harlequinned20

Bitter sweet is what I would feel as I say “cheerio” to Shelly. I have really learned so much from this course. I have gone through every emotion from thinking it is easy, being overwhelmed, too busy, too tired, excited and challenged. You name it I have felt it! This course has a wide content and so much covered in a short space of time. The Bitter is that I will miss the pressure of having to blog about everything! The sweet is that I now have the habit of blogging! Well maybe!!

I am grateful that I had some prior experience with some of the ‘Things’, and there is a lot I will go back to. My hope is that I will be disciplined enough to go back and dig deeper into some. I have a better understanding of the things that I already knew. I think delicious delicious.com/katie_bennett , is a tool that will become well worn in my tool box. I have improved with Google reader and feel better about embedding video, podcasts etc. I am so glad to know more about wikis and love the idea of creating a classroom wiki. As Technology integrator I will encourage the teachers to have their students create one for their classrooms.

To continue learning and sharing is not just a goal it is a lifestyle. I hope to model the skills and experiences I have picked up along the way and I hope to be a role model to my peers and to our students for life long learning. This course and the content has shown me that although there is so much to choose from it is with a little extra knowledge that we can know enough to make some choice in the tools for us, for our toolbox and for our students.

I created a Ning network mostly as a test to see how it would look. I could see using this for networking with other teachers and it was simple enough to set up however, I am surprised that it will become a 100% pay only network in July. I don’t think this will be one I will pay for. As an educator it is usual that you would subscribe to a few other networks and possibly a few magazine subscriptions so by the time you add this all together it would be out of the budget!

I think I will be going back a few more times to Classroom 2.0. I have added it to delicious and I also joined the beginner group. I am waiting for approval so that I can put a comment out there. I have read some of the comments and it looks as though it really is a place where people respond. I noticed that a Spanish teacher had introduced herself and she has been receiving lots of comments. Hopefully making a few contacts. I have been a member of a discussion group from England for quite some time now and it has been very interesting following along. The teachers network and share ideas, even jobs before they are posted. It is for Drama teachers and so I mostly have enjoyed all the resources for plays, improvisation ideas, books and ways to assess drama students. It makes me feel as though I am in touch a little bit with England!

I have been using Google docs for a few years now. If it had not been for this tool then I would have spent a very long time at school last summer! I had volunteered to collaborate with another teacher and write the schedule. We started planning and working on it towards the end of the school year however, it was soon, very clear that it would continue into the summer. We put the document (Excel spread sheet)  up into Google docs and we often both collaborated and worked on it in our own living rooms. We often had instant messaging going as well! It was really cool to see the other person working in the document. I know there has been quite a few upgrades although, we had a little dissapointment when we exported it back down and tried to print. The formatting was all thrown off! Arrgh! We got through it and it still was worth the trouble. We knew then not to make it look pretty until we had brought it back down.  I do think this has changed though and I know that powerpoint is now much more compatible. I don’t think I will stop using Google docs both professionally and personally.

I have shared things with my husband through Google docs!  For the record, nothing too personal just an educational idea for him to show another teacher that he works with.

If you have seen me around school then you know I usually carry a big bag and a bunch of tools into each classroom. I met a man on an airplane recently on my way to NY and we discussed the recent charge for luggage. He was carrying a Kindle so I couldn’t help myself I had to ask if I could have a turn with it. He actually seemed excited to let me and then told me all about it. I want one! He explained that since he had this tool he now only carries a small bag back and forth to NY as he is living and working there all week and goes home on weekends. He has one of those computer jobs, you know, the kind we wonder what they do! He explained that he used to carry a suitcase full of manuals and reference books for his work and now he just uses the Kindle.
I have used quite a few of the tools now and have to say I want to keep playing and looking. I like edu.glogster.com and we have used it in class for quite a few projects. I also used a short clip that I made on zimmertwins as part of a presentation. I embedded it into a powerpoint .

I like youtube and have found it useful. I usually have found a video that I am using to show in class and if I embed it and it worked, great, otherwise I would move to it before I turn on the projector for the students to see it. It was a little scarey in case I was to show something they didn’t need to see. I was teaching a dance from Peru once for a global studies project. I found a video that showed the traditional Peruvian folk dancing. Right beside it was a clip showing a traditional dance with a very different meaning and not wearing much in the way of clothes!  

I enjoyed learning some more about youtube and I think quiettube will be great also. I will definately put it on my tool bar to use at school. TeacherTube has some good videos that are geared to education.

I really like the safety mode that you can add to a youtube find. I am sure I will use this also. I have added a video below that was taken this past Sunday at a Church event I attended. It is so nice to come home and the next day it is up on youtube.

I think pageflakes could be a very useful tool. I liked my google page and the calendar and the things I could personalize but pageflakes seems to have lots more to offer. I will spend some more time here to reorganize my page. It could be a tool that I use to make a news letter for my drama students. The fact that you can upload mixed media and it seems to be quite easy, and then share it would be a good way to show videos or photos perhaps? My only question that I think that I can answer once I got used to it, would be how do most people use this and why would I use this too over some of the others I already use now? I need to find a real need as there is so much to choose from.

I am interested in coming back to it and spending some time using it. I may even take another look while I eat my cornflakes!

I enjoyed watching the video and GETTING STARTED KEYNOTE The Wizard of Apps, from Joyce Kasman Valenza. (The Wizard of Apps or will they have an app for that.) Using students to present some really good ideas and thoughts about considering which apps are the most critical as they walk down the road together. The students presented a parody of The Wizard of Oz with the overriding theme of going on to college or where ever with their digital footprints. This video really made a number of valuable connection for me as I send my son off to college this fall. I will be asking him to see this video and see how he reacts.
The Theatre students made this video which I thought was a very good way to have fun while learning. I recently helped collaborate with the 6th grade as we worked on a project using cyber safety as the theme. Instead of giving them another lecture of what not to do, we had them working in groups and creating either a short video or a powerpoint of a public service announcement with a topic that they had chosen. We used the most popular themes that we as a class decided upon once we started discussing the general theme of cyber safety. It turned out that e mailing, social networking, online gaming and cell phones were the most popular topics of interest for these 6th graders. The videos and powerpoint presentations that they created were very good and we the teachers also learned as we went through the project with the students! It is amazing what you can learn from a 6th grader.
This video validated to me that this is exactly what we can do for our students as life long learners and 21 Century teachers/facilitators. Of course attribution is essential although sometimes quite a pain. Learning new tools is always good but it means you will actually use them if you make a connection with them. For students if they make a connection with them outside of school then the lesson is twice as important.
From this video, I could clearly see how important a digital footprint is going to be nowadays!
I will be back to this once I finish this course.

Albert and the Lion
I had some fun creating this in podbean. It was relatively easy to edit in garageband and the upload to Itunes library. When I converted it from a file in Itunes then I ran into a bit of trouble getting it converted. I couldn’t see how to change it to an mp3 file. It was easily converted to mpeg4 and this seemed to be ok. I do know in audacity it is quite easy to export to an mp3 file and so this was a surprise. Got through it though, and would say that it was quite easy.
If working with an entire class I would recommend that they first write a script to get the recording done. Also a good idea to practice with the students hearing their own voice a few times. You will be surprised how many children haven’t heard how thy speak!!

Over the past few school years I have worked with students on different podcasts and have had an entire year group create individual podcasts. I think they have a lot of value in the classroom and provide a really good way to safely share a reflection or a message. The tool we used to make them was audacity. It is easy to use and quite easy to edit although, it was a little challenging at first to find sound effects to use and as I didn’t really know to look in the creative commons sight for music,etc., this has probably changed the way they will turn out. I have made some things on garage band also and the sound effects have been much better. That is not an option at school.

I do subscribe to itunes to a few podcasts and was good about keeping up with it last year. I have not been listening to many this school year for no other reason than I don’t have time. I love to listen to the poetry ones and I think it would be good for the students to hear good poetry out loud. It makes all the difference in how you gain an appreciation for it. I have also been thinking about some sort of news program for kids and may venture into this. My thoughts are for Religious education as it would be a nice tie in to the topic of sharing and talking about Christ.