Overview-WHEW!!

 I do not even know where to start. I enjoyed this class so much.  I learned so many new things. I felt like I had to rush through several things because I did not want to get behind in the class so I bookmarked alot of things that I can now go back through and take my time looking through them.  I have been out of the classroom for three years and I cannot believe how much technology has changed during this time.  I feel a huge sense of accomplishment for finishing this class and feel so much more competent on technology in the classroom.  I teach MTA which is a scripted class with no technology for the students.  I plan to get back into the classroom in the near future so I feel that this class will really help me make that transition without being totally lost.  I love the fact that this class is online and I can do it at my own pace.  I usually spent my evenings at home going through the material and then would come back to school to blog about it.  I am just excited that I now know how to blog and wiki.  I had heard these terms many times but did not really understand what they were. 
  I would highly recommend this class to anyone who wants to find new ways to use technology in their classroom.  I will continue to use my reader and will go back and explore things in more depth now that I have finished the class.  I am really excited about my new knowledge :) 

Thing 23-Other Social Sites

 I enjoyed looking through the information on Classrroom 2.0. I even found some messages that I wanted to comment on but I am not a member yet so I am waiting until they accept my membership request.  I think it would be great to get a social networking site together for an entire campus.  We could address topics on campus and it would be much easier to reach out and talk to people without having to email everyone.  The whole campus could collaborate on CIP, doing  book studies,  tutoring, etc.  I think it would be a fun way to communicate with faculty.  It would also be great to create a group of teachers who teach the same subject or class. It would be a quick and easy way to communicate with other teachers and get ideas as well as solutions to problems.  I am looking forward to spending more time on Classroom 2.0. 

Thing 22_Social networks

1. Why is it important to know how social networking works??

•  There are so many social networking sites that it is hard to keep up with them. My favorite is facebook. I will admit...I am a facebook addict. I love talking and catching up with friends from my past that I would not normally have a chance to talk to.  I also love to facebook stalk my own children.  I have learned alot of important things about them on facebook.  I think it could be beneficial to educators to set up a class facebook site (no personal information posted though) to keep students and parents informed to what is going on in your class. It would also offer another easy way for parents and teachers to communicate.

2 What new insights did you gain about these sites??

• I always find new games to play and new people to communicate with. I absolutely love facebook!

3. What did you like/dislike about each of these sites?

• I explored Myspace because I have not even looked at it since I joined facebook. I had to get my password emailed to me because it had been so long since I have been on there.  I like facebook better because I am more familiar with it than I am Myspace.  

4.   Which site has the most useful features?

• I think facebook does.  I love playing games on this site and I love interacting with friends.  It is very user friendly.

5. Can you see an educational use for these sites?

• I think it would be great to set up a classroom page that parents and students can visit.  Most people have facebook accounts so it would be another way to get in touch with parents and keep them informed as to what is going on in your classroom.

Thing 7B-Reader

 I went to my new igoogle page and looked at some of my information on my reader.  I always enjoy checking  for breaking news. Also, I check my reader often to check out reviews for upcoming movies.  It is such a good way to keep on top of things I am interested in. I have even found a few new sites to subscribe to as we have gone through these 23 things.  I usually only check my reader every other day.  I am hoping to have more time to check it more frequently to keep up with it. 

Thing 21-Google

 I am really excited about all of these google tools.  I am now a huge google fan. In the past I have used Yahoo for everything but I am definitely switching to google. I even made my igoogle page my new home page.  You can see it here. It will be great to have all of my information and interests at my fingertips and I really love the big clock on it so I can keep up with how much time I am spending looking  through all of this neat stuff. I am really excited about it.  I also spent alot of time looking at google earth. I was amazed at all of the information you can get from google earth. Of course I had to look up my own address and check out my house. I also looked at my parent's home. This would be a great tool to use to go on virtual field trips. I can see using this along with books so the class can get a better idea of how the setting in a particular story would really look.  You could also use it to go on virtual field trips to places you might not ever get to visit in real life.   I am definitely going to spend countless more hours exploring all of these tools. 

Thing 20-Google docs

 I am so excited to learn about google docs. I can think of so many uses for this in the classroom. Your students can work on group projects and not have to go to each other's home.  I love the fact that you have to give certain people permission to edit your document.  It is so user friendly and you do not have to worry about what type of software someone has. Everyone can use it and everyone can view it.  I created a slideshow  just for fun with some pictures from my daughter's volleyball team. It is neat how you can create it on one computer and pull it up on any other computer to view it or edit it.  I will use google docs for years to come. My favorite part of it is that it is totally FREE!!!

 I also think this is a great way for teachers to communicate with each other about a student's progress.  You can make a spreadsheet and update it as the student progresses through certain goals.  It is a great way for a team of teachers to collaborate without having to meet. It is really user friendly too!!

  I am going to find some time to make a survey and try to send it out. Our librarian created a survey with google docs and I thought it was a great way to get input from other teachers.  I absolutely love google docs and plan to use it frequently.

Thing 19-Voicethread

Wow! Here is another thing I did not know existed. This is so neat. I found several interesting things on this website.  I found a voicethread called Weather. It was a picture book written by an elementary class. It had their voices recorded on the page that they wrote and illustrated. It was really neat to see the pages and hear their voices reading their creations.  I think this would be wonderful for a class to post a class book and have their families and friends comment on their pages. What a great way for grandparents  to get to be involved in their grandchild's education.  I loved the fact that you could go on and leave a voicethread comment about the whole book or about an individual's page.  There are endless ways that you could use this in your classroom. I can also see creating a powerpoint and actually having your voice recorded on the powerpoint.   You could even use Flickr to find pictures and have the students work together to use the pictures to create a story and then have them record their own voices on their project.  I was really impressed with this site.

Thing 18-Teacher Tube and You Tube

I spent way too much time looking through videos on You Tube and Teacher Tube. I enjoyed every minute of it though.  There is just about every kind of videos imaginable on You Tube. That is the main reason you could never allow your students to navigate through You Tube on their own. If I used You Tube with my students I would embed the videos I wanted them to watch on my blog and have them only view videos from there. I really enjoyed Teacher Tube. It was so much more interesting than getting information from a podcast.  I watched a great video on the First Thanksgiving. I bookmarked several videos on my Delicious account.  I am embedding my favorite video from You Tube though. It is celebrating the success of the Texas Rangers this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqSUCKetAPk&feature=related

Here ia another one that I absolutely love!!
<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wp_RHnQ-jgU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wp_RHnQ-jgU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

Thing 17- Podcast

  Podcasting is a great tool  for education.  I previewed the website "Learn Out Loud" and listened to a podcast about the US Presidents.  Click here to listen to it. I listened to a 10 minute lesson on John F. Kennedy.  I learned some interesting facts about him.. I did, however, have a very hard time staying focused. I am a visual learner and I have trouble listening to someone speak without seeing them or seeing any visual tools.  I am sure that there are podcast out there that have video as well as audio.  I use podcast every week on a personal level. I teach a Sunday School class at church and I miss the worship service. I subscribed to our weekly podcast so I can listen to the sermon at home.  Again, I have a hard time just listening to it because it does not have any video with it.  I usually do other things while I listen to it. 
  I can see using a podcast as a tool for students to get to listen to other voices, other than the teachers, to teach lessons on certain subjects.  It would be hard to use though if you did not have a class set of ipods.  The teacher could play it out loud on her computer and the students could listen to it.

Thing 17-Podcasting

 Podcasting is a great tool for education. It is amazing what information is out there to listen to.  I teach a Sunday School class so I miss going to worship service at church. I subscribed to the podcast at our church so I can listen to the Sunday message.   I have a very hard time staying focused with just the voice streaming and no video to watch.  I am a visual learner so I have a very hard time staying focused on just listening and not having something to watch. 
  I also went on Learn out Loud

Thing 16-Library Thing

Library Thing is a great way to catalog and tag your favorite books. It is also a great way to share your opinions about certain books.   I love Nicholas Sparks books so I searched through and found alot of information about his books.  It would be a great way to tag books that you use when teaching certain subjects. It is also a great way to search for other books that people are using to teach in their classrooms.  I would love to read a book and get to discuss my opinions with other people who have read the same book.  I know I did not spend enough time seeing all of the benefits of this site but I plan to go back and look at it more in depth at a later time.  I am adding it to my delicious bookmarks. Here is a link to the Library Thing.

Thing 15 is Delicious

I got signed up for a delicious account. I already have a yahoo account so I used it to sign up for a delicious account. It took me a little while to download the toolbar but once I got it up and running I felt like it was really easy to use.   I searched for websites that will help me with TAKS reading tutoring.   I found many different sites that look like they will be really helpful.  I love the way the delicious bookmarks come up on my toolbar as a separate tab.  I think it will be great to access these bookmarks from home. Several times I have been working on tutoring and get home and forget that I don't have a certain bookmark on my home computer. I am looking forward to having these bookmarks available on any computer.
 I had some trouble coming up with tabs for some websites because they are basically for the same subject. I had to get creative and try to think of other ways to describe the sites.  Once I got in the groove of pushing the tag button and having it just pop up ready for a tag, it got easier. I am looking forward to tagging alot of websites and searching through other teacher's websites instead of always having to go to yahoo and using the search engine for helpful websites.  I think I am going to love it!! Please visit my bookmarks at 
http://www.delicious.com/rondoe2006

Thing 7A

  I subscribe to Rotten Tomatoes on my Google Reader.  I enjoy reading about different movies that have recently come out.  I have been wondering if I really wanted to see "Life as We Know It."  I read on Rotten Tomatoes that it is not worth seeing. I will more than likely wait for it to come out in RedBox and not waste my money to see it in the theater.  It got bad reviews from the critics but decent reviews from the audience.  You can go here to check out the reviews.  I really don't see much educational use for this subscription but I enjoy reading the reviews.

Thing 14-Quizlet

 I chose to play around with Quizlet.  I was really impressed with it and spent a great deal of time playing games that had already been generated. I especially liked the Spanish translation game and the SAT words.  I think Quizlet would be a great way to help students review for upcoming tests.  I also think it would be a great way to enhance their vocabulary.   You can make your own flashcards or play matching games on this site.  The games are timed so it is always fun to play several times to try to beat your score.   The younger grades can use this site to make multiplication flash cards to help the students work on memorizing their multiplication facts.  I really enjoyed searching through this and can think of many uses for this site. 

Thing 13-Image generators

 I really enjoyed playing around with the image generators. I started off uploading a picture of my husband and had some fun putting his picture on a monkey body on the body switcher web site.  Then I made a baseball trading card with my son's picture and then went on sign generator and made a basketball jersey and a license plate for my daughter.  I had a great time playing around with all of these. I bookmarked several of them and will use them to make things for my family.   I think the trading cards would be a great way to teach vocabulary in the classroom.  It would also be a fun way to make memory matching games for students to play.  I use the comic generator to make the monster below.
http://www.comicstripgenerator.com   I think comic generator would be a great way to make and express a thought for the day with your class.

thing 12-Slideshow

Here is the slide show I created. It was easier to create than I thought it would be. I just hope I did all of my credits and links correctly.  Click here to view my slide show. I am crossing my fingers and hoping it works :)

Thing 11-Flickr

I really enjoyed looking at pictures in Flickr. If I was going to use Flickr with my students, I would have pictures saved in a folder on my computer that they could browse through and use.  I came across some photos I would definitely not want my students to look at. I think Flickr is an amazing thing.  It gives you pictures of just about anything right at your fingertips. Previously I have had to search for images and then find the one I want only to find out that I could not use it without paying for it.  I think There are so many ways that you could use Flickr. I think it would be fun to put a picture a day up on the promethian board and have the students use the picture as a writing prompt.   I also think it is a great way to share pictures with friends and family. I have used Snapfish in the past but I am going to start using Flickr now to share my pictures. Here is a picture that I downloaded:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbj/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturesbyann/with/2572062003/

Thing 10-Creative Commons

  I learned a lot from the information on Creative Commons. I am still a little unclear on some aspects of it.  I had noticed the emblem before but did not know what it represented.  I am always concerned about infringing on copyright laws and I always hope that a jury would have compassion on me if I was using the information for my students.  I also worry about it when my own children are using information from the internet. I will show my daughter the creative  commons emblem and tell her to watch for sites that have the emblem.   When I am making a presentation, I usually just use Microsoft clip art or pictures that I have taken myself.  I now feel more comfortable in using other people's materials with the creative commons logo.   I found this portion of the class to be very beneficial.

Thing 9- Whew!!!

 I think I finally finished my wiki.  You can view it here. I called my wiki Ronda's Ramblings.  I enjoyed creating it and felt that it is fairly easy to create (after I printed out the wiki cheat sheet and used it for each step) I even went ahead and created a Voika. I had a really hard time saving it on my wiki. I tried several different ways to get it there and finally got it saved. I am not sure if I could go back and do it again. I just succeeded through trial and error.   I enjoy looking at everyone else's wikis and I am going to go back and add a few more things to mine before it is all said and done.  I am just really excited that now when people start talking about wikis I will actually know what they are talking about. 

Thing 8-Wikis

  I am really learning a lot of new things from this class. I have heard a lot about Wiki's but never took the time to really stop and figure out ways to use them.  I enjoyed looking through the wikis in the discovery lesson.   I was excited to see all of the different uses for the wikis. I looked through a wiki called Kindergarten Counting  where the teacher was trying to make a virtual counting book to 100.  I also glanced through a wiki called Primary Math where students and teachers from all over the world were contributing to ideas about teaching and reinforcing number concepts. There are several classes involved in updating this wiki. I think it would be exciting as a class to add information to this wiki as well and see what the other classes came up with. I think the students would be enjoying creating information for this wiki and not even realize they are learning in the process.  The third wiki I glanced through was a wiki for older students. It was from an eleventh grade class.  The teacher used this wiki to extend topics from the classroom  and offered things like a class calendar, instructions for homework and projects and a place for class discussion.  I think this is a great way to keep the students in touch with what is going on in the classroom. It is also a very good way to keep parents up on what their child needs to be working on at home. 
STRETCH:  All of this information on Wikis made me stop and try to think of a way that I can incorporate a wiki  in my class.  I teach MTA so I think it would be very beneficial to set up a wiki with websites with information on dyslexia as well as a comment board where parents and students can discuss the challenges of being dyslexic and success stories on overcoming dyslexia. 

Thing 7-Comments

 I agree with the writer of "How to Comment like a Queen or King".  It is important to add as much information as possible when leaving a comment on someone's blog.  You should leave a reason for agreeing or disagreeing with their post. I really enjoy reading other people's blogs and I like to leave a positive comment about their blog.  Blogging can be a very positive as well as a negative thing.  I think it is a great way to express your opinion and read about other people's opinions as well. It helps to see how other people feel about issues. I have even been known to change my opinion after reading opinions from both sides of an issue.  I like to read the comments other people leave on my blog as well. I think a blog should be like any normal conversation and I think everyone should follow guidelines for proper etiquette.  I also think that people should use blogging to express their experiences and opinions and not use them to spread gossip.  Right now there is a blog going around at Poteet where several people are blogging about a subject they know nothing about.  It has turned into a very hateful blog about the principal and I think that is a shame.  I think that sometimes people should have to identify themselves if they are going to be blogging about someone else and using their name.  Blogging should not be used to hurt other people. I think our new rule needs to be "if you can't blog something nice about someone then just don't blog it at all".

Thing 5-The Reader (RSS)

 I have spent a lot of time looking through the different websites and reading news on them.  I have never even heard of a reader before this class. It is a great way to keep all of your information at your fingertips. I wish they would have had this available back in the dark ages when I was doing research papers in high school and college. I think this would be very helpful.  I like it because I can find all of the info I am interested in in one click.  It  would be great to use in computer lab because I always struggle to get the kids to type in the URL addresses to find things we are studying. I could have these readers available to them and they would not have to type in all of the information.  I am looking forward to periodically checking my reader to see what other news is available.  I enjoyed looking at the reader for 10 sites for creating digital comics. I like this site because it is designed by an educator and is set up for education so you know there is not going to be any inappropriate material on the site when your students click on them.

Thing 4

I really enjoyed reading the different blogs. I especially like the Blog titled "Patrick's Update". I am very impressed with the fact that teachers are allowing students to blog instead of having them write about things in a paper journal.  It is so exciting to see how many people from all over the world were offering Patrick support and encouragement.  I expect these bloggers cannot wait to get on and blog and see who is reading their blogs.  This would encourage the students to be creative and want to blog instead of just writing about things in a notebook and only getting feedback from the teacher.  It is also a great way for students around the world to read the blogs and see what other students are experiencing from other parts of the world. 
 I also read the blog on the second graders and their duck stories. Some of them were pretty silly but I enjoyed seeing their ideas and seeing their unedited comments.  I think this is  a great way to encourage the students to express their ideas and opinions. 

Web 2.0

I am intrigued by all of the latest technology available to teachers and students. I think that it is a wonderful way to reach students and grab their attention and have them learn important things without them even realizing they are learning.  I think it offers students who have been unsuccessful in the past a chance to blossom and become interested in learning again. They will even venture out of their comfort zone to show what they have learned.  This will enable students to learn in a much more creative manner than ever before.  So many teachers complain about the lack of interest of their students. I think that using tools from Web 2.0 will keep those students interested in learning. 
 There are so many ways now that teachers can engage their students. Anything from having them create a news story or their opinion of a news story and posting it on UTube to making a powerpoint presentation covering any subject imaginable.  I heard recently that many school districts are getting rid of all of their text books and replacing them with laptops for students. I think this is a wonderful idea. Textbooks get outdated in no time at all. The internet is constantly being updated and refreshed and the information is never going to be out of reach.  I hope that more and more educators see the importance of incorporating technology in the classroom. I think this will increase the number of lifelong learners. 

 The habit that will be the hardest for me is to have confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner.  I teach MTA and do not use technology with my students in my classroom. I feel like I am out of touch with all of the new innovative things that technology offers.  I do not feel confident in myself as a technologically sound person.
I am going to have to really push myself to finish this course and not give up along the way.  The time frame of this course is another issue with me. I feel like I am juggling so many balls right now between being a teacher, wife and mother. This is another ball I am going to have to add to my life and I am hoping that I will be able to spend the time that I need to complete this course and learn alot of new and fun things along the way.  I really enjoy learning new things in technology so I think it will make it easier to invest the time needed to complete this class.  I am really looking forward to interacting with other learners like myself as we complete the 23 things in this course.