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.

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.

Thing #17

The wiki sandbox (another "thing" I've never heard of).....I posted my experience with the 23 things. I wish I had a better handle on all this new technology. I'm hoping to have more time to really explore now that I know what's all out there. As far as wiki's, I think it's a good tool to use if everyone is knowledgeable about wikis.

Thing #16

Wiki's, wiki's, and more wiki's, I never knew this word even existed until a couple of months ago when I started my classes at UHCL and now I hear it quite often. I would love to have a wiki for my family to share information. My mom is having a retirement party and it would be great to add our thoughts to a wiki, so that everyone gets the same information.
If you want your staff to use wiki's, you need to make sure they completely understand what a wiki is and also how to use them. They also need to see the value in them. Let's face it, none of us wants to spend our time doing something we don't feel would be useful or helpful to us. I would like to eventually use wiki's for voting on books or sharing books with other students either in the classroom or as a campus.

Thing #15

In reading "Away from the Icebergs" library 2.0 represents where we want to all be eventually. I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm not sure it will ever really happen. There will never be enough money to do all the things we want to do, especially when it comes to staff and technology. We also need to take a look at librarians who have been in the profession for a while and make sure they are being trained on all the latest and greatest technology and techniques. I know as a teacher, even after 10 years of teaching, there are lots of things that I still need to learn and education is always changing. It's important to know what you as a person can handle and not overwhelm yourself. I've found that if I overwhelm myself with too much, then I don't do anything. I would rather do one thing really well, than several things poorly.

Thing #14

This is a little frustrating to me that I can't watch some of these videos at school. I understand why some of it is blocked, but I wish there was a way to let teachers view what they need to view.
I can see how this could be useful if I'm searching for specific blogs, but I don't know how I will ever keep all these new "things" clear in my head. I feel like I'm on technology overload.

Thing #13

del.icio.us is a great tool, but I'm not sure I want to add anything extra to my home computer. It's already so slow, but I would love to have all the websites I use at home, school, when at a friends or out of town all in one place. I need to spend some more time figuring out all the details, but this would be very useful if I'm trying to do work from home or just browsing on the internet no matter where I am. Like I said, I'm not so sure about adding all the extra "stuff" to my home computer.

Thing #12

Rollyo could be very useful in the classroom and library. I would like to create a searchroll for myself of blogs from teachers and librarians. I could find fun lessons to introduce to my students whether it be in the classroom or the library. For now, I created a searchroll for shopping (so not what I need to do). I can spend enough money on my own without any help!

Thing #11

Ok, I've signed up for Library Thing. I would love to catalog all the books in my classroom and teach the kids how to use this. It would also be a great way to make sure the books are in the correct place on the shelf. This could be shared with parents as well. I added some books that we've read or I've read to my class in the past. It's a great way to share your likes and dislikes with other teachers, friends, or librarians. It's also a fantastic way to see all the books that are out there that other people are enjoying reading.

Thing #10

Finally, I figured out how to get my image onto my post!! That took me a while. Thanks Danielle for helping me out! I went to the comic strip generator first and saved a picture to my computer and it wouldn't upload and copy and paste didn't work. I finally used image chef and it worked! Yeah!!! I like using pictures and importing my own messages like this one, if it's easy. It gets frustrating to sit there and try time after time only to come up with no picture.

Thing #9

Well, ask and you shall receive. I was wondering how to find useful blogs for librarians and Thing #9 just answered my question! This is one I’m going to have to play around with and find which sites are best for me. There are so many to choose from, you could be looking for hours.
I thought the Cool Cat Teacher blog was a little confusing. There’s just too much “stuff”. I also looked at edublogawards.com. On Google Reader, I added the “fun” feed bundles.

Thing #8

I am honestly wondering how I would use the RSS feeds. There are not common websites that I visit daily to get the latest news. Is that bad? I can see how other people would love this tool. My friend loves to keep up on the latest Hollywood gossip, so she would love this.
For me, professionally, I think finding a site with blogs from other librarians and/or teachers would help me keep up to date on curriculum or ideas for the classroom or library. Personally, I would use this tool for shopping, but that probably would not be a good idea. I don’t need any help when it comes to spending money. :)

Thing #7

Google has a lot to offer! I would love for my mom to use the Google calendar. She's a nurse and it's really hard for me to keep up with her schedule. I never know when she's working. As a teacher, I wasn't sure, at first, if I would want to share a calendar with parents or other teachers, but if I decide what events to put on my calendar then it would be ok. I would have a different calendar for friends and family.

I LOVE the Google Notebook. I always put reminders in my phone and also add stuff to the memo pad in my phone so that I don't forget things. I love the idea of being able to keep track of things on Google Notebook. I could have several different notebooks, one for personal use, one for professional use, one for family vacations or ideas for Christmas and birthday presents. I could see using this in a variety of ways.

I think IGoogle would be fun to use in the classroom or the library. It would be a good communication tool for the parents, too. I would love for the students to actually work on creating this page and see what their ideas would be.

Thing #6

I love all the different things you can do with pictures on http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/. I'm not really sure about the trading cards. Maybe I don't really understand it, yet. I can see lots of great ways you could use Flickr with mashups. I would love to make a class magazine and use actual pictures that the kids have taken and actual pictures of the kids. How cool! They would love that. They would feel like a super-star. I might feel like one, too.

Thing #5

I've looked at Flickr, downloaded pictures, tagged them (gave them key words) so that I can find them easily in the future. As far as groups, that's still a little fuzzy. I tried to look up librarian groups and found some really weird pics. There are so many groups I think it would be difficult to find a group if you don't have enough information. I'm not sure yet how I would use this as a librarian except to look at other libraries across the world. I read in Danielle's blog that she looked at a library in Norway. That's cool that you can see pics of libraries across the world, but I'm having a hard time finding those kinds of pics. I just need to play around with it more.

Thing #4

OK, I've sent an e-mail for my blog to get registered.

Thing #3

The blog.....well, I had trouble figuring out how to do everything. I didn't read carefully, so it was frustrating, but when I went back and read, I finally figured it out. The Avatar was kind of fun to create. It reminded me of creating your Wii person. I don't have a Wii, but my friend does and it was very similar.

Thing #2

The 7 & 1/2 Habits mentioned writing things down. That is one of the hardest things for me to do is to put things in writing. Well, I guess it's not hard to write down, I just don't. I don't write down goals or steps to take to reach my goal. I never have. It makes sense you would feel more obligated to achieve your goals if they were written down. It will be easy for me to make a list of people who will be able to help me achieve certain goals. I have great co-workers and fellow students who are always willing to help. It's nice having people you can rely on, get along with and work as a team.

Thing #1

Well, here I am, finally! I know I am going to learn all kinds of new "things". Looking forward to it. The seriously cute dog on my page is my baby, Gracie. She is precious. I love dogs and animals. I just started grad school to be a school librarian.

Ok, now what???

Ok, so this is my first posting and I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I'm sure I'll continue to learn.