Thing 23

We're finished already? Hey, what was Thing 1 .... no, seriously, I have to click back to the outline because I have lost track of time, place, and Things.
I am very grateful for the 23 Things journey. I hope I can continue to access the 23 Things website so I can review topics, how-to directions, etc. I don't know if learning this has been hard due to the function of my age, coupled with multi-tasking through personal issues, as well as (of course as all of you had to) taking care of what enabled me to take this journey - my role as teacher, and juggling with taking care of The Main Thing which is Family.
I feel slightly less overwhelmed by all of it but having said that I know we just barely scratched the surface. I do feel more confident from tackling Web 2.0 tools. Some of the confidence sort of hit me when I realized I have some "street credit" on the technology scene from my 8th graders when word got out that I had a blog. Hah, I was emanating coolness as I explained to some of them what a "wiki" was.
The digital world is such a huge part of this generation that I know we have to find the time to incorporate it more into our teaching. Since they are so hooked into it I think I need to take more steps to incorporate it into their learning and into my teaching topics. Web 2.0 tools are a perfect living backdrop that becomes more than that when woven into teaching. Students love to use Wikipedia so much that I think it will be easy to use that enthusiasm into making our own wikis on project topics.
Personally, I think since many of the tools are collaborative they fit ideally into family projects of recording family history and those special stories that make up each and everyone's family culture. I was able to share with my own children some of the 2.0 tools and passing on the stirring videos. Now when I see a video I love I immediately think: How can I share it?
I still feel some frustration with embedding widgets into my website space on the school's website (we use schoolwires). I have to seek some help from some staff members who are already overloaded to show me what I may be doing incorrectly. And since I see the power of using many of those widget gadgets to hook kids (eg, checking what's new on my web site) I am more impatient to explore doing that.
I am even more grateful that my son decided to give us the resources to replace our 10 year old PC and appreciative that I somehow took that leap and decided (while shopping alone for the new PC) to go with the more expensive Quad core processor (against the salesman's advice!) . I can appreciate the technology needed for these new apps. The computer at school was so slow and loading the pages with errors on them which really slowed me down.
I can't believe that nearly 10 weeks have gone by. I began needing my daily or weekend fixes of exploring the Things - and exploring the digital world beyond my material "here and now".
My head had been really spinning with some of the Things but however frequent my tangents and side trips were with those Things - and it seems almost like an oxymoron - I now feel ever more grounded than before.
Here's my salute to keeping my head (most of the time) - Avril's version of Alice:

Thing 22

My Wiki space - in so many ways is still under construction. But isn't that the thing with wikis anyway. They are a space with a topic that is really in perpetual construction?
Anyway the space: The title is Thriving Tips for First Years+. Or that is the title I wanted to give it but somehow I navigated from that site and didn't know how to get back. So I don't know where one would see that title but at any rate if you click on the link hopefully you'll get there. It's a simple topic but something I hope to have fun with as well as you others who'll have lots of tips. What I wanted to do was create another page for Veteran Teachers whose theme would be tips to staying on top of our game. But maybe that should be a separate wiki space.
Wiki's sure are different from blogs! A wiki should be a changing, evolving document with a life of its own who is basically ruled by its theme (ok, a little bit by the editor). Additions are quite anonymous. Although it has an editor its personality can evolve almost like a separate entity. But I see a Blog as being possibly more heterogenous. You have the foundation but its more like a tree with main branches but some are grafted on, and to a point can be quite a hybrid mix of ideas. Okay, I don't know what I am talking about. I think it's time for me to sign off and think about this more.l

Thing 21

I am really scratching my head about this wiki thing. I clicked on many of the wikis I can see their use in collaborative efforts definitely, long distance communication and work - especially if collaboration, etc can take place between classrooms in other cities, states, countries. Some of the wikis showed that (between a class in New Zealand and NY). But one wiki I was surprised not to find was one where teens can share experiences, ways to deal with divorce issues, etc -maybe I missed it, but I went to D for Divorce, and to T (read TeenTalk). With fewer social workers in schools due to cut backs, I thought that a wiki for Teen issues might be useful.
I checked out Teacherknowledge from U of M's school of Education and was disappointed - it enticed me with the word "science" in the one line description. One of the things downloaded on the site was a Dutch site whose applets were supposed to have been useful. I can't imagine kids seeing that and expecting to not be frustrated by it. The language barrier would be too distracting.
I definitely appreciated the wikis for writing stories.

Thing 20

Again, this Thing started easy but I quickly got lost in the rabbit hole.
I was frustrated for longer than I care to admit when I attempted to download Quicktime software. It seemed that I was downloading it successfully and then when I would try to listen to a podcast I'd get a message that I was missing a plugin. Well, somehow finally I got a message to run a repair program and that caused Quicktime software to download correctly.
At any rate, when I tried EPN I went for the science topic podcasts. "This Week in Science" looked entertaining enough due to its annotated title I saw after clicking on it: "Kick--s Science". The podcast was informative at times (I tried their most recent cast), I liked their entertaining delivery - it's more suited for private listening or adult listening due to references to the hosts' alcohol consumption and at times adult language, but overall it seemed too long. Admittedly, I am not accustomed to podcasts but I am disappointed that they don't have the length of the cast listed. As I skimmed through the other podcast themes (science and others) I noticed that the lack of time length listing is de rigeur for the EPN site. Nova's E=mc2 drew my attention when I saw Dr. Neill deGrasse Tyson's name (anything he says, I find interesting and entertaining - watch him on the Jon Stewart and Colbert shows). The Nova podcast is no more than 3 minutes long. I can see subscribing to both of those. I did prefer the organization and look of PodCast Alley. After trying Comedy (disappointing) I went to Environment and liked a few of them, in particular, EnvironMinute would be cool to use in class once a week for a quick science current event discussion. I would recommend More Hip than Hippie for an entertaining listen for outside of the classroom (I gotta buy an Ipod for those road trips to Philly so I can listen to all of this!). Brain Science with Dr. Ginger Campbell is fascinating - check out the first one about Alzhiemer's and an older one about the Teen Brain.
Just to completely veer off the science path I tried the music topic and was happy to find a brass band podcast as well as a cello one (Cello Journey) my favorite parts of the orchestra. I subscribed to both of the those podcasts using Bloglines. I liked the idea of having one location for all of the feeds but I ended up using Itunes for the podcasts I downloaded from the Itune store. I couldn't figure out how to download Itune podcasts to Bloglines. But that's ok. Doing that I discovered the free radio stations on Itunes - the relaxation ones are really nice. The nice feature with the Itune podcasts is that they list the length of the cast. By the way, College Humor podcast is hilarious - had to get that one. The NPR Friday Science is worthwhile as well. Wow, what an evening!

Thing 19

The podcasts that interested me had to do with wind turbines and CO2 sequestration. I had given articles on each of those topics for my students to read when we dealt with alternative energy. The podcasts I found were short enough to use in class and are good stand alone spots of information and excellent sources of follow up or even as prefaces to the articles I gave them. I thought it may be timely to show as a follow up for my students since Earth Day is coming up. So those two video casts I found on Science Fridays. Here are the links: this one is about wind turbines, comparing individual residential sized turbines to gigantic ones that supply thousands of homes:

Wind Turbines: Size Matters

The next one is about carbon dioxide sequestration:

Stashing CO2 In Rocks

Science Fridays - I would definitely subscribe to it.
I also liked Scientific American's 60 -sec podcasts, especially meaning useful to my classroom were

Engineered Virus Harnesses Light to Split Water

We will be studying light soon and they have studied the four ways that all waves may interact with objects and absorption is one of those ways.

Thing 18 : the sequel

This is just because it is so beautiful and it would be even more relaxing to set to music. Great to have playing when kids walk into class - just for something different every once in a while. Does any one know why some of the slide shows who supposedly have music - there'll be a message to wait for the music to start - but there is no music bar underneath the slide show and the music never does play- does anyone know what's going on with that?

The beauty of nature

View more presentations from renny.

I like the photos in the slide show - but the music not so much, but it's okay.

The Beauty Of Nature

View more presentations from Ali Tamay.

This next one, I like for the close-up shots of the flowers. Okay, again I teach CPO physics but with spring blooming everywhere I think it's neat to bring into the classroom and talk about flower parts and reasons for the flower.

The Beauty Of Nature

View more presentations from LEFKOILYKOI.

Okay, I am getting much too wrapped in in this. But I am getting very excited about this Thing 18 - I can't wait to try it in class.

thing 18

Although I don't teach Earth Science I think these two slide shows would be interesting to show at the beginning of class for some "Current Science in the News" type of format. I like to have a short conversation at least several times a week in class for students to appreciate that science happens everyday and impacts them everyday. I am really excited about "Slideshare" since it will allow me to do that in a very visual and more interesting way.

Iceland - Volcano 2010

View more presentations from John J.

What Are Volcanoes And Why Do They Erupt

View more presentations from rsander.

Thing 17

I tried the bubble.us since it seemed that I could use it in class. Have kids do Concept maps or webs instead of traditional linear note-taking. Well, I couldn't figure out how to use the site. There was no video or tour of the site. I gave up.
I checked next the Zoho site since my students create Powerpoints. I thought this might be a good substitute for Microsoft's Powerpoint program for several reasons. 1) Not all students have it on their home computer. 2) Zoho makes it easy to work on the project at home then come to school, log onto the site and add slides - I wouldn't have to hear the refrain that "I didn't email the work to my student account" 3) They can easily work collaboratively with another student on one project.
4) They may not have the same version of Powerpoint and it may not open on the school's computer.
I signed up for it, got the verification, and started on my merry way exploring the program, making a sample show, being a little stymied on the look of the program, etc when I saw that I could see a "2.0" tour of the site. Then something went very wrong and the site would change to my account and it didn't do what I thought it would - basically, give me a quick tutorial.
I am not that tech patient or savvy for all of these apps to be intuitive.
I was excited about the Knowtes site but then disappointed that it is shutdown!
I will log on that Zoho site and see if I can figure it out though. I can see tremendous use of a free presentation site for students in the classroom.

Thing 16

I love Google Docs! I wish I had it when my five children were asking me for help in editing their various college papers and college application essays. We as a family could have really made a party of it - just kidding. I was just able to retrieve an old document based on a son's college assignment that had to do with a personal family immigration story and share it easily for the first time with all of my children. Reading it again, I can see that my children can expand on it by asking questions and those answers that we'd have to research would really enrich it.
I can see a use for it in the classroom especially if students are collaborating on a project or even a lab report. If I had the lab document (questions etc,) saved on Google docs then they'd be able to work on it together. The challenge still is how much collaboration do I want them to do? If I can save a document (by scanning it) so can the student if they have access to a scanner. I think I still am not cognizant of the level of cheating that can occur. If a student is a poor writer but can scan a framework of a paper and the criteria that need to be covered in that paper then another student can more easily contribute to it and then how can cheating be proven?
I love that spread sheets can be made and accessed and groups can contribute to it. That is a powerful application of the tool. One can have a science experiment where groups are averaging in other participating schools' data. That sends the experience of doing trials to a different level.

Thing 15

Wow! I had to go back and find Thing 5 to get reminded how to add "Sub with Bloglines" since I was missing that button on my home computer. Funny thing is it seems that after I added that button on the school computer and finished Thing 5 long time ago, I then wondered as time passed, "What the heck is that button for?". Good thing for Thing 15 since it gave me an excuse to reflect and relearn Thing 5. One thing I am proud of is that part of Thing 15 where we learn how to prune and organize (if needed) the feeds. I actually learned to do that on my own when doing Thing 5 originally - it was easy and almost intuitive - what an ego boost - I feel more techie already!
We were suppose to check our feeds?? I sort of forgot all about them and that the feeds continue to feed in without any more doing on my part. Just now when I checked them and pruned them I realized- three hours later that reading the feeds and skimming them to keep up with them is almost as good as reading a good book before bed ... or disastrous if you find yourself even more wide awake at midnight on a school night.

Thing 14

Oh boy - I just about went against my own advice. I am in danger of losing my head over playing this game of "tagging". There must be a way that it will increase my productivity but right now I am overwhelmed. I have quickly tried to tag sites that I can use later but in getting the 10 sites I had to view so many and discard quite a number that I thought would be either too complicated for my classroom (8th grade physics) or too complicated to benefit my understanding of the physics topic. I feel that I need to spend a lot more time going over the sites I did choose and weed away at them. I did fall instantly in love with the skateboard science site and I hope to find more on that topic that are even better. See for yourself: my Delicious user name is danuta.danko
Oh, one big issue I am having is that whenever I have tagged a site it is now on my tool bar. I really have no reason to see it and it's really getting cluttered up there. Does anyone know why it's doing that (cluttering up the toolbar) whenever I "Tag"?

Thing 13

Social bookmarking - I feel like I am decluttering and spring cleaning already! I am not an intuitively organized person. So you may guess correctly that on my school computer I have several hundred "favorite" bookmarks. And none are organized into folders. So yes, it usually is quicker for me to find it all over again in Google. This social bookmarking will probably enable me to get rid of all of those bookmarks instead of spending time organizing them at the end of this school year (as I had promised myself, yet again). So I am saving time already! The only think troubling me is that it'll probably take me a while to effectively think of the best tags. But I think that will come with practice and taking clues from how others tag theirs, like the article on effective tagging said. I'll probably be reading that article for a third time...

Thing 12

Since we're about to start studying sound waves I thought this bat widget was perfect. Now I hope I can figure out how to paste it on my webpage. The kids would be so surprised. How cool. But how do I get rid of the ads without paying the fee? I just had trouble adding text after I embedded the widget. The added reflective comments would not show up. However, I do see them in the draft and they are sort of "stuck onto" the widget code. Does anyone know what's going on?

Thing 11

Posting comments on others' blogs is a little scary - my ego sometimes gets in the way - I don't want to come off sounding trite, trivial or inane. However, I get excited seeing that there was a comment posted - it's a validating feeling and especially if one is on the pc at 12:30, suddenly it doesn't seem so inanimate or that these typewritten words or just dying in a the void of a vacuum somewhere. At the same time, it can feel a little unfulfilling if its a conversation that I want to continue - like right away because I have a stream of questions that came up due to the other person's comments. However, I love feeling that sense of cyber-community, riding that Cyber-Wave!
The comments I have received have served to keep the curiosity alive and keep exploring for even better videos and to seek better ways to organize them. Actually, blogging and commenting serve really to make "all of this" less overwhelming.
Students will take to it quickly and enthusiastically as really evidenced by their attraction to texting, IMing, and their participating in social sites like Facebook, etc. Blogging taps into their need for social contact and validation. However, I also see that we can't be surprised if we see versions of "cyberbullying" rearing its head and be prepared to deal with it.

Thing 10

I was not able to download videos using Keepvid or PWNYoutube. I am working on this at school and both sites were blocked. However, I was successful using Zamzar. Although it is easy to use, I don't like the lag time that it takes. I first tried a very small cute Sesame street video (letter W for water, wind, waves and wet - since I am on this wave unit in science) that is short and not a large file at all. It took about a 1/2 hour for me to receive the email that I could download. It took longer to receive a slightly larger file - the surfing video (biggest wave ever surfed). I have yet to try the Bill Nye wave video song. The resolution does not seem to be as good as projecting the video from Youtube directly.
I don't know how I am supposed to be adding comments to the video I imbedded. Maybe I am misinterpreting what I am to be doing: Am I to submit comments about this video on my blog or to the Youtube site where I am found the video (which I already had for the previous Thing)?
One thing I'd like to know (and I haven't looked ahead so maybe it's one of the Things we'll learn to do yet) is that since I can see me accumulating quite a few of these downloaded videos to enhance the units, I need to be able to organize them and make them easily accessible from my computer. My desktop is getting quite cluttered!

Wave videos and a wave song to sing from Bill Nye

The two videos are very different. I love Bill Nye science songs and this one, on waves is especially entertaining as well as educational. The other video shows a person surfing on a 85 foot wave, purportedly and believabley the largest wave ever surfed (successfully). It's jaw-dropping and almost frightening if one has ever surfed or been pulled into an undertow.

Thing 9

I was disappointed with Schooltube and Teachertube. The videos were boring - at least for the subject matter (waves) that I was hoping to find for class. I hit the jackpot with Youtube. It is not blocked for teachers in our school. I easily found Bill Nye song videos on that topic. I found surfing wave videos I can use purely for entertainment for the students, as well.
The only issue with Youtube is one definitely has to be prepared to preview videos and have them preselected and downloaded so as not to get any inappropriate videos being advertised on the right side of the screen.
Taylor Mali made me laugh with his poetry about girls lending pens and made me cry when he talked about his wife(is it really true?!) jumping to her death.
He is a most talented man. If that story is true I hope and wish for his healing.

Thing 8

Okay, this was more fun than I have had in a long time on a Saturday evening. Talk about being caught in a time-free zone. I can see huge possibilities with the "motivator" maker http://bighugelabs.com/motivator.php as well as the
captioner and poster maker on Big Huge Labs. (Ok, now that's frustrating, the link insert button does not want to cooperate and insert the link so I just copied and pasted link and it's not coming up as a hyperlink. I don't know what I am doing incorrectly but if anyone out there has advice please HELP)
Those applications, however, were very easy to use. I could use them to make posters of scientists for the month's theme (Black History, Women's History, etc). I am very psyched about this, since I am disappointed in the offerings from the local teachers' store. Students can create probably more interesting things than I can. So they would even be more geeked. What a way to illustrate vocabulary words! The memory game was addictive on the Flickr memory However, at this moment, I am frustrated since the link button is not posting the links as I have copied and pasted. I was frustrated with the Image Generator since for me, at any rate some of the applications were difficult to use and not intuitive. I sure could have used one of those wonderful tutorials like we had on how to use blogger, etc. Trading Cards Maker was a disappointment to me since that application would have been the most useful but I could not get it to work satisfactorily and I had to learn by trial n error that I needed to become a member to make it work at all. Plus, there were no directions if one wanted to center the person's name (I just hit the space bar until I thought it was centered. Again, a tutorial video would have been most helpful.
Danuta

Thing 7

Flickr opens up another huge source to add a visual dimension in teaching concepts and vocabulary. I am very excited to try this. I could put together sets of photos to show certain vocabulary. I am hoping that Flickr makes it easy to put together a slideshow.
One of the issues that I can see coming up is that it may be time-consuming at first - because there is such a huge variety of photos to surf through, and I tend to overthink my choices. The other issue is to be wise and choose what can never be deemed inappropriate photo choice.
Danusia

Thing 6

I decided to search for photos using the keyword,waves. Choosing this as a topic was tough - it took me over an hour of looking and being mesmerized by photos before snapping myself out of this reverie. I am an 8th grade science teacher and we just started the wave unit. So I was thinking I could use this in class. I loved many of the wave subject photos however, I made myself choose these three not necessarily because they were my favorite - which they weren't, but because they showed different characteristics of a wave. The Cirrus clouds have a wave pattern with a crest and a trough. I could even talk about cycles and frequency if I set up some artificial parameters. The crashing, breaking water wave seems to show a nice amplitude with some energy. Lastly, the waves made by an object dropping into the fluid show a property that oan occur with water waves where the energy spreads out in equal directions.
Danuta

Thing 5

Wow! I am seriously addicted to finding and reading blogs. Take the warning of the video presenter seriously when he said this. I had to force myself to stop just now. It was overwhelming as well as empowering since I found many helpful blogs for personal and professional applications. I felt like I was really part of a larger community. It's sort of a paradox since one is sitting by oneself reading these blogs in isolation but the feeling is as if one is not by oneself. It is definitely a freeing experience for me. Time limits: set them up - you'll need them. Another surprising thing for me is that many sites of interest to me didn't have RSS feeds.
Danuta

Thing 4

I can really appreciate the concept of the "Reader". I find that it's similar to bookmarking my favorite sites (like at school where I find that I need to bookmark sites for science) but now I can receive updates from my favorite sites. I like the idea of organizing them (which I still have to do with my favorite sites at school - I am not good with this whole idea of "organizing"). So far I am finding it easy to do. I like the tutorials - easy to follow. I am trying to do all of this at school due to small grandkids at home who wouldn't understand why I can't play with them but I am having trouble with school computer in that it loads pages but with an error message so it seems I can't comment on people's posts unless I try multiple times. I have learned to save everything I post before hitting the "publish post" thing or else it may disappear!!
(Like they just did now when I got a message of "Error" after clicking publish post)
Danuta

Thing 3 Reflections

I am hoping that blogging may end up being another learning modality that will reach more students that otherwise may not have been clicked with. I am thinking that I'd first use a blog format to have students comment, reflect on their own work and thereby they would influence the work of other students, especially when they are working on a project. So in effect, this would end up being a form of presenting their work with more reflection on their part. However, I think they would respond with wariness and hesitation since it would be interpreted as more work to be completed on their part and another deadline to be met. I have great frustration in having them log on to my website to get vital information. They are 8th graders and still just want to email me their questions - even as general as - I was sick, did I miss anything?. So my cynicism as in regards to their blogging is my concern, as well as parental concerns as to their child's internet safety since they may regard this blogging as internet chatroom thing that they hear about on the news. So I would first have to educate the parents as to what the blogging is and what it entails.

But it's feeling like it'll explode from Things 2 and 1

Thing 1 and Thing 2 – the topic sounded innocent enough, sort of reminiscent of Dr Seuss’s mischievous Things 1 and 2. But very quickly I went from “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” feeling to one, more like Alice in Wonderland going down the hole and observing the Queen yell, “Off with her head”. Well, I want to keep my head but I also want to keep the heads (brains) of the 8th graders engaged. The Time article and the video very powerfully made their point that we need to use the technology that is so much a part of the students’ lives. However convincing the video (accompanied by an even more stirring musical background), I was ambivalent by the principal’s quote used to rationalize using cell phones and podcasts for instruction – “If you can’t beat em’, join em’”. I wouldn’t have used that as an argument for any action that I would want to take, especially one that may have so much power.
I took this class because I need to learn more technology: I can’t say that it is to keep up with technology since I feel so techno- illiterate. I am happy to say that I can see already an application of cell phone use in a similar way as that suggested by the video – to use it for a survey and then expanding the results into a large point. I could see my students (after school) texting students in other schools, rural, urban, other states, in connection with a science project during Black History month. My students have researched African American scientists from a list I provided. They prepare a list of a dozen scientists after skimming through 100’s. After doing preliminary research on the dozen they then choose one to research more in depth. Invariably, they question why they are researching African American scientists and not Caucasian or simply any scientist and I say that if I asked them to visualize a scientist that most would see only white and male. So I would like them to get an answer to their question of me by texting other students and asking other students in other communities if they can name any African American scientist and their accomplishment. I know that this is not quite the same as the visualization I mentioned earlier but I think that although they can’t name more than a couple of white scientists that when faced with the evidence of African American scientists (and their life stories) that they may then visualize scientists differently.
Now how would I contend with all of their cell phone roaming charges?