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.