I have learned so much from this course and enjoyed all except this last part about the podcasting. After playing with that for awhile, I’ll probably feel better about that as well. Everything can’t always come easily. I’ve seen the value of Google Reader and Delicious. Delicious will take a little more getting used to. I’m going to get a lot of use out of Google Docs. I’ve already told many other teachers that we should definitely be taking advantage of that tool now. The reminder about the value of using Creative Commons material hit home. I should be pushing that more with students and definitely with other teachers. I don’t think people take that seriously.Thank you so much for all you’ve done in bringing this course to us and making it fun!
I had a heck of a time with this. I did not have the Windows Sound Recorder on either my desktop or my laptop. I thought I would download Audacity which I had some trouble doing. Once I had it downloaded, I looked up a tutorial and listened to multiple sessions on how to use it. I had no trouble with recording me reading, but I could not get the music track loaded with the music I wanted on there. I spent probably 8 hours on all of this over several days and am ver y tired of it. I can see where this would be a great tool for students to use and that they would enjoy hearing their own voices. I just need a lot more practice with using Audacity.I have tried to embed it on here and can’t seem to get this to work either.
I don’t know why I waited so long to complete this Thing because it was actually fun and easy once I sat down to do it. Animoto makes it very easy to create a slideshow with music; the step-by-step directions are clear.I chose to do my slideshow on the Galapagos Islands because it’s such an incredible place that I’ve always dreamed of visiting. Choosing the pictures made me want to go even more. The music for such a beautiful and diverse place was easy to choose: “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin. I can see where this tool could become very addicting.
I read the article about Schools and Online Social Networking by Nancy Willard. She makes some very good points about the use of sites at school. She does not think they should be used at school, but also thinks more should be done than just blocking the sites. I agree that the school should also be doing a lot of educating of students about online safety and responsible use. Schools definitely need to have some kind of clearly written Technology Honors policy and specific consequences which are actually enforced. Parents must keep themselves informed and monitor their childrens’ internet use. Many think their kids are too young to get involved in something bad, but it can happen to Elementary students now too.I think that Facebook and Social Networking sites are here to stay, but we will have to see if there is some kind of value for controlled classroom use. I joined the Classroom 2.0 at your suggestion and am awaiting approval. I think the Beginners group might be helpful in utilizing some of these tools. If some kind of site like this could be developed for students, that might be a good classroom tool. I’m not sure how you would control it. But then you have the students that have to abuse the tool and push the limits. You might have to start with just a school-wide network. Since I have to work with students who have social skills challenges, joining a social networking site might be helpful for them. I’ll just have to think this through and investigate whether this is being done anywhere else.
I had already had an account with iTunes and had actually subscribed to several different free podcasts for a couple of years. I particularly enjoy some of the NPR ones, This I Believe and StoryCorps. They inspire me. Another one I have enjoyed is actually a video podcast from YouTube, The Best of YouTube. They are short little videos that have a variety of themes and are sometimes funny, sometimes things that make you think. I had subscribed to it from iTunes, but you can also subscribe to it from its own site.I checked out some of the podcasts on Education from iTunes, but didn’t find anything I was interested in.I went to the Education Podcast Network site and checked out some of the school sites. I liked the fact that students could put up video podcasts of projects. One showed Calais Middle School students and their Robotics project where they had to program it to do something. I could see this being very helpful if you were to assign something similar in a class. Students would be able to see examples of what you wanted. Students would also be thrilled to show their own projects on a podcast.The other sites that I found were more Professional Development sites. Weekly Web Tools has a podcast with talk about a variety of Web2.0 tools. I can see this being a good resource to give to teachers to help with integrating Technology into their curriculum.
I have actually been using YouTube for quite a while, but mostly for personal use. I explored a couple of videos that gave me ideas about how to use it in the classroom. I have taught Alice software which has its own tutorial, with written directions. One of the drawbacks I have found is that the tutorials do not contain audio. Many of my students do not read well because of learning difficulties. A video on YouTube, Alice Tutorialmade by chris101b, gives some basic instruction, a “How to” on using the software. Some of the short examples given with the program are not the most enticing. Students would be very excited once they saw the Alice Example Michael Jackson’s Thriller by dizmira.One of the ways I recently used YouTube personally was when my daughter was explaining something and I had no idea what she was talking about. I could not picture it. She is going to Thailand this summer and was describing a fruit from there and how you peel it. We got on YouTube and they had a “How To” peel and eat a Rambutan by aehooser. I could see exactly what she’d been describing.My funny video was one I discovered on a Saturday afternoon. There is a whole series of Annoying Orange videosby daneboe. It’s become a standing joke in our household! I had not been to TeacherTube in a long time. It has some videos that would be good for Professional Development; Shake It Up by Bionicteaching is one I liked. They also had Teacher Resources on TeacherVision, things like graphic organizers and printables that were already developed and could be used. I also thought this might be a good place for students to produce their own Alice tutorials that could be shared with classmates.I could not get Quietube to work on my laptop which is using IE. When the button is clicked on my Personal ToolBar, it just goes to the website. I did get it to work on my desktop at home which is running FireFox. I do like the fact that it only shows the video and not all of the other surrounding visuals that are on the YouTube page.
I am continuing to enjoy looking for innovative application that can be used with iTouches/Phones. Music teachers often enjoy being given some creative ways to reach their students. ThumbJam is an application that the students could get really excited about. It is a musical performance software that can be fun for novice or advanced musicians. It has the capabilities of using 30 instrument sounds and many different scales in order to create a musical composition. I found a similar type program for desktop last Fall and demonstrated it to the Music teacher. She tried it with the kids and they were thrilled. The fact that this is done on a handheld device allows her to have it a variety of environments. When she used the program that was on the desktop, she was forced to conduct her music classes in the Computer Lab. Portability would make this much more convenient.
I think that the idea of PageFlakes is wonderful. Personally you could have all of those sites that you often access right at your fingertips. (It reminds me of a hyped up better version of My Yahoo!) The ability to custmize things is extremely important these days. A person is more likely to use something often if they find it convenient and it gives them what they need. This seems like it could be that page.I personally had problems with getting the template to load onto my logged-in Teacher Page. I will have to play around with it more to see if I can figure out why it is not working. I was getting very frustrated because of being tired. I can see the value of this tool and would like to use it.As far as classroom use, I could envision each of our students, who have their own laptops, customizing their own pages with whatever tools they most frequently use. If they are working on a short term project, they could have a flake specific to that subject for just that short period. When they were finished, they’d have the option to remove it.The down-side of using it with students is that sometimes they become obsessed with all of the customization and beautification and never get around to the actual purpose of using what’s on the page.
I really enjoyed playing around with GoogleDocs. Already knowing how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint made using them very easy. There may be some more advanced PowerPoint features that are not available on GoogleDocs, but I will have to explore it some more before I can say that definitely.There are so many great ways that this is going to make life easier, personally and professionally. I was explaining GoogleDocs to a student and she saw the value in being able to use this for shared or group projects at school. With our students living so far apart, group projects are difficult to manage. Students could be working on these individually at home and not be tied to a single computer.In the same way, teachers often have committees and are working on something together. This would save them from having to make a gazillion emails and continue to pass multiple copies of attachments around. And then you don’t know which version is the latest! Being able to access a history of when modifications were done and by whom will clear up much confusion.I also could see the form as a very helpful tool. I liked the fact that there is a time stamp attached to the replies. Students enjoy filling out online surveys and you could even develop quizzes for using in the classroom if you don’t have one of those response systems. The students could even make up their own quizzes and let the other students answer theirs. That would be a good way for them to demonstrate their knowledge of something they’ve been studying. They would think of it as a fun activity, while the teacher would be able to evaluate them. I think the students might be surprised how difficult it is to make up a good survey. I know I was when I read the responses to my first questionnaire. It helped clarify what kinds of questions were more valuable and which formats would give you the information you were after. That in itself is a valuable lesson!
Delicious looks like a fantastic way to organize things. Being able to access your favorite bookmarks from a site from any computer will make things so much easier. I like the fact that I’ll be able to search for other people’s favorite sites as well.With colleagues having accounts, it will make things so much easier to share. I will no longer have to have them email me a link to a site they’re talking about. As long as they have tagged them in Delicious and are willing to share, I can go and look them up. Less email to have to deal with! My difficulty will be in taking the time initially to set up and tag the sites. I had some problems at first in getting the buttons on my laptop. I did figure it out, but it took some time. What also will take some effort is remembering to use Delicious instead of just going to my Favorites folder and bringing up my bookmarks the way I have been for years. “Old habits die hard.” I do plan to continue exploring using this one piece at a time. I do see a lot of potential for using this and am excited to learn about it. I often using my husband’s netbook when we’re in the car on a long drive. It’s been frustrating not to have my bookmarks on there. Now I no longer need to worry about that! I attempted to share a couple of interesting sites with the group and one showed up while the other one didn’t. I have not figured out what caused the difference and am continuing to analyze to try and figure this out in order to correct the problem.I added a couple of subscritions to my Delicious, but have a gazillion sites. I want to go back and figure out what tags might be helpful to intersect and narrow things down some. If I’m correct you can intersect more than two tags and get very specific about sites you’re interested in.I did import my bookmarks from my existing ones. that was a very easy process. What’s not so easy is having to go back and think of tags for all of them. I’ll have to do a few at a time and maybe do a tag bundle for them to keep things organized.
