Thing #20

I love Google Docs. I've been using them for a while in my classroom, and they have actually helped me be better prepared for class. Personally, I uploaded a Power Point Presentation for my graduate class because they had Office 2007. My computer only has Office 2003. Google Docs does the conversion for me, so I just pulled it up on the class computer and was ready to go. My students are also seeing the importance of this feature because many of them are running Office 07 while the school still runs 03. 

In class I have had the students log on and take notes over different pieces of information. Then they had to upload what they found onto Google Docs to share with the rest of the class.

My favorite use for Google Docs was when I was out of town and needed to give my students reading quizzes. I created forms then put the link in my class blog. Each student was responsible for clicking the link and answering the questions. They only had fifteen minutes, the time stamp helped monitor their time, and I was able to check the answer all the way in Washington D.C. I knew immediately who did and did not read and take the quiz. This definitely cut down on cheating, and the substitute didn't have to worry about keeping up with any important documents.

Thing #19

VoiceThread is one of the more fascinating tools we've explored. For a basic use, I could post different pictures and shape TAKS like questions around the picture. Then the students could respond with various answers. I know we're not supposed to teach to a test, but it would be practice with the visual component of the test.

Currently, I am getting ready to start a unit on Edgar Allen Poe. I was thinking of a group project that imitates the opening paragraphs of "The Fall of the House of Usher." Each group will get a picture of a house and create a description that would also parallel the type of family that would live there. I could put the picture on VoiceThread and have the students tell their stories that imitate the opening of Poe's great short story.

Thing #18

You Tube is an old favorite in my house. I never really thought of it as a teaching tool because I use it for relaxing and entertainment purposes. My husband even made me look up specific videos as I was working on this particular thing.

My two videos for my subject area were those favorites "Conjunction Junction" and "The Preamble" from School House Rock. I don't care how old these videos are; the information is just as viable today as it was when I was growing up. It bothers me that current children's television doesn't have the same education focus. The "how to" video I chose to watch explained the intricacies involved in solving a Rubic's Cube. It began simply enough, but I think I'll leave that little slice of puzzle pie to someone else. The final video I searched and found was my favorite "Star Wars According to a Three Year Old."

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

The first podcast I previewed was The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips because curiosity got the better of me. Was she really giving sound grammatical advice? Or would it be more work for me when my students stumbled upon the podcast and were misinformed. I am very impressed at the topics she covered and how accurate she was. The other choice was more personal in the Mugglecast. As big a fan of the Harry Potter books as I am, I'm not that big of a fan. It's nice that they are keeping up with so much HP news, but I just was not that interested.

Podcasting is not a new concept for me. I do have iTunes with a collection of personal podcasts: The Flight of the Conchords, Henson Studios, and Pushing Daisies. The biggest problem I have with podcasting is that I am not an auditory learner. If there are no pictures or video, it is really hard for me to follow what is being said. However, my auditory students would benefit greatly from podcasting. They could listen to information while accomplishing other tasks. In that way it seems like a very efficient way to learn.

I always told myself that if I have to miss school when I finally have children, I could use podcast to do quick lessons. This would guarantee that my students would hear exactly what I need them to hear (not that subs are unreliable).

Thing #16

Library Thing should be one of the first things we learn! I love, love, love books and think this is the coolest site. I really like the idea of Library Thing keeping me informed of local book fairs, author signings, and such. There are so many books I adore! Where do I start to add them all? My biggest hope is that a plethora of new books will be shared with me through this site. 

I have zero plans to use this site professionally. This will be my personal dragon's hoard of literature!

The thought did cross my mind to have all the members of my book club sign up. We already share a love of reading and deciding on the next book to read is so hard for us to do. This might be a way to narrow down the search and see what else the rest of us are reading outside of the club.

Thing #15

Being honest, I'm not a fan of tagging. Mainly because I cannot always remember the certain tags I used or how I worded them. I just know that I'll end up with a tag list that is two miles long because I'll write in so many different tags. However, to be fair I will give "delicious" a chance because I do like the idea of keeping all my faves on one site. 

As far as using it for educational purposes...

There will need to be a lot more exploring because I don't have many co-workers that have caught onto the social bookmarking. My first few networks may have to be strangers, so to speak. After a little more looking into all the sites that appear when I do a search for a particular topic, I might be able to find a more appropriate use for my "delicious" site. 

For my students, it might be helpful when they have to look up information on a topic. If I look into the most appropriate sites and tag them, I can simple share that with my students. Then I don't have to worry about the sources behind the sites that my students are using.

Thing #7b

I absolutely love my Google Reader! I check it all the time and get so excited when there is a ton of stuff for me to browse through. I know we are trying to find uses for a reader in education, but I have quite a few personal sites in my reader now. Of course I have a ton about Pushing Daisies. The good news is that they will complete season two and are negotiating a season three! Keep your fingers crossed!

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

There are so many things I still want to explore and look at, but my time is limited since I'm trying to catch up. However, there are a couple of tools I want to discuss that could be used in the classroom. Letterpop (Experimental Thing #14 Newsletter) would be a fantastic way to have a class newsletter that parents/guardians could access online. The application is very easy to use and fun to play around with.

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.

Thing #13

I am disappointed in the various Flickr mashups. Both the sign generator and the comic strip generator have been removed from the internet, and I really wanted to use those two. Currently, I am contemplating reading a book written by one of the mashup creators because I want to learn how he creates his Flickr photo mosaics. It seems complicated, but it might be worth it.

Both of the mashups that worked successfully were in Big Huge Labs. It seemed to be easier to use my own photos for the following because I'm still trying to figure out the best way to credit other photographers if I use one of these masups.

Right now, these kinds of mashups seem like they might be of service if my students were working on some type of marketing campaign. They could make name badges, posters, or whatever to promote something. If they wanted to support the library, they could make collages of their favorite book covers? This is still a tool I need to spend some time with before deciding exactly what my kids will use it for in class.

Thing #12

I hate wikis! I hate wikis! I hate wikis! I followed all the directions for the slideshow and the stupid myspace code DID NOT WORK in my wikispace. The only thing it did was embed the actual code. I hate wikis!

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

Plea for Daisies

Out of all the mashups and third parties that use Flickr, I really enjoy the collage and speller. I'm still churning ideas over in my mind as to the application for some of these in my classroom. I will definitely use my mashup to help my favorite television show.




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

I love Flickr as much as I am frustrated with wikis! A whole new treasure trove of images unfolds page after page after page. The documenting is relatively easy to do, especially if I only search within the Creative Common licensed photos. From now on, when I assign technology projects that would require images, I know how to instruct my students on properly borrow images from Flickr. Although, I have a feeling most of them already know about it and will be frustrated that I now know about it and will make them document their images.

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

Barack-ing the Vote Even if You're of the NObama Persuasion

Saturday found my husband and me early voting. It turns out we will actually be in Washington D.C. on Election Day, so we chose to vote now. As they scanned my driver's license (I seem to have misplaced my voter's registration) and lead me to the voting room, an intense feeling of pride for my country overwhelmed me.

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

Thing #10

Somewhere in my subconscious I have heard of Creative Commons. Due to it being shoved so far back into my mind, I never really gave any thought to what it was or meant. Honestly, the little CC emblem on sites never caught my attention before. However, I have a feeling I will start to notice it more and more now that I'm aware.

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.

As I watch Luke Skywalker battle the rancor...

This post will kill time for me in two ways:
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.

The Platform Between 9 and 10

It's Sunday evening, and I'm avoiding grading papers. The fact that I now have both a blog and a wiki keeps me constantly checking to see if anyone has responded to my "Burning Question" or any of my blog posts. Yep, that's just the kind of nerd I am. Also, my husband heard about my incredibly basic knowledge of html code, thanks to that blasted wiki, so he had me format his website for him: LG Electronics Sucks! He was so proud of what I did, I didn't have the heart to explain that most of it was just copying and pasting from codes on the internet. Oh well...

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...

Thing 8 3/4

I just started looking into this Sandbox thing and realized why I don't like wikis. I'm following all the directions and the code is confusing and when I preview my page it doesn't look anything like the example. It should not be this difficult!

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

This is the "thing" I have been dreading because I'm not comfortable with a wiki. I have yet to see why anyone would choose to use a wiki over a blog because I couldn't imagine what the students would need to make changes on. As I explore the wikis on the 23 Things blog, I will also write my post. This way I can share my immediate feelings and questions as I work through the different wikis. With that said...



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

Why does commenting make me uncomfortable? There's a great scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where Jay and Silent Bob are going door to door in order to beat up the people who have commented on a movie made about the not-so-dynamic duo. Perhaps I have an unreasonable fear that my comments will be misinterpretted and an angry blogger will be knocking at my door.
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!