mrosenbaum2.0

I was very concerned about my abilities to maneuver through this class, but I am quite pleased that I was able to finish. I have found some tools which I know I will regularly use – Flikr, TeacherTube, and Pageflakes. Others I did not find too useful – Library Thing for one. I would love to be able to create an interactive, ever expanding wiki for my 7th grade History class, I just know that I need more practice on it myself, and I hope to get support from my co-teacher; her media skills are much better then mine.
I have been thinking all summer about using the blog in class, I need to continue thinking about how I want to “embed” it in my routine.
I really enjoyed pushing myself to learn new “things”, I usually spend my summer reading various historical accounts and research as well as the occasional historical novel. I did that this summer to an extent, but being pushed out of my comfort zone was good for a change.
I have a lot of technology to master in the coming year – working with an LCD player in my room, using it regularly; learning to use an activboard, after completing the on line class and taking another seminar during the year; and hopefully putting to use many of the things I learned in this class.

I now see that the hardest part of making a podcast is actually getting it on line.

I had some initial trouble with the mic I was using, but managed to figure out – or at least get lucky – and got it going. Then I had to rummage around in Sound Recorder until I figured out how to get more time for the recording. The first go-rounds were only 60 seconds and that wasn’t enough time.

Going through the Zamzar conversion was fairly simple but there were a lot of instrucions for gcast and I got lost a few times. But I had them printed and that helped a lot.

The head of our middle school uses podcasts in her Facing History class of 8th graders. One of their assessments is to create a podcast as a book review – presented in an oral format i.e. radio show, author interview, commercial, etc. I think it is a great idea. For foreign language it is wonderful – our Spanish teacher assigns her own Spanish language podcasts for students to listen to, in order to prepare for the coming class. For history I can see having students research a specific event or person and make a “news” podcast, as if the student were a journalist and is witnessing the event or interviewing the historical figure. This would be  fun and creative assessment tool. Added attraction = other members of the class can listen to and critique each others work.

At first I was a little intimidated by the whike idea of major social networking. One of the articles/bkogs I read sstated that smaller really is better. I can see using a very closed specific area to work with my students on – closed to eveyone else. It would be an interesting place for a picture of the day comment, a once a week assignment on art appreciaition,  as a way for students to keep up with what is  going on in class.

I “drove” around Classroom 2.0 for quite awhile, I got a ittle lost and I got a little involved in too many postings, but it was an education. I read an entire 8th grade class’ blogs and was appalled by the spelling and grammar. I keep reading about how blogging and on line social interaction creates better writers but I have yet to see it.

I found a lot of interesting products and sites by reading through a number of postings and that was worthwhile. I can see using these education networking sites as a means by which to find (highly recommended) materials. I cannot see myself getting involved in the conversations. All of this networking is actually very time consuming. There is a lot of worthwhile stuff to glean from all the sites, but there is only so much time in the day!

I really like the RSS feeds I have found. I have four education feeds and there is almost always something interesting on them – I check about once every three days. I also subscribe to Jewlicious a little left of center feed of everything Jewish – I got to watch an American reporter who lives in Israel take a tandem skydive over northern Israel -with commentary. It was funny and pretty amazing to share in the experience.

I also discovered that according to the Happy Planet Index, established in 2006, by the New Economics Foundation, that 9 out of 10  of the happiest places on earth are in Central or South America. I am not sure what that statistic means, perhaps I should look into retiring in Costa Rica!

At first I thought Pageflakes would be a drag (no pun intended), but when I started looking at all th esitea Shelley listed, I thought there were some very intestig ideas present. I started to think that instead of the homework page I have thru the Epstein network, maybe the middle school teachers could use Pageflakes. There is the abiulity to put up resources, add detail to things via the notepad and access to You Tube (or other on line video) as well as podcast, Flikr and others would be cool.

However, when I got signed in and added the K12 Learning template, the trouble started and the relationship began to erode. It took me quite a while to figure out how to change the pictures, I wanted to use the photo flake for a picture of the day. But all I could figure out was how to add feed and then I had to go thru all the pictures to see if there was one I wanted; instead of going straight to Flikr or google image… and finding something I want to specifically import. The same with the You Tube flake I set uop. I would want student sto view a spcific video, but I could get in trouble with them watching other things, I allow in the page, because there is no way to limit the feed to one video.

I tried to sign up for my email, and put in my gmail account and triple checked the email address and the password and I keep getting a pop up or open flake that says there is an error and something is worng.

I did set up the weather, a new set of photos from Flikr and a You Tube flake. I deleted the schedule – and a few other things I didn’t think students needed to see.  lot of what is on here is surrounding my desk where I can actually see it anytime I need to. I cannot always be on or near my class computer.

I am so glad that I decided to take Web 2.0 in the summer instead of during the school year! A lot of information going down here and I am trying not to drown in it.

My experience with Googledocs was good and bad. I like the idea of being able to share ideas and get feedback from people but some of the work was frustrating. Creating a word dorcument and sharing was fairly easy. I asked my collaborators for comments on my 7th grade History course contract. But working in the presentation mode was very frustating. There were only 4 fonts to choose from. No way i could find to create backgrounds. The font size was very difficult and moody, sometimes it allowed me the size I requested and other times it skipped all over the place and I finally had to settle for something close to what I wanted.

As for uses:

• To help students collaborate on assessments so that group work can be done in and out of class. Students who are home sick or out of toen can catch up on what is going on with their partners.
• Working in teams with teachers – being able to send docs back and forth and edit them until we all get what we want; saves time and effort and a lot of running around.
• I would need to play with the spreadsheet, but I can see using it as a check in/signature from parents about various things connected with my class – they have read and now will sign the class contract; they have seen the rubric for a specific project and will help their child stay on task…

I am having trouble embedding the video from You Tube, so I hope this works. – It seems not to have worked so I am going to make a link the video described below.

I enjoyed moving through the site and finding a number of things I can use, oddly enough, in Bible. The one that I am attempting to embed will be very useful as a presentation of a very confusing chapter in Samuel, which I usually skip. But with the help of the video, I think the students will be able to visualize what happened.
I love to garden and I looked into a few of the how to gardening videos. Some were fun and useful and I will probably go back to them soon.
However, I was disappointed with Teach Tube. I looked around a bit but every time I tried to view a video, something got messed up. I wasn’t able to view anything and I tried a number of different videos and even tried logging off the internet and then getting back on.

I was a bit disappointed in the podcast assignment.  I went through the Grazr and checked out a few sites, I also went to Learn Out Loud and Skip the Tuition. I didn’t find anything that would be of use in my classroom, but I did download a lecture series from Stanford on a topic I like to learn about, 1st century Palestine and the historical beginnings of Christianity. It took a very long time to download, and only the first lecture downloaded -something happened while the others were doing so.

Learn Out Loud was very difficult to deal with, Itried to get audio on the podcasts a number of times, with no luck.

Skip the Tuition had a lot of listings, many for science, math and literature, not that many on history. As I said above, it took a very long time to download and the sound on the first lecture is not that great.

I found most of the podcasts boring – just listening doesn’t cut it for me, I am a visual learner. The sound was poor and the speakers did not have any concept of presentation, it was no different from sitting in a lecture hall being bored by a monotone lecturer.

The only use for podcats in my calssroom I can see so far is for differentiation. I know it would help some students a lot to be able to hear the text of their books aurally; an aid in their comprehension. I am not sure how to go about doing that and making it accesable to students, but I am sure our tech people can teach me.

I was a little disappointed in  this one; Library Thing did not interest me in the keast. I gave it a good two hours, not including the “tour” or any of the general introductory links. I searched three or four authros including Janet Evanovitch and Lewis Carroll and found either plot summaries or reviews, which I can get from other polaces. I would not want to list my own library, though I readily share my books with others.

I guess it is a good site for people who read tons of fiction. It gives them a chance to read the summaries and then participate in the Groups and Talks. But I found those disappointing as well – and many of them contained really poor grammar.

This is not a program I woiuld sepnd time on in my classes, or at home. I might occassionally use it to read a plot summary or a review of a book I have heard about.

I am still trying to decide which I like better to create folksonomy – Delicious or Simply Box. During our week off, I explored Simply Box a little and started to create boxes. There are a number of things I like about but some things I don’t – like OI hav to go to the webpage to access all the information.

Delicious is a little more on the ball – I can access the entire website when I clicked to it. I like and used the tags others put up to research and find useful sites. I copied all the siotes into Simply Box and delicious and figure I will eventually deicde which i want to use with my students.

I can see using this for an on line textbook, where I can send students to a number of sites to compare and contrast intformation then do some writing.

I will continue to compile information.