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...