Thing 23 - This is it!!!

I am a leader of technology in my building. That is why I took this class, because I want to be able to show all these cool tools to my teachers and keep up with what the kids already know. There are so many great tools that teachers could be using. I will definitely promote some of these tools to them. Will I promote all?? It is hard to say. I am still trying to get my teachers to get there students to NOT use wikipedia and use a database instead, so do I want to show them a wiki? Maybe. It's getting the time and chance to promote these ideas to them. But as I have mentioned previously, I do not give up.

Okay, let me address the prompts. Have I differed in my view between Thing 1 and Thing 23? No, I still think it is overwhelming and there is so much out there. You could spend a lifetime just exploring those that were covered let alone the stuff that was not covered. It's just like the one presentation said (Did you Know) the world is growing exponentially. For example, I have mentioned I am camping, we bought a travel trailer, and we stocked it with camping stuff from when I was a kid. When I was between 10 and 12, so about thirty years ago, my parents and sisters went tent camping around the state of MI for a week. We had plastic dishes. We are using those plastic dishes, and my daughter tried to put one of the mugs in the microwave and I had to stop her. She asked, "It's not microwave safe?" And I had to reply, "It was made before microwaves."
Our students don't know life before the Internet, or DVR, let alone only three stations and the wonderful invention that VCRs were. (Okay, I love my DVR). I love technology. And it is more than just the cool tools we find in the Web 2.0 world. It's the cell phones that record video and instant weather surveillance. Which brings me back to the question asked, "Has this program changed how you view the Internet or how view teaching in the digital world?" Just that it is cool. I once worked for a data processing company (they still used tape for data drops) and one of the sales people always said to the customers, "If we can tell a person how to do something, we can program a computer to do it." Okay, I might not be quoting her exactly, but the point is there. We can make the computers do stuff that works better, looks impressive, and can be transmitted around the world in the press of a button. How cool is that?
" What plans have you made for using these tools in and out of the classroom?" I have started several projects I hope to put finishing touches on including my flash cards, my Googledoc site, my wiki, and a few others I can't even think of right now, oh yeah, podcasting.
" How will you continue to learn about Web 2.0 tools?" Listening to my colleagues at REMC meetings for one, because there is too much out there to explore on my own. I wouldn't have found these tools on my own, because I do not like to surf.
"What are your big "take aways" from this experience? " I have learned about how to get around many of things I thought were holding me back before. Like not having a server, or it being tedious to make a webpage in Dreamweaver. It's so easy to do these at the many sites. I feel confident now that if a teacher asks me about doing one of these projects with students that I would be able to help them and possibly get filters unblocked (except for flickr and you tube), if they wanted to pursue something like podcasting.

So, confidence, knowledge, and the starting point to help my self and my teachers bring their teaching into the 21st Century.

Thing 22 - How long?

I am trying to wait for my download, and I am sneaking ahead to do the last thing while I am waiting. 45 MINUTES!!! Ahhhh, I'm hungry and cold (the air is on in here but it is only like 70 outside.) But isn't that the beauty of the Internet, that I can work on this while I am camping. It is a good thing that I get July and most of August off. On the last day of school, when everyone else left by 11:30, I was there until 1:30. I am going to post this so my Thing 23 is not out of order and come back and edit it when my download gets done. Other than saying I was able to download, I think I did all of the reflection in part A. It is cool to know that there are ways we can get around the filters. (But I've answered two phone calls and filled out an online survey while waiting for this download. Plus I watched that last video on Thing 23.

6-20-08 2:55 Update - Checked my email. Download was there now saved to my computer!! I am done!!!

Thing 22 A - embed video

Okay, it is approaching zero hour and I had trouble with signing up for You Tube and then Blogger went down for a half hour, so I am going to do this in pieces, to get it done.

I picked the video the Element Song by Tom Lehrer. I have been using an animated version that just basically flashes the names of the elements, this one shows a lot of pictures of the elements (gases are hard because can you see gas? But they show a balloon for helium, so it is cute.) See if you can spot why I can't use this with students.


If you didn't catch it, see Thing 21's reflection.

Thing 21 - Online Video

I'll start with the last question and yes, you tube is banned in my building. I think it is so banned I couldn't even join with my school email. I never got the confirming email. I used my personal account, and snap, it was there so I was able to comment on "the element song tom lehrer". It was fairly cool until the silicon element was a pair of huge, almost fully exposed breasts. Sighhh, so much for showing my students that video. But see the next thing, because I am going to use it there.

There were some neat things I did learn though by exploring You Tube. I guess there is a new commercial out that uses the theme song from Eddie's Father. I, being the TV junkie I am, remembered this when my daughter's friend started talking about the commercial and the song. I was able to find the song fairly easily in You Tube. I also found out that, apparently, the TV show was based on a movie that starred Glen Ford. I didn't know that.

But as everyone has probably pointed out, it will not get unblocked. And I don't want it to, I don't like being the Internet police. There are enough legitimate educational websites out there that you could find what you want somewhere else.

Even the Teacher Tube had some very poorly produced videos there. I thought I would try to find a multiplication one for my son, an 7th grader, who basically failed math and is seeing a summer school tutor, might benefit from a video. But I couldn't find one after watching about five poor ones, I gave up.

Obviously, RESA has managed to find some good videos and even posted some of yours there as well, but for now, it will be a tool to have fun with not to use for educational purposes.

Thing 20 - RSS Revisited

Now that I have done my delicious account the use of bloglines seems to make more sense. I can view bloblines from any computer. I have that RSS feed button on my computer and thought that was easier to subscribe to the feeds. But that limits it to that computer. Seems like a big duhhhhh! but that's my epiphany for the day. New benefits? Not really other than I like subscribing to the news (since I never watch it and go through life not knowing what is going on.) Am I checking regularly? Are you crazy? I can't get my things done because when I turn on my computer I automatically check my emails. And by the time I do that, I've wasted a half hour that I should have been working on my things. Once upon a time, when I had AOL, news popped up every time you logged in, and that was good in a way, that I saw the news then, but again it is something that distracts you from your main goal. So NO checking blogs or my RSS feeds are not a habit, nor is a habit I really want to develop. I like going through life not knowing what others are thinking.

Okay, only three more to go, but I must go stretch my legs. Now, I just hope I will come back in a few hours.

Thing 19 - Set up delicious

My user name is the beginning of my email address : schultn.

I guess I was an overachieving, procrastinator because I imported my favorites, because that's really how I wanted to use this. Okay suggestion for when you run the class again. Do this as one of the first things. Like Thing 2 we created a blog that we have been using throughout the whole project, but this Thing 19 we could have been using the whole class as well. So for the ten sites to add to delicious I went back and added all the sites that I didn't already have bookmarked (which just happened to be 10) and most of those were from Thing 16, but either way, I think delicious would have been a good tool to help us organize the class.

I think delicious will help my productivity because I have a computer in my office and one on my circulation desk that have different bookmarks and sometimes I find myself running back and forth between the two because I need the bookmark that is on the one I am not at. I am not sure how I would really use it in my teaching. I use Instructional Arcitect to organize web addresses for students and that has worked out well. see the main page at http://www.ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:4038

Thing 18 - Tagging

Social Bookmarking - Tagging. "Tag. You're it!" always comes to mind when we start talking about Tags. I am a librarian. I catalog. So I can relate to tags. The "social" thing, I'm not so sure I care about that, do you get the idea I'm not so concerned about what others are doing on the web? But I do like the idea of my favorites being all in one place, because between two work computers and my home computer, I have many of the same bookmarks but they are in different places on the different computers.

(Okay what were the questions again?) Are tags useful? I would say probably, since I have my financial links under a folder with that label, it would be easy to tag those websites as banking or financial. So, yes, tagging sounds useful. Advantages, might help my bookmarks be more organized, sometimes, I do have trouble finding them, disadvantages are the public aspect. So I would think you wouldn't want to tag a site that is a logged in site or one that is not generally public (it might make it easier to call it to someone's attention.)

okay, this one's done (in less than an hour, whoohoo!)