Thing #23! Yea!

Answers to questions for final Thing!
1. Favorite discoveries or exercises were the RSS feeds so that I can organize my reading material. I also enjoyed learning what an Avatar was and creating my own personal Avatar!
2. This program has assisted my lifelong learning goals in many ways. I am always trying to stay on top of education and new ways of teaching. This program has offered my endless possibilities for making my classes creative and interesting. I want to get proficient at podcasting and actually video some of my cooking classes! I just need a "catch phrase" and I will be the next Emeril!!
3.The unexpected outcome for me was that I actually knew about the Photo Story program. You always love to hear that you are doing something right! I used it efficiently last year and plan to expand on it again this year along with other "things" that were in this program. I love learning about technology and trying to incorporate it into my classes. The students will teach me the rest of what I don't know!
4. I did not actually learn that you had help sessions on specific dates until the very end of this program. Sending out emails or constant reminders that the sessions are going on would be helpful. I know that I asked Vaughn to help me, but I did not know that there were actual classes held that I could attend with fellow teachers to learn more about what I was doing. It is always better to learn in a social setting!?!
5. I would definitely participate in another one of these programs! After attending the Family and Consumer Science Conference in Dallas, I learned that I was more technologically advanced than the presenters! One of my fellow teachers asked me if I would consider being a presenter for next year since I knew many ways to make their presentations much better already! I felt so sorry for the presenter that actually introduced the Photo Story concept and the poor example she gave! I almost ran up to the front with my laptop and said "Here, this is what it is suppose to look like and this is what your students are capable of doing"!!!! Thanks for having this program available.
6. I would describe my experience as "An incredible, enlightening, educational,journey through the infinite world of technology"!!!

Thing #22

Ning! That's a new word. In this social networking website, I see that it could be helpful since it is on a particular subject or works with a specific issue. In researching the sample websites, I thought that the "Teacher Librarian' website was really a good example of exactly how this tool could be useful. You are connecting other librarians from around that country that can share issues and ideas with many possible answers and solutions. Any group could benefit from subscribing to a NING site and conversing with other like individuals that are experiencing the same problems or successes as themselves. Being a Family and Consumer Science teacher, I feel that I would seek out a website like a NING to discover new ways to approach problems or lesson plans. Also, our particular subject has many issues now, even facing extinction in the classroom, and it would be helpful to discuss ways of making our voice heard in the education world. The Texas Librarian is another good idea since teachers in the same state face the same state mandated laws. I am glad to know about this tool and will seek out a NING that will be useful to my needs. Another great tool!

Thing #21

My students have already been doing PHOTOSTORY. I love this program! My Career Investigations classes worked with our librarian, Cindy Shultz, who taught them the program and about importing photos from FLICKR.COM. The assignment was to create a photo story about your chosen career. The students loved being creative with the music and script. Some students opted to just use music and write their captions in each frame. I thought that this would take awhile for the students to learn. WOW! Was I surprised when they said "we don't like the choices of music, can we download our own music"!!! If you have not used this wonderful tool, please do yourself a favor and let your students show you what they can do! I am uploading the photo story from a student that wanted to be an actress! Great video! Oh! I had the students save these to their student folders and graded them from their folders! Enjoy!

Thing #20 Paula Deen - Cast Iron Molds and Decorative Cast Iron Pieces - Cooking.com

Paula Deen - Cast Iron Molds and Decorative Cast Iron Pieces - Cooking.com

Finally! I have been totally frustrated with this one! I still don't know if I embedded this one correctly! I tried to embed a video from Teacher Tube and it would not work! I have downloaded the AVI conversion download to help with the conversion of the videos to my computer. I do have a very old computer, so this whole process has taken me alot longer because I had to wait forever on each window to come up!!! OK! Now on to the next thing!! I am almost done!!!

Thing #19

These WEb 2.0 sites are tremendous! What a great tool for my Skills for Living classroom. I could video (pod cast) my lessons or demos, and the students could view them if they were absent that day! I could save the really goods ones and share them with my colleagues! I could use these podcasts and even categorize them according to ingredients, specific foods, etc. We could also use this in my careers class to categorize jobs within a Career Cluster. We could even explore this as a job on the web! Great tool, once again!

Thing #18

Oh my goodness! What a great way to simplify your life! I am totally blown away with this online course. Every "thing" is so helpful and basically user friendly. I explored docs.google.com and could actually create my form and follow each instruction to fill it out and email to coworkers. I thought that the automatic summary and spreadsheet calculations were invaluable. This is great for collaboration with working documents where everyone can post their revision and you can come up with the actual finished product. Then, email it to everyone so that they can use it in their lessons or work. Incredible time-saver! No spending hours hunting down everyone for their part of the document! Wonderful!

Thing #17

Good job, Bruce! I got the websites that one of the presenters from the conference gave us on a "hand out" and placed them in a rollyo account. My students will be able to access these websites during our career searches! What a great tool to use with just about every project that you ask of your students! It is also a great assessment tool! You can ask the students specific questions from specific websites that you know they will access. Then, get creative with the assessments! I am wondering if you can add websites after the account is already established? I will have to play with this. New websites are always popping up that will enhance learning. It will be great if the rollyo is a "document in perpetual progress".

Thing #16

Help! I tried to sign in to post a comment in the sandbox portion of the wiki, and I was rejected every time! I use the "sbisd" user name and "sbisdlib" password and it kept telling me that that account was already in use! What did I do wrong?? I think that Wikis can be very useful! I see my students posting careers or even using it to post recipes in categories! The possibilities are endless. I have to get better at using this one! Practice, Practice, Practice!!!

Thing #15

Library 2.0 is something that I have already experienced in this past year. Our librarian is techno-savvy and I go to her for help with technology projects all the time. We collaborated on "photo story" with my career classes. She introduced them to Flickr.com and we explored how to import pictures and use them wisely. Together, our students created some of the best career photo stories that they proudly presented! I also told her how I was using student folders to house projects for grading. We are trying to "go green"! She passed this info along to the other teachers in our school. Our library is more than just reading books and checking out books. Our librarian helps students on technology when she can. She is always my "go to" person when I can't figure something out. Our library of the future is going to look much different that it does now. I doubt that it has four walls and ONE person that we call a librarian. Today, students have so much information at their fingertips. They just need a facilitator to help discover the world that lies within that information and the best way to use it. That is where a great librarian comes in! Good job, Cindy!

thing #14

Technorati - I have just come from my conference in Dallas for Family and Consumer Science. I was extremely disappointed with the outbreak sessions and the quality of infomration that I received. After taking this online course thus far, I, who am not considered a techno-savvy individual, am far more savvy than the presenters at this conference! At one session, we actually received handouts of websites that "might be useful in our lesson plans"!! If these people had researched the web applications, they could have just placed each website on "delicious.com" and instructed us to research the "tags" and find their website suggestions accordingly! One person that presented talked about adding "photo story" to your lesson plans and proceded to show the poorest example of a "photo story" that I had ever seen. Even my worst students did better the example presented! I was so embarrassed for the presenter and wanted to take her my laptop and say "please show this photo story so that each individual will know that it can be done right"!!! By searching blogs, we are all connected and can share our findings. We can learn what does not work and what does! We can comment to each other and expand on our existing knowledge. Tagging our information can help us to know what already did not work and help us go in another direction from the beginning. Collaboration with others helps to increase our abilities to reach our goals must faster! Way to go Technorati!

Thing #13

I am attending the FCS Conference in Dallas. Each seminar that I attend, the instructor has given us websites that will assist us in our teaching experiences. As I begin to visit each of these websites, I can tag them according to the category and post them on my deloicious account. the instructors should be telling everyone about this wonderful new tool! Instead of giving us a hard copy of the websites, they could just post each site to their delicious account, or whatever social networking site they chose, and tell us to check out their tags! Lots to learn! The potential is endless for an informative conference like the one that I am attending. We could all benefit from this social networking site. This could save alot of time and allow for other helpful seminars instead of just giving us websites in each seminar! Great tool!

Thing #12

As I have read through the articles on "how to communicate through blogging," it has become clear to me that blogging is very much like carrying on a conversation with someone interested in hearing what you have to say. The rules of conversation etiquette apply to this application as in any conversation that you would have with someone in person. "Talk - Listen - Respond" just like you would in a conversation. Linking your blogs to other articles or pictures simply expands your conversation and allows others to comment or have additional information that supports your views. With these mini-lessons on blogging, provided by other bloggers, I feel empowered with a new knowledge of how to communicate with the world! It will take me some time and many trials to get good at this, but I am ready to get good at this form of communication.

thing #11

I signed up for Library Thing! I posted the Twilight series which I am just finishing the last book "Breaking Dawn." There are millions of people that have read these books. I will really enjoy this site because I love "book clubs" and that is what this reminds me of. I like the fact that I can keep a record of all of the books that I read. The best part is being able to share them and actually discuss different view points. Great Thing! ha!

I am headed to the New Jersey coast with my girlfriends for a mini-vacation! Can't Wait!

Thing #9

I did it! Wow! I love searching for new RSS sites and adding them to my google page! This could save lots of time, energy, and effort! The easiest search tool was google because I am just familiar with their set up. I like the Bloglines search tool because you can just type a single word to make the seach successful. I got a little confused when I tried Atomic learning. I don't understand what I was suppose to do there. This will be very helpful as I go further in this course. I am now looking out for the little RSS icon on each article!

Thing #8

Wow! I opened a Google Account, but I don't have a clue how to add bookmarks or any other stuff! I will definitely have to play with this one! I like the concept of being able to view your sites without all of the ads and junk - - I just don't get how to get started adding! I will get the hang of this soon!

Thing #7

I set up an iGoogle home page. It is a great tool because you can choose the items that you want to see right when you computer comes on! I always look at the weather forecast and there it was! You can change it to suit your needs at any time. I tried to set up a Google notebook, however, they are not accepting new accounts at this time for the notebook. If you have an existing account, you can continue to use that account. I explored the Google Docs and thought that it would be a good tool to use at school. The teachers could share documents that work well in a lesson plan. You can search for other documents that compliment you class. It could be a valuable tool. Interesting stuff!

Thing #6

The idea of using multiple resources to create a useful tool, such as the one described with the real estate companies combining maps and real estate software, is amazing. The possibilities are endless for any business! I explored the ways to create magazine covers and maps of where you are going, or have been, and that site was pretty intriguing. I also thought that the "Librarian Cards" were a great way for all librarians to communicate. I can't wait to have a little more time to play with each site! Good stuff!

Thing #5

I have used Flickr to retrieve pics for photo story.

Thing #3

Creating a Blog!? What am I doing? What are blogs good for? Help! I guess this is another form of communication which leads to my better use of technology. I followed all the steps and here is the blog that I came up with. Oh well, we will see what happens as I muddle through this course! Creating an Avatar was fun and informative! I know that my students already know how to do this - - Wow!

Thing #2

Thing #2 - The 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners
Goals are easy for me to set. I simply think of what I want to achieve and then make my plan. I know that I have to accept responsibility for my own learning, and therefore I find my own resources to make my goals happen. Problems are challenges that help me to grow and learn from my mistakes. I have total confidence that I can accomplish everything that I set my mind to. One stumbling block is technology! I am completely clueless and need lots of help from teachers and mentors! Thanks for any and all help!

SO MUCH TO LEARN!

I AM SO NEW TO THE NEW TECHNOLOGY! THIS IS MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT CREATING A BLOG SITE. I AM TAKING THIS PROGRAM "23 THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO HELP TEACH YOUR STUDENTS"! I AM GOING TO NEED LOTS OF HELP!

SO MUCH TO LEARN!