The blog continues, even without being assigned

I suddenly had this incredible desire just to update my blog. I wasn't sure that I would continue once I graduated from 23 things, but I missed it. 

School goes on.

Christmas will happen even if I am not ready for it.

and I am so happy that I am still here and kickin.

Summing it all up!!!

In summary, by far, hands down, the best and most fun staff development ever!!!!!

The most surprising thing was the library thing. In fact, I have made myself wait until after I finish this last class related thing to go to the library thing and update my list. There are so many things that I am planning on using with my students, of course some of them I am already using now. Quizlet is the application which I use the most. It has become rather personal for me to maintain my vocabulary site for my own personal 8th grader to practice for vocabulary quizzes in an entertaining way.

I truly believe that I will continue to use all of these skills (well maybe not the sandbox), and I am sure that I will keep my blog up even after the class. I probably will take a little time off though, but I will continue will my RSS, so much superior to the newspaper. I like reading the things I want without sifting through the extra stuff.

As far as me taking another class with this type of format, you bet! Count me in!!

Thing #23

I was hoping to add the thingster badge to my post for thing #23, but I added it to my chargercougar blog as a gadget. I really thought I already had it, but it was gone when I looked so I put it back. I joined 23 thingsters way back before thing #3, just because I like social networking. Wow, how far have my 2.0 skills come? Look at me blog!! I am still not good at embedding picts and things in individual blogs, but I am still working on it. It could be that I really like Safari better than mozilla, so I have to keep checking to make sure I am in mozilla.

I really think that next year I will try and set up a Ning network for team 7-2. I really think that the students and parents would get into it. It would be a great way to keep them all involved, and it would lessen the need to make so many blanket emails.

I do have a picture on my 23 thingster page, and have left a couple of comments on the fall 2008 page of thingsters and one for one of the members.

In searching for a few "nings", the list is truly overwhelming! I chose a favorite one about St. Joe H2O. What an awesome example of a way to have class participation at a Ning site!

Thing #20 A shared Doc

Well some of us at KMS decided that we would work on this together. We have come up with a shared document in which we shared funny stories of things our students have done or said over the years. It is not quite as detailed as "Here to There and Back again's" Unblock google (which is awesome and very useful), but I think that all of us who are participating are having a great time!
I think that fellow teachers and classes could really use this in the collaboration process.
And so I leave you with a random picture,
Myspace Funny Picture Comments & Graphics
You will never look at Nemo the same again.

Thing #22 Facebook vs. MySpace

Well, I think that the "loud librarian" whoever that might be, really hit a lot of my feelings when I first started with myspace. I was very leary of it and had heard a bunch of negative things. When I got started I was teaching high school and I my son was in high school. I started with it just to see what was on his page. I did lots of activities with other students in his class since I coached them for most of their high school volleyball and track careers. It turned out to be fun!! You are welcome to send me a friend request, I'll accept although I rarely ever check this account anymore. I spent quite a bit of time on this page, and have quite a bit of family stuff on it. I mostly used it to keep in touch with some family and some of my former track team. I liked feeling connected once I left Dallas Christian.
Then my son got me really hooked on facebook! I do check my facebook account everyday. Sometimes I even use the chat feature. It is really fun to banter back and forth with my son who is away at college, or to catch up with friends that I haven't seen or talked to in years. I prefer it to myspace because it is so much less fluffy! I love the trivia stuff and had to send a lot of cowboy wave requests to get my Romo Jersey.
I think that it is really important that we keep up with what our students are doing, and lets face reality, most kids over the age of 10 use one or both of these sites regularly. Even though my students know that I have both accounts, I have only gotten one friend request from a current student. I don't know I think that feels a little strange. I rarely ever get friend requests from total strangers, and myspace is set to private so you have to be my friend to view it, same with facebook. I think they are both grand.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

The Google Thing #21

Wow! There are so many neat parts for this thing! I wish we could use them at school. Could someone please tell me what is wrong with Google that the district blocks it?
I loved personalizing my on google home page. How fun is that? I have made a google calendar too, and I like it because now my husband can check it on line and no longer has any reason to not know what is going on. Of course that is if I can keep it up to date. Google notebook was good too!
But google maps is the best!! I have also used this often for directions, and I like that you can change the view so you can really see what you are looking for as you arrive at the destination.
I also saw that one of our classmates found a google translate sight and as a teacher of several of those Arabic students this would be so helpful. I know our ESL teacher would really like it.
Mostly, I pretty much could see great uses for everything in Thing #21. Go Google!!

#7C the Reader continues

Well, I am still fascinated by all things NASA, so one of my reader subscriptions is NPR topics. It has been great to keep caught up on probes, missiles, ISS, and astronauts. The latest articles is kind of sad, but it is talking about the Phoenix lander who has been gathering info from the surface of Mars for about 5 months. It has not gathered any conclusive proof that we could live there, but it does look like at one time water was there in some form. The lander was supposed to have a life expectancy of 3 months, so it really lasted longer that it was supposed to. It actually died because its solar panels became covered in dust and the batteries could no longer stay charged.

#19 VOICETHREAD

Thinking about doing this one scared me. I was afraid that I was going to have to record myself and embed. What I found was a 2.0 tool that will definitely be used in my classroom in the future. Several science threads, an incredible VENN diagram where the kids can interact. I think I will try that one next 6 weeks with the laptops. The one called bellwork was great too! This "thing" was easy to use and life is so much easier to post now that I can get all my stuff in the same delicious spot!

Thing #18 You Tube & Teacher Tube

Well, my husband is absolutely addicted to YouTube, so I see a lot of it from an angle not directly in front of the computer screen. This is a fun "Thing" and I can see why we were warned to set a time limit.
I have chosen to put the element song in since we are teaching chemistry this six weeks. I also chose several more element sites and atomic structure sites. My "How to" I chose was about installing RAM into a computer. I am glad I do not have to do that anytime soon. Of course, the thing of interest is a clip from the new movie Twilight "What if I am the bad guy?" I cannot wait until the 21st of November. I can be sleepy at school on Friday if there is a midnight showing.
I found lots of things that I could use @ school, I hope that the filters do not get on them.

Oops, pod casting is Thing #17

The post below is really about thing #17, my bad.

Pod Casting Thing #18, my Ipod, more than an alarm

Wow! All this time I could have been getting these really cool things for free for my ipod and I did not even know it. I went to everyone of the podcasts. I even went to my itunes before I did some of them and one of them I subscribed to immediately was 60 second science. I found it later in the list. I also got a "learn Spanish" one because I took that this semester also and I really want to know how to speak Spanish. The other one I subscribed to is Teachers Teaching Teachers. The possibilities are endless! I thought searching through the itunes store was easier to use than any of the directories. Maybe it is just what I am used to. I did really like Mugglecast, and the 2nd grade project on Thomas Jefferson was great! I am pretty sure if 2nd graders could do that our 7th graders could also.

The #16 Library Thing

I absolutely love the "Library Thing." How awesome to be able to keep an online record of your own personal library. I even stretched and have already added 18 books, and it didn't take any time at all. I absolutely love the idea of the students being able to do this and the 50 book challenge. The teachers of team 7-2 have basically challenged each other this year to read at least 5 of the 20 lonestar reading books. 60% of us are already there and 3 of us are going to try to read all 20. The students love it too, because we are reading what they are reading!!

Thing #15, the trama of tastiness

Well delicious and I were getting along just fine until I realized that once again I was in Safari, force of habit. Once I went to Firefox, it kept telling me that I added my buttons but they were not there. If the add bookmark bar is not there, you have to jump through a few more hoops. I can tell that it will be a marvelous tool once I have more practice. I decided to tag chemistry things and hopefully I have added the alkali metals video from brainiac to the list. It is great if you are a science teacher, the kids love it! So here are my delicious bookmarks and the video. Rock on!!

Thing #14-Fun Things to Play with

I simply must admit that after this week of school, playing on the computer even in the form of homework was a wonderful stress remover. Being in a very strange mood, I decided to start from the bottom up until I got to a "toy" that peeked my interest. I have had some experience with writeboard and wordle from earlier in 23 things so I just looked over them but decided not to redo.
I was really excited about Weebly. I really thought that this would be the one that I would use. I love drag and drop things. This week in the computer lab my students created their own food webs, and it was fun. I thought that I might make my own using my own digital photos, but did not like how weebly placed the picts on the page. Then I went to toondoo, and Ta-da list. My son really likes cartoons and I thought it would be fun for him. Only a few seconds later, I realized cartoons are still not my thing and do I really want or need another list of things to do.
My next stop was Quizlet. What an incredible site!!! I LOVE IT. I created a science vocabulary list of 30 words from our 8th grade vocabulary list, you know, the district's big push. I teach 7th and am planning to do the same thing for them. I started with 8th since I have son in 8th grade . It does all sorts of amazing things including flashcards, quizzes and games with my list. I think it may be the best thing I have found so far! I am going to share my list with the 8th grade science teachers also so that maybe some of their students can use it too!

The future of thing #14

I haven't had the time yet to start on this one, but I have read it and I absolutely love the line.

"Think of this "Thing" as focused play. Or think of it as miserable, frustrating work... it's up to you ;)"

That's what I like the most, instructors with a dry sense of humor. :-)

Thing #7B

Well my new favorite post is one which shows photos and discusses new information from the Messenger space probe which is flying by Mercury. Did you know that we have not had a probe going by Mercury since the mid 70's. I wish there were more opportunities to use NASA resources to encourage our student's interest in space. There just seems to be only time to push what's on the test, and really cool space projects aren't. I makes me kind of sad, but this is a really great article.

Thing #13 Playing with photo toys

Wow! You could really spend a lot of time with this one and there were some fun things to play with. My most successful one was the trading card maker. In 2007, my son played on the TAPPS 5A state championship baseball team, so that is what is above.

I also spent time on the mosaic maker and was very frustrated by having to upload and upload and upload or upload to flickr and try to get it to make it to upload an entire group. I was never success and just cannot read the Twilight series and spend more than 3 hours on one lesson. After all Edward and Bella seem more important to me right now.

These are incredible tools, and I do want to work with Kelly on getting some of these incorporated into our classes at Kimbrough.

Thing #12- Slide on in

I embedded my slide show of galaxies into the sandbox. I also put in a family slide show because I liked it.

#11-third time is charmed.

No know copyright, and the Smithsonian Institute has posted these images to Flickr. If you click on the long thin rectangle it does link to the photo page,(so does that) so I guess I have learned this one in stages.

#11 Try, Try again

I hope for this to be my missing picture of a spiral galaxy taken from the Chandra observatory. On the previous blog if you click on the ? mark it will link to the image. Go figure.


I think this is successful. Hooray!

Thing #11, A Flicker of Genius, but maybe not mine!

Well, here goes. Thing #11 did take be a little longer. I searched flicker photos and added my own photos to flicker to use later. I decided to use galaxies as my educational search, so maybe I could use it later. I am hopeful that at the left I have a picture of a spiral galaxy, I cannot tell in this screen. If it is not here. I'll try again in my next post.

I am getting better at the sandbox, and I did get my picts in for thing #12. I absolutely love the blog on using Flickr to teach vocabulary. This would tie in extremely well with the Frayer model that we are using now in our classes. There were great examples here. Kudos to Teacher dude. I even left a comment.

#10 A very common thing or is it?

I love the entire creative commons thing! Honestly, I have not noticed the CC on any of the sites, but I never really looked for it. I definitely think that it will affect student work in the future, and I love collaboration. Coming from a family of coaches, most if not all plays, in most sports were "borrowed" from other coaches. I guess that is creative commons in its simplicity. Everyone begs, borrows and steals from each other and some of the time it can make the difference in winning and losing a game. (Most of the time, if your athletes are better than theirs-you win) Talent being equal, though, the creative common things can work for you! I know, I think it is fun to work collaboratively and there is something mysterious about collaborating with people that you do not even know. This is such a paradigm shift from all the copyright presentations that have been presented to us during staff development.

Thing #9 Be careful or your could get stuck in the Sandbox

Well, I can't say that I really enjoyed this one. I have spent more time on this one than any of the others. When my kids were little I used to be so paranoid about them playing in the sandbox because if you left the cover off the neighbor's cats could come and visit the sandbox. We all know what that means. This is why I named my page "No Cats in the Sandbox."

Well, as life would have it, I made a brand new wiki and then tried to put it in the 23 things sandbox. That doesn't work. Kelly helped me and I mostly copied and pasted so it did not take nearly as long to create the 2nd time. I did post it, as well as my favorite yucky science web site to the sandbox.

I did create a voki which I put on this blog, and maybe when I get a few more hours I will try and figure out how to get in on my sandbox page. Good luck to all of you on thing #9. May all your burning questions get answered.

#8 Stretch Wikipedia-the expert opinion on all things

You just have to love wikipedia. First I decided to look for the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stars for my son's homework. I typed in Hertzburg-Russell and didn't find a thing. Just another example of computers only doing what you tell them to. I did find it and it had a lot of history and a lot of information. I compared it to one on Glenwood, Arkansas. This is a small town where I grew up (outside of it anyway). It had little history and it said in the discussion that pictures should be added to make it better. I agree, but I do not have any of this very small town.

Thing #8 Wikiness

This is one of the things that I have most wanted to know how to do. It was amazing seeing the wikis that classes have created. In the post called Wiki Wiki Teaching, there were great links to several student created wikis. Two of my very favorites were one which was set up as a study hall sight for students to view and see assignments and projects that were coming up. I really liked it since it made the  students responsible for maintenance of  their own study time. The other was a review for an English exam where students were basically making their own collaborative on-line review.

While exploring the list of Wikis provided, I of course went to the science sites first. I absolutely loved the 6th grade science site called "code Blue". Since I teach body systems in the Spring, we may try something like this one. It appears that each student had to do a brief amount of research about a medical profession and write a short paragraph about themselves with a description that made them that Dr. It would be a great way for the teacher to know who they are and they still retain their anonymity. Also within this wiki was a great link to a "yucky science" site that students would love. My favorite discussed the digestive system.

One of the sites was a high school chemistry teacher's wiki. I found the way it was set up to probably be one that would not be a problem for anyone monitoring the system. It seemed to be very clear and concise and would allow the students to access expectations for each lesson and to post their assignments to the wiki. It appeared that many students had made powerpoints of various subjects.

As the U.S. turns its head toward elections, I found one the Wolf's Den wiki had a link to a student history site where each student had a link inside their class, and they were asked to post reasons for who they would vote for and why. Some of the posts were most insightful and I believe that if the teacher had not made up his or her mind, they might make a decision based on input from students.

Thing #7 or sharing a little part of your soul

As I was scanning my reader, I came across a post on Infinite Thinking Machine called Freedom to read. It has one of my favorite lists of the top 100 banned books from 1990-2000. It is amazing to me how some of these could make it. Maybe they could ban our posts and comments too!

Commenting is like voting, it seems to give you some say. Sometimes we feel that voting may not do any good, but when you think about the process it really is the only say we have, and no matter how small that say, it is still mine. So when I now blog that is my chance to send my "Vote" out into the mysteries of cyberspace for the universe to read.

I have really enjoyed reading not only posts but others comments to the posts. I know that I find it exciting to get posts on my blog. It is kind of like seeing how your number of friends compares to others on facebook. In the movie Spacecamp, the quote was, "ohh, competitive, aren't we?" I guess I am!

Word/Spanish word of the day

I also added the word of the day in Spanish and English to my Reader. Since I am also taking Spanish on Tuesdays this semester. It is fun for you word buffs. How is that for verbiage.

#6 I fed my reader, how overwhelming!

Wow! Where to start. The amount of information that you can gather by "feeding you reader" can be overwhelming even if you skim read. I could literally spend hours just skimming these awesome blogs. I began with a spot for the 50 year celebration of Sputnik since I am a space nut. I really do think this is 51 today, but I digress. There is a man who claims to have pieces of Sputnik which fell out of orbit and landed in the back yard. He tried to turn them in, but the air force gave them back, and he buried them under the house. Who would have thought?

Then for the most amazing techno/educational thing I saw was about a teacher who was trying to do great things for the students and move them into the 21st century but he was locked out by his district, and could no longer have access to his laptop. Another person comments on the same blog that they had been waiting 2 weeks for software so that he could put his class images on the system. I know that parts of this have been frustrating for me with this class also. I have just decided to do all my blogging for 2.0-23 at home. I don't have to override that way.

I believe one of the most informational blogs was one which gave guidelines for students and teachers using U-Tube clips in presentations. Sometimes it is just hard to get my head around "fair use".

By far, the most fun or funnest (so glad we are not graded on perfect grammar and spelling) thing that I have seen, is one that I our saw on one of our fellow classmate's blogs. Steering me toward wordle. It is great! I have a science one on my blog.

My RSS reader #5 or skim quick for a glimpse of what's going on!

As I read through several of the student blogs from one of our required feeds Student2oh, i was awed by the comments by students,or quotes like, "  Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes." the student actually quoted from the apple think different campaign. Isn't that what all of us in some way are trying to do with this class? Don't we all think somewhat outside the box to be trying all these new thing?

I think that it is overwhelming to look at the amount of information that comes through on the reader. (Maybe I am not as outside the box as I would like to think) Right now the only ones I have done are the required three and the Dallas Morning News.

I loved looking at the last one. TO thinks ROMO doesn't throw him the ball enough! 18 times in a game. I thought he couldn't catch on Sunday, but then I have a master's in physical education I must not know as much as T.O. WHINER! 

too much editorializing for me! & so I conclude my thoughts on thing #5

# 4 continued

I really need to put my thoughts into more than 42 words. The blog about brevity is obviously written by a very intelligent young man who is very bright. I had never thought much about the 5 paragraph form before. I just accepted it. I liked the entry by the person from the UK. Tonight as I went over homework with my son who gets help in CMC, I noticed he kept counting. It turned out the assignment was to write a 50 word essay. I did find it difficult to reduce my feelings into any type of meaningful entry with only 42 words.
I also thought of my mom when I read the DaVinci blog. She was always insistent about not raising cookie children in a cookie cutter world. I am one of those science teachers who stresses that hypotheses are often wrong and we must "think outside the box" to come up with the answers. I hope that this class continues to give me more reasons to help my students learn to think and feel not just regurgitate answers for testing.

What #4 taught me about blog reading.

In short form, blog reading/writing is informal & informative. Six blogs read, I was enthralled with brevity. Written by HS student. My Goal to be succinct.
Homework another favorite why give it if it is just more schoolwork. Protect time. Task accomplished.

Thing #2 (Are we supposed to creatively name these?)

On to thing #2......

Here I am showing my incompetence! I "stretched" activity #2 and wrote my thoughts in writeboard, but now I cannot get it to go here. Instead of trying to figure it out again, I am just going to retype it. I have tried copying and pasting and exporting and have been unsuccessful. I even tried to copy and paste to a word document which worked well, but then I still could not paste to this section. It keeps putting it below here. So here are my thoughts as I watched and read the info for #2.

How will technology change my world, your world, my family's world, my student's world? Are pen and paper tasks really what students are doing these days by choice? In a world of students who have grown up in a video, t.v., and video game world, do they learn best by a teacher's lecture? Let's find ways to give them the freedom to learn in the ways that they learn best. I am not a t.v. show, and they need something more exciting than me. Let's do great things!

I want Kimbrough to become like the middle school in the David Warlick article, "A Day in the Life of Web 2.0." I want to blog. I want the kids to be able to access assignments on their computers. (More practically, I want to find a way to engage my blind student and my 3 Arabic language learners.) Would it not be great to get even more use out of my ipod? Would it be wonderful if student could be really excited about learning the way they want to learn, in ways they are already using for entertainment! Let's get started! Yeah, I am blogging!

Thing #1

While I am reflecting on my lifelong learning habits, I am sharing part of my soul. You know in some ways (in fact a lot of ways) this feels strange. I really liked school growing up and I was good at it. I enjoyed my college experience both B.A. and M.S. and I was good at that too. Sometimes as an educator I think that is why many of us became teachers. Now the struggle is how to get the best out of students who do not like, and therefore do not feel like they are very good at school to perform for the masses.

For me the most challenging of the 7 1/2 is the creating of my toolbox. I think I know the things that I need, but I am still unsure, so maybe the confidence thing is a little lacking also.

By far the easiest for me is the 1/2. I love to play! I also am responsible for my own learning, and I hope that some of my students feel the same way after completing the class.

2.0-23 things and more

Visit 23 Thingsters

My thoughts on new technology

I am so wondering why what I copied and pasted from writeboard appeared below instead of here. I should keep reading as I create, huh?