Sunday, July 25, 2010

Thing #23!!!!

Wee hee!! I finished! (NOTE: My entries are slightly out of order--I am still waiting for thing #20 to finish upload, but I am leaving for a 2-week vacation tomorrow and must finish this tonight--sorry!)
1. FAVORITE DISCOVERIES: LibraryThing (I'm crazy about reading communities and hope to turn each one of my classes into one this year) and Photo Story (I will no longer be content to post pics on fb or snapfish--they must now be animated and have music to go along with them!!)
2. Wow, it's definitely made me less afraid of the multitude of things that are out there in the interwebs. I would use almost all of these in my classroom, but some are also things that I'll check on or update personally. I also like to know that if I do pick up a new hobby (which is something a lifelong learner would do), there will be a community out there to give me tips and support!
3. I was surprised both by how easy some things were and how difficult and/or time consuming others were...but that may have been a function of my computer and impatience more than the sites themselves. I was definitely surprised by how many great FREE things are out there that I could use in my classroom and that my students could have unfettered access too...but do I really want to be THAT available to my students? Which leads me to...what is the most effective way to use all of my new info? A thrilling prospect!
4. It took me a couple of "things" to feel that I was doing it correctly. Perhaps an intro page that gave the FAQs and THEN the "things" listed. However, this is a small point--overall I found it very easy to follow and I liked that our dates were flexible--I would never have been able to follow a weekly schedule this summer.
5. I would definitely participate; however, I think I'd have to do it during the summer...too much to do during the year and I would probably rush through a lot of this!
6. This professional development course provided me withg the resources and the confidence to explore and utilize a plethora of online learning opportunities.
7. Congrats to everyone else who finished--the blogs look great!

Thing #22

Ooh, ning for Teachers looks good! As a language arts teacher, I'm always looking for new ideas, feedback on lessons I have, or just a good, intellectual discussion on a poem, novel, or passage I'm teaching (or considering teaching). I love that with a site like this, I can have something that is professionally-based yet also "social," at least in the cyber-sense. I would definitely use this to throw ideas out there to teachers who are teaching the same thing as me. This is definitely one of those examples where the vast numbers of people and resources available on the internet can really make a positive impact in my day to day life. What a rich resource! In particular, I would use it to communicate with other AP teachers. I am on a listserv, but it is overwhelming and I have to wade through an awful lot of things that don't concern me or what I'm teaching. I like that I could lead this discussion but also weigh in on other people's ideas. Oddly enough, though, the first blog I clicked on was by a lady who was an educator but it was not something I would show my students in class...guess not everyone's using it for strictly professional purposes and there aren't as many filters on it as I thought...

Thing #21

I didn't expect to tear up during an online PD course, but...here's my story: (I've also included a link to youtube where I've posted it...the blogger took so long to upload and I'm not sure if it actually went through)...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l-Qk8FSDD8

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

HEART OF DARKNESS

HEART OF DARKNESS

Thing #20

I don't know how I've been completely unaware of Teacher Tube for so long--I love that I can find online resources that I know are acceptable! Our YouTube was unblocked this year, and with the ACTIVboard, I was able to find a number of outstanding things to help in the classroom--everything from an audio and visual playing of Tupac's "Dear Mama" to lectures on Donne to a clip of Liberace, who was referenced in a novel we read. It was fantastic! This year, I'd like to use clips to help me introduce some of our more difficult, dated novels, such as Heart of Darkness and Dickens. I think that the setting is so important in so many of the novels that we read, and that our students have such a hard time imagining it or placing themselves in that time or place. So, I searched for things to help with that. Here's what I found--it somehow wound up on another post. It's a "book trailer" created by a librarian in Laredo and I think it does a wonderful job of making the book seem creepy enough that students will be excited to start reading it.

I think one of the best things about YouTube/TeacherTube is that we now have a million clips at our hands to help illustrate or enhance what we're teaching. Our students are such visual and aural learners that it will so help them with what they're reading about, and we don't have to show entire films. Can't wait to use this throughout the year!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Thing #19

Cool site. I was immediately drawn to the "food" section, even though it has nothing to do with my classes. I checked out urbanspoon.com and Houston popped up, which was neat (and kind of Big Brother-scary--how do they know where I live?) I liked how they had things clearly listed and I also thought it was helpful that at the bottom, they had an aggregated list of recent food reviews from Houston publications. I looked at some of the other ones but found them slightly confusing; some of the "books" seemed to be nothing more than booksellers, and I now have my rollyo for that! :)
Not quite sure how I'd use this in the classroom; research again pops up, but I am not certain just how I could use it for that.

Thing #18

I am already a big fan of OpenOffice. I purchased a new laptop last year and didn't want to have to spend extra money on Microsoft Office, so I downloaded that and was very happy with it. We also have downloaded that software on our school computers (which has really thrown the kids off). I personally like OpenOffice and I have fewer issues with it than I did with Microsoft Office--what would happen is that our school computers would have outdated versions of it and our students would come in with the latest version and they'd either be unable to pull up their work or it would come up in wingdings or something. OpenOffice is able to seamlessly download different things.
I've worked with googledocs in the past and haven't been a huge fan. One thing I like is that, since I have a google account (my home "teacher" email is a gmail address), I can pull those docs up quickly. However, there was something about them, and I don't know if it was the organization of them or other aesthetics, but I just wasn't as comfortable with them. I still would rather use something like this than have to bow to the Bill Gates monopoly, and it is helpful with students who also have google accounts, as there are, once again, no formatting issues.

Thing #17

Rollyo...oh, how this working mother now loves thee...I find myself constantly looking at the same pages to compare prices, find availability, etc. In my class, I can't tell you how many times I try to look up information on or availability of novels, so I created a searchroll that contains the top sites I use to research that. I searched for a book that I've been dying to read:
http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=let+the+great+world+spin&sid=635458&x=0&y=0
This is a neat function; I will be able to make more customized ones when I get back to school and continue my planning throughout the year. I like that I can save these and then go back and add sites. Very cool.

Thing #16

Wikis--Well, I now have tags, diigo, wikis...I feel like I am in an entirely new profession with all of these new names! Wikis are cool; as I said in my post, I just joined one that was recently set up for AP Lit teachers. On it, we can add, edit, and share various documents to help one another with planning and teaching. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into, but this "thing" helped me figure it out. There are a few ways I could use this with my students. One way would be to do a neat creative-writing thing, and have them keep adding on to things (sometimes I'll have them re-write the ending of short stories so that would work well). It could be valuable to help them with peer editing and proofreading or with just a general conversation online, regarding books they are reading, have read, etc.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Thing #15

First of all, I really found the video interesting. It made me think about how I am preparing my students for college and the real world. I plan on showing this to my students when we start to work through the college essay/application in the fall. I think it would open up a great discussion of goals for the year and the future, as well as get a good discourse started on "why do we bother learning this stuff?"
There were many things I agreed with in the perspectives that I hadn't thought about before. I am saddened by what will certainly one day be the loss of books and libraries as we now know them, but a few of the ideas I read about made me feel a little better about it. One thing was mentioned in "Into a New World of Librarianship," when the author stated that Library 2.0 "makes the library a social and emotionally engaging center for learning and experience." This made me think about the ideas on commenting found in one of the earlier "things"--the fact that many people are able to express themselves more openly and honestly online, oftentimes because of anonymity or an alias. While that does have some negative side effects, I suppose this is one very positive aspect of that trend. People can connect with one another from great distances and relay information very rapidly. I can't help but be happy with that. However, I am concerned about the fact that there is soooo much information out there--how will we able to determine its reliability or not? I suppose the end of Chip Nilges's perspective answered that somewhat when it talked about specialized databases and the indexing of information. I'm interested to see some of the policing that I believe will eventually have to be included in the online world. I also wonder where schools will find the money for the materials and training, and how long it will take to make technology something that everyone will use to enrich and present their information to students, not just use it to make things look prettier or more professional, which is what sometimes happens when technology is only used superficially. I think our school libraries would benefit greatly from adding more technology asap, to really help prepare our students for the world they will be entering in the next few years.

Thing #14

I don't know if I was searching in the wrong place or something, but I couldn't manage to find anything for "School Library Learning 2.0" on the Technorati.com site. I found the site a little overwhelming, to be honest. I would love to use it for some type of research purpose, but there is so much there that I'd be worried that my students would lose their focus and click on all sorts of other places, leading them to blogs that are entirely unrelated to what they need. Overall, I think I would talk to students about tagging things and stress how it could be particularly useful when they get to college--they'll be able to keep up with all of the information they'll need and be able to access it wherever they are.

Thing #13

I thought this was a great idea, once I figured out what it was! I signed up for Diigo, since I could use my google account to login. There are a number of ways I could use this with my students--set up collective bookmarks for their research papers, college applications and essays, links to the class blog, etc. Diigo has a special set-up for educators and I applied for that. Once I hear back from them, I can hopefully devise more specific uses for it. I like that this would be a place where students would be able to find information, but it wouldn't be something that I'd have to monitor on a daily basis, like email, since oftentimes, when I get home, I don't check my school or teacher email. I also want to set up a personal account under my personal gmail address, because I often find myself looking for sites that I have bookmarked on a specific computer. This would help solve my frustration! I love that I can set up my own tags for things, since I sometimes forget what I filed something under; this would cover all bases.
In terms of teachers and librarians using it, the obvious things that jump out are help for research. By giving students access to it, there is a great deal of student feedback, which would be good. Also, if a teacher were to assign something like a blog for each student to complete over a set period of time, this would be a nice, easy way to compile those sites together.

Thing #12

COMMENTING!
1. The points about commenting using an alias or real name were right on target. I attempted to start a blog last year in my class and I asked that the students respond using their real names, because I know that too many students are only too eager to make inappropriate, snide, or inane comments if they can hide behind anonymity, and I wanted to avoid all of that. Not sure how it worked, since the blog never really got up and running, but I will try it again this year! I also see how an alias would be helpful; I am on a couple of blogs that deal with parenting and life in general, and I think sometimes that being able to hide behind an alias makes people more comfortable with posting more personal questions/issues that they need help with, and I think that's a good thing. However, I strive every year to try to stress to my students that the internet can anonymity can breed all sorts of ills online!

Point #2, from "Cool Cat Teaching Blog": "You become part of the life of the blogger you are reading." Oh, heck yeah, and isn't this the reason that so many people blog and read those blogs? I have a girlfriend who has a blog about her life as a military wife who scrapbooks to save her sanity. Her blog is a great combination of her craft as well as her life experiences, and I've talked to her about how she has this big following now (it helps that she's a great, witty writer) and that others are so supportive of her during trying times or they feel like they know her even though they've never met. This is the beauty of the internet--we just have so much at our fingertips now and meeting people or staying in touch with others has never been easier. Reading this post makes me feel kind of guilty for reading so much online and commenting so infrequently!

#3. I am thrilled that we got this assignment, as it led me to an entire blog based on my favorite novel, AConfederacy of Dunces. This blog (on blogger, no less), goes through the novel, which is set in New Orleans, and attempts to find the notable landmarks. I am laughing hysterically as I read through it and it will definitely influence my next walking trip in NOLA! I was more than happy to leave a comment about some of the sites that he managed to hunt down and I forwarded the blog to a number of friends.
I also looked up a site that is dedicated to my neighborhood, and was able to comment on some alleged major construction that will soon be occurring a few blocks away from me. I was drawn to this site because I saw it listed as something on a neighbor's facebook page...so once again, technology begets more technology!

Thing #11

Library Thing--very cool site. I'm already a member of goodreads, which is a similar site and I've loved being on that, seeing what friends are reading and receiving good recommendations on it. It would be nice to have this separate account and encourage my students to join so that we could see what everyone is reading, what they like, etc. In AP English, my number one goal is to foster a love of reading, and this type of online community might help. Either way, my big readers would love it!
I actually prefer goodreads for my actual book list, as it's a less cluttered-looking page, but that is most likely due to me being more comfortable with that, having used it for awhile now. Browsing LibraryThing, however, I like their groups more--they seem more interesting and thoughtful--if it weren't for my schoolwork and outside life (ha!) this year, I'd totally join the 75 book challenge 2010!

Thing #10

I was excited to try the Custom Sign Generator and was looking forward to making a "World's Best Actress" sign for Lady Macbeth, but I had a hard time figuring out how to take out the wrestler picture that was already on the template, so, no go there. I then made a cute alien cartoon reflecting my feelings towards Wednesday (I wasn't particularly inspired that day). I LOVED Wordle and want to find some way to fit that into my classroom this year--maybe as some type of review; have the kids add the words, or give them the words and have them write about their significance or something. I definitely bookmarked that one. Here are links to my images:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2238011/AP_Novels_and_Authors

http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/creator.asp?title=The+Wednesday+Greens&text=Hump+Day--what+a+drag!&tag=July+19%2C+2010&fontsize=14&font=comic&color=black&move=&move2=&cartoons.x=146&cartoons.y=14&cartoon=1-eyed-monster&time=1652