Thing #23: The End of the Beginning

This class has been a great "kick-in-the-pants" for me, giving me the guidance, motivation and accountability I needed to discover some of the tools available to me as an educator. Beyond discovering these tools, I was "forced" to actually practice using them... and of course once I did that, those tools were no longer so intimidating or scary.

My favorite discovery is not technically one of the "23 Things", but I was led to it while setting up my RSS feeds: the Google Account. I think it's so handy to have everything in one place: RSS feeds, my dashboard, my blogger account, documents, etc. It's user-friendly and provides an efficient way to navigate to important websites. I am also enamored of RSS feeds, because they help me to keep informed, and the NetLibrary, because it helps to feed my addiction (see Thing #22).

Blogging was a great exercise, because it made me process what I was learning, and also motivated me to learn how to download photos from my camera and imbed other images and videos from the web. While these last two skills were also not technically part of "23 Things", this class motivated me to learn them.

As far as actually using these "Things" in the classroom, if I was a "regular" (as opposed to a substitute) teacher I would definitely create a class wiki. I think its capacity for student input makes it superior to the more traditional website. In my personal life, I'm so happy to have learned how to (a)upload photos from my digital camera to my computer, and (b)share them through e-mail or other sites (instead of asking my husband or son to do so). Not rocket science, but for some reason I had resisted learning this skill!

Yes, I'd take another "dicovery"-type class. I'm always intimidated by new things and change, so it helps when I have someone to "hold my hand". As far as improvements to the class, I would have enjoyed an opportunity, on the first day, to meet my classmates in a room without computers, where we were all facing each other, without the distraction and physical barrier of our terminals. I am a very "relational" person, and I thrive on the interactive aspect of the classroom. I think that a more intentional approach to building a sense of community in this class would make everyone feel more comfortable with each other, and also enhance our sense of camraderie when interacting online.

The bottom line: this class dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century and the world of 2.0 Learning... and for that I'm grateful!! Many thanks to Carol and all of my classmates in this semester's "23 Things".

Thing #22: NetLibrary: I'm in Love

I am an audiobook junkie. When I became a mother I despaired of ever reading a book again, but then I discovered that I could "read" a book by listening to it. Since making that amazing discovery, I have listened to audiobooks while driving, doing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning the toilet, watering the plants... you get the idea. I try to "turn off" the book anytime a member of my family walks into the room, and most of the time I resist the temptation to drive around the block over and over when I come home just at "the good part" of the novel I'm listening to in the car, but it's tough! To make matters worse, Carol has just explained (in Thing #22) that I can feed my addiction without even leaving the comfort of my own home! When I browsed by the subject "Science and Nature", I pulled up a great selection of titles with which to improve my mind, such as:

Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind.

Why bother resisting? Naturally, I checked it out!

Thing #20: YouTube Euphoria

When I typed "Biology" into the search box at YouTube, I wasn't really expecting to find anything helpful, but thankfully I was wrong! Check out this video on Protein Synthesis: entertaining AND educational... yea! Probably only a biology teacher could sit through the entire video, but I was impressed. Now please excuse me while I go and watch the rest of the rock opera from which this was excerpted: "Control of Gene Expression"... sounds like a real cliff-hanger!

Thing #21 Diving into Podcasts

I love the Podcast.com directory! Without even searching, I found 4 sites on the "Top 25" that would be helpful to me as a science teacher. NOVA, Discovery News, BBC and "Stuff you Should Know"... yea! One of my daughter's math teachers started off many classes with a brief clip from YouTube. It was an entertaining way to get the kids engaged right off the bat, and motivated them to get to class on time, so that they wouldn't miss the show. Why not use the same technique, but with an educational video or audio podcast about a current event, or pertaining to the topic of the day?

Thing #19: It Takes Two to Mango

For our "Discovering Web 2.0 Tools" Exercise, I visited Mango and completed the first Spanish lesson. I spent 4 years learning French in High School, which seemed like a good idea at the time... my Dad worked for Amoco and we were living in England. Now I wish I knew Spanish! I found the first lesson easy to understand and enjoyable, with lots of helpful repetition and the ability to move forward or backwards at my own pace. I can envision myself spending a summer working through the Mango Spanish program, especially if I knew I would be working with ELL students the following year. Unfortuately, our local library doesn't subscribe to the program... phooey!

Thing #18 Web-based Apps: Thumbs Up & Down

I'm sure it's due partly to my ineptitude, but I had a hard time trying to get Zoho to work... I'm giving it a "thumbs down". Google Docs, on the other hand, seemed a lot more "user-friendly"... "thumbs up" for it. There was even a special category of templates called "Students and Teacher", which had items such as calendars, research papers, book reports, and grade and attendance records. I played around with photo albums, spreadsheets, calendars and documents.

Carol also pointed out a neat site called "Google for Educators" which extends far beyond word processing to many other applications that they provide free for the classroom... cool!

Here's the website:

http://www.google.com/educators/index.html

Thing #16 & 17 Wiki Wonderland

Sure, wikis have their downfalls, but overall I think they're a wonderful thing. Last October, while flying on Southwest Airlines, I read an article in their in-flight magazine that featured a discussion between the president of Encyclopedia Britannica and the founder of Wikipedia. (I wish I could access that article now, but SWA doesn't offer a "search" feature on their magazine's website... the nerve!) Anyway, the debate between these two men was a great example of "Learning 1.0" and "Learning 2.0", and I must say that Britannica came down very hard on the side of intellectual elitism. Anyway, I think that a classroom wiki would be fabulous, in that it would facilitate the "community of scholars" approach to which I aspire. I would just need to hold some sway over the content... guess I'm not ready to be completely democratic!