The Grand Finale

I've really enjoyed my time working through this class. A lot of the tools, though I may have had experience with them in the past, were presented in an educational context that I hadn't previously thought of because of my prior experience.

In particular, I enjoyed reviewing Google Apps before the start of the school year. It gave me a chance to revisit what I learned in the spring and get started on my new modifications. I'm also excited about using both VoiceThread and YouTube more often this year in the classroom. Of course, the most recent ones come to mind first, but I certainly enjoyed played with Library Thing and exploring the whole idea of creating a Wiki.

I know that social networking sites are one great way to keep up with the updates to technology, but I'm actually planning on using some of the blogs I found through my Reader to keep tabs on how technology is being used in education. For me, it seems like a better solution to the whole "staying current" problemo.

After finishing this course, I can say that I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of knowledge I realized that I already had pertaining to these tools. It taught me that I really need to repurpose my skills and start digging deeper to find the best ways to teach my chillins - I'm certainly not going to run out of ideas any time soon!

Thing #23: Networking with Ning

Alright, so I spent most of my time on exploring Ning, because that's kind of just the way it worked out. I thought that Gather was interesting, but it didn't do a whole lot to entice me to explore much.

Ning, however, I really enjoyed exploring. My overall impression of the site was that it was not only easy-to-use, but it made connecting with other educators very low-pressure and open. In fact, I spent a lot of my exploring time kind of surfing the forums. It was interesting to note how respectful most of the discussion was, simply because a lot of people lose their filters when they're commenting online and tend to make things more personal than they are. For whatever reason, these forums were pretty well behaved, and I actually enjoyed reading them, even when the group consensus didn't line up with mine. I can see myself using this as a "sounding board" resource through the different groups, often without even having to ask the question myself.

I can spout off a lot of different uses for social networking in the professional and educational fields, such as idea sharing or resource lending. However, if I'm completely honest with myself, I would have to admit that my only current plan to utilize social networking is through my students. I'm planning on having the students create a group for the Yearbook this year to promote it, where they'll post photos that they've taken recently in addition to the public wiki/flickr account we're going to set up.

Sometimes it's good, in my opinion, of course, to set boundaries between your personal and professional life. In my case, I'm much more comfortable keeping social networking purely social and personal, rather than trying to overwork my tools and burn out on this idea. In the future, I may choose to broaden my networks with Ning and other sites, but I think for now, I'll focus on the long list of other tools you've presented us with and leave social networking where I like it: outside of work.

Thing #22: Facebook and its minions

I love facebook. No one should really be surprised at all. I'm am obsessive about writing, internet communication tools, and photos. Thus, I love love love facebook.

Despite the fact that I can't actually remember what you all will be able to see (I think my privacy settings are fairly strict) you're more than welcome to click on the link to my profile and "friend" me. Now it's time to answer the questions.

1. Why is it important that educators know how social networking works?

We need to understand these sites because our kids use them. I'm a big advocate of understanding our chillins' lives through their activities, and when the internet is such a huge part of them, it's something we can't ignore. If we aren't going to make an effort to see what kind of public exposure they're getting on the internet, how can we expect to understand problems that might arise from it? In addition, we need to be able to show students the positives and negatives of using social networking sites. I can't tell you how many students I had at the college level that didn't believe employers checked the Fbook during hiring until they found out they didn't get the job because of their profiles.

2. What new insights did you gain about these popular sites?

Ah, no new insights, I don't think. I completely understand the appeal of this networking site, and the only thing that I noticed today is that it's another example of how students truly desire the ability to take ownership of something and make a statement as an individual. Facebook and Myspace give them that opportunity, we need to remember to provide it in the classroom as well.

3. What did you like or dislike about each of the sites you explored?

As a former Myspace user, I'll say that I greatly prefer Facebook if only for the protection it offers its users. Myspace privacy controls are often times a joke, even if they seem like they work. Funny story - I thought my profile was closed on Myspace when I started teaching, but learned very quickly that it wasn't when my students started asking me about my "top friends" and asking where my tattoo was on my body. Lesson learned, profile shut down.

4. Which site had the most useful features?

Useful? I suppose that Facebook has the most applications and groups. Actually, come to think of it, some of the applications on Facebook have an educational component to them, like word games and the Notes function, etc.

5.Can you see an educational application for any of these sites?

Honestly, not at this level. In middle school, they're just starting to figure out how to interact with their peers face-to-face, which makes online interaction all the more awkward. However, as they get older and more mature, I could see it becoming a real tool. When I taught college chillins, they sometimes used the "Notes" application to work on their projects, and the groups created a real bonding tool for them. It could work for younger students too, but I'm just not comfortable opening my own profile to my students, even if it was one I created for that sole purpose. It would give the kids an illusion of a different kind of a relationship with their teacher, which is a little concerning for a teacher as young as I am. Maybe in a few years...

Thing #7b: Revisiting the Reader

Until today, I was waaaaaay behind on my reader. A week-long wedding in Vegas will throw off a lot of routines, even if you're not the bride, I've learned.

In any case, I read through all of my updates (well, skimmed all and read through some) this morning to jumpstart my day. After reading this short post from The Choice blog of the NYTimes, I was definitely ready to tackle the lawn and blow off some steam. The post explained that student loan defaults have been vastly underreported, with $50.8 billion worth of loans in default at the end of the 2009 year.

I know, I know, this isn't about English, reading, ESL, or even yearbook. But it's a concerning subject to me for many reasons. If this trend continues, the way education loans are awarded and limited may change, further limiting higher education possibilities for students with an economic disadvantage. My particular subject area has a ridiculously high percentage of Eco. Disadv. students who I'm hoping to encourage to attend college one day.

Middle school may seem a little early to start the real planning, but for these students, they need to hit the ground running as freshman to have a real shot at earning enough financial aid to make their dreams come true. It's good for all secondary teachers to keep tabs on, I feel.

Source: Student Loan Default Rates Come Under Scrutiny By RACHEL GROSS

Thing #21: More with Google

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I'm a big fan of the Google tools. In fact, I use it in my classroom fairly often and it's already factored in to some of my earliest lesson plans for next year.

To make sure that I wasn't getting away too easy with these couple of assignments, I created a public calendar just for the vacation that I'm about to take my younger sister, Hilary, on as a graduation/18th bday present. Do I know how to create a link to it? Nope, sure don't...unless I'm using a google site, and then I certainly can.

Which is why I'm including the link to my site that I created with the Google Apps program this spring. I really enjoyed creating the content, and one of my main goals as a teacher this year is to incorporate it more into my teaching and truly make it a part of the curriculum. I would have created a yearbook site today, but I'm still thinking that I'm going to do a wiki for them, so I'll have a full year of using both a wiki and a google site for the classroom setting and I can pick the one I think best fits my students' needs at the end of the year.

Thing #20: Google Docs = Everyone's BFF

Once more, I have to admit that I've been using Google Docs for a while now. Our administrators have used it to manage ISS and detentions, as well as to hold documents such as role sheets for OEYP.

In fact, I actually took Paige Wester's Google Apps course in the spring, where we created a Google website for our classes and explored the different ways that we can use GoogleDocs in the classroom.

Some ways that I've already used the tool include:

• Creating forms as quizzes for the kiddos
• Using the site to manage a calendar of deadlines
• Creating a page of alternative activities for early-finishers

In the future, I'm planning on using GoogleDocs for the group book report projects that my reading students do, as it will make it SO MUCH EASIER for them to all be held accountable for the work when each student can modify the document at the same time. Sure, it'll be a long first day of instruction, teaching them how to use the PowerPoint-esqe application and troubleshooting, but it will be worth it in the long run.

I'm also planning on using it for all of my students as a way to save their documents, rather than relying on their ability to remember to save it to their student folder on the network, etc. That's a great way for them to lose things, it happens all the time. However, I'm hopeful that if they actually are required to UPLOAD the document, there will be fewer "I don't remember where I saved it!" excuses.

Oh, and PS- here's the link to my published document!

Thing #19: Voicing an Opinion on VoiceThread

Okay, I was skeptical about how I would feel about this particular tool. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find some great ideas and uses for the tool as I watched the assigned VoiceThread and explored some of the suggested created Voicethreads. Some of the uses I could just flick my wrist at, but I found myself really liking the last suggestion on the list, the "Library from A to Z" VoiceThread. After watching it, I came up with three similar ideas for use in my own classroom.

• In Yearbook, I could have the students create a presentation for the next year's staff as their final project, showing them page-by-page the different departments they created that year. Not only would it be good for ideas next year as an intro, it would also be good for the class to reflect on their work.
• In ESL, I could have my beginner-intermediate students create a VoiceThread with the vocabulary they are learning on a weekly basis. This wouldn't be a huge project for them, more an on-going one that they could work on during times when their newcomer status excludes them from traditional curriculum or testing.
• For all of my 6th graders, instead of making a poetry memory book out of paper, the students could create a digital presentation in groups where they would read the poems aloud and scan in pictures, illustrations, etc. This would be a better alternative to last year, because it gives them the opportunity to practice their speaking while getting multiple attempts to get it right. Less pressure = more success for my reluctant speakers.

Overall, I'm excited to use this tool, and creating a VoiceThread educator account is at the top of my list for when we come back from vacation.

Thing #18: Youtube & Me

Oh, YouTube. I remember when you were THE place to be on a Thursday night in middle school. I just couldn't get enough music videos. Now, horrifyingly enough, I'm actually in several YouTube videos and I'm using it to search for educational tools.

The first video I'm embedding is one that's almost a cheat. I used it in class last year, and it's definitely one of the lessons that my chillins really got into...though I'm not sure if it's because they liked the video or they just wanted me to show them more often, so they faked enthusiasm. Their assignment (the purpose of the lesson was to improve their following directions skills as well as provide them with background for an upcoming story we were reading) for this video was to listen and find the countries that had either changed names or were no longer countries and then do their own version with the song corrected.

I actually DID find, during my explorations today, the same video in Spanish. Granted, I need to do some thinking on how this would be best used with my newcomers, but still...it's pretty fun.

For the next year, I'm planning on using YouTube and its relatives much more, now that I'll have a fully functioning computer hooked up to my projector. One of the videos I'd like to use (in the same fashion as the previous) is embedded below. One of the hurdles I crossed this year was trying to teach students how to use photos to provide context for vocabulary words, so I think I'll use this for a rotation while we're doing stations to practice defining words based solely on picture messages.

I'll briefly mention TeacherTube, only to say that I wish this were somehow a better tool for us. When I first heard of it last year, I was psyched. Then, as I started exploring, I quickly found that there's a much larger range of educational videos on the original YouTube itself, especially when we're talking about videos that our kiddos will actually be interested in watching. However, I did manage to find the following video:

My kids love a challenge, and the best way to get them to do something they don't want to do is to show them people who HAVE done it and challenge them to do it better. So there actually is some great content on TeacherTube, but I think I'll stick to YouTube for now, annoying password-required viewing and all.

Thing #17: Podcast Previews

One of the advantages of being a recent college grad is that I'm already familiar with some of the more technologically advanced educational tools. The last 2 years of my college career were spent listening to podcasts each week, as well as making them (for journalistic purposes).

I was excited to find the Grammar Girl podcast on your list! I've been a subscriber to this one since its beginning. After taking my Vegas Vacation last week, I was behind on my Google reading and podcast listening (I've always listened to podcasts on iTunes), so I took this opportunity to catch up. I loved the podcast about Voice and Tone in writing, and I'm hoping to work that into my writing lessons next year.

In the past, I've used the Grammar Girl podcasts in class very little, simply because it's hard to get the kids' attention focused on something that's only auditory and not visual. However, I had a lot of success toward the end of the school year using the Lay vs. Lie podcast from her site. The students really understood the way she explained it, while they only got about half of my lesson.

I'm looking forward also to utilizing the Just One More Book blog to give my students another option for research when they're working on author reports. In the past, they've had a hard time finding good information on childrens' and young adults' authors.

Podcasts can be a great tool, you just have to find the right way to use them. I've found that using them in centers with headphones works best, simply because the students are already in a "focus on one thing" mindset. In a whole-class environment, there are too many distractions to get them to focus. As long as you alternate it with other stimuli (visual and tactile), you'll be good to go.

Library "Thing" #16

I love Library Thing. At some point, I had a Library Thing account, but I just completely forgot.

I'm enjoying exploring this tool for my personal life, trying to find book "suggestions" from other users who generally enjoy the same type of books that I do. I'm also loving being able to see the books that my favorite authors own (the ones who are actually on Library Thing, anyhow).

As a teacher, I love to find new recommendations of the best Young Adult books, and this is a great way for me to find new books. In fact, I'm kind of nerdily excited to be able to tell my chillins what authors are reading. In addition, I'm hoping that the students will be able to keep track of my library online as well, though I'm still working on figuring out the best way to incorporate this into my curriculum and get the kids to actually care. The "Berry Classroom Library" list won't be complete for some time, of course, because my library isn't at my house...it's in the classroom. At Berry. :)

Here is a link to my profile: http://www.librarything.com/profile/imaginetruth

Thing #15: Deliciousness

I have to begin this post by saying that I'm not really a huge fan of Delicious. In fact, after the class is over, I'll more than likely delete all of the random things that I had to acquire (the toolbar, the Yahoo account, etc. ) just for this one tool. I've used StumbleUpon for years, and with my personality, I simply prefer to use that tool combined with Google and other search engines than deal with Delicious.

Moving on with the assignment, I spent most of my time researching different volunteer vacation and Latin/South American tourism sites, as you can see on my delicious links. This is something that I'm interested in personally, but also something that I look on as an enhancement to my career as well, seeing as how I'm an ESL teacher. Any experience that helps me learn to communicate better with a culture different from my own will be an enhancement to my career.

I'm just not enthralled, but there was bound to be at least ONE thing out of the 23 that I didn't care for, right? :)

Thing #7a: Reading Rundown

As I scroll through my Google Readers, I often find many articles of interest to me personally, but it does take a little while for time for me to find an article I truly appreciate in the educational areas. One that I recently found on the TechLearning blog that I'm subscribed to was a bit called "What Silly Will Get You."

In this article, Dean Shareski writes on the idea that for every serious advantage that technological advances bring, we also must deal with the silly creations that come out of that advance. It's an interesting concept for me, because I feel that it discusses the very truth of life: there cannot be only seriousness. There must also be silliness, it is part of what makes life wonderful.

I see that reflected in this course, as well. While we are, of course, encouraged to use all of these tools to enhance our teaching and to open our students up to these tools as well. But, as I've noticed in many of the "things" we have to do, you also encourage us to explore how they may serve us in our personal lives, as well. I agree with the blogger when he says "For us to try and wish the silly away is futile and in many ways ignores what it means to be human." What would these advances be if they did not serve both sides of our personalities? I think that it's important to recognize the value in silliness, as well as recognize that it's irresistible. Sometimes I'm surprised by how quickly my students get off task even as they're trying to do their work. This article reminded me to make time for them to be creative and "silly," as well as giving them very clear instructions and monitoring closely to make sure that they stay focused.

Thing #14: Exploring E-tools

Looking through the list, I realized that I had already started using many of the tools in the past year for class. This is, of course, thanks to our wonderful staff development opportunities as well as our fabulous librarian, who keeps me up-to-date with tools she thinks will help me reach my ESL kids in a different way.

So, with Wordle (my favorite app), Blabberize, Writeboard, PicNik, Quizlet, PollDaddy, and Mixbook out of the running, I narrowed my other options down based on personal preferences and chose to explore both TimeGlider and Ta-Da List.

Despite the fact that I'm a sucker for to-do lists and calendars, I don't do a whole lot of that online. However, I found that I may use Ta-Da List to make sure that my students can keep track of the requirements for their projects online, as they have such a problem keeping track of the many, many papers we give them.

My favorite of the two, however, was TimeGlider. I think it's wonderful for our students to analyze informational texts and to practice their sequencing. In fact, I plan to use it for the 8th graders as we study The Diary of Anne Frank this year. This way, they can identify the "plot-like elements" in the diary through plotting the most important events on a timeline in TimeGlider.

Thing # 13: Imagining Images

I'll be the first to admit that I get a little over-concerned when it comes to using any sort of generator, mash-up, etc. online. It makes me nervous, because I can't trust that they're doing things right, and it might come back to me. However, I tried to put aside my anxieties for this little assignment and focus on having a little fun with the project.

Going along with the theme of my last post, I created this image on Spell with flickr:

Then, I continued on and decided to be a cliche with Image Chef to add the little peace sign graphic on the sidebar, also found below:

...and finally I rounded out my little experiments by creating a graphic with the Danger Sign Generator.

One thing that I would like to note is that the district's new library websites have a lot of these sites linked, which is fabulous. However, when we (the teachers) were playing around on it last year, a lot of the sites were blocked. In fact, I remember wondering why the district would like Image Chef on its own site, only to block it in the schools! Perhaps this problem has already been fixed, I'm going to hope it has.

In the future, I think I'll be using these tools to make projects more fun, as well as a creative outlet for my students once they are finished with typing papers. I see endless possibilities for some fun extra credit assignments for my early finishers in the near future. The truth of the matter is that a lot of the time, as an ESL teacher, I don't have as much fun with the kids in the classroom as I WANT to in my head. With Beginners-Advanced High students in one classroom, it's hard to keep up the pace! However, as I mentioned before, I think that these tools will be a great addition for early finishers, and also perhaps as a way to get those beginning students a completely individual task for group projects.

Thing #12: Sliding Through Flickr

Creating the slideshow was pretty easy for me. It may be that I'm a fan of cleaner, simpler design and thus didn't opt for the more video-like possibilities with all the bells and whistles. In any case, I found it to be pretty straight-forward and easy to use. I'm not sure how often I'll use this particular tool in teaching, though I would love to come up with a project for the kiddos to create a photo slideshow. Perhaps as a vocabulary exercise? Multiple meaning words, anyone? We shall see.

For now, enjoy the following slideshow themed "Imagine." I gave attributions for only four of the photos, because the final one is my own.

Photography credit:

Imagination by okaysamurai

Logic + Imagination by photonquantique

Imagine Peace, 2001 by photo4howi

Imagine by Jessica Whittle Photography

Thing #11: Flickr Findings

As I mentioned in my last post, I've already used Flickr for a variety of tasks, both professional and personal. In fact, I've already had my kids use Flickr to search for CC photos for their portfolio projects. So I didn't learn as much this time around as some other teachers may have. However, I did realize WHY it took my lovely students so very, VERY long to finish their projects: because it's so hard to get exactly what you want to pop up!

Most of my past experiences have involved working from certain users' photos or searching for a specific type of graphic that we knew existed. During this Discover exercise, I found it incredibly hard to explore the concept of "Imagine" or "Ima

gination." Apparently, the Flickr world thinks that John Lennon and Yoko Ono invented the word, or something. However, I did manage to find one photo that I thought was worthwhile to convey the theme completely graphically by okaysamurai.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/okaysamurai/424974185/

I think in the upcoming year, I'll use Flickr more, not only as a tool for my students to use, but also as a tool for me to use in the classroom. Now that I have a projector neatly mounted on my ceiling and a way to connect it to a computer with Internet, I need to utilize these online tools!