Thursday, December 11, 2008
My Husband
Monday, December 08, 2008
Summary of 23 Things
LibaryThing and RSS feeds are my two favorite tools.
How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?
It was nice to be challenged to really learn again. I'll admit, I don't spend too much time in my graduate studies really pushing myself. I'm so caught up with work and personal life that overachieving is not high on my list. However, having to work with that blasted wiki and learning some basic html code in the process was pretty darn cool. I'll keep that in mind the next time I don't feel like taking the extra step for something.
Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I'm really angry at my co-workers that will not give some of this stuff a chance. I hate being angry, but it is frustrating to know all the awesome things exist, and they won't even bother exploring them.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I loved the format of this class. It is very independent and keeps the participant responsible for completing everything. Perhaps there could be one day we meet at the beginning to see all the wonderful people we are supposed to be commenting on in the blogs.
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Absolutely.
How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher or school librarian?
I'm going to do my best to incorporate this for my students. It will make my job easier and learning more fun for them.
How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.
I have my connections on the "inside" with people who get to explore this stuff all the time:).
Thing #23
I enjoy the wealth of sites provided through this course for networking. It will be interesting to see what I can find out there for English. Classroom 2.0 will probably be the most useful when I have a question about a specific tool though. Now that I know all of this exists of course it will be valuable information. I would be a fool to take the time to find all of this and not use it. It would not make me a very good life long learner would it?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Thing #22
Thing #7b
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thing #21
Thing #20
Thing #19
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thing #18
Teacher Tube would have been the better place to search for English related videos. However, the layout for Teacher Tube doesn't seem to be as user friendly. It might also be that I am not used to navigating around it yet. I did find a cute video on the rules for comma usage.
Thing #17
Thing #16
Thing #15
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Thing #7b
My favorite educational article comes from The Catholic Education Resource Center. I think the name of the site may turn some people away from looking at what it has to say. Although many articles may focus on beliefs and doctrine of the Catholic Church in current society, there is a good number that speak on universal educational issues. For example, "Self-esteem vs. self-improvement" speaks on our society's too coddling view of building a child's image of himself or herself.
Thing #14
After making my newsletter, I decided a survey would be fun to create at Poll Daddy. I would love for everyone to take my Random Survey. There's no real theme to it because I was still learning how to build one. Again, it was relatively easy to drag and drop in order to create the survey. Recently, I've been using the Forms on Google Docs for online quizzes for my kids. Poll Daddy could become a second way to quiz my students over what they read without wasting paper.
Finally, for fun I played with Wordle. I just took a quote from Emerson about books and let the application do its thing. Now, to create a custom color palette, I did have to look up the html for colors online, but that is basic copy and paste once I got there.
I could really have fun with some of these tools on my facebook or personal blogs. Creating newsletters for my friends overseas to read about what is going on with my family would save postage and time getting to them. Not to mention if I'm in a crazy mood and want to survey or poll my friends on something irrelevant but entertaining.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Thing #13
Monday, November 03, 2008
Thing #12
I'm going to try to post it in my blog instead:
This is a condensed version of one of my favorite Grimms Fairy Tales, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses."
Here are all the photos I used:
A Wonderful Surprise Uploaded on January 16, 2008by audreyjm529
18th Century Spanish Officers Uniform Uploaded on October 8, 2004by mharrsch
Glass of Red Uploaded on October 10, 2007by Zesmerelda
Adelitas Uploaded on October 14, 2008by Omar Eduardo
Homecoming 2008 Uploaded on October 4, 2008by DanCox_
Silver Leaves Uploaded on October 6, 2008by beccaplusmolly
petite 18k gold leaf charm Uploaded on November 1, 2008by knitsteel
Emerald, diamond bracelet Uploaded on March 14, 2008by gemteck1
Happy Heels Uploaded on March 1, 2008by talekinker
The Fairy Tale Door Uploaded on June 15, 2008by David Masters
Enchanted Tower ? Uploaded on October 10, 2007by Curnen
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Plea for Daisies
This is a plea for all those who may read this to watch Pushing Daisies on ABC this Wednesday 10/29/09 at 7/8 P.M. If you are afraid to get involved with a show in the middle of the second season, rent the first season, fall in love with the show, and jump in! The show uses unique and vibrant visuals to tell the most entertaining and odd stories. It would be a true loss to have such a show taken off the air. Please watch.
Thing # 11
The idea of using Flickr to illustrate vocabulary or to visualize a scene from a story really interested me. The vocabulary more because of the difficult nature to illustrate some words.
The photos I searched and chose were pink flowers and fairy tales. (Read the blog title: Hopeless Romantic...) Here is one of my favorites:
Photo by:
drops of spring Uploaded on June 1, 2007by Steve took it
Monday, October 27, 2008
Barack-ing the Vote Even if You're of the NObama Persuasion
Please understand, I do love living in America and am grateful for all that it represents. However, I've never really gone out of my way to be extremely patriotic. Yet, as I approached my voting booth it occurred to me that a century ago I would not be allowed to stand in this place and have my say in the government. It also occurred to me that were I in another country, I might be prohibited from choosing my country's leader. Just thinking about these things made me become irritated at those that refuse to vote because they feel it doesn't really count or will be canceled anyway. That's the loser's excuse for being too lazy to go and vote!
So what if another vote cancels mine? I still had my say and now reserve the right to complain if I don't see the change I am hoping for in a new president. Not to mention all the political positions that could affect me, my family, or my job that were on the ballot. If I had opted not to vote, I would have missed the opportunity to help a local hospital improve itself because my "for" in favor of money being spent for the improvements would have been left unsaid.
Regardless of the end result, NOTHING can erase the pride and excitement surging through my veins when I walked out of the early voting location. Everyone who is able, should get up and vote! Complain all you want later if your candidate doesn't "win." Just be grateful you have the opportunity to affect change.
Photo Provided by:
American Flag Uploaded on August 3, 2007 by Tanya Ryno
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thing #10
As far as impacting my work and my students work goes, now that I know Creative Commons exists it will be harder for me to allow my students to pull material from wherever they please. Interestingly, as a Catholic I regularly go to Confession (that's not saying I go so often because I'm a rotten person...), and in this day and age part of examining my conscience with guidance from the Ten Commandments is asking myself if I have stolen any online material intentionally or not. Once I know something is wrong, I cannot keep doing it. I pay for all my iTunes (much to the chagrin of my husband), and I avoid using video, audio, images, or text from online sources because I do not want to accidentally steal what is not mine. Creative Commons will hopefully give me a safe and honest way to begin to integrate video, audio, images, and text!
My own teaching materials are so borrowed and modified from my predecessors, I would not know where to give credit. Actually, I don't even feel comfortable copyrighting my teaching materials because I feel curriculum should be shared among educators since we are all trying to educate future generations.
Of course the material on Creative Commons will always be limited because some people simply will not share. This is not a huge problem, and I really only see positive potential with this idea. The trick will be figuring out how to use it effectively.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
As I watch Luke Skywalker battle the rancor...
1. My pizza hasn't arrived yet.
2. I have class in an hour.
I was informed that the reason more people have probably not responded to my "Burning Question" is because I messed up my sandbox page, and a person will have to join my page to participate in discussion. So this is an invitation to the other members or our 23 Things class, or anyone who loves me, to join my wiki page.
Well, the pizza's here, and they messed up my half! Adios.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Platform Between 9 and 10
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thing #9
In order to complete the assignment for the Sandbox, I printed the "cheat sheet" AND I kept the instructions open in one tab and the example open in another. There was a lot of clicking back forth between the two tabs. My compassionate husband noticed my struggling when I couldn't seem to get my page to look right, so he read through the directions and "translated" them for me. Once I received them in "Lydia Speak" they made a lot more sense. After I tackled that hurdle, my frustrations vanished and I desired to distinguish my wiki. I went back to The Cutest Blog on the Block and figured out how to copy the code to fit in the wiki.
It turned out that I liked the background to my wiki better than the background on my blog. It only made sense to change the background on my blog to match! This of course led to me reformatting the fonts and colors for my blog...But this isn't about my blog, it is about my wiki.
I'm still not sure that I will have a solid use for a wiki any time soon. However, I will do my best to become more familiar with it so it is ready when I need it. As I said before, I welcome any tips for maintaining a wiki or shortcuts that make managing it easier. Please take a look at The Rock Princess wiki and respond to the question on the Sand Between My Toes page.
Ah...the sandbox. Well, it is definitely going to be a love/hate relationship. Obviously I was distraught when I wrote Thing #8 3/4. It pushed me to the point of trying to understand enough of how to "write" a wiki to customize my background and everything. Of course, I realized today that I misunderstood the directions and created my sandbox page as an offshoot of my personal wiki instead of the sandbox wiki. Oh well, I'm so please with how it has turned out that I don't want to change it! Now, if someone could only tell me how to make sure my fonts don't change regardless of which fonts are installed on the computer...
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Thing 8 3/4
Yes, I'm frustrated, but I will be okay. I am pleading for any tips or advice for fixing my current disaster known as wikispaces.
Crisis avoided! I would still love tips for wikis, but they are a lot more work then I anticipated.
Thing 8
Okay, I like the way the 1001 Flat World Tales is set up. The tabs at the top of the page make navigation pretty easy. I can clearly see that it is a protected site, and it blows my mind that there are students working with this wiki in Hawaii, Colorado, and Korea. Honestly, I'm still not familiar enough with wikis to tell if anything is missing or if I would do anything differently. However, I do have an idea for a creative writing class and wikis (if I end up teaching creative writing). I love the premise of having to write a story to impress the "king." I suppose any English class could use the wiki to revise and edit a paper.
Moving on to the FHS Wolves Den page because it combines English and U.S. History. This site actually seems more complete. The coolest thing is the class chat option. If I could guarantee a time for students to all be on at the same time, this could be very beneficial. Right now I just get the same two or three students that track me down on my Facebook or shoot me an e-mail. Not quite sure how I feel about all that information in one place. It seems overwhelming, but I think that is because I'm just exploring and do not have a specific piece of information that I'm looking for. Overall, I like how this is very much a class website with all the stuff students might need for class, discussions, papers, etc. There is even a place for the summer reading:).
Finally, I'm looking into Room 15 Wiki. Unlike the other two, this one is on pbwiki. It also is a younger group of students then I teach, so I'm interested to see how the wiki is being used. So far, I'm not as impressed as I was with the previous two. This seems to be on the more basic end of wikis. The sections at the bottom are nice. I really enjoyed the book reviews, but I am not sure there is anything on this particular wiki I could use.
I'm still in limbo with regards to wikis. Again, I cannot see the difference in wiki as a website and blog as a website. I can post classroom information and calendars on the blog. My students can write book reviews and create pages for projects in a blog. The one use that I might try to implement is the revising/editing of papers. Also, all the wikispaces I looked at are done in cute colors with pictures. I went ahead and created a wikispace, but it seems like I need to be able to write code before I can change anything. I don't know code! Here's where I could definitely use some solid comments:
1. Who out there uses wikis and prefers them over blogs?
2. What are "cooler" uses in the classroom then just revising/editing papers?
3. How can I jazz up my wikispace without having to know code?
A goal I set for myself in the beginning of this course was to expand beyond my blog. I would really like to use a wiki as well.
Thing #7
I just never really engaged myself in commenting on blog posts. This is evident when I expect my students to comment, and I don't go over proper ways to leave a comment. Fortunately, there are some great resources on our 23 Things blog. After reading a few of them, my confidence in commenting definitely went up. I'm more conscience of what I comment and how I comment. I figure as long as I think before I type and sincerely respond to the post, maybe no one will feel the need to pulverize me:).
It may also come down to criticism. Who likes being told that their writing stinks? Naturally, I think worst case scenario when it comes to the comments I may find on my blog. My fears of criticism, even if it is constructive, keeps me from being part of the "conversation" of a post. The good news is that I'm working on that!
Of course with all my RSS feeds, I will probably start commenting like a maniac. Here's to another late night!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Thing #6
Google Reader is such a useful tool for simply collecting information. Plenty of my students would rejoice in such a discovery. My husband's curiosity spiked when he saw what I was doing. I then got to explain how the feeds work and why he should set up a Google Reader as well. Of course he wants to subscribe to all the boring stuff like politics and economics and business (yuck).
Right now my two favorite educational feeds are Students 2.0 (Think Different post) and The Fischbowl: Is It Okay to be Technologically Illiterate. Perhaps the biggest ideas that jumped out at me were the notion of having to educate life long learners (Think Different post) and how people who choose to remain ignorant of technology, "should be embarrassed, not proud, to say so in public" (Fischbowl).
Okay my fellow Thingers...some of you have not set up your blog to have RSS feeds. What is up with that? How am I supposed to subscribe to your blog if you will not give me the option? Also, thanks to a couple of you more savvy bloggers, I discovered TheCutestBlogontheBlock.com and my blog has a new look! Does anyone else think this is the coolest PFK s/he has taken?
Thing #5
1. RSS feeds allow all of the information I want to access to accumulate in one place.
2. RSS feeds stay current so I know that the information is up to date.
3. Sorting through the feeds gives me something to do while I procrastinate on 23 Things or house work or graduate papers.
4. After finding the feeds that pique my interest, I can e-mail them onto my peers who may also be interested.
5. There does not appear to be a limit on all the trivial knowledge I can collect in my reader.
Now, one of the pages I was able to visit describes What Makes a Good List. Feel free to check for yourself and see if I met the criteria.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thing #4
Unlike a novel, the blog allows interaction on the part of the reader. Comments are a great way to revise our thoughts or opinions about a topic. Sometimes they may seem ignorant or agitating, but they definitely bring up a point-of-view a blogger would not receive if s/he were only speaking amongst a group of friends that felt the same way. So many skills may be acquired this way. Students can learn proper ways to comment and proper ways to receive criticism. It could expand viewpoints on an issue. It could offer encouragement. It could even validate the reason the blog was written in the first place by the simple fact someone is reading it.
With so many advantages, it's no wonder why teachers are grabbing up blogs and using them in the classroom. In the end, it was the post about the true integration of this technology that really caught my eye. Right now I believe I am the teacher that wants to have all these cool things, but has yet to learn how to properly create a learning environment where the technology is used to its full potential. This is another reason for my interest in the course 23 Things. (I do have a class blog, but I know I do not keep up with it like I should.)
For now I'm going to keep blogging and learning.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Thing #1
Obviously, I am of a slightly older generation and need to discover more ways to integrate techniques to continue to encourage lifelong learning in my students. Out of all the habits, the very first one will be the most difficult for me to follow. Again, I am very right brained and do not put too much stock in having an end in mind. I take in and send out pertinent information in the most efficient and effective way. Then I see how it all comes together afterwards. It works out because there is always something that can be learned. The problem is that I did not know what I wanted to learn or to teach, so how can I assess if a skill was mastered? Next to the first habit, viewing problems as challenges seems hard to do. A problem is a problem. Having a problem implies that a solution can be found. All the "fun" is in finding the solution. When I see it as a challenge, my lazy genes kick in and it seems too much like work. In the end, this is all semantics and will probably resolve itself.
Playing with and teaching others are way too easy for me. I am young enough to know how to work my way around a blog, upload video and pictures to a facebook, and easily transition from 35mm film to high-tech digital photography. I want everyone to be as excited as I am about what technology can do, so I have zero issues with teaching others how to use it.
Right now, my toolbox is small and it needs to grow. I become too comfortable with one or two types of tools. This is good because I will utilize them, but that also means I'm not using the others out there. Continuing to build a solid learning toolbox definitely holds importance for me in this course.
Everything I gain from this course will also help with my Intel Teach class. If I can make it easier for another educator to integrate technology into the classroom, I will!
Thing #2
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Not a Year Too Late
Stay tuned...