Luv2Learn

i recently came across a school’s supply list . It had several apps on it, one of which was flashcards. Students were asked to have this app downloaded to their iphone/ipod touch when they came to school the first day. Imagine a school encouraging the use of these “toys” in the classroom! Actually, I think it is a brilliant idea. Most of these students already know how to use these “toys” and use them on a consistent basis when they are not in school.  I am sure the excitement of using these in the classroom wears off eventually, but as tools to keep the students engaged, they provide many opportunities.

The app flashcards runs off quizlet. This data base is immense and can save an enormous amount of time in creating or researching for definitions for vocabulary.  Check it out for yourself. The app allows for mobile studying – perhaps on the way to baseball practice!

I made it. I will admit that there were many times when giving up was a very real option, but I knew I would be in a better place if I stuck it out. I think that technology in the classroom has been in a way the “pink elephant in the room.” We as educators know it out there and yet it is somehow easier amidst the lesson plans, grading, and faculty meetings  to just pretend that it will go away.  I have tried to look at the lessons in terms of how I could use them in my classroom. Collectively, it seems overwhelming. Each week individually, however, seems manageable. I must remember that when I am implementing the tools into my classroom. Like climbing  any mountain, the steps need to be intentional and taken one at a time. I am not teaching this year – rather I will be a student in a graduate classroom. I am excited to use the tools I have learned about in my assignments and in my personal day to day of developing my craft.

My next steps will be to develop a website that I can use when I return to my classroom, join a learning community through ning , and develop a blog page. My reader containing my subscriptions of feeds will keep me well informed and I am considering how to get started with twitter. I have saved each of the twitter blogs from the assignment page (23 things) to my delicious account so I can read through them carefully.

Looking back, I wish I had somehow set up a directory of each week so I woul have a reference section to go to when needed. I have come across a new (not yet published) web 2.0 book that should fill in the gaps for me. I am looking forward to learning how to be more of a native in this exciting digital world.

I have to admit, the more I explore, the more excited I get. I was very excited to find and sign up for classroom20. I am looking forward to connecting with other educators who share my interest in math and my enthusiasm for life long learning. I also have to admit that I had not thought of social networking outside of facebook or linkedin. I can now see that these sites are incredibly useful for joining communities where learning is the main goal. For educators who work in schools where professional learning communities are not present, these social networking communities fill in the gap. For people in general who are interested in learning, these communities provide places to collaborate, create,  and share ideas, projects, and newly acquired information.

I will also say that prior to watching the videos and reading the blogs  about twitter, I thought it was a very silly thing to do. Now I will say that I see it as a potentially very useful tool in creating 21st century skills of communication, collaboration, and problem-solving through the use of technology. With its short posts summarization skills can be increased as more concise language is used. I especially liked what the teacher in The Twitter Experiment UT – Dallas said , “It is going to be messy [concerning the use of new technology in the classroom] . Messy doesn’t mean it is going to be necissarily bad.’” If I approach the implementation of new technology into my classroom (or life) with this attitude, I will no doubt be more successful in adapting.

One of the feeds that I subscribe to is Free Technology for Teachers. In one of the recent posts it referred to a student blogging challenge being sponsored by Edublogs. Twice a year  September and March, teachers can register their classes for a 10 week blogging session. Classes that have already registered for this current September challenge include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Albania, Norway,and Spain.  This looks like a great way to teach blogging to students and to introduce them to global conversations.Just think of the 21st century skills that can be learned through this blog.

Additionally I found a few free ebooks I would like to share one with you called How to do 11 techy  things in the new school year.  Happylearning  to you all. In browsing this site I found Issuu: a website for publishing and sharing documents. The “my library ” section allows for either private or public options. Documents can be uploaded to the library and then accessed from the web. Helps for those of us with so many thumb drives to manage!

Earlier in the class I had watched a video of how to use ipods in the classroom. One of the uses for ipod in the classroom was a response tool that was linked to a google document. Having had some time at that point in the class I ventured out and made a document and made it public. You can take the short survey and your answers will be tallied in the spreadsheet.

I am currently using google documents for a colloaborative project from an assessment training class I took this summer. As a group, we assessed a student using the instruments we had been trained in. The final part of the project is to write a report of the assessment. The group is editing the report using goole documents. Due to the confidentiality of this report I am not able to permit viewing to anyone outside of the group.

Everyone knows about youtube – or at least I assume they do – I mean if I know about it then everyone else must know about it.  I have often gone to youtube to look at lessons for math. Unfortunately, however, the site is typically blocked in most schools so it seemed to be of little use for the classroom. It was good to learn how to upload a video and convert it for the purpose of saving it to be used off the internet in the classroom. I will have to practice uploading and converting some of the videos.

It was also good to learn about teachertube. This is a new resource for me and I will be sure to check it out extensively. Another exciting tool for my classroom and my own personal development. I can see making lesson videos and uploading them to teachertube for assignments in the class I am taking.

This video is one of my favorites. I had recently read the book and this creatively summarizes it.

As I start the journey of creating a basic podcast I wonder if I will be able to accomplish the task. I find myself coaching me along the way. Inside my head I can hear “Its ok you can do this” and “Read carefully so you don’t miss anything here” and “Let me check those instructions one more time!” I am amazed at my level of anxiousness over the task at hand. My thoughts go to many of my students as they face new learning each and every day. It is good for me to stretch myself in this field of technology as it reminds me that I need to experience what my students are experiencing so I can teach them how to take the next step. Learning is moving out of our comfort zone – it is moving into the unknown, which can be very unsettling. When I experience the unsettling, I can share with my students on a personal level, modeling for them that learning is not always easy.

I was surprised to find that I had a sound recorder. I am not sure I had even ventured into the “accessories” area on my computer. Another land awaits my visit! Using the recorder was simple enough. Saving it simple too. Adding it to my itunes library, however, proved to be a lesson in perseverence. I was able to convert it easily enough  – I just couldn’t locate it. After many attempts at finding it I decided to “phone a friend”. I had read her blog on her adventures with podcasting and knew she had had the same problem. She would know where to find it!  Oh no. It isn’t in the same place she found hers in.She assures me it is there somewhere, I just need to search everywhere and I will find it.  I hang up and decide to persevere. With much gladness – I am sure I had a big smile on my face when I finally found it in the library under music all the way at the bottom. Don’t ask me how it got there – I have no idea. I am sure if I was a digital native I would have instinctively known to think that an audio recording fit into the category of music. Maybe someday, with enough practice, I can think like that. Time will tell!

I was able to upload the recording onto the class site. While there I listened to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a reading from a book, and thoughts on volleyball. Each one of these reminded me of when my mother in law had died and I saved the tape from the answering machine with her voice on it. Listening to that tape kept her closer. I couldn’t help but think that sound recordings and podcasts could keep me closer to my loved ones both while I am alive and when I am gone. Having grown children who live away from home, I think this could be a way to “close the gap” that the miles between us have created. Messages to them or simply reading the children’s book I give to them each birthday and Christmas could be a way to keep us close and preserve  a voice to be heard by future generations.

I have tried the stretch task of embedding my recording on this blog but so far I have not been successful.  I will go back and re-read the directions carefully!

After re-reading I was able to successfully embed the recording. YES!!!!!!!!

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Podcast – I have seen it on my ipod; I have seen it on websites I have been browsing. But if I am honest I thought it was something other people did. I had no idea it was something I could do. Or at least that what all the podcasts about podcasting suggest. My skill in this new area is yet to be seen – stay tuned for thing 18 and judge for yourself! For now I will share some of my thoughts on podcasting.

I have to say that even venturing into the land of podcasting presented itself with a number of challenges for my less than up-to-date computer. I was just getting started on the lesson when the Internet went out – for 3 days – until the cable company could replace the lightning fried cable at the street box. Alas, I can continue learning. Now I see that downloading podcasts is time consuming – at least on my dinosaur of a computer. I practice my patience waiting and waiting and waiting. Finally, I can wait no more. I must have a more capable computer. So off I go to find the fastest machine available! Once installed, I approach the lesson with enthusiasm. Downloading still takes time but now only a fraction of the time it was taking on the older machine. I smile as I enter the land of podcasting.

I must admit that I am a information hoarder. I used to do this through my collection of books. Now I seem to be doing it through subscribing to everything under the sun! Podcasts would appear to be no exception. This new found self discovery has me a bit perplexed for a time – until I stumbled across a podcast series called “mastering itunes”. This is found in the podcast collection called Cut to the Core.  In part IV of this collection I learned how to organize my playlists and create folders. Now I can subscribe and download to my hearts content.

I subscribed to several (ok I’ll be honest) 12 podcasts throught itunes. One that I especially liked was called Podcast Central. This was of particular interest to me since it is from a local middle school here in Georgia. The school uses this medium to  communicate with staff, parents, and students about varying topics of interest or implementation.

  I am looking forward to continuing my journey in the land of podcasts.

At first, I didn’t think I would have any interest in using the Library Thing. However, after perusing around a while, it caught my interest. I entered into Stephen King’s library – we both are from Maine and he lives down the street fromwhere my husband grew up! I was amazed at the libraries I had access to. As I took the tour of the site, I found it interesting but not something I would use. After all, who wants to look at my library? I decided – lest I miss out on anything on the internet- to sign up and do my “stretch” task. As I was entering my 10 books into my library, I thought of using this in a similar way as my delicious account. Since I had just worked on that assignment the application was fresh in my mind. I soon realized that a group would allow a conversation about a book(s) and more learning and collaboration are at hand. I intend to get in touch with a friend I took training with this summer and set up a group to converse about the books we are reading within the training area. Another great resource for new knowledge and collaboration. Is anyone getting the theme here? In the classroom students could set up their own libraries and converse with others about what they are reading. Communication – another of the 21st century skills- could be enhanced through this sharing.

Setting up a delicious account proved to be very simple. I had, in fact, done this last spring. As the end of the school year rolled around, I learned how to import my favorites from my classroom computer to my account. Well, sort of ! I actually couldn’t remember my password when I was at school and ready to import the list so I created a second account. Then when I got home and looked up the password for the original account, I was able to import everything from account 2 into the original. Now, I just need to go back and tag everything so I will be able to access it easily. I am thinking I will treat myself oneday when I need a break from the everyday stuff. In the meantime, feel free to use whatever I have already tagged: delicious.com/pwhull/accounts/

At first, I thougt that a delicious account would just make it easy for me to access “my favorites” without being at my home computer. It does do that, but it does  so much more than just that. I learned that I can access others saved websites through a tag search. Just for kicks, I decided to try a search for Math. There were some 300,000 entries for me to explore and save if I chose. I remember last year our department was discussing how to create  webpage with our favorite urls that we use. We never got around to creating it because no one had the spare time to put into its creation. Along came delicious – no need to spend alot of time sharing websites with each other. Making our account and making it public is all that needs to be done. Now each of us can share resources with one another with little or no effort.

I am thinking that this would be a good idea to set up for any particular class. Let’s say we are working on a project in class. An account could be set up for the class and the students could research and save websites that would be useful for the project. The account could be made public for the class students or it could be made totally public. Collaboration like this is just one of the 21st century skills our students need in order to be successful in life. A great tool for those eager to feed their minds.