Thing 23

I have been taking online courses through the Ed Tech program at MSU. I hope to earn a Master Degree in Educational Technology. My experience in the MSU program meant that most of the 23 Things were review for me. It also allowed me to move fairly quickly. I would recommend the MSU program to anyone who wants to move beyond this program. I enjoyed reviewing the material covered in 23 Things.

I plan to try to incorporate most of what we learned into my classes next year. We will use blogs, create group websites or wikis, RSS and Delicious pages. I know that my use of 2.0 tools will evolve over the next couple of years. Practice will dictate when and how we use the various tools. I have been trying to get YouTube unblocked for several months with no luck. Photo sharing will be a big part of our projects next year. We are talking about a podcasting requirement but have not worked out the details.

We are going to be making big changes in our method of delivery next year and Web 2.0 is going to be a big part of it.

Thing 22

Link to wiki.

The above link will take you to the wiki that I started. It will obviously be different when school starts. Ms. Laforest and I will be teaching a combined class and will collaborate on things such as a class wiki. I can see that wikis are useful but am not sure I will use one in place of a website.

As part of the New Tech Foundation our students will be working on several major projects a semester. A group wiki would be an ideal tool for collaboration. Projects can be outlined and developed using a wiki. This would also allow us to monitor participation by tracking changes made by individual group members. Group participation will be a major component of student grades.

Wikis differ from blogs in that blogs are the work of an individual and wikis are a group effort. Each will have its place in class next year depending on the assignment. Blogs-individual wikis-group.

Thing 21

I like the way that Westwood Schools and Welker's Wikinomics put Wikis to use. It is similar to what I have been planning to do using a Weebly website. They have set up course pages that appear to include all the information that students need for class. This is being done in a paperless format which is one of my goals for next year. Each included links and obviously allowed responses. Both were locked to prevent unauthorized changes.

I will now have to consider whether to use a wiki or website for my classes next year. I may use some combination of both. I do not foresee any problems using a Wiki. We will have classroom sets of computers making access easy. There should be no interference from administration because they will be used for educational purposes and monitored daily. I do not see any real hurdles at this time. The only problem I can anticipate at this point in inappropriate postings or changes. We will have to develop a policy to deal with this before the start of the school year.

Thing 20

I used iTunes to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal Morning Report. I am an Apple user and thought that iTunes was the easiest to use and the most visually appealing of the 3 services. I have used EPN in the past when looking for educational podcasts. I will use EPN for examples when we begin classroom podcasting next year. This was the first time I looked at Podcast Alley. I will use all 3 in the future when looking for specific topics. I especially liked the assortment of sports and travel podcasts available on Podcast Alley.

Thing 19

My favorite podcast so far is from the high school in Minnesota. The commercials for elements on the periodic table are great. I can see using them as part of multimedia presentations in class. I would use them just like a T.V. commercial. I teach Biology but most biological concepts are based on chemistry. It would be simple to match elements with topics being covered.

I also enjoyed the National Geographic site. They had many podcasts dealing with environmental issues and National Geographic material is always interesting and timely.

The New Tech Model requires students to make several presentations over the course of the year. Podcasts would be a natural fit for several of the presentations. We have also discussed making podcasts to emulate a radio station. We have not gotten past the discussion stage for this idea, but I am sure it will become part of our curriculum next year.

Thing 18

I picked a slide show dealing with DNA to embed. I liked this particular show because it is a good introductory overview
of DNA. The graphics were very good, I enjoyed just looking at some of the pictures. What is nice about Slideshare i you do not have to "reinvent the wheel." This type of tool will save me a lot of time and provide a high quality product. I will be able to find a Slideshare presentation for almost every topic. Slideshare and YouTube will make my classes more interesting next year.

DNA The Molecule of Life

View more presentations from Salwa Hassan Teama.

Thing 17

I have wanted to learn how to make a website so I picked Weebly as my 2.0 tool. Weebly is free ( up to 3 sites ) and easy to use. The first time I used it I was able to make a site in about 30 minutes. Weebly looks nice. It allows you to add photos and link to other sites. You can have multiple pages on one site. We will be using a course management system next year as part of New Tech. If not I would use Weebly as a course page. Assignments and announcements could be easily posted. It would be a great resource for absent students. Parents could use it to find out what is going on in class. You could probably make your own course management system using Weebly. I think Weebly would be a great organizational tool for both teachers and students. Everything you need for class could be at your fingertips.

Thing 16

I became familiar with Google Docs during my New Tech training this spring. We will be using it as a part of the New Tech High next year. Every student will have an account. I like the way Google Docs is a web based application. We will have access to it anywhere we have the internet. We will not have to worry about outdated versions. Students will not have to worry about using specific computers. Once we are familiar with it, Google Docs will be much easier to use. It seems that the number applications that are part of Google Docs is growing almost daily. The New Tech people introduced us to several beyond the basic word processor, spreadsheets and presentations.

Each student will get extensive training at the begining of the year. They will be expected to use Google Docs for most assignments.

Thing 15

RSS has not become an obsession for me at this point. I guess I am old fashioned. I still like holding my reading material in my hands. I would much rather read the Free Press as a newspaper rather than the online version. Luckily we have a neighbor kid who delivers it daily. I do understand the advantages of RSS feeds. Instant updates, focused material etc. I check my feeds several days a week and enjoy some of them. I will be eliminating several this week because I do not read them. Some were not what I thought they were when I first subscribed.

I think that we will use RSS feeds in our classes. I see it as a great way to expose our students to a wider variety of material than has been possible in the past. I am sure that some students will take to it quickly. I have found it relatively easy to use.

Thing 14

My delicious page.

The link above is to my Delicious page. We had to keep one to organize our resources for a project in an Ed Tech class I took through MSU. As part of the project we had to form Special Interest Groups who worked around the same topic. Each of us did an individual project but used the group for support. We shared resources through Delicious and critiqued each others work. At first I did not see the value to Delicious, but when I started to prepare my final report it was great to have everything in one place. It saved me a lot of time and paper. I will continue to use Delicious as I work on my Master's.

Thing 13

I have used Delicious in the past. We were required to keep a page for an Ed Tech class I took through MSU. Once I got the hang of tagging it helped keep me organized. At first I was not very efficient in picking my tags. I ended up with unrelated articles tagged together. I also had related articles with different tags. The more I used tagging the better I got at it. I eventually learned it was better spending some time determining the best tags early rather than wasting time trying to organize later.

Thing 12

I picked ESPN Bottom Line for my widget because I love sports. Most of my family and friends feel the same way. Using ESPN will allow them to check scores when visiting my site. Embedding is very easy, at least from the sites I looked at. If it wasn't easy people wouldn't do it and the sites would not get as many visitors. It seems to be all about exposure.

I have a Facebook page that I started to keep in touch with my kids who are away at college. Once my name was out there old friends found me. The contact we have through Facebook is not as meaningful as face-to-face contact but it is an easy way to stay in touch. I had lost touch long ago with several of my Facebook friends. We now talk about getting together when they are back in Michigan.

Thing 11

Commenting is important because that is what keeps online communities going. Without comments blogs would just be a series of proclamations. The give and take that occurs through comments adds the spice that makes blogging worthwhile. I think that when my students blog online they will be more careful with things like grammar and spelling. Nobody wants to look bad to the entire world.

I have not received any comments to my blog yet. I do know that as a beginning blogger I worry about offending people. Without facial expressions and body language comments can be taken wrong.