Mythbusters

One Last Thing

To sum it all up:

I think that my favorite things have been delicious, flicker, my RSS reader and imagechef. I think that those are my favorite because at this moment they are the ones that come to my mind. If I can remember them, then I think those will be the ones that I will try first to incorporate in my life/lessons. I have learned so many things from my reader and I know that I will continue to check and read some of the articles in order to keep on top of the ever changing world of technology.

For many years now, I have put on my PDAS that I want to incorporate new technology. I have been given a big dose of it this summer and I intend to implement it and use it in the coming school year. I will enjoy using what I have learned in my lessons. I want to continue to learn and grow. Learning is a lifelong endeavor and is what keeps us mentally acute.

I will take away from this course a tool box filled with things that I can use in my classroom to keep my students interested and learning new skills. Anything to do with technology immediately sparks an interest in the lesson!

As far as improving the course, the only thing that I would suggest is updating the blogs that you have as a list to subscribe to. Some of the blogs had not been updated in several years. Otherwise, I think that it was full of discovery and learning.

If you offered another class similar to this program, I would sign up and take it during the summer. I don't think that I would be able to handle the amount of required work/reading during the school year, but I would definitely sign up.

I will continue to monitor my RSS reader to keep up with the newest technology. Networking with a Ning will help me keep me up to date with the newest ideas and technology that teachers around the country are using. I think that this course has opened my eyes to a whole new world of networking, blogging and interacting with the newest technology.

Thank you very much for offering this course.

Thing #23

I think that social networking will continue to expand and will encompass the educational community. On Ning, I saw multiple sites of classrooms connecting across cities, states and countries. There were private sites that were connecting classrooms from China, Japan, China, Australia. I see these kind of sites as penpals of the highest order because students do not have to wait weeks or months in order to get a response to a question, comment or observation. Responses are instantaneous. As these types of interactive sites become more common, I see students becoming part of a global community of learning and interacting with different cultures. As our world shrinks even more, we can become more tolerant of each other.

I also feel that Ning and other sites for networking will be a valuable tool for professional growth as we exchange thoughts, ideas, and reflections. Instead of lecture/speaker type staff development, I can see a definite trend toward online learning and development. I think that it could very well be the way staff development is conducted in the future. It is imperative that we keep up with the technology. I found a video of great quotes to inspire teachers on a Ning tech integration site. (Some man inserted his picture in the slideshow so ignore him)

Visit 23 Thingsters

Find more photos like this on Tech Integration

Thing #22 Facebook

I decided to sign up for Facebook. It is a totally new experience for me to be involved in an online group of this nature. I looked up my son and he actually let me become a friend so that I can now keep up with him better. I gave out several requests to friends and family and I am waiting for a reply from most of them. Now that I am actually a member of a social network I can see the benefits of how families and friends across the country could stay connected by using a social network. My facebook account will help me stay connected with my children and my grandchildren. I now see that they can be a very useful tool in our society that is becoming more and more fluid. I grew up in a neighborhood where I knew everyone and they knew me. I had a physical network of people that I knew and socialized with. I think these electronic connections are replacing our neighborhood connetions. I chose facebook because I felt that it had more positive things to offer and because my teenagers use facebook to network and I want to keep better track of them. It also had the most useful features such as the ease of uploading pictures/videos and seemed to have more options available. Eventually, I think that teachers will be doing as much online teaching as they do physical teaching. You could answer homework questions and even post information about upcoming events on a social networking site. I think that more and more technology is in our future.

Thing #7ab - RSS Reader

To my surprise, I have really enjoyed my RSS reader. It makes it really easy to keep track of the most interesting articles that are on the sites that I am monitoring. I am getting really adept at skimming and scanning the feeds and picking out only the items that I think will be worth my time reading. I found several things of interest in the past few days. I read about a book recommendation engine that seemed to be quite useful to find books that I will enjoy for school and entertainment. I also found a tool that will take out all the ads and clutter around a YouTube video so that you can safely view it in the classroom. The site is View Pure. It is well worth the visit to this site.
Another site that I think my college students will be able to use is NOOKstudy which gives them online access to over 500,000 textbooks and will allow them to write in study notes etc.. I have already found many useful tools from the readers. I'll keep on reading.......

Thing #21 Google APPs

I created alerts for news articles concerning Texas Education and Mesquite ISD. I think that it will help me keep up with the news about what is happening in education in my city and state. I think that it will prove beneficial in helping me stay in touch with the education community and concerns that I might have with what is happening that might impact me and my classroom.
Staying organized is always a challenge. I am the events keeper in my household and if we miss or are late for an important event, all fingers point in my direction. I am the one that makes sure that our family stays on track. I think that the Google calendar will assist me with the goal of making every event for my daughter's senior year. I began the calendar and feel that I will use it frequently because it will send me an email reminder that I have an event that I want to attend (or am required to attend). This tool will be extremely useful.

Thing #20 Google Docs

I created a document for the beginning of the school year and sent it to collaborate with a colleague. Google Docs will be great for sharing documents with the grade level without having to print and send it to each one on the team. Each teacher will be able to look at the document and correct errors and then let me know that they had proofread the notice. It will be very convenient for that use. Occasionally we have letters or forms that have to be sent out in a short space of time and google docs will give us an advantage in getting it printed and out to the parents in a timely fashion.

I uploaded a spreadsheet and a powerpoint. The spreadsheet was easy and quick. It will be easy to access it from school and home without having to carry a flashdrive or hard copies of the document. However, I think that the Powerpoint feature would be very difficult to use. I uploaded one of the Powerpoints that I had already created on my computer and it would not let me show it from google. I had to download it to the computer to get it to play. The templates for Power point presentations would be hard to use. There were so many of them to choose from. I would have to know exactly how I wanted it to look before I even began to search for a format for my presentation. There was also not much storage space before I would have to ask for more storage. I think that for presentations that a flash drive or an external hard drive would be more efficient.