Week #6 thing 15

Reading perspectives on library 2.0 was very interesting. I like the idea of taking down barriers to research as described in "Away from Icebergs." The idea of creating collections of print information that anticipates every user's need seems overwhelming. As a classroom teacher I have had the joy of utilizing my library without having to think through collection purchases. The internet has certainly changed the way users need to interact with the library and material.  

Just this year I have renewed my own vows with the public library. I forgot how much I loved walking in with the optimistic feeling that all of my questions and dreams could be pursued within one building. I was thrilled to find out about the new Voice Alaska program where audio books could be downloaded.  As much as the technology piece excites me, it doesn't hold a candle to the print of a great book and a friendly librarian to help with questions and recommendations. One of my favorite features of the library is the ability to reserve books on line and then walk in and find them set aside for me.  It is this interaction between technology and thoughtful humans that make my library experience relevant and pleasant.

Week #6 thing 13 & 14

Delicious . . . I was first exposed to this through Martina's tech classes. She has been using it to tag, label, and track interesting articles and websites that she has found. She has major categories that organize all of the links. That was my first chance to play around with delicious. 

Doing the RAW discovery exercises was my next experience with delicious. I found myself wondering how I could use this in the classroom. Whether it is gathering and organizing sites and articles for potential research topics or simply items of interest for students, delicious seems like a great place to store it all.  I also envision a category for parents that would include great articles or websites focused on raising teenagers, especially in relation to school. 

It took me a little effort to really understand Technorati. As I understand it, this is a place where you can search for blogs using tag words.  I believe that Technorati is slated as one of the largest search engines for the blogosphere. I noticed that I could select a category such as lifestyle, fitness, business, etc. Then I was provided with a page of possible sites of interest. I'm not sure how I would use this within a classroom. The idea of categorizing and sorting information is very important. Teaching students how to do this with their blogs would really feature the idea of titles and summarizing. Hmmmm . . . I guess that would be a way to use it in the classroom.

Solomon and Schrum Chapter 7 Reflection

Solomon and Schrum Chapter 7 Reflection

At the beginning of the year I decided to set up a class wikispace that would let students interact in discussions about their recreational reading books. I worked with my librarian to set this up and she explained to me the security issues involved in setting up student accounts. Luckily, wikispaces.com was offering free educator sites and were willing to add student accounts without an email address attached. YAY! The wikispaces.com team is fantastic to work with and they have continued to support my class wiki throughout the year as new students have entered class.

The other day I was discussing this same issue with my tech coordinator as I'm slotted to teach a digital media class next year. I was interested in the availability of Flickr for classroom use. He explained about the E-rate funding issue.

I was so interested to find all of these issues addressed in chapter 7.  I wasn't specifically familiar with the current laws and appreciated having them explained. From CIPA to COPPA to DOPA, there have been multiple laws put into place to help protect children. It is important to understand the background of an issue.

The copyright issue is another one that I have not fully understood. The new emergence of the Creative Commons license make so much sense. I am going to include a workshop on this before the end of this school year and be sure to address it early next year as my class begins to work with programs such as voicethread.

Nettrekker was introduced to me through a few different professional development tech classes. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but my goal is to add that to my class tools for research.  This will provide a safer way to search, especially images.

Pictures of students has been a question for me, as I  have heard that school websites often can be a spot for predators to search for information about kids. For my digital storytelling and digital media class next year I would like to focus on images that do not include faces, unless it is a famous or historical figure.  This will encourage students to focus on imagery and symbolism as they tell their stories and record events. I guess if the project will not be posted in a public site, then it is OK for pictures of students to be included.

Ultimately, I'd like for my digital media class to be able to add photos to one place that could then be accessed by my LA classes as well to use for projects. These images would not include faces, but artistic photos of landscapes and objects to enhance their projects.  I plan to use the creative commons licensing idea so that the photographers get credit when the photos are used.

Even in our everyday lives people seem to freely borrow others work. I just got an email from a friend that included a mash-up that I created and sent out. He added it to his invitation. While it wasn't a big deal that I was not mentioned, I certainly understand the idea of giving credit to the creator. I'd like for students to get a good taste of this concept in class as they see others using their photos and such.

In conclusion, security and safety online is an ongoing important issue.  It is imperative for teachers and administrators to stay informed and vigilant about security. The more we understand the issues surrounding internet safety, the better decisions we can make to keep our students safe.

Week #5 thing 12

Voicethread . . . I am really excited about this program. The ability to add voice to images and create projects is exactly what I need in my language arts classroom. I've used garageband before for podcasts, but it wasn't all that user friendly. It took us awhile to figure out how to put it all together.  Voicethread seems like it will be a bit easier to navigate. I hope to do both individual projects and use the collaboration tools with multiple voices and comments on each page.

Martina Henke has a tutorial on her site edtechinak.org along with some other great programs. 

Week #5 thing 11

11. Web 2.o award list was a great resource. I was happy to see that I already knew about a lot of the sites. I've experimented briefly with NING in my classroom this year, but found a wikispace more manageable from a teacher standpoint. My students really liked the user-friendly MySpace-ish feel of the NING.

I checked out Stumble Upon.  What a great idea. I've gotten a few emails about possible sites to check out and in exploring them, I did find some really neat sites that I might never have found by surfing. It is like strategic surfing, very cool

I've briefly used Google Docs and want to spend more time with it to understand how best to utilize for the classroom.

I have a Gmail account that I set up for my team parents. It has been fantastic. I email home weekly reminders of upcoming projects and tests. The set up of gmail storage makes it easy to keep track of conversations.

I am in love with Pandora, how cool is that. Is that considered streaming . . . I think so. I never have time to look for new music and am not very good about having my Ipod charged and handy. This is a really great way to listen to music. I like that can give songs a thumbs up or down.

I'm intrigued by G.h.ost. It provides computer capabilities based on the internet.  This is the idea of working in a cloud. So practical to education as students work in class, then want to be able to continue at home.  Our tech guy doesn't want thumb drives to be used because of the virus possibility. This would be a way to circumvent the thumb drives. How convenient to store all your documents on the internet for easy access.

I checked out Twitter, but couldn't get it connected to my phone. Not sure why? I am not sure how excited I am about this program, but I wanted to try it.  My mother in law was flying in during Redoubt eruption time and Alaska Airlines offered Twitter updates. The school district is also now offering Twitter  updates for school closures. Twitter seems to be everywhere.

All in all, there are so many tools. I'm sure I forgot to list some that I checked out. I will use this list as a resource to go back and explore when I have more time.

week #5 thing 10

The online image generator was very cool. I made a Bart Simpson cartoon and posted it to my class wiki. As I was trying to post it, I got a message about selecting an online storage account to put it in. I wasn't sure about that, and I posted it anyway. Sure enough, the next day I checked my wikipage and the image was no longer there. There was a message that said, "we told you to select a storage account." I guess I need to make one of those accounts to store my images. I can see great use in the classroom from projects to simply jazzing up hand outs. The idea of being able to customize popular images really puts you in the creative frame of mind. All of a sudden, you are in control of creating something funny or interesting. Knowing that it will be published creates an atmosphere of professionalism, urging the student or using towards a higher quality of work.

Solomon & Schrum Ch 1 reflection

I started reading Web 2.o when my amazing librarian Heather Fleming offered it to  me as a way to do some research about blogs vs wikis for my reading assigments.

This first chapter really puts an urgency into rethinking our current education delivery method. I liked the term "flatteners" in regards to technology taking away old barriers and stratification around accessibility.  This idea of changing from "command and control" to "connect and collaborate" is a huge paradigm shift for educators to make, I believe. In its simplest form, I compare this to individual standardized test taking vs multi-student collaborative projects.  Which one "tests" the knowledge? Or is it more a question of what should we test? Does the ultimate product by many prove the mastery of concepts or must we do an individual evaluation of each person's level of mastery? 

As the open source movement and the web 2.0 tools have emerged, it seems to have put all students on the same playing field, for the most part. The tools are there, so how will each student use them? Internationally, we are seeing students committed to their learning and using these tools to be competitive. At this point, educators are just beginning to discover these tools and school districts seems to be struggling with how to "control" them. 

I've always had trouble with the gatekeeper mentality.  This has prompted me to teach Shakespeare to all 8th graders and focus on vocabulary so they can skip being intimidated by certain academia. The idea that the web is not longer guarded by gatekeepers is exciting.  This new change has put the control in each users hands for how much they want to interact, create, and share.

The section on blogs was of particular interest for me.  After learning about RSS feeds, I added an RSS feed to the home page of my class wiki.  Last weeks assignment was to review this blog (Young Adult novel recommendations) and discuss the idea of blogs. Is this something that they would be willing to do themselves.  Overwhelmingly, the students described themselves as "not a blog person." As if this is an official description. You either ARE or ARE NOT a blog person. How strange. I have to guess that many of them do not understand much about blogs and how to find blogs of interest.  Table 1.1 showed the blogger survey results as the biggest reason people blog is to express creativity. The next biggest reason is to document personal experiences and share them with others.  I have to believe that students would be just as excited about these reasons if they understood more about blogging.

My favorite line from this chapter was, "Technology is second nature to them and then accept and use it without question. School lags behind."