Thing #14

I could not wait to write a post about what I learned looking through these wikis! I have been hearing the word wiki for about a year now and no one ever explained to me what they were so I pretty much wrote the term off as just another computer thingy that I will probably never use. After reading about them and looking through some of the examples given to us, I am thrilled to learn about them. I can already imagine so many uses for wikis both for the students and for me as a teacher. First, I would love to organize a project where the whole grade level does an author study and each class could create projects for different books by that author to share on the wiki. Students could even collaborate amongst the grade level not being tied to only the other students in their own class. The wiki SaluteToSeuss - home is a perfect example of this use of a wiki. Also, I would think that teachers could collaborate/plan together with their own or other grade levels using a wiki. This would allow input among the various teachers. On my campus, the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers have been attempting to communicate with each other better in order for us to assist each other in helping students prepare to use skills taught more effectively.

I loved the ability to basically reach out to the entire world using a wiki. The following wiki is used by students to post questions that they formulate. Then, their goal is to receive 1000 responses- Monsonclassroom Wiki - home. This would open up a whole new world of possibilities for students to get different perspectives on a problem or question.

Another interesting and fun wiki was schoolsthen - home. This wiki allowed students to interview parents/grandparents and compare/contrast schools from their youth to current schools. What an update to the old-fashioned Venn diagram idea!

Students can really benefit from reading others' ideas about a difficult concept such as "What is a utopian society?" This wiki- The Discovery Utopias - home lets students work together to create a conceptual utopian society. Students can compare their idea of a perfect world to the ideas of others and get completely different perspectives on the same idea.

All in all, even if I had a hard time setting up a wiki of my own, there are so many great ones out there already that I'm sure I could find one for my students to participate in. The wiki Home - Primary Math looked easy to manipulate and might make for a perfect start for a beginner like me. I really want to play around with this tool more now that I am seeing all the possibilities.

Thing #13

While I get the gist of this capability of tagging, I am still a little confused about it. I went in and set up my delicious account and I had a little trouble at first. Finally, I did get it done and I played around with searching different tags. I found this capability very interesting. But, other than just placing these sites in a category instead of just having them bookmarked, I'm not sure what the difference is other than the sharing part. I also noticed that to keep something from being shared, you had to check "do not share." I thought that should default the opposite way. That way, I wouldn't accidentally put something out there that I didn't mean to. As I said, I admit that I am still confused about this tool so I feel as if this post may not make sense to some. But, I am doing this task the only way I know how and that is honestly and with my best effort.

My initial search was "2nd grade centers." This brought up all kinds of stuff and some very neat websites. I then changed my search to 2nd grade literacy centers. A couple of those, I tagged as literacy centers. Then, I looked up online educational games. This was where I found the two sites that I tagged misd23things. I figured that might be useful to some of us since we are trying to incorporate more technology into our classrooms. There were a lot of sites that I had never heard of but that seemed good.

It was pretty cool when I tagged the couple of sites as misd23things and it showed up immediately on the Wiki(?) page. It was neat to see what everyone else had shared. This particular "thing" just hasn't quite kicked in fully with me yet but I am going to play around with it some more and hopefully will get a better understanding of it as I do so.

Thing #12

I was amazed by all the tools that are apparently available to us. I realize that the list given to us to explore was just a tiny sampling of what's out there and that is just mind-boggling! Several of the tools were interesting to me and seemed relatively simple to use. First, I was immediately drawn to Mixbook http://www.mixbook.com . Using Mixbook, you can create your own interactive books using photos or artwork. I could just see endless possibilities for this both in the classroom and personally. I can see putting students' original stories/illustrations online for parents to see. The tool also allows the capability to create a printed version of the books. I can also imagine using mixbook to chronical the process when we do science projects or other types of ongoing projects throughout the year. This would be such a great addition to the whole process and something that students and parents would love!

Next, I looked at Quizlet http://quizlet.com/ This was a very neat tool where you can find pre-made online flashcards and games and you can create your own. I pulled up the game called "scatter" which was a multiplication facts game. On the screen were various equations and answers all mixed up. As you pulled the answers over to the correct equations, the equation and answer would disappear from the screen. This was a timed activity so students could basically compete against themselves to achieve automaticity in solving the equations. I thought this would be very useful to help kids prepare for quizzes but also just as a fun center activity or something they could even pull up at home if they had internet access.

I also looked at Blabberize http://blabberize.com and Letterpop http://letterpop.com/. Blabberize allows you to turn photos into talking cartoons. I could not get it to work on the sample page but it seemed like a fun tool to use. Letterpop interested me because it is used for creating newsletters, scrapbooks, and flyers. All of these things could be useful in the classroom and the scrapbook would also be fun to use personally to create a memory book from a vacation or just a family scrapbook that could be shared online with relatives.

I did wonder about the capability of using these tools in the classroom, though since you have to register for them with an e-mail account. I didn't know how many of them would actually be easily accessible given all the restrictions placed on our access by the school district. That would be my major concern.

Thing #11

Wow, this thing was very challenging but it was fun. I would love to use the mosaic with pictures of my students. I would be able to use this also when we study landmarks. We could put together pictures of various landmarks. The possibilities are just endless! I like the smiley face signs, also. That would be something that I could use to create simple directions and then print them out and post them at centers, etc. I had trouble putting the smiley face in my blog post because it saved it some way that was not allowing it to copy over. Again, I got help from my teen who used a little creativity to save it to a paint program and then copied it over. That is the kind of knowledge that I guess just comes with time and experience in using these different tools. When it didn't work for me I was ready to give up. I didn't even know what other options I could use. That is something that I am going to have to work on. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php

Thing #7a

I am doing this "thing" out of order because I can do it with no help! :) As I was looking through my reader, I found two things of interest to me. One was a post about the importance of building relationships with students. PreK Secret to Success: Give me relationship The writer of this post has a very informal voice and really does a nice job of discussing how important these relationships are to students and teachers. I love getting to know my students and showing an interest in their lives. My favorite thing is when we can have humor in the classroom. Most years, I have been fortunate to have classes that, for the most part, the students could engage in appropriate humor with me. Since I teach younger children, it takes some doing to make sure they understand there are limits and a time to "get serious." But when they and I can all enjoy the humor in a situation, it really seems to bring out a whole new side to them. I think it allows them to see another side to me, too and maybe it can serve to motivate them to want to work harder for me when they have to.

Another post dealt with textbooks and basically asked the question, "Are textbooks obsolete?" Are Traditional Textbooks Dead? I, for one, certainly hope they are not. While I think that technology certainly complements the value of textbooks, it should not replace them. I hope there will always be a need and desire for real, physical books that we can touch and feel. I know that with new hand-held devices we can pretty much take virtual books anywhere we can take traditional books, but scrolling down a tiny screen is just not the same as turning the pages of a book. Browsing in a bookstore among aisles of books and other people just can't be replaced by surfing the internet alone.

A lot of the other items that were in my reader seemed to me to very intellectual in nature and a lot of it just doesn't seem relevant to me. I will need to spend more time looking around and finding items that I think can benefit me.

Thing #10

To create this slideshow, I used Rockyou. I have to admit, I needed a LOT of help on this "thing." Thank goodness my own kids know a lot more about this stuff than I do! Anyway, it was very fun to select and arrange the photos I wanted to use. I wish I felt more comfortable doing this on my own because I think it would be very useful in the classroom and would get students' attention. I guess I will keep working to get better at using this kind of thing.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/glow__nouf/3606355263/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/justabiggeek/2678946763/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundilfari_gjk/2760703981/


Small Taste of Summer by pxlpusher
feel the summer by kalandrakas
day 141_summer sundays by anitacanita
Summer by adwriter
Summer is Waning by Storm Crypt

Thing #9

Ok...I really loved playing around in Flickr! First of all, I love photos and the fact that there is this huge collection out there that I can use is awesome! I especially liked being able to weed out the ones I could use through creative commons. The theme I chose is (surprise!) SUMMER! I just absolutely love the summer and there were some very creative photos linked to that tag. I am still having trouble getting the pictures in this post so I will come back and add to this post later. I can see how my students could use flickr when doing stories and research projects. Last year, I looked all over the internet for photos of various types of insects when we did our research/science projects. This would be a great thing to use for that.
As you can see, I have come back in and added the pictures. I had trouble getting them to go where I wanted them. I used layout, but I still didn't really understand how to get the pictures to go where you want them exactly. Oh, well, I guess I will just have to play around with this and practice some more to get the hang of it!

Photo credits: Small Taste of Summer by pxlpusher , feel the summer by kalandrakas , day 141_summer sundays by anitacanita ,Summer by adwriter, Summer is Waning by Storm Crypt