Monday, August 10, 2009

Thing 11.5

Thank you for the opportunity to write some final thoughts.

Favorite discoveries is easy for me. Image generators, especially Wordle, was both useful and will be fun for the kids to use next year. I also loved the screencast. By completing it I learned a great deal about recording on my laptop, and will be much more helpful to my students in this area.

The area most critical to life long learning would be a better understanding about microblogging. I had heard of Twitter and Facebook, but did not have a clear picture of what they were. I still don't feel comfortable using them (What are you doing right now?)but it is good to know what other people are talking about.

I guess one of the biggest surprises is that there are grown-ups out there playing in virtual worlds like 2nd Life. I just feel so certain they could be making better use of their time in the First Life.

Thing 11

I gleaned from the posts I read, that a major concern of the areas that fall under digital citizenship, is the lack of critical analysis as the children work on research. Both of the blogs mentioned how the students seem to believe what ever they read and weren't that concerned about discriminating between the facts being presented versus the opinions being shared.

Fortunately, we already teach fact and opinion in the 3rd grade. Now we need to take what we learn as we study advertisements and articles that appear in print and use those same skills and key words like "I believe" and "you should" to alert them that an opinion is being presented.

I thought the chart presented in the blogs were helpful to break down the components of digital citizenship...literacy, safety, learning strategies, and etiquette. I'm wondering if anyone else has complained about the high number of grammatical errors and typos found in some of these blogs and post. Digiteen was so poorly written I found it difficult to follow.

Thing 10

Alright, I'll start with the good, but I am such a novice at this entire concept that I'm not sure the will be accurate.

GOOD: AMAZING graphics! You truly feel like you are entering another dimension. The Mayan ruins looked amazing. The sections on "Explore" and "Learn" looked particularly useful to educators. I can see how me taking the kids into this world on the large screen could be amazing.

BAD:Lots of trouble even looking in. Thanks to you guys I've greatly increased my internet savvy, but this was way out of my league. My daughter, a SIMS veteran, found the site difficult to negotiate.

BACK TO GOOD: Hey, I now know it exist! I can appreciate the potential it has for educators every where!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Thing 9

I can see slideshare being extremely useful to my students because eventually the Norway server could run out of space. We do a HUGE powerpoint scrap book each year, an individual one for each student. We seem to luck out that not very many campuses store the incredible amount of pictures on Sweden and children's work on Norway as we do at MDE, but oh if they did! What then?

Well, now I'm seeing that the web has already answered this problem. As I teach my students to store more things in sites like Flickr and Slideshare, we can avoid this issue before it starts.

On my overview, I wasn't quite sure if editting could occur once it is stored. My kids love to work on powerpoint shows together and though it is cute to watch them cluster around a single screen, I can't help but think that more work could get done if they could work on the same powerpoint from different computers.

Thing 8

Learning about the screen cast was great. I need to bring the mic from school, so will finish tomorrow. Bought a microphone and it worked beautifully. Made a screen cast for my kids on how to open microsoft word and the settings I want them to use. Once I am at school I want to do one that will show them how to save properly to Norway in their folders.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Thing 7

What a great selection of videos on every subject imaginable! I feel so silly that for years I have only been using United Streaming for the bulk of my in class video selections. Embedding is no big deal! I even added the YouTube video we uploaded earlier.



Idiots on the beach

Monday, August 3, 2009

Thing 6

I am fortunate to have an iphone and did upload some of the educational apps mentioned. The astronomy one is quite good and will help enrich our third grade Greek heroes unit. My daughter prefers the Lemonstand game, she compares it to some of the SIMS games that are so popular.

I was excited to learn that there exist a cable that can connect the iphone to the computer screen or projector. Even if it only can do pictures and videos, I still feel the possibilities are worth exploring.

Use pictures and videos to share and document assignments that are not pencil and paper.
Use picture taken to insert into powerpoints to illustrate how-tos etc...
I plan to trying sharing a book over the docking station I have in the room.

I worry that what is so cool about many of the apps is controlling through the touch screen and that will be lost in a group of children if it becomes too large.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Thing 5

I guess I am just to wierded out to be a Facebook user. All I entered was first, last name, email and birthdate. Suddenly, many parents from my school are on the page waiting to be added. How did they know? How was every single person they showed someone from my elementary school? OK, I'm better now. Not that I don't love the parents at my school. I just don't want them looking at pictures from my private life, a few barriers are a good thing!

Twitter didn't do much for me either. Tried a couple of celebrities like Oprah and Suze Orman. Just can't see the need and though I see the value in quick exchanges and sharing information, I just don't think it is worth the risk. I noticed the SBISD tweet mentioned some of the dangers.

Back channeling seems fine. If it helps people stay focussed, I guess it is a good thing. I know this is the wave of the future, but you just don't have to jump on every wave.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Thing 4

I guess I just demonstrated the advantages of having lessons and ideas like School Tube available on line in my comment, the audio section of the beginning lesson plans goes so well with our own 3rd grade science curriculum. What a great way to think about sounds and to add some technology to that unit!

Posting student work has the obvious pride factor. We all love to see something we've done well out there for others to see and comment on. The ability to share work with others far away from the student is also a wonderful idea.

A final note about the up loading. Incredibly easy! I used a video done on an iphone this summer. It literally took it straight from the phone to YouTube. I titled it Idiots on the Beach. I will try to insert it into my Blog like we did in 23 thins.

Thing 3

The Blogs and articles about Skype and VOI's like Skype were excellent. I particularly related to the comments on class management when things go wrong with technology. I would imagine that early trials would need a back up activity at the ready.
The cross cultural aspects are amazing to contemplate, but for me starting a little closer to home, perhaps with a dramatically different grade level (3rd talking to 7th) who is learning the same topic ( volcanoes, come to mind) might be a little easier.
One of the commentors mentioned how the show and tell lesson format worked really well with the camera, I've a feeling like all things new it is best to start simple and expand from there. The key is to start!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Thing 2

These various tools have been great fun to explore. The Wordle would make a great cover page for a report. I also plan to use it at the beginning of the year, by having the students write sentences about themselves and then use Wordle to form a ME cloud. Glogster poster ideas were excellent. It would be my hope that by eliminating all the collecting, cutting and pasting involved in most posters, it would open avenues for more creativity. I've already used animoto in the classroom last year. My students were overusing powerpoint and it gave them a fresh way to share information with the class. Bookr was new to me. My first thoughts were to use it in describing the many cycles that occur in the sciences. I also think it would be a great device to share a non-fiction book report or a review.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Thing 1.

I left the cartoon and utube videos from 23.5. They still look pretty cool to me. The video on connectivity of the learner was alright. I enjoyed the cut outs, but it was a little hard to stay focussed on the content. I was a little concerned about the aspect of people looking for answers just talking amongst themselves and never really finding the expert. I realized at the end, that this would be the responsibilty of the teacher to make sure the learner has the tools to use his networking capabilities to find the person with the answers. Well, we are off!