Week 9: Thing 23 - AKA The End!

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I liked learning more about RSS feeds and Image generators.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I want to revisit how and when I use technology. I know there are a lot of times I think about it, but don't actually do it. I need to be more proactive in including technology and making it a part of what I do rather than something on top of what I already do with my students.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Really, my own exploring of new tools (Google Wave, Google Moderator, and sites.google.com) was what benefitted me the most. I looked at the instruction from this program and thought "surely there's a better way or a way that applies more to my classroom". This really got me thinking about practical tools that cater to my needs in my classroom.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Rather than finding "cool tools" like the flickr stuff, find practical tools like online polling software, advance methods for actually designing effective wikis and blogs, and useful research based search engines would be much more helpful than "fun" or "cool" activities. They need to remove things like "Youtube" which we all use and have become a part of our lives and continually replace the "things" with emerging technology (i.e. Google Wave).

5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? If so, check out Discovering Assistive Technology.
I would if it was more geared to applicability to actual classroom activities to help us with work we're already doing. I don't need my kids to search for flickr pictures when they could be using the internet to help develop more useful and academic tools.

6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote Classroom Learning 2.0 learning activities?
Technology is always advancing, and we just have to find the right tool at the right time to help us with our current task realizing there will be a better, more accurate, more helpful tool soon to emerge if we only take the time to look for it and apply it.

Done!

Week 9: Thing 22

e-books. There's something that I just love about picking out a book based on its cover that keeps me at bay from Kindle's and the like. It will be a while before I can transition to using ebooks on the go. However, their application in the classroom is great. Any book, poem, or short story that I teach and is available in the public domain is linked to my website. This way students can read their nightly assignments from home without a textbook.

I've had this available since I started teaching, but I'm still not confident in the ability to go completely without textbooks. There is still information (historical background, terms, author background) that isn't consolidated in one place. Perhaps through the use of tools like wikipedia, I can design ways to bring this information into one place for students to access once we move toward a more paperless classroom. The major downfall of ebooks (as far as simply Read Only technology) is the ability to make notations in the book. However, tools like Kindle are allowing for such additions to create a more vitural reading and interactive experience.

One place that ebooks have been particularly helpful is in our reading of Huck Finn. loudlit.org has a chapter by chapter function that allows students to read the text on the screen while listening to an audio recording of the text. They can also download the audio to their ipods for listening anytime/anywhere. This is a great asset to students who struggle with reading and reading comprehension.

Project Gutenburg and Librivox are two great assets to this ebook community. They are allowing for web 2.0 sharing (librivox allows users to record public domain literature for sharing) and a comprehensive "go to" site for online books (i.e. Gutenburg). As ebook readers become more prevelant, it will allow users to access public domain books for free use on their portable devices. This means classics, long in print, can be accessed by anyone anywhere anytime for free.

Another great source of ebooks (if you're into them) are through the Memphis Public Library. It's been a while since I looked, but I believe they have many audio recordings (and possibly ebooks) for sale for about 5$ each. Of course sources like Amazon are quickly making non-print books easy to find, cheap, and accessible.

While I'm not ready to pick up an electronic device to replace flipping through a book, I do think that there is a lot that can be done with showing students where and how to find books online for class and personal use.

As a footnote: I looked at the "World Library Fair" website. It seems rather useless. Go to Gutenburg directly if you need something. Most of the links it sent me to were dead and it is a very difficult site to navigate. Learn to use your normal search engines to find things. For instance, type in "Tom Sawyer" + "Full Text" to get a full text version or add + "Audio" to get an audio recording. Otherwise, Gutenburg seems to be the most comprehensive site for locating full text materials.

Good sites:
loudlit.org
librivox.org
gutenburg.org

Week 9: Thing 21

Podcasts are a cool thing that I just don't have time for. I'm jealous of people who take the time to listen to the latest installment of shows on NPR or other audio media. After I watch my four sitcoms each week, grade papers, and cook dinner, there's just not time. Maybe if I had a longer commute than 5 minutes that would help too. I miss my hour long NYC commute all time time. Oh how many more books I would read and podcasts I could listen to. Even local radio shows like Drake and Zeke now post their shows online for later consumption.

Like Hulu, we now live in a world of "on demand". It allows us to not be tied down by particular show times. We can access information at our leisure and fast forward through it when we get bored. It's a great thing!

There are a few that I've found that I've used from time to time. College lectures often make their way into usable podcasts which is nice. I wonder if there are academic websites forming that make usable search tools for such things? I'm sure if there's not a repository of the kind now, there will be as universities move more toward online courses and instruction.

I've not considered their creative use in class. Once again, this becomes a technological issue. Most students don't have access to microphones and equipment advanced enough to do recordings at home, and to record at school in a classroom setting could be chaos. I did a form of this last year when students had to do an audio recording of a poem that was spliced with a powerpoint. It worked, but it is a challenge to get everyone through the process.

Week 9: Thing 20

One way to know that the culture of the internet moves faster than an established digital program like this: when you read the heading "discover Youtube" as if it's something groundbreaking.

It was "discovered" about 2 years ago or more and it hasn't looked back. Youtube is a great source of everything from Old English readings of Beowulf to music videos, to college lectures on obscure topics.
Though youtube is the most comprehensive, don't forget to check out hulu.com, video.google.com, video.yahoo.com when you're trying to find that hard to find video.

Let me say that Hulu has revolutionized the way I watch TV. I hardly ever watch anything as it's on live anymore. Hulu offers TV mostly commercial free in high resolution the day after it airs. Goodbye live TV! Even my favorite concerts are now being streamed live on Hulu and then being archived in case I'm not around to watch them.

Unfortunately, youtube is blocked at school, so if I require kids to use videos, they have to find them at home and send in links. Also, at this point I can't require kids to watch them at home because they don't all have internet or connections fast enough to watch videos.

Here's one of my recent favorite "viral videos". I think it is the future of global networking, creativity, and peace. It's actually part of a series of videos all done by a network called "Playing for Change". If you've not seen it yet, check it out!

Week 8: Thing 19

I feel like a broken record, but I'm not going to register on yet another website for another tool that exists elsewhere. Ellen sent out a great tool a few years ago called Shelfari. It was really cool for about a week, but then I realized, "Okay, now I have a digital bookshelf just like my bookshelf at home... now what?" I can see where a tool like this would be great if you were really in a community to share books, or, like it suggests, for small libraries to catalog their books. However, for personal use it doesn't show much promise beyond a passing fad.

Additionally, there is a widget on Facebook that is almost identical to Shelfari. This allows me to share with an existing network (my facebook friends) and allows me to keep it all in one place with one website to visit, one password to remember, and one network to share it with. Once again, I played with it for a week and then never touched it again.

The one place that I'd eventually like to go with such a website is to create a community where I would have students write book reviews of books they're read and allow future students from year to year to select a book off of the "virtual shelf" when they're trying to decide on an outside reading book. Hopefully student reviews will help them recommend books to each other, help them get excited about certain books, and help me select books that they may be interested in reading.

I'm still investigating how to do this best and how to make the reviews required in such a way that it lends itself to a good meaningful task and not "one more thing to do". I'd also have to find a way to setup a classroom bookshelf that all students could access it with a common username/password, or some other form of group access. I've thought about setting it up as a "Google site" or wiki instead to allow for easier access and bookmarking. I'm not sure if it's better to use an existing network like shelfari or to establish something a little more tailor-made. I'm going to try and experiment with this likely in the 3rd and 4th quarters when they have to write book reviews. I'm excited about the potential for long term digital archiving of outside reading.

Week 8: Thing 18

Okay, so once again this program wants me to sprawl onto a new website with new links, new passwords, and new usernames. That's just silly. Even if this other software is better, I'm going to stick with Google Docs simply to simplify my life. I first encountered G-Docs when my high school class reunion was being planned a few weeks ago. I was sent the link and then was able to update my information on the spreadsheet that was being used to track attendance. It was a really brilliant idea and use of technology.

This seems like it could eliminate the need for students to have "my documents" folders that have been problematic to access from home. Now there is also no excuse for students who don't have Microsoft Office at home either. Goodbye Works! As far as Open Office, I've tried it and it is okay, but my family reported some compatibility issues and still switched to Word in the end.
With Google Docs, now students can write papers, homework or anything else online directly, save it from home, the library, or school and access it anywhere in the world. They can even share documents with me. However, this gets tricky because it makes it that much easier for them to share it with one another. This means that they could easily type a paper and then share it with someone or work collaboratively when they are supposed to be doing independent work. Not that they can't do that through other technology or simply handing a piece of paper to someone, but this cuts out the middle man. In the end, a brilliant tool for collaborative work, a scary one when you're asking students to do individual work.
One nice feature that this site has is spell check - google sites (for designing wikis and websites) doesn't currently have a spellcheck which is very frustrating. Firefox and Chrome have built in spell checkers, so that's okay, but if you're using IE (i.e. at school) then there is no spell check which can be problematic.
Overall, one of the more helpful tools we've encountered, and it has a lot of potential in the future.

Week 7: Thing 17

700 views: 0 replies
This seems to be the gist of this exercise. I'm not exactly sure what this "thing" is touting, but the best I can guess is "nothing". At best it seems like a wiki adaptation of a blog. However, this "blog" is not searchable or organized like most blogs. It's simply a listing of things on a wiki which is not what wiki's are used for. One of the links (no, make that two now) is dead and one of them led me to a page with 700 views and 0 replies further developing the idea that people (like us) are looking, but no one is responding because you can't force conversation about things that aren't directly related to your life, classroom, or needs at a given time. Of all of the "things" so far, this seems to be the least clearly explained, the least useful, and the least organized. If one had to be dropped (and there are at least 2 or 3 others in the running) this one would be tops.

Week 7: Thing 16

Of all of the web 2.0 "things" out there, wikis are clearly the most helpful. While many are still arguing that wikipedia isn't a legit source, it is quickly becoming one of the most reputable sources out there. Far more reliable than blogs, it is closely monitored by editors who are often professionals in the related field. Not only that, but as the document is becoming more complete (and it is - one Time article stated that the number of new entries is slowing rapidly) it is easier to monitor what is happening to each entry and verify it for validity. Unlike blogs and other personalized websites, wikipedia is actually realiable by comparison.

Wikis are also the most helpful technology in class. It really allows students to collaborate on one project together to produce some completed outcome. Currently, I am using a wiki to collaborate on a writing project with a friend in Minneapolis. This would formerly have taken numerous emails and other means of collaboration, but now we can both work on one site and both alter the document in real time for the other to review and edit. This can be incredibly helpful on any number of projects in a classroom. I'm considering some type of either creative or research wiki for my students as part of my tech grant tech project next semester. I'm hoping they will see the benefits of collaboration. It is fun, purposeful, and useful!

Week 6: Thing 15

For starters, this "Disney" video on copyright (and therefore plagiarism) is very funny and could be used in class easily. It's a little annoying after a while, but it gets the idea across to the viewer that copyright is a tricky subject that people dabble in all the time. It could work as a great tool in dealing with "borrowing" ideas from other students and the web.
It asks for a way this program has been modified, and that can clearly be seen with our current approach. CBHS has adapted this course, designed our own website, and is implementing it in such a way as to benefit us and our needs. I think this is a great thing (done with permission) in this world of web 2.0.
As far as how this will change our world... based on some of the articles here and a few others I've read recently, it's becoming clear that the world of ebooks and other PDA devices will change the way we consume "books". There will be a new world of non-printed print media, printed books on demand to reduce waste and overstock, and a debate over the copyrighting of online work. One place this will be problematic is the production of fiction. Will authors still write and get paid to publish? Will people still buy books? or will people follow authors and writing genre's online through the purchase of (or free sharing of) online literature? How will newspaper (I use the term "paper" loosely) journalists get paid? There is already a problem with journalists (again using the term loosely) who get their stories from real journalists (employed by the NYT for example) who then read them and turn them into secondary sources of news without compensating the original reporters (who are often risking life and limb for a story). These are all problems that are going to change the way libraries stock information, the way people write, publish, and produce work. Finally, it will change the way they get paid (or don't get paid) for what they do. The question was posed in one article I read today, will fiction writers get paid again for their work, or will they simply write and share it for free on the web. Perhaps a better question is, is this a good thing, bad thing, or just a thing all together?

Week 6: Thing 14

I'm not sure exactly what the goal of technorati is, but it doesn't seem overly helpful in a classroom setting. My feel for it is that it is a way for blogs to be present on search engines, but to me, this seems to further perpetuate the idea that blogs are reliable sources of information in a scholastic setting. If I had a blog about fixing cars and I wanted to be able to find or have others find related blogs, this could be very helpful. However, this would not prove to be a beneficial exercise in a classroom. Personally, I find blogs to be good tools to share your life with those with whom you want to share it. It's not something I want for the world to see in most cases.

Week 6: Thing 13

My basic instinct on programs like delicious is that the majority of my use of the internet is 1) sites I go to all the time making features like RSS helpful or 2) I need to look something up so I search for it, find it, read it, and am done with it. Rarely are there sites that I need "sporatically". However, there are some sites I use from year to year with a particular reading assignment and I save those to my favorites. However, with the fluid movement of the web, I often find that things I bookmark are gone, changed, or irrelevant by the time I need them again a year later. I can see where this could be a good way to share information; however, I think the rollyo (if it actually worked) is a better concept for use in the classroom. I did find some really interesting articles on the library website that I enjoyed reading, but beyond that, there wasn't much functionality here that I could use in a classroom. As far as personal use, I see RSS as a much more promising feature. Rather than teaching websites like this that will come and go, our real goal should be to teach students how to do searches online. Very few of them know how to look anything up. Teaching them about keywords, realiable websites, and good search techniques will prove much more useful in the real world than taking them to the "digital waters" to drink from. If we do all of the searching and organizing for them, they won't know how to do it themselves.

One last thought: I was reading the "effective habits of delicious users" and one of the suggestions was to add sites to your RSS. In essence then, isn't this just one "middle man" step in the process to RSS?

Week 5: Thing 12

This Rollyo thing has some promise if there is time to really investigate it and set it up for a particular project. I don't know how helpful it would be day in and day out, but it would be a good asset for a research project. It would be a helpful way to restrict students to certain websites when you assign them a research project. As a teacher, I could preselect reliable websites and then require students to find all of their material from the provided websites on the Rollyo. One disadvantage to this is that it won't search our subscription based databases like EBSCO or TEL. It would prove very helpful in current events classes where you could create a search engine linked to specific magazine and news articles. I believe it would make up for my criticism of the RSS when I stated that RSS is not a practical tool for finding current articles and information. This would allow the teacher to create a database specific to a grouping of websites. I could also see this as a useful resource for English while we're doing a particular novel. I could link all of the different websites about the novel to a Rollyo. It may also be a useful tool in dealing with writing techniques and online writing resources.
Here is the link to the one I created using writing resource websites:
Okay, so I thought I created one, but my chief complaint is that this website is VERY slow which means I could just search on my own in the meantime. If it ever loads and I can locate it, I'll post it here.

Here is the link (I think): http://www.rollyo.com/321321321/help_me_write_right/

Week 5: Thing 11

So the IQ quiz is cool if you want to wrack your brain for state capital and teach geography, but it's not very practical in an English classroom. I looked through the list of suggested sites they provide, and I think they've left out some of the more helpful ones. Ellen sent out an invite last year to a bookshelf website that would prove useful in an English classroom. It allows students to post books they've read, show what books they own to loan out, and even a place to post book reviews which is already an assignment I have them do on paper. Of course, to go back to my same point, this is a great website, but it's impractical because it's one more place to go. Facebook has developed nearly the same software that allows me to include the same information and then immediately share it with my facebook friends. Two benefits of this are that 1) I can share it with a pre-established group rather than having to send additional invites 2) it's housed in a website I already visit reducing the number of websites I have to go to.

Another website they've left off is called www.sporcle.com. It's a great website with a variety of quizzes that students can use to learn more about a subject or even quiz themselves on trivia. One that was recently posted is http://www.sporcle.com/games/leomontg/nineteen_eighty_four# This one is actually a very good quiz on the book 1984 that I could give my students. The quizzes are often user produced making it a great web 2.0 resource that you could use in and adapt to your classroom. It's a fun way you could create online quizzes for your kids and even your friends.

Week 5: Thing 10

I think I've finally stumbled upon something I can actually use that's fun, cool, and practical. There are many different avenues that I can use with this technology. For instance, I played around with one that allows you to create a magazine cover (seen above). It's not pretty, but it was a first attempt just to see what the program would do. Now that I see what the final product looks like, I can easily edit it with better colors and there are many more options to make it more personalized and unique. This would also be a great way for students to create book covers, design magazines for a book they've read, make comic strip versions of books, and explore the relationship between visual art and literature. I"m excited that I was introduced to this and and think I can use it in the future. It will take some time for me to explore the different websites that they present here, and I'm sure there are others.

Week 4: Thing 9

Unfortunately, this isn't a very "organic" exercise. You have to really surf and stumble across information on the web. Searching for it cold turkey rarely yields any results. I have found that most educational information on the web is either 1) for elementary education 2) out of date 3) not very helpful. I have recently done some searching for information on Beowulf to enhance my teaching of the book. I have found a few decent resources that are set up as lesson plans or links to interesting articles. However, very little of what I use day to day in the classroom would relate to what could be found on newsfeeds and blogs. Even when I have students use current events in class, that is done using research materials and search engines. Using a RSS to hope that a relevant article will appear.

In reference to these particular links, the Google engine looked to be the most helpful. The one called "Edublog" looked to be the most promising, but it turned out to be out of date by three years and consisted largely of big awards announcements, but very little in the way of actual information.

I think establishing communities of blogs for teachers would possibly be helpful if you knew that you had time and were working on similar projects as other teachers. For instance, if there was a running blog for teachers who are currently teaching Beowulf to share their ideas, that may be helpful. However, once again this doesn't seem to be an organic or realistic exercise because of our time constraints as teachers.

Week 4: Thing 8

So I think that RSS is probably going to be the most practical technology in this exercise and it's also the one I know the least about. I think there are better RSS readers than the ones they have suggested. I'll ask around and post their links here later.
The new Yahoo! homepage is operating on a similar feature where you can add links to commonly visited pages to your homepage that will then open in a scroll over/pop-up window.
I think, in actuality, that the internet is a shrinking force at this point rather than an expanding one. Just as the argument exists that the universe must reach a point at which it must contract, the same is happening to the internet. There is a centralizing of information on certain websites and rather than "surfing" the web, like in the "early days" of the internet, I find myself visiting the same 4-6 websites over and over again. Features like RSS allow us to quickly visit those websites and see what has updated. If we regularly read the same blogs or visit the same humor websites, we can use RSS to alert us to updates without having to go to the website every day. The same is true of news stories that interest us or that we regularly look at. I'm curious to see how personalized this technology becomes in order to allow it to suit our individual needs.

While the technology doesn't quite exist yet, I think that this could be a useful way to dispense information to students and allow them to read up on current events, view pictures, and even read blogs that are relevant to a particular class. I see this as being technology that could evolve or be adapted in the near future.

Week 3: Thing 7

One exciting part of technology is that it allows you to quickly locate information to save you money and time. Whether it is looking at forms about car repairs or checking out the days "online deals" at passwird.com, you can find ways to make your life easier. I have found resources like reviews of products and forums that discuss how to repair a certain car part very helpful. In the past, you had to take your car in and let the "experts" diagnose the car and fix it. Today, you can talk with online communities to explore your problems and find solutions. In the end, this saves us so much time and unnecessary expenses. I recommend to anyone that they shop for cheaper prices online and look for answers to their problems before they move forward.

Week 3: Thing 6

I was intrigued by the color wheel mashup; however, it would not apply to a classroom situation that I can tell. It is great if you're remodeling a bathroom and need a picture to match a particular color of paint or shower curtain. The one that I did think could be helpful is the map application that allows users to upload pictures of places on the globe a map. Once again, this seems like a place where dupication needs to be replaced with a monopoly. Google Earth is such an undertaking that these pictures would be better off added to the existing Google Earth/Google Maps structure rather than Flickr creating their own mapping software. It seems redundant. This would be helpful in a classroom if, say, we are reading Catcher in the Rye, and I want my students to see where a particular place is and what it looks like in NYC. Most of this is already discussed in my previous post.

Week 3: Thing 5

So I hate Walmart because it makes us a culture without culture. It robs us of the chance to shop at Borders for a book or a record store for a new CD. We can also get our hair done, buy a big mac, and put tires on our car. However, I think monopolies on information is a good thing. There is no reason that I would ever travel to Flickr to look at pictures when I can just use the photo application on Facebook. Facebook allows me to do "one stop shopping". I can "blog", comment, post pictures, look at friends pictures (which is maybe not as enlightening as looking at pictures from people I don't know) but it is surely more practical. I want to see where my friends have been and what they see, not what a random person on Flickr sees. There is value in seeing other people's art, and for that I'm thankful. Without the internet and places like Flickr, there would be no way for us to see other people's art. However, I think it's a good thing that a website like Facebook is around to provide us with "one" website we can go to for information, updates, and pictures. The one function of Flickr I do like is the mapping feature which allows us to see pictures of say, the pyramids, if we want. It should be more integrated with google earth/maps to allow us to click on any location and "see" what others have seen there. Again, they may have their own map, but to spice it with a project like google earth is even better.

NYC

The view of NYC from the roof of my school in NY the night of our engagement
Originally uploaded by jstwstngtime

This is a picture from the roof of La Salle Academy in NYC.

Week 2: Thing 3.1

I've talked with my brother who is currently in college about the functionality and practicality of blogs. His comments reaffirmed my suspicions that they are largely an "extra" requirement of the class that seems forced. The discussions are often brief and don't add as much to class discussion as one may hope. I think it's important to use them as a place for an alternate discussion and not always an addition to a discussion. It could potentially detract from some healthy classroom discussion. Of course, the opposite can be argued that students who are usually quiet in class can now have a platform for discussion or followup. I think the hard part is encouraging original thought when everyone is commenting on some common question. I think the goal is to develop discussion, not an question and answer session.

Week 2: Thing 3

So I've created my blog. I want to comment on the Avatar thing. I see the point if you're playing a video game or using your Wii, but it doesn't seem very practical for classrooms. First, I didn't like the interface on Yahoo (which I am typically a fan of Yahoo! products). It was overwhelming in the number of seemingly unimportant options like tshirt designs. However, it was very lacking when it came to actually designing my "person". The Wii offers many more options when it comes to selecting body type, hair styles, and face shape. Yahoo seems difficult to navigate and it doesn't allow for many variations, at least without spending some time figuring out where things are located. This should be more intuitive than it is.

I suppose you could use this in class to have students "create" characters from a story that they are reading. However, this seems to be a "busy" task more than one that inspires critical thinking. There may be ways to make it based on critical thinking principles, but overall, it doesn't seem practical.

Week 2: Thing 2

Looking at the 7.5 habits of highly successful people, I think the one that I am best at is taking responsibility for my own learning. I don't expect other people to do my work for me or to even help me. Often I prefer to do things on my own to ensure their success. The point that I struggle with the most is the next step, which is to see problems as challenges. I often "freak out" when I hit a roadblock. I think it would be helpful for me to see adversity as an opportunity for success, learning, and a positive outcome.