Web 2.0

Went back to my google reader and found two interesting blogs that Cool Cat Teacher had posted.  In “Do What You Can.  Share What You Can”, [http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-what-you-can-share-what-you-can.html] she gives some encouraging adages that I’ve heard, like her, from the older, wiser women and men in my life (mom, dad, grandparents…)  Basically she’s giving encouragment to the encouragers…the teachers.  Teachers want to encourage others, but we’ve got to remember what we tell our kids…when you give your all, it’s enough.  In “So If Teachers Won’t Read It, What Are We Doing With Kids?”, [http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-if-teachers-wont-read-it-what-are-we.html] she talks about the importance of teachers continuing to learn so that we can do our best to help the kids we have.   I agree with her, but I have something to add.  She talks about reading with her son 30 minutes to an hour every night.   As a language arts teacher, I applaud her.  There’s nothing you can do to help your child more than reading with them.  What I’d like to add is that most teachers WANT to meet their kids’ needs…they WANT to change with the times (most will).  I can’t speak for others, but I can speak for myself.  I find that there’s so very little time to learn  and then perfect new things.   She says that , “He goes on to say that teachers are so focused on test prep that they don’t have time to do anything else. “  How true, how true…and how sad.     Unfortunately, I believe that teachers have to teach to the test now.   I think this is NOT what education is supposed to be, but teachers are trying to survive and help their kids survive, too.    If I had the time to learn and practice new techniques without feeling like I’m falling further behind each day, I’d LOVE to learn how to teach, as I’ve been told, “smarter.”    There is stress from the time I arrive at work to the time I leave…if I didn’t leave it at work, the stress would follow me home,too.  Teachers have to be able to go home and just be parents and/or spouses if they are to be good teachers at school and good moms and spouses at home.  I don’t have any easy answers, but I think one is that education has to become TRULY important, no essential, to the federal government.  Our government is really good about passing tough legislation, but then they don’t back anything up with even barely adequate funding to see it through.

All I can say is,  “YES!  YES! YES! I’m FINALLY finished!”  Web 2.0 has been a real challenge for me.  I am the type learner who needs to see things demonstrated AND then have someone help me when I’m stuck as I work through it myself.    When help videos wouldn’t work or when instructions were more vague than I needed, my frustration was at its highest.  Thankfully I have had some good friends like Arlie who have given a lot of help…but that’s what a community of learners does.  I’ve learned some really neat things….social bookmarking, social networking sites, using Creative Commons when searching for pictures in Flickr, embedding pictures and videos into blogs, creating slide shows with on-line resources,…even podcasting (to name just a few).  My next step is to practice, practice, practice.  Anyone who knows me knows that the perfectionist in me will drive me to become at least much better acquainted with all this “stuff” before I try to teach it to my students.   I am excited, though, that I now know more than I did about using the internet and about some interesting things that my kids can do on the web.  The first thing I’ll likely do is use social bookmarking so that I can go back and find the resources and ideas I liked the best. 

After visiting Classroom 2.0 and Ning.com, I honestly have to say that I was quite impressed with what I saw on Classroom 2.0.  I particularly enjoyed watching some of the videos that were posted/embedded.  I watched one by William Lambert in which he showed how to use peg words to remember important information.  (It was called peg1).  I really wanted the video to continue because it was so interesting watching a teacher in a real classroom situation implementing a real strategy.  His use of the workshop method, which we are implementing at my school, was neat to see as was a study technique.   I found myself trying to see if I could remember the random list of student-generated words based on the peg words he had been teaching the kids.  The kids acted like a real classroom full of kids do, and they all seemed excited and engaged in learning.  I also liked the Latest Activity portion because it not only contained an interesting article link by Or-Tal Kiriati on homework and cheating, but that portion is updated constantly.  While I was searching around the different tags, a new blog popped up.  The members tab was neat because it’s nice to “see” and learn a little about the people in your community of teachers…some of whom lived across the ocean.  Another really interesting part was the featured photos… of people who actually are members of this community.  Social Networking could be very helpful in my profession because all the blogs and articles are about things that educators think and worry about.  It lets us know that we’re not the only ones looking for answers, and it gives us a lot of different solutions to consider.    How great to be connected to someone halfway across the world who can offer very perspectives for me as a teacher or offer information for a topic my kids are studying.  Social networking can help professionally and personally by making my searches more focused and by having more than just me searching for solutions/information/etc.   As with anything else, becoming proficient in anything will take time and practice, and having a community of “helpers” makes it easier.

Pageflakes seemed to me to be a lot like Facebook or Myspace in a way (the layout and interactibility), only this is a site that I think parents would see as a “professional” place that has a very different expectation that facebook or myspace.  Parents would like pageflakes because it is one place where they can find out really important information and get help for their studnets.   I really enjoyed viewing Miss Tyler’s Third Grade Pageflake because that is exactly what I would consider both parent and student friendly.    Her page flake showed a lot of the kinds of things I’d probably put on a pageflake that my kids and parents could use.  I like the message board where kids and parents could leave me blog messages.  Right now, parents contact me via email, and this is VERY convenient.  I like being able to embed videos that I’ve found on the internet as well as ones I’ve created.  This could be great for kids who are absent from school…like a home tutor of exactly what we did in class.  I like the calendar so that parents can see what’s coming up…this would work great for posting upcoming tests or project due dates.    I also like the bookmarking feature…for me so that I can find all my favorite places to visit in one easy step, AND I can find stuff for my kids here and leave bookmarks of sites I want them to visit.    Technology in the classroom is encouraged more every day, and pageflakes is a great way to keep parents informed AND get kids more interested in doing homework.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to do something that requires you to get on the internet over a paper and pencil exercise out of a book? 

I use Microsoft Word documents and Power Point Presentations nearly every day, and I have enjoyed adding new things like more images from flickr.com as well as animations, etc.   I honestly found googledocs to be rather frustrating and slow.  I felt that I had fewer options for adding the “fun” stuff in googledocs; however, I do like the collaboration option.  It was eyeopening seeing how much teachers generally spend in their classrooms, and such a document could be useful in many ways.  This could be used in the classroom for students to collaborate on a project which each different member researches from home and then adds to the final product.  Collaborative learning in the classroom often takes longer than necessary because students can only work together at school.  IF they all had computers, they could work from home AND together at the same time.  Another use in the classroom would be to put documents or presentations on the internet for students who miss school.  They could not only access what I covered in class, but they could also add their own thoughts/ideas  and have other students give help at home by editing the document or commenting on what was added.  Finally, when teachers at a school are researching for a committee project, googledocs would make it much easier and faster to bring together all their research together into the final product.  Teachers definitely work with limited time, so being able to work from home at any hour of the night they might be awake and have free time is an advantage.  This could cut down on the number of meetings teachers have to attend so that teachers might have more time to do what’s needed at school.    Another way for teachers to use googledocs is to add to presentations and then share the information with other teachers who teach the same subject…again, with fewer meetings needed.

A HUGE thanks to Arlie who showed me how to embed videos in my posts!  How exciting when I view my own posts and actually find the videos will play like they’re supposed to!  :0)

I have seen videos on YouTube before, but this was the first time I’d been introduced to Teacher Tube.  I see both having lots of application in the classroom.  First, teachers can find interesting ways to teach such things as idioms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjlpQqbW8uo&feature=PlayList&p=3A5432110505D63E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=15), allow students to see new ideas for creating their own videos to share, and then give the kids opportunities to create.  New Georgia standards ask teachers to have students complete performance tasks as a way of demonstrating mastery of standards.  Creating videos and then sharing them safely on the internet would meet several langauge arts standards.  Of course, as a teacher, I would preview all videos before asking my students to access anything…the first video I previewed on idioms had a major curse word within the first few seconds….proof that youtube has some limitations, like all internet resources used in the classroom.   Some other good youtube videos I viewed (which I could use in my classroom ) were “Across Five Aprils (clips)” [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-ngPNMS4c], ”Dig It–From the Disney Movie ‘Holes’” [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybjSSExktzI] and “Lesson 6–Thanksgiving–English vocabualry” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD9ZtiX7d7g).  The latter one is about turkey idioms, and it includes an interactive portion where students learn about the idioms and then practice using them.  I thought this one was particularly interesting because it seems relatively easy to add this interactive component, which makes youtube and teachertube even more user friendly for teachers. 

On a more fun note, this is one of my favorite videos on youtube:  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4).  There are several that go with this one, but this is an example.  As a youth counselor and part of a praise team at church, I’ve already used this video.

Thing 18 My First Podcast

I have a podcast somewhere on podOmatic.com; however, I have NO idea how to get it to Gcast.  Does anyone have any SIMPLE, easy-to-follow directions to help with this?  I’ve listend and/or watched every help link available in learning 2.0, and I’m stuck!

I embedded the podcast correctly into the next blog post , I think, but it’s NOT on Gcast.  Does this matter? 

I previewed, or at least I attempted to preview, several different podcasts from PBS podcasts, Learn Out Loud Podcasts, and Education Podcast Network.  PBS podcasts were mostly for younger children, but at least I know that most of the information would be suitable for the classroom.  Learn Out Loud seemed interesting if I was looking to further my education.  The Education Podcast Network had a lot of podcasts in my area, but I didn’t find as much as I wanted.  I tried to go to the Daily Idiom and subscribe to it because I teach idioms, but resources are limited.  I got “unable to open RSS feed” as a message.  I liked one called Sotry Cast because it had several interesting Halloween stories that I could share with my kids.  I tried to subscribe to this one several times, but I was unable to do so.  I also looked at Storynory, and it was good, too…mostly for younger children, but still usuable in middle grades.  The one that I think I might be able to use in the future was Ben Bleckley’s Pedagogy to Practice because it had a lot of the background information on Holcaust Web Quest .  I teach THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, and I always need information to subplement my unit.  Right now the only way I think I could incorporate this into my classroom is to listen to the podcasts on this site for information I then share with the kids.  I am honestly not sure how much freedom I’d have to allow my kids to listen to podcasts on computers at school.  Also I’d have to know more about being able to network all this so that a classroom of computers could serve all my kids at once.  Podcasting isn’t my favorite thing because I do not like to listen to someone speak to me without seeing a face.  I am a very visual learner, so just listening to podcasts requires me to concentrate on focusing.  Also, visual images of what I’m hearing both helps me understand and remember the information.