Final Thoughts!

Going through the 23 Things project has been quite an interesting and very educational experience. Over the past few years I have taken several Appalachian Technology courses; so, I wasn't sure if I would learn anything new through the 23 things. As I reflect on my learning, I have to say that I learned a lot. To be quite honest, almost everything that we covered was new to me. Although I had had experience with many of these topics, I hadn't had much experience actually manipulating and using them.

My favorite discovery exercises were Activities 5, 6, 9, & 10. I loved 5 because I was thrilled to learned about Google Docs. I never knew that anything like it existed. It has made my life so much easier as a teacher because I can now save my documents to the web and have them at school when I need them. (Bye! Bye! Flash Drive) Week 6 was great because of the on-line electronic books. I am so excited to have those books to share with my class! We have actually already used a couple of Aesop's Fables. As I progressed into week 9 I was so excited to learn about Twitter. Although I like Facebook better, I was finally glad to know how Twitter is used and why it is so popular. The final activity 10 was FUN! FUN! FUN! I loved playing the image generators. They were very fun and kids would love to use them. I also enjoyed using Shelfari and having access to book reviews and my own book shelf.

I guess my biggest take-away from this course is how much I truly did learn. Like I said because of my Master's program I felt that I had learned a lot. However, through this course I realized that I have a lot more left to learn. Technology is always changing!

The only thing differently I would do with this course is allow more time for its completion. I wish that I could have more time to slowly go through and manipulate and truly use each site suggested. However, I felt as if I brushed over some rather than thoroughly studying them. I do like the fact that the course was on-line and we were able to complete it at our convenience.

Overall this was a great experience and I lookf forward to taking similar courses in the future!

Rollyo

I have played with rollyo for a while and it seems very similar to other search engines that we have used. I like rollyo because I feel that I can narrow my search much faster than with other sites. It is also very easy to add your own sites to your "searchroll". I also like being able to search and look at other people's search rolls for topics that I am most interested in. The only con to this site was it seemed very slow at times. Each time I tried to save my "searchroll" it seemed to take forever. I created a rollyo that was based on all of my favorite sites to locate recipes. Check it out: http://rollyo.com/kellymabecraig/my_kellymabecraig/

Shelfari

Shelfari is a really neat tool! Not only can I keep up with the books that I have read; but also, I can read review for books that I haven't even read yet. This would be a neat way for a class to keep up with all of the books that they have read throughout the year. I think the visual of all of the books would really open kids eyes to how many books they have actually read! The organization and graphics of the website are both adult and kid friendly. Thanks for recommending this site, I will definitely use it both personally and professionally.

Image Generators

This was so much fun! Sorry, I used all wedding pictures but they were the only pictures I had on my flashdrive. I could really see children enjoying the FD Toys site. It was really neat and there were so many cool things you could do with it! I really enjoyed the generator blog; especially the madmen activity. I couldn't quite understand teh Letter James site.

Twitter in the Classroom

I think that Twitter could definitely be used with middle and high school students. It would be a great way for them to share ideas and information when completing classroom projects. I also liked the PowerPoint that suggested you start a story, tweet it, and then let others add to it. (That idea could possibly be used with lower grades). I also like the idea of talking with another classroom and locating them via google! That would be a lot of fun for elementary students. Twitter could definitely be used as a professional teaching tool because you can collaborate and gather ideas from other teachers. Overall, twitter as a teaching tool could be used in many great ways! I think I might like Twitter a little more than I thought! :)

Twitter

After experiencing Twitter for a few days, I have to say that it is not something that I personally like. I have to admit that I prefer facebook much better. I think I like the personal connection that I find with facebook much better than Twitter. I can look at my friends pictures and make comments directly to them. Twitter doesn't allow for all of that. I also find locating people much easier on facebook. I will continue to play with Twitter for a while. Who knows, I may eventually prefer it over facebook.

Technorati

After examining Technorati, I found several blogs that would be interesting to follow. I typed in "recipes" and was able to find several blogs that would be helpful to me as a cook. On the downside, lots of other blogs popped up that in my opinion did not even fit that category. Technorati is fun if you have the time and patience to sift through each blog to see if it is beneficial and relevant to you. However, my favorite sites are flickr and delicious. As a classroom teacher both of these sites allow me to tag things that would be useful in my classroom. The things that I tag I pick and able to quickly know that they are going to work for my students. I also feel that declicious and flickr would be "safer" than technorati because the searches do not seem as broad.

***As a side note the links to claim our blog and create a watchlist are not working.

Delicious - Social Bookmarking

Today as I explored the delicious site I was impressed by all of the information that could be found. Recently we have been studying animal habitats and I was able to locate several virtual games that we could use to study habitats. I also found several lesson plans that could be used for inferring & landforms. I definitely will use Delicious as a way to tag my favorite websites and as a research tool for finding new information and sites. This is probably one of my favorite resources that we have used thus far!

I've only added a few but here's my delicious address: http://delicious.com/kellycraig

The Sandbox

The sandbox is really fun! It reminded me a lot of a Wiki. I tried to add a new topic "Favorite Musician" but I don't think I did it correctly. When I brought the sandbox back up it wasn't there. Any ideas? I think this would be a great thing to use with the staff at our school. We could comment on things that maybe our PTO or principal needed information on. Great Resource!

Wikis

As I examined the wikis today I began to think about how I can use them in my classroom. I really like the 2nd grade teachers idea of posting student writing on the Wiki. I am a little confused as to how she created their individual pages so that each student had their own. I have to say though that I still like blogging better because I wouldn't want just anyone to go in an change my students work. If you were working on collecting information about a topic it would be great. I am pondering how we might be able to do something with this for Thanksgiving. Possibly ask people to list their one favorite Thanksgiving food and graph the information? It would be neat to get replies from people all over the country. As a graduate student at Appalachian last year I used several wikis in my technology based classes. The professors had created the wikis with earlier classes and each new class updated the information. Therefore, as fast as the technology changed a new group would change the information. Pretty smart if you ask me!

E-Books

Electronic books are truly remarkable! In a graduate class 2 summers ago I actually made my own electronic book. We created our books in movie maker and uploaded them so that our entire class had 20 e-books. The process was fairly easy and fun! I would love to create an e-book with my studetns; however, I feel that that would be a much easier task with upper grade students. As I explored the e-book sites I absolutely loved the on-line version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice". I actually am thinking about letting the electronic book read this story to my class. It would be no different than me reading a chapter book aloud. I also liked the book choices on the "Big Universe" site. I found the project gutenburg site to be difficult to use. Many of the texts seemed to be old and not "current". I truly feel that electronic books will take the place of paper books in the future.

Pod Casts

Searching for Podcasts seemed more difficult than I originally thought. Now that I am out of Graduate school I feel like I am not kept up to date on the new children's literature that is coming out. I found a really cool feed called Book Bites for Kids. Through this podcast the producer discusses new books that are coming out and interviews the authors. If one was doing an author study, this might be a good way to allow your students to listen to their favorite author speak about his/her work. There were other cool podcasts such as "Book Voyages" which is a children's literature review from the perspective of a librarian. I can see how pod casts could be very beneficial to a teacher. I am not quite so sure how it would fit into the elementary curriculum. I would probably need to explore more in order to see its benefit in the classroom.

You Tube

Since being able to use You Tube here at school, I have used it for many lessons in my classroom. I have found the site to be very useful when I am teaching either science or social studies. While studying various types of animals, (their life cycles and habitats) I have been able to locate several videos that my students could view to understand these science concepts. On Columbus day I was able to locate several videos and even songs to teach the history of Christopher Columbus. The song was very "dorky" however my students loved it and have been singing it ever since. I am sure that they will never forget that Columbus sailed in 1492. Overall, I feel that a teacher is safe to use You Tube as long as he/she previews the video before showing it to the class.

Web 2.0 Tools

I decided to examine the site My Heritage. Basically this site allows you to create a family tree. You can upload photographs and information about every member of your family. This would be a great way for families to keep up with each other. I found the site to be very easy to use. In a matter of minutes I had created my "immediate family tree". I could definitely see this site being used in an upper grades classroom. I have asked 4th graders many times to create and draw their family trees to share with the class. Students could use my heritage to upload family photos and information. The teacher could allow the children to share their family tree with the class using the SmartBoard. This is definitely a site worth checking out!

Google Docs

This tool is probably the most beneficial I have been made aware of yet. As long as I have internet I can access a word processing document and files that I have saved and stored. I actually have already started using this feature. Up until today I have had to store my gradebook on a flash drive so that I could carry my information from school to home. Now, I have uploaded my gradebook into Google Docs. I can access my information now without all of the hassle of saving the file to so many different places. This would also be a great way to share information with colleagues that you do not want to send as an attachment. This is an awesome resource!

Feeds

I have to admit that I found all of the feeds to be pretty confusing. It was hard to differentiate real news from entertainment news on many of the sites. My favorite sites were Technorati and Topix. net. The link that I had for Feedster did not work. Technorati would be a great site to examine if you were trying to find out about the newest and coolest technology. Topix allowed me to search to look for information that I wanted to find. I'm not sure how much I would enjoy using any of these sites because there seems to be almost too much information.

Technology & Teaching

I have been teaching now for 9 years. Since beginning my career I have already seen great change implemented in the area of technology. I would have never thought 9 years ago that I would be using an interactive white board instead of a chalkboard/whiteboard. My ability to reach the internet at the drop of a hat is remarkable. The ability to do this has allowed me to in an instant pull up wonderful information for my students related to our areas of study. I think that technology will definitily become an even bigger teaching tool in the future. I truly feel that in a few years every child will have a laptop in front of them instead of a notebook. Is this a good thing? Yes, because the jobs of the future are going to require all workers to be tech savvy. However, I wonder sometimes if we need to hold on to some of the old. What if your hard drive dies or a virus attacks your computer. Students need to be well-rounded.

Mashups

My favorite "Mashup" is the Flickr Montager. My friend actually did the same type of picture for her daughter's graduation. She used software to take pictures that she had of her daughter from Pre-K to 12th grade to create a montage. It is so neat to look at the individual pictures that make up the larger picture. On the flickr montager I typed "frog" in the search bar and their were thousands of picture of frogs. I would be a little afraid to do this with kids because you can't see every single picture and I would be skeptical that there might be a few bad ones thrown in the mix.

Flickr Picture

This week I am looking for pictures to show my students various temperatures. I want them to be able to look at a picture and then give an estimate of how warm, cold, or hot it might be. While looking for a picture of winter, this picture of the dog popped up. Not only would the kids love it, but it also shows that animals need to adjust to changing temperatures as well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueone/309978409/

7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners

Out of the 7 1/2 habits of life long learners the easiest for me would be setting goals. Over the past several years I have set several goals for myself and have worked very hard to accomplish them. These goals have been both small and large. One goal that I accomplished last month was officially earning my Master's Degree in Reading. This year I have set several goals for my classroom. Throughout this year I plan to incorporate more technology and more hands-on learning activities. On a personal level my goal is to begin taking piano lessons and to learn to play the piano.
I think my weakest habit would be viewing problems as challenges. Many times I want to gripe and complain about the problem and not work to solve it. I get aggravated and that makes the problem seem even larger. So, one of my goals from here on out will be to view problems as challenges.

"Did you know 3.0 & 21st Century Learner"

Wow! These two videos bring to light how important technology is to our students! The videos were both frightening and amazing at the same time. The statistics and facts were unbelievable. As a teacher it made me realize that I have to begin to prepare my students technologically for the future. We can no longer place technology at the bottom of our teaching agenda. We must incorporate technology into all parts of our day. The statistics on how far American students are behind is alarming. We must take action to prepare our students for the 21st Century. These videos renewed a fresh determination in myself to become more knowledgeable in all aspects of technology so that I can better educate my students.