Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Yeah Me!!!!

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. A LOT has happened since the last time I posted anything. I moved back to Amarillo and am working at Claude ISD in special education in grades 6th-12th. Also, I'm ENGAGED!!!!!! He is the most wonderful man and I feel very lucky to have found him. Hope to return to my blog soon.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Thing #23

My experience with 23 things:
Well, if you've read my previous posts you've probably noticed that I was frustrated several times. I can only imagine trying to do these things in the classroom or the library with 22 students.
1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I liked photostory. It was just disappointing when I got it all ready and then it wouldn't upload. You've definitely got to make time and expect problems to arise. You can't be in a hurry.
2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? I definitely know about more technology that is out there. Many of the "things" talked about I had never even heard of. It's going to take some time for me to become familiar with them and honestly, some of them I will probably never use, but at least I'll know what people are talking about if they bring up something from the 23 things.
3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I really was surprised at how much is out there. I don't really play around or search too much on the internet. I know what I need to do, go to that website and get it done. There's lots of options out there to play around with.
4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I think we need to be given more time to actually work on these different features to get the full benefit. Some of it seemed to be repetitive.
5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? No, probably not. I'm on overload as it is.
6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities? Eye-opening, make sure you have the time to really sit down and learn in order to get the full benefits.
7. Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs?

Thing #22

Nings...huh?? So many new things to learn. I went to http://teacherlingo.com/ and found a site where you can make your own comic strips. I'm sure the students would love doing this. This would be a good activity for sequencing a book or writing the character traits. On this site there are all kinds of ideas for teachers to use to "jazz" up their lessons. When I have more time, I'd like to explore and see what else is out there. It also seems like there's lots of blogs for teachers and librarians to use, collaborate with each other, and just chat. Maybe there are some other teachers out there who share in my frustration when it comes to technology or give me ideas.

Thing #21

Just when I thought I was nearly done....I had my video all ready to go, did everything exactly like it said and it wouldn't download. It says Blogger is experiencing problems with uploading images or video. This was fun, until I got to this part. Technology is soooo frustrating! You spend long amounts of time trying to do everything correctly and then something like this happens. I feel like I've had nothing but problems when it comes to these 23 things. I've got it saved on my computer and will try tomorrow and see if it will upload.
I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do. I've tried to upload my video to teachertube and it's still not working. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I went to "help" in teacher tube and it says if my video is over 100MB then I have to convert the video to make it smaller. It's not too big. Maybe at some point someone can help me figure this out, because I think it would be really cool to use and let the kids create projects using pictures and videos.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Thing #20

The only time I ever watch a video on You Tube is when a friend sends me a link and says "this is funny, you have to watch it". I've never really thought about using it for anything else other than entertainment, which it can be very entertaining sometimes. I viewed a video on TeacherTube about fractions. It was pretty entertaining. I know the kids would love it!
One of the reasons why I am not as technology savvy as I would like to be is because of all the problems I encounter when I try to use it, especially at school. I'm trying to look at teacher tube and it keeps saying "cannot find server". Other websites are pulling up, so I don't know what the problem is. I wanted to see some of the other teachers videos they posted on their blogs and all the videos are a blank white screen. I get so frustrated, I just want to give up and go back to the old fashioned way. Ughhhhh! I guess I'll try from home later and see if it works.

WOW!!! I finally got it to work. Woo-Hoo!!

Thing #19

I like the Campfire site. I would love to see if this would be useful for homework help. I think it would work much better in middle and high schools for homework help.
Although, I'm not big on chat rooms, I think it could be helpful if you wanted to chat with other teachers or librarians.
I also like http://www.onesentence.org/. It would be fun to read these (the appropriate ones, of course) to kids to help them get a good idea of what a really good sentence looks like.

Thing #18

Open Office would be useful in many different ways. I really love the one for pupils and students. Usually, when something is explained for students it's a simple explanation and easy to use (which I'm totally for). I'm wondering if I would be ableto use http://why.openoffice.org/images/calc-big.png as my grade book at school. The grade book that our school district provides is not very efficient or user friendly. I also like the draw page, but it seems very similar to programs I've seen in the past. I like the impress page to make power points.
I've also used Google Docs on our midterm presentation in Dr. Bishop's class. There were three of us working on the project and it was very effective. I also liked being able to share our document by all three of us at different times and on different computers.