Thing 23

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

Oh, I had so many faves! Setting up my blog was very exciting! Learning about Flickr, mashups and 3rd party sites, RSS feeds, on-line image generators, LibraryThing, Delicious, wikis, Livemocha, TeacherTube, and Nings were my top favorite discovery exercises.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

This course has allowed me to see how Library 2.0 connects us and allows for better communication, support, and collaboration. I see my place now in Library 2.0 as a teacher and learner. I will continue to implement many of the 23 Things to further my learning as a person and teacher as well as supplement my students' learning.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

Yes, I was extremely pleased and surprised at how user-friendly this course was! I consider my technological skills to be developing so I was slightly curious as to whether I could "hang with the players." I found the 23 things to be well organized, explained well, and applicable to my second graders. Also, I felt supported by the Kickball Captain, VWB, and found the videos from the CommonCraft guys very helpful.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or concept?

I honestly can't think of any improvements. The format was low-pressure, informative, and supportive! The district should be very proud of this course. I applaud the creators!

5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

Yes, yes, yes!

6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

23 Things was overwhelmingly eye-opening, informative, user-friendly, and realistic for classroom applications!

Thing 22

I belong to a ning called Projects by Jen. http://projectsbyjen.ning.com/ It is a great place to find other teachers for ideas as well as ongoing and/or upcoming collaboration projects. I have also applied for a second grade teacher ning. I love all this support and collaboration!

Thing 21

This is a Photostory I completed this past spring. It includes my students' bird artwork as well as their recordings of their bird research.

Thing 20

I have used TeacherTube before to post videos on my class wiki. The only issue I had with the videos was that they buffered a lot. Any suggestions?

My embedded video is from my classroom when our eggs hatched in the incubator. It was one of my first times recording video so it is pretty rough, but my students did not seem to mind. They watched the videos repeatedly on our class wiki.



TeacherTube has so many creative, useful, and classroom friendly videos. TeacherTube and Blinkx are fabulous resources!

Thing 19

I explored Livemocha. I signed up to learn Spanish and found the site to be very user-friendly. The lessons were well explained and I received immediate feedback once I submitted my sentences written in Spanish. A tutor even popped in to ask if any help was needed! There were resources such as flashcards and being able to chat with other users of the same lessons. I will definitely continue with this--at least until school starts. :) This would be a great tool for teachers and older students.

Thing 18

I explored Google Docs. I did not see much difference between the word processing and presentation programs compared to Mircosoft's. This was a good discovery because my upcoming students might be using Google Docs. I very much like that Google Docs users can share and collaborate on documents. This is a big-time plus! I also liked that the documents could be accessed from any computer with Internet connection. Am I correct in thinking that this would mean students could work on documents on their home computer? If so, this could have merit as well as negative aspects (such as not knowing if the student is completing the work independently).

I did have trouble using the spreadsheet on Google Docs. I was able to make a spreadsheet, but couldn't format the cells because the toolbar would not become active (don't know what to call this--the toolbar was gray, I couldn't use it despite clicking on it). The Help section did not help with my issue.

I was pleased to see Docs for Teachers, but felt like many of the documents were not geared to the elementary level. I would rather make my own as I have done in the past.

In the future, I will explore Open Office on my work laptop.

Thing 17

Loved the video on how to use Rollyo! I created a searchroll on bird facts. Rollyo was a new tool for me. Thus far, I am not sure that it is succinct enough for 2nd graders. I will continue to explore it.
http://rollyo.com/vstones/bird_sites_for_kids/