Thing # 23

- My favorite discoveries in this project were: Making a blog, Google Docs, Photostory, hyperlinks, and Wiki.

- This program affected my goals by making technology one of my life-long learning goals. I realized that technology is like learning a second language, you have to keep up with it and apply/use it so you can get better at it.

- What surprised me during this journey was that there is a whole world of tools out there that I didn't know about, and that what I learned is just a part of it. But at least now I know where do the people who do cool stuff get it from.

- I think having a FAQ section for each "thing" will help.

- I will participate in future programs.

- My learning experience was frustrating in the beginning, challenging in the middle, and enjoyable at the end.

Thing # 22 Nings

I looked at "Ning for Teachers" and I actually liked a lot of the sites/blogs included in it. There are some good ice-breakers to use with students in the beginning of the year. Teacher Lingo has also a link to "Mrs. Jackson's class blog," which is a helpful teaching blog.

I like the Nings but I feel it is similar to other tools we learned in this project and I am not yet proficient enough to decide when and how I will use each one and what is the difference between them.

Thing # 21 Photostory

I used pictures from my first trip to New York when we were on a helicopter tour. Photostory is very easy, and fun to use. The problem I had was in uploading the video on my blog because it kept giving me a message of error. When I decided to publish it with the message of error, surprisingly it worked!

I am so excited about using Photostory at the end of the school year with the year-long pictures I take in school, instead of the power point I used last year.

Thing # 20 You Tube and Teacher Tube

I embeded one video on classroom management from You Tube and one on perimeter and area from Teacher Tube. It was easier to find videos on You Tube than on Teacher Tube. I will be using these sites to embed videos in my class wiki.

Thing # 19 Web 2.0 Awards List

I skimmed through some of the sites on the list and chose the PBworks tool for Wikis. I remembered that I have joined my school wiki last year but never contributed to it. I started a wiki for myself yesterday, but I am still working on it. I liked the wiki idea especially when I saw other wikis for 3rd grade, which is what I teach, so I could relate to what they did. When I searched wikis earlier I only saw library ones and high school ones so I couldn't tell how to use it in my situation.
I think it is a great tool to communicate with parents as well as students. I am thinking to add certain lessons and homework assignments on my wiki to help students who need more assistance or who were absent that day. Another idea is to allow students to add something about themselves in the beginning of the year as an icebreaker.
I am excited about my wiki and I am still learning as I am adding to it.

Thing # 18 Google Docs

Wow!! This google docs is awesome!It was very easy to use (finally, something is easy to learn!) and I think it is very helpful. The video explaining it was very useful as well. I can't remember how many times we wanted to edit/update something as a team in my grade level and we kept sending the paper to each person to update. Or the person in charge would receive a lot of emails from everyone on the team to update something and then that person would send the final copy to everybody. This Google Docs can save a lot of time and hassle. I love it! I tried it by creating a simple document about lunch, since we order every Friday in my school, and added a hyperlink to the menu of the place(Yay!). I can then send the link of the document to teammates to fill in their choices and we order.

Thing # 17 Rollyo

Rollyo is the most useful tool for me to use with my students so far.I could see right away how to use it in the classroom where students will research different science topics as well as navigate through different math games during the daily workstations. The Rollyo video was awesome! It explained what Rollyo is in plain English.
I started a couple of searches on Rollyo, one for math place value, and one for science on frogs. I had to put only my links for place value because I didn't find any in Rollyo. May be I didn't do it right.

Thing # 16 Wikis

I looked at the different Wiki examples and they were all library Wikis. I tried to look for science or math wikis but I realized I needed to be more specific with my search.
I added notes to the Sandbox about my 23 Things experience.
I liked idea #1 as an example of using a wiki in the classroom, having students do collaborative note-taking on a certain topic. We do something similar called "ticket out" but the kids write something they learned on a note card. Now they can do the same thing in a wiki, and also add their opinions and criticism. This also can be an assessment tool, I think.

Thing # 15 Web 2.0, Library 2.0

The video was interesting to watch! It was very authentic since the messge is coming from the students themselves as learners. The students we teach tell us in that video that they spend much more time using their own technology than studying for school. The logical thought here would be, why don't we then combine both, learning and technology? The funny thing though was one of the comments on the teacher's article from a parent who wants her kids to shut their tech tools and just listen to the teacher!

I read a couple of library 2.0 perspectives and I liked Dr. Wendy Schultz's article. She explains the stages of library development now and in the future as 1.0 (commodity), 2.0 (product), 3.0 (3D- service), and 4.0 (experience). What came to my mind when I read this was, I really need to pick up on technology now because the gap keeps (and will) be wider between me and the tech world.

Thing # 14 Technorati

I did NOT start an account for this one! If it's not required I won't do it. I already have a lot of accounts for different web sites, which I can not keep up with.
The search for "school library learning 2.0" came out with 0 results every time I tried it.
I looked at the popular tags on Technorati and I was surprised that many of the popular tags were meaningless words (or at least to me they were meaningless) like, aa, aapl, crm, etc...
The top blogpost, out of the Top 100 for today, was from the Huffington Post about Yoga and Recovery. I like Yoga, and believe in its benefits, so I was happy to see that.

I think Technorati will help me if I am looking for blogs discussing a specific issue or a certain person.

Thing #13 Delicious

I made an account on Delicious and searched for web sites on different math subjects. I liked many of them and added them to my delicious list. I always need independent activities for kids to do on the computer on the unit we study while others are working on differnt activities (or working with me). So I found Delicious very helpful in this area. In the beginning I didn't know what was the difference between Delicious and my Favorites, but then I realized I could access my web sites on any computer since they are saved on line.

Thing #12 (Commenting)

One point I liked from reading about commenting is that we need to add some information about ourselves in the profile so that other bloggers can see it after reading our comments. I know this can be a privacy issue so I just added a few details to my profile.
I would love to track my comments so I created an account in CoComment but when installing the program my Norton antivirus program saw it as a virus and stopped it. Did anybody have this problem?!

I enjoyed reading and commenting on these blogs:
Whirled Cultures
Sheli Mom
Michele Investigates
Lori's Educhat
Linda's Summer Blog

I commented on a couple of news sites since I am following a story about a protest against police torture and brutality in Egypt.

Thinh #11 Library Thing

This was the easiest "Thing" I learned so far and that's why I enjoyed it the most! I joined Library Thing and added a few of my books to it. I like that web site because it is a good way to keep track of my books, and I liked the Recommendations I found on my home page after I added my books. I will keep adding the rest of my books to the site until I am done with them.
I looked at the groups but I haven't found myself in any of the groups yet so I didn't join. The group that was interesting is called "Tea" for tea drinkers! I like tea so I may be joining that group.

Thing #10 Image generator

Image generators are fun to play with. Now I know where people get all that fun stuff that see! I looked at all the resources mentioned and saved them for future use, but I played around with the first 3. I made my Sphinx picture and a Simpson one from Comic Strip. I played around with Custom Sign Generator and I liked the Fake Magazine Cover. I posted another picture on the side bar with a "23 Things" necklace from Image Chef.

Thing #9 Useful blogs and News Feeds

I searched for different blogs and websites through the search engines provided and each one of them took me to a different world of knowledge and networking. I liked topix the best since it is easy to follow and it had already located my area when I opened it and provided me with all kinds of discussions, news, forums, and events related to my place.
Syndic8 was the most confusing one and it was very hard to follow. I didn't try much on that one!
I liked the Cool Cat Teacher blog, it is very rich and useful. I also liked to search through the blog winners of 2009 and read blogs from all over the world.

Thing #8 (RSS Feeds)

I made a Google Reader account and added some blogs and web sites to it. It was fun searching for all the sites relevant to my teaching and my interests, and I was excited to find blogs that share my teaching philosophy. These are some of the sites I added:

Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks
NCTM New and Noteworthy
Recycle Your Reads (a wonderful blog of a reading teacher from my school)
Ultimate Katy - Schools, events, traffic, pets and more in and around Katy
My Teaching Spirit (a great blog of a teacher who shares ideas about teaching math in small group)

What I like about RSS feeds is that it gathers all what I need to know in one place, which makes it easier and saves time.
I will use this technology to know the latest news about teaching my subjects (math and science)and to share ideas with fellow teachers. I will know more about taking advantage of this tool when I use it more.

Thing #7 (Google)

I set up some Google alerts, like Houston news, to be received every day. I read one of the members' blog and I saw that she had an alert for science education and I thought that was a good idea. So, I set up an alert for "math teaching" and I received a wonderful collection of articles, jokes, and video clips about teaching math. I think this is a great tool for my teaching!

I added the Google calendar in my account and added to it US calendar, Sunrise and sunset times, phases of the moon, and other calendars. I wish if I could import my calendar from my school outlook but it didn't work.

I used to have Yahoo as my home page and I was used to its lay out and how I personalized it a long time ago. I created a new iGoogle page and made it another home page. I took some time to personalize my new page with my theme and gadgets: weather, date/time, news, movies, and calendar.

Thing #6 (Mashups)

I spent a lot of time going through some of the mash ups that used Flickr and I wasn't sure if I had to have a Flickr account to use them. I ended up creating an account and uploading a few of my pictures on it to see how it worked. I had to choose "private" settings for all the options until I feel comfortable enough with the program and decide what I want to publish.

I liked the Mappr application so I can find pictures from any place in the world. It was interesting to see different photos from different countries. I also played with the Mosaic Maker, but I didn't save one. I created a Bookr about math using math pictures from Flickr but I wasn't sure how to give credit to the picture owners or where to write the address of where I got them from so I deleted it.

I finally had success with one of the applications, which is the trading card, and I created my own :)

Thing #5 (Flickr)

I was surprised when I read the first thing on Flickr web site: "5,557 uploads in the last minute." That is a pretty popular web site! I thought first that it was another site to download pictures from, but it turned out to be a very useful tool to organize and share my own picures. I agree with one of the comments about organizing pictures since I too don't have all of my pictures downloaded in all of our computers. So, it will be a good idea to open a Flickr account and keep my pictures in that one source and make it accessible to my family and friends.

I chose a picture of a math calendar bulletin board since I do something similar in my classroom. I liked how that teacher used the space of the bulletin board , and what's around it, to display so many things.

Picture was downloaded from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/perspicacious/1471224750/

Thing #3

Yaaaay! I am finally done creating my blog and adding my Avatar! It took me so long as I was learning what a blog looked like, searching different blogs on the internet, looking at different players' blogs, and a lot of trial and error until I finally got it. I know this may be the easiest thing for a lot of people but I am so happy that I got it done and I learned so much in the way.

I love my Avatar! Another new thing I learned about! It was fun playing with the different options until I got the one I am satisfied with. Exporting the Avatar from Yahoo to my blog the way they have it on the web site didn't work. I had to copy/paste the picture to my computer first then add it to my blog.

Thing #2

I really enjoyed reading the life-long learning opportunities that are mentioned as examples in the 7&1/2 Habits. They seem like commom knowledge now, but I wrote them down so I can remember them when I get older and I can't think of something to do.

The easiest habit for me is #3: to view problems as challenges. I am a very committed and persistent person and I like to throw myself in challenging situations and I keep struggling until I learn. Hopefully, it will work the same way in my struggle to improve my technology skills :)

My hardest habit is #6: Use technology to my advantage. I am so behind in technology and I know I can get better at it only if I put it on the top of my priority list (or To Do list!).