrestling, which can be displayed on iGoogle as well.  But my smart phone receives this notification as well, so this may be a bit redundant.  That being said, my smart phone pretty much provides all of the information that can be displayed on the iGoogle.  I guess this may work out when I am working on the computer.  One good feature is that it is online and can be accessed from any computer.

I currently use my APSU calendar everyday.  It is also linked to my phone and I have access virtually all the time.  I have multiple calendars that I have created and can link them if needed as well as share them with other users that I invite.  It is for this reason that I will not change my choice of calendar.  I did however, check out the Google calendar and it seems to be very similar to that of the APSU version.

I looked at the Remember the milk site and even downloaded the app to my phone.  After further review, it seems relatively simple.  I think I can do the same thing with my calendar feature though.  I did add a couple of items to the list via my smart phone voice feature which is kind of cool, very quick.  I may give this a second chance.

After reviewing these sites, I feel that the systems that I already have in place are adequate at this time.  Maybe I am set in my ways and am just really used to my current systems, but I really like the way they work now, after all, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Thing #15

This is rather blog like.  Some organizations are using this as a collection site for information, whereas others may post comments or reviews.  I liked the Literary Circle wiki, because it would allow the group members to add their feelings about the book.  Again, rather blob like.  The tracking feature and the RSS feeds could prove useful for the original author and their followers in order to stay current on the topic at hand.  I don't know if this is something that I would use in my classroom, but may consider for group projects, especially group projects that cannot meet face to face.  Also, this may prove effective as a peer review tool.  Like many tools discovered throughout this course as well as "tools" in everyday life, we as users, develop our own preferences towards what we like and what works well for us.

Thing #14

I chose to look at Bubbl.us and gliffy.com.  Bubbl was easy to use for an organizational chart, but lacked the templates that gliffy had.  Bubbl was easier to custom create charts as gliffy had the templates and I had to delete some blocks that were not needed.  I really liked gliffy because of all of the templates, it gave several options to choose from to create layout plans, Venn Diagrams and other charts as well.  It does come with a free 30 day trial but after that, it has a $4.99 per month fee.  I would use this site frequently when free, but may hesitate with the added fees.  Please see below an organizational chart that I would personally use to create a contact list for my wrestling team.  The second one is of a Venn Diagram that could be used as a discussion with students, obviously, topics can change.  I liked the idea of being able to create the diagram though.



http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/3496730/M.png

http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/3496867/M.png

Thing #13

Well, I have created yet another user name and password.  Thankfully, there are not extreme security settings on the Zoho site, so I was able to use the same user name and password that I have used for a couple of other sites.  It gets a little frustrating when each site may have a little different criteria to establish an account.  Linking to Google on several occasions has been helpful.

I looked around Zoho and find a lot of similarities to Microsoft, but with my layman's experience with different types of computer programs, I find a lot of the features somewhat limited to what most of us are used to in Microsoft.  Which may be the reason why I have not heard of this site or program.  I was interested in collaboration features and can understand how this may be very useful with group projects.  I uploaded a couple of different types of files and found that there was comparability issues with each file.  I could see my interactive Power Point as it was in PPT, however, it did not recognize the links that I used to navigate.  I also uploaded my 5th Grade Language Arts project which I was also able to read but changing formatting was not compatible.  I have used Drop Box many times and have had great success in saving and sharing online.  Frankly, I am open to new things, but if it isn't broken, don't fix it.  I prefer to use the systems that have and do work for me.

Please see a Presentation version from my Google Docs.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uYPDzqaMIFPUvEcJfkCzUfeTFjnfLMMuyU_L6pUa_pE/edit#slide=id.gcb33f12_0_40

Again, these sites can be useful to group projects, but may need to be constructed, viewed and edited all from the online sites.  The offline feature is good, but access will still be required to complete collaboration.

I use my online calendar everyday and looked at each of the calendars available.  I am partial to what I am using largely because it is what I am most familiar.  Both Zoho and the Google docs calendars seem to have limited features to what I am currently using as well which is a reoccurring theme to the other aspects of both programs.

Thing #12

See Link below for a calendar that I made using Google calendar.  I have been using the APSU calendar since I started school here a year and a half ago and am pretty happy with it so far.  The reason I chose to use the APSU email and calendar as opposed to Google, is merely because some professors demanded all email traffic through the school provided account.  Instead of maintaining several different accounts, not to mention user name and passwords, I decided to manage just one account.  I was not able to figure out how to import or export from APSU, but the Google calendar has that feature with help as well. Setting up a Google calendar could have student, parent, and classroom benefit as well to share the schedule.  I am not sure that there would be a need for both a blog and a shared calendar unless the calendar was linked to the blog.  As a teacher, we must recognize the most effective way of communicating with our students and their parents.  One way may be extremely effective for one but not as effective for another, so multiple approaches may be needed.
https://www.google.com/calendar?tab=cc

I also chose to add an alert to Iowa Hawkeye Wrestling.  This was just a personal reason towards something that I will actually use routinely.  Other topics can prove useful to provide to students if they have a research project, or have an assignment towards current events.  As a coach, I have endless time in front of the computer tracking other teams or individual wrestlers, so the benefit to having alerts posted with updated information will be very useful for me.

Thing #11

*Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
 *Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
                                   
As all of the Web 2.0 tools are fairly new to me, Google still is the easiest for me to navigate right now.  I'm sure that the more I am exposed to and through increased use, I will become more proficient with other methods as well.  But as with human nature, we tend to gravitate towards familiarity.  With Google blog search, I can search for topics that interest me through the existing search engine.


*Which was more confusing?
I was not initially a fan of Topix.net or Technorati, although they also had built in search engines, the main page was cluttered with what someone else thought was interesting or important enough to post on the front page.  As a Non-Traditional student, I lead a very active and busy schedule through my school schedule, coaching, kids school programs and family events, so sorting through topics or information that does not pertain to what I am looking for in the first place, tends to irritate me only adding to my frustration. I do understand that through these "23 things" we are to be exposed to what other people have deemed useful to them.  As upcoming teachers, we don't exactly want to be just like the other teachers but we do want to fill our toolboxes with applicable tools that can assist in making us successful.

*What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?
School library learning 2.0 is similar to what we are doing right now but this was exposed at a much earlier age.  The fact that it was presented so early, adds further weight to current teachers as well as the upcoming, need to have as much exposure as possible just to keep up.

*Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
This may not be unusual for some, but TLC has aired a couple shows on extreme coupon.  I  typed into the Google Blog Search "coupons" and got a whole bunch of blogs that could assist the active coupon person in obtaining and even learning about coupons.

*What other tools or ways did you find to locate news feeds?
Again, I appreciate the simplicity of Google, Google Blog etc.  Everything I have needed, seems to be available through a Google search.

Thing #10

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
I have not used this before, and have been somewhat frustrated when I get the updates for this and I didn't know what it was for.  I often go to various websites and look for information, this feature will greatly reduce my time spent just looking for updates.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?
I have already saved a couple sites that I use fairly frequently for my coaching.  Through Google Reader, I will be able to know about updates much quicker.  School sites as well, I saved the Cool Cat Teacher with plans to monitor as well.

How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
Simply for organization purposes, if there are several websites that are used within the classroom or for developing plans, there can be a valuable use to utilizing this service.

Thing #9

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7046/6919022363_a4fbf09217_m.jpg

In the spirit of Valentines Day, (I know it is six days later, but you need to know, I didn't forget) This is really cool.  I sent this to my wife, who needs Valentines Day anyway to tell their loved one they love them.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7187/6772922108_b114bab16a_m.jpg

I like this logo generator because there are just endless ways of printing different phrases.  I could see myself spending some time with this and then generating a t-shirt with the results.

Thing #8

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7190/6919006983_f7389c646c_s.jpg

I think puzzles are always cool.  This can be useful in the special education community towards occupational therapy, sequencing, color match, and I am sure a hole bunch of other ways.  As the instructions stated, this may become habit forming.  The size and detail of the photo would definitely affect the student which may require larger print to accommodate different levels.  Creating themes would be kind of fun too.

Thing #7

 

link to picture http://farm1.staticflickr.com/37/124009614_71cb40b472_t.jpg

I can see the usefulness of using flickr to store and post photos.  Posting class projects and familiar areas of the classroom or school may prove useful.  I will remain open as to, what I am sure is a wide variety of uses.  I would always be cautious on publicly posting personal photos. 

In my first semester here, I took Astronomy and since have liked looking at stars as well as pictures of stars.  Also, growing up as a child, I had a fascination with cameras (no flickr back then, so most of the pictures are gone) I used to try to take pictures like this one posted using different shutter speeds and settings.  I never really got it perfected.

 

So now that I have this sort of figured out, I decided to add a photo that I have from one of my tours in Afghanistan.  This is a howitzer 155 on a fire mission.  The artillery guys called this "puff the magic dragon" or the "bow tie".  Pretty cool photo, scares the living crap out of you if they fire when you don't expect it.

Thing #6

I picked https://www.dropbox.com/.  This is a free online storage site that you can use from any computer with an internet connection and even you smart phone.  You can store just about anything from documents to photos and then access them from a different computer or even share them with another drop box user which then can be used as a collaborative file.  The initial storage capacity was 2.25GB and after completing a few things online, I was immediately upgraded to 2.5GB.  With each referral that downloads and installs, you can receive another 250mb up to 8GB of free storage.  There are additional pay options for packages with up to 1TB of storage space. 

This can be a very useful option for school work storage since it has a base that it can recover any of the versions previously saved on drop box as well.  To revert back to School 2.0, this can be used to store and present at different locations and perhaps simultaneously at multiple locations in a distance learning or online capacity.  Teachers can also use this as a method to distribute information towards assignments, receive and provide feedback on students work, and provide information to parents regarding school work or even as a welcome presentation or section wrap up full of photos or samples of students work.

Online storage:  https://www.dropbox.com/

Thing #5

As discussed in a couple of the other posts, School 2.0 is an advancement towards entering the 21 century.  Much like our environment and the world around us, technology is rapidly becoming a part of most of our lives.  You can buy a computer, phone or virtually any type of electronic and it very well may require an update before you even take it out of the box.  I think that School 2.0 is an attempt to link what is so popular with today's youth.  As an older student (graduated high school in the eighties), I grew up with very little technology in schools.  As a matter of fact, there were only two computers with word processing only in my entire high school.  Could you imagine writing all your papers by hand, without spell check or grammar assistance?  Through three math classes I have had at APSU, there has been a discussion as to the use of calculators in school and if used, at what grades would be appropriate to introduce.  Are our young students becoming too reliant on calculators or technology?  Technology is crucial in the advancement of our nation and the rest of the world.  We are always looking for better, more efficient ways of doing or producing things, and technology allows us to do that.  In order for us to advance in technology outside of school, we MUST introduce technology within our schools.    I think it is and will be our responsibility as teachers to properly introduce technology to assist in the presentation as well as supplement learning in ways that remain interactive. 

I got an email just last night from my child's middle school that there is an increasing problem with cell phone violations in school.   To a person of my age, this is a true example to what influence technology has on our youth.  I didn't even have a cell phone until I was 30, and I only had 100 minutes a month!  If our youth are becoming proficient with technology at an early age and this is interesting and important to them, they will undoubtedly learn from that method better than with previous methods.  Gathering and maintaining the attention of our students is also a quality that we strive to learn and master as teachers.

Thing #4

Well, there really is not a community of one.  So by creating interesting topics to draw interest to readers, and by commenting on other similar topic blogs with appropriate comments as well as a link to your own blog, will begin to build a community.

In the Blue Skunk Blog, they discussed that writers write to be read.  One way of knowing if your work is being read, is through the use of comments.  In addition to receiving a comment, this author also finds value in validating the comment with a follow up comment, even if it is only "thanks". The Pro Blogger also states that Interaction with comments is valuable much for the same reasons, but also to learn why their readers read.

The cool cat teacher includes to make your comments meaningful.  This makes a lot of sense in that if the blog means something to you, and you provide a relevant meaningful comment, than you very well may encourage more meaningful posts from other readers and additional posts from the blogger.

 I have chosen to follow several other bloggers in this class, largely because I have shared similar interests or shared other classes.  I commented on similar thoughts or nice ideas that I had not thought of before.
Erica Paredez
Stephen Forrester
Becky Phillips
Ariel Griffith
Nick Caudill
and two other blogs I followed and commented on were
The Pioneer Woman - Cuban Pork Chops
CBS Sports - Girl Wrestler Makes History in Iowa  Under user name dhsta

Thing #3

Being new to the "blog world" I can initially see that this can be a very useful tool as a future teacher.  Firstly, with the numerous teaching specific blogs out there, it can be used to gather information that other teachers considered useful.  In addition to gathering information, I can see the benefit to sharing my own ideas and gaining feedback on what others may think as well.  Secondly, there may be some benefit to posting class schedules and supplemental information and assignments to augment learning for my students and provide a directed focus and assistance to the parents.  Now granted, this is only the first two weeks that I have been exposed to blogs and have not yet achieved my goal of becoming a teacher, so I only hope to learn even more ways that blogs can be utilized in my teaching.

Thing #2

The process of creating this blog and the avatar has not been very difficult, but rather just a new process that I had to learn and get accustomed to.  By no means will I ever consider myself a computer technical person, but I will continue to learn and apply tools throughout this process.

In naming my blog, I used the guidance given in class about using my last name in the title then I further added the first initial of my last name which was conveniently also a common user name for me as well.  I find it difficult to manage multiple accounts that have different security requirements for user names and passwords and it kind of totally defeats the purpose of the strict requirements if I have to write my user name and passwords down in order to keep them all straight and not forget them.  Every time I feel that I have a good password that I can use throughout, I find that a different account has different criteria or even has an expiration date for the password.

The experience in creating this blog has not been difficult.  It is an entirely new process, but directions and peer assistance has made this process much easier.  The most difficult part of this process has been dedicating time to complete.  With a demanding outside schedule, I have had difficulty dedicating time to complete this project, however, my coaching responsibilities are complete at the end of next week which will free about 30 hours a week that I will be able to dedicate specific blocks of time.

My avatar really does not have much likeness to me as the choices were fairly limited to what I would picture myself as.  I basically went through the choices and selected what may end up looking cool.

Thing #1

The lifelong learning habit that I consider the easiest would be, teach and mentor others.  With my background of 22 years in the Army, I became successful first as the student and mentored, then as the teacher and the mentor.  My final job within the Army was to manage a Forward Surgical Team which provided far forward surgery to the most horrifically injured Soldiers, Coalition Forces, Civilians and even the bad guys.  In order to be successful in this mission, my team had to constantly review and teach each other our jobs.  In addition to teaching each other, we would commonly teach local doctors how to perform basic medical tasks as well as life saving surgical interventions.  In addition to my vast Army career of teaching and mentoring, I also serve as the head coach for the Rossview High School wrestling team.  This goes without saying that teaching and mentoring is of the utmost importance in order to be successful not only as a coach, but as a team and a wrestling community as well.

The hardest lifelong learning habit for me has been and will continue to be is the use of technology towards my advantage.  Throughout my Army career, I did continue to advance with technology as it was presented to me and I feel confident that I will continue to adapt with the added technology presented within this class too.  I have not been exposed to blogs, twitter, or chat rooms but will remain optimistic that I will learn about them as well as how to employ them to become a successful teacher.

Needless to say, I have a lot to learn about web 2.0 tools.  Having not been exposed to much computer technology before, I want to become proficient with all the tools presented.  I did have difficulty in building my blog as I didn't have any of the accounts needed to start, so I had to sign up and create a list of accounts, user names and passwords in order to keep everything organized.  I do not really have a favorite or easy part of creating this blog, but still find it interesting.