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.