So, as technology becomes more and more a part of our personal and professional lives, it's clear that technology, internet, web 2.0, and social networking skills are not something that are a passing fad. They are going to become, if they aren't already, important and, perhaps, even necessary.
Social networking sites like FaceBook are becoming more popular by the day, and children are wanting accounts younger and younger. It's hard to prove someone is not 13 years old when they check that box saying they are. But, what are they posting on these sites, and are they being safe?
Well, it appears the current website answer to these questions is the new social networking site for young children, Togetherville. I read about this site in a CNN article the other day, and honestly? My first thought was...why?
Now, the whole point of this site is that it is geared to introduce children to the concept of social networking, but with the safety that their profiles are created by, and managed by, their parents. Verification is done via the parent's email address, to make sure that a profile is tied to an adult. And it is the parents that make and approve friend requests. I also saw that most of the options for comments on other peoples' walls are canned responses, to help prevent students from sharing too much personal information.
So...I think "why" a little bit less, but.....it makes me wonder. While kids need to be familiar with the internet and social networking, at what age does this really need to start? Togetherville is geared towards 6-10 year olds. Personally, I think 6 is too young. At that age, general computer skills seem like they should be more the focus. I mean....6 years olds are in 1st or 2nd grade!!! There is NO reason that they NEED to be on the internet and making social networking connections. That's when it might be best to be focusing on keyboarding and general computer usage skills. I can see getting into more web 2.0 by the time they hit middle school, and other tools controlled by, or shared by, the teacher before that. But, honestly, social networking is something they should probably end up doing, and do need practice with in using properly, but I don't see the need for something like a FaceBook page that early.
Maybe it's just me being "old-fashioned" and being just old enough that I didn't have all these technological and internet-connected possibilities when I was that age, but I still don't see the need for them to be able to do EVERYTHING online that early. Goodness knows, once they pick it up, they'll fly with it. And yes, earlier is better, but.... I don't know. I can't tell you a specific age that makes sense, but perhaps an age with double digits.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
My New Tweeps
Twitter is one of those web 2.0 tools that has become part of everyday conversation, news, and social networking...and it even has its own vocabulary--tweets, tweeps, tweeple, and more. I joined reluctantly with a personal account nearly a year ago, and then got my class account a few weeks ago. I really like some of the funny anecdotes and pictures that my friends post, and I have enjoyed following some celebrities. On my class account, I have found it really helpful to subscribe to educational news sources, as the headlines come to me, instead of me having to remember to go to all the different sites and look them up. However, I'm still not entirely sure if Twitter is for me, or not.
One thing that I have noticed in my classmates' blogs is that everyone seems to equate Twitter with using your cellphone. Honestly? This is not something I want to do. 1. I have to pay for a data/internet plan, above and beyond my calling and texting. 2. I don't have a touchscreen phone or one that does lots of apps (or...does it? I don't use the web on it, so who knows, aside from not having a touch screen). I truly do not want all those messages coming to me via text messaging, and reading through all those tiny messages on an even tinier screen just isn't appealing. I DO like Twitter, and I DO see why it's fun on a personal level, and can be a great way to communicate, share, have conversations, and ask for help on a professional level. Yet, aside from setting up my personal account to accepts text message as tweets from me, and getting direct messages to my phone, I do not want the rest of it. So, it will have to wait for when I can come home, or access it at school, with enough time to scroll through. And, this in itself can pose a problem. The longer you are away, the more tweets you have to get through. And sometimes, that can be a daunting task. Never mind the abbreviated messages or text speak that you sometimes get, so that people can stay under 140 characters, or the piles of messages in a row from the same person, because they were nowhere near staying in those 140 characters.
But, anyway, I digress....
What type of information did I get from following Twitter the last few weeks. Well, first and foremost, I followed the US Dept of Education, and a number of education news sites like Education Week and US News Education. Last semester, we were following the news in education and blogging about it, and I meant to keep up with it. Yet, that rather fell by the wayside as I had to go to extra sites all the time. Having headlines come right to my Twitter client, Echofon, embedded in my Firefox browser has enabled me to read articles about changing laws with testing, see stories about teachers boycotting standardized testing in the UK, see links to blogs about the Race to the Top, and even see a few videos or comments on web 2.0 tools with regard to education. While 140 characters is not enough to give you the full idea of the article, you do get the headline and the link. And really, when you visit the main page of a new site, what is the majority of what you see? Headlines. This is what you end up basing your decision on whether or not to read the article on, and Twitter provides you with just that. Subscribing to these sites makes Twitter kind of a mini RSS feed.
In terms of who has been the most helpful in particular for me to follow, I think the two I would currently point to are Teaching Ideas which gives ideas on a range of things, from news to lesson ideas to links with tips on classroom management to suggestions for teaching FaceBook groups. It's a bit of a melting pot of teaching advice, and while some things are not of interest, the mix of information that is thrown out seems like it is bound to come in handy to nearly every level and content area at some point. Reading it can give me ideas, or may provide me with sites to suggest to colleagues.
More in line with my particular content area is Alice Ayel. She lives in Germany, and teaches French, Spanish and German, while being very interested in web 2.0. Some of her posts are in the foreign languages she teaches, and she shares ideas, blog posts (her twitter links to her blogs), lessons, links, and even teacher retail resources. In addition, she seems interested in connecting with her followers, by responding, retweeting, and asking for suggestions. I like that she uses the two-way functions of Twitter, and is open to dialogue and discussion, instead of being 100% an outward stream of information.
And also, just as a side note, I decided to follow Hugo Chavez on Twitter. He joined right around the time that we signed up for Twitter, and I thought that this would be an interesting feed to follow. Who knows? It may provide something to discuss in class, or an interesting take on a news story. Either way, it's not every day the leader of a country is posting on Twitter, so I figured, why not?
One thing that I have noticed in my classmates' blogs is that everyone seems to equate Twitter with using your cellphone. Honestly? This is not something I want to do. 1. I have to pay for a data/internet plan, above and beyond my calling and texting. 2. I don't have a touchscreen phone or one that does lots of apps (or...does it? I don't use the web on it, so who knows, aside from not having a touch screen). I truly do not want all those messages coming to me via text messaging, and reading through all those tiny messages on an even tinier screen just isn't appealing. I DO like Twitter, and I DO see why it's fun on a personal level, and can be a great way to communicate, share, have conversations, and ask for help on a professional level. Yet, aside from setting up my personal account to accepts text message as tweets from me, and getting direct messages to my phone, I do not want the rest of it. So, it will have to wait for when I can come home, or access it at school, with enough time to scroll through. And, this in itself can pose a problem. The longer you are away, the more tweets you have to get through. And sometimes, that can be a daunting task. Never mind the abbreviated messages or text speak that you sometimes get, so that people can stay under 140 characters, or the piles of messages in a row from the same person, because they were nowhere near staying in those 140 characters.
But, anyway, I digress....
What type of information did I get from following Twitter the last few weeks. Well, first and foremost, I followed the US Dept of Education, and a number of education news sites like Education Week and US News Education. Last semester, we were following the news in education and blogging about it, and I meant to keep up with it. Yet, that rather fell by the wayside as I had to go to extra sites all the time. Having headlines come right to my Twitter client, Echofon, embedded in my Firefox browser has enabled me to read articles about changing laws with testing, see stories about teachers boycotting standardized testing in the UK, see links to blogs about the Race to the Top, and even see a few videos or comments on web 2.0 tools with regard to education. While 140 characters is not enough to give you the full idea of the article, you do get the headline and the link. And really, when you visit the main page of a new site, what is the majority of what you see? Headlines. This is what you end up basing your decision on whether or not to read the article on, and Twitter provides you with just that. Subscribing to these sites makes Twitter kind of a mini RSS feed.
In terms of who has been the most helpful in particular for me to follow, I think the two I would currently point to are Teaching Ideas which gives ideas on a range of things, from news to lesson ideas to links with tips on classroom management to suggestions for teaching FaceBook groups. It's a bit of a melting pot of teaching advice, and while some things are not of interest, the mix of information that is thrown out seems like it is bound to come in handy to nearly every level and content area at some point. Reading it can give me ideas, or may provide me with sites to suggest to colleagues.
More in line with my particular content area is Alice Ayel. She lives in Germany, and teaches French, Spanish and German, while being very interested in web 2.0. Some of her posts are in the foreign languages she teaches, and she shares ideas, blog posts (her twitter links to her blogs), lessons, links, and even teacher retail resources. In addition, she seems interested in connecting with her followers, by responding, retweeting, and asking for suggestions. I like that she uses the two-way functions of Twitter, and is open to dialogue and discussion, instead of being 100% an outward stream of information.
And also, just as a side note, I decided to follow Hugo Chavez on Twitter. He joined right around the time that we signed up for Twitter, and I thought that this would be an interesting feed to follow. Who knows? It may provide something to discuss in class, or an interesting take on a news story. Either way, it's not every day the leader of a country is posting on Twitter, so I figured, why not?
My Personal Learning Network (PLN)-Past, Present, and Future
So, if I am being honest, at the beginning of this class, I would not have known what PLN stood for. However, the concept of a Personal Learning Network made immediate sense to me, and seems like something that most teachers naturally have through their university classmates, advisors, mentoring teachers, coworkers, administration, and others that they meet, whether it be online, or in person. Taking that network, and expanding the same idea via web 2.0 tools seems like a natural progression in this age of technology. As it becomes harder and harder to function in a work or personal environment without internet access and technological know-how, it seems only logical that we should put the World Wide Web to use, and bring resources, tools, connections, ideas, colleagues, and experts that we never could have reached before into our Personal Learning Network.
Also at the very beginning of class, I was rather dreading the fact that we were going to have to sign up for many new accounts on many different web 2.0 tools. I was not looking forward to all the different places that I was going to have to check in with, so that I could find out the latest updates. However, with the ability to follow others on Blogger, subscribe via RSS feed, and get Tweets right in my browser using a client for Twitter, it is possible to condense some of these web 2.0 tools into fewer central locations to make it easier. And there are many tools that allow for email notifications, so that you only have to go check them out when you are told of a change, instead of taking the effort to login and look, when nothing has happened.
As I stated in my last post, one thing that I noticed about my PLN was that as I expanded it outward by exploring different web 2.0 tools, the more I found it folding back in on itself. Blogs can link to wikis and Twitter feeds. Twitter accounts can link to blogs and wikis and other resources. Delicious is centered on sharing links, and can help you connect with people of similar interests. Once you decide what you want to focus on, the way that the web 2.0 tools interconnect becomes an extremely beneficial portion of the development of a PLN. The bigger it gets, the more resources you find, and the easier it is to narrow it down to the ones that are truly useful, making your PLN meaningful to you, and inclusive of links, networks, resources, connections, and tools that you will really use. My own students work on a graduation portfolio, and for the last few years, I have been telling them to add as much as they can, as often as they can. In the end, it will be so much easier as a senior to narrow down what they include in the final product if they have a lot to choose from, instead of having to go hunting for good examples. I think that they same is true of a PLN. Adding new things often and as they strike my interest is the first step. Checking and following them for a while to determine if they are useful, and then making the decision to keep them or delete them is the second step.
Another thing I was unsure about as I began to form my PLN was what the focus would be. So often in college, I remember out texts, professors and TAs giving examples for all the core classes, and not really being sure how to include the foreign language group. I was a little apprehensive that we would be focusing entirely on the generic and core aspects of a PLN, and content specific areas might be left to the side. However, we really did get to work on our PERSONAL learning networks. The whole point and aim was for us to find things that interested us, and that we felt would benefit us in our professional growth. While core subject areas do seem to have more emphasis that "electives," even online, I have been finding more and more blogs, wikis, links, and twitter feeds to follow that I find helpful. I am the only foreign language teacher in my district at the high school level, and being able to find and connect with other language teachers is a great benefit to me. Having people that I can bounce ideas off of, ask for resources, share and get lesson plans from, and network with is something that I am looking forward to.
At this moment, I feel that I am still very much in the exploring, developing, and organizing stages of my PLN. I have a lot of new tools and accounts that I can utilize as I continue to develop this set of resources. The major benefit of the PLN is that it can take any direction and any focus that I want, and it can change over time. I still feel like I am early in my teaching career, and finding resources, colleagues, links, ideas, and lessons to supplement and spark ideas in my teaching may be my focus. However, as soon as I can, I would also like to be able to contribute ideas and share links and lessons, etc. A PLN using web 2.0 tools is invaluable because, just by its very nature, it will constantly be evolving, both in content and in the tools themselves. We want to teach our students how to stay current, and doing so ourselves is one of the best ways to ensure that we can help them do so.
I am on a communications committee at school, and I think that the idea of a PLN may be something that we should discuss and try to work on at school. That, or, we have a committee of teachers called the DISC committee, with representatives from each building level in the district. These teachers are part of the decision-making group for our early release professional development topics. Bringing the idea of web 2.0 and PLNs up to them might help to get some early release sessions on these ideas for teachers in the district. On a smaller level, I can see mentioning some of these tools to teachers that I talk with frequently, or referencing a particular tool that seems useful in a situation when a teacher asks for help or ideas. It may be easiest to start slowly, and once someone gains familiarity with one tool, interest in others will follow.
Web 2.0 tools that I found of particular interest and can see being included in my classroom are GoogleDocs, blogs, wikis, Delicious, and Voice Thread. I was very impressed with GoogleDocs during our first activity with it, and have since used it to post a link to a document on my school website, collaboratively edit a document with a colleague, and work on my Unit Plan project form home and school, and share it with Dr. Schroeder during our Elluminate session. I often do a review activity at the end of the semester where students work together to create review sheets and handouts, and this would be an excellent way for them to continue working after class time has run out, and to have it available to everyone, no matter where they are. The wiki and blogs are tools that I outlined a specific use for in my Unit Plan, and can also see playing roles in activities such as that end of term review--wiki pages created on each topic by each group--and journaling/written dialogue activities--blogs. Delicious is a great way to share resources, whether it be for a research project, or just to compile a list of links that students can visit for extra practice in the foreign language. And Voice Thread is something that I really want to look at for next year. I often think of having students do pronunciation practice by reading aloud or responding to visual prompts. The downside to this is that it takes class time for me to listen to them, or is difficult to schedule times for them to come in outside of class. Voice Thread would be a way around this. they could use a computer at school or at home, and record when they had time.
For my own personal use, blogs provide a great way to network and follow specific people that I find of interest, and share my own thoughts. Wikis are a great way to collaborate, find, and share information with others in a community with similar interests. While I am interested in finding more wikis, I have thus far not been very successful finding wikis that are CURRENTLY active....so that is my goal over the summer. I also hope to continue looking for links, and refining my tags and included bundles, networking, and links on Delicious. I know how to use it now, I just have to get better at using it efficiently.
Twitter is a tool that the jury is still out on for me. In my personal life, I like it, yet, with both my personal and professional accounts, I find that if you don't check in often, it can sometimes be hard to scroll back through countless tweets to find the ones that really interest you. Also, so often what is shared is a link, and then you have to go to that site to find out if you really want that information. I have subscribed to a lot of news sites, and there is good information coming through, and I don't have to go look for it separately. But, 140 words can be restrictive. Also, I am unsure how supportive my school would be of this technology. But, again, I am on a communications committee, and Twitter is an excellent for of fast, concise communicating. I may just have to bring it up, and see if my fellow committee members think it might be worth suggesting a school twitter feed to the district.
Finally, in terms of tools that I do not really expect myself to use, I think that Elluminate, YouTube, Flickr, and social networking sites like FaceBook are pretty much out. Elluminate was very interesting and easy to use, and seemed like it had a lot of great features. I just do not feel like our school is currently equipped with the space, time, hardware, and bandwith to deal with it. Streaming video is not currently allowed, which puts Elluminate and YouTube out of the running as options for frequent inclusion in class. Flickr seems like it would be best utilized if students could use it from school, and if I had a regular and easily accessible way of projecting images and accessing them in group settings at school. However, having to check out the InFocus projector to use a larger screen than my computer monitor, and the school frowning upon uploading large files, much of the use of Flickr would have to be out of class. I have no problem encouraging or allowing students to use Flickr, but I want to try and focus on things we can do at school and get everyone access to, even if they happen to not have internet or a computer at home. Similarly, there would be security issues with what students might access on Flickr, and that would cause a problem for school access. And finally, social networking sites like Facebook.....well, to be honest, they make me extremely nervous when talking about dealing with students on them. I have a FaceBook account, which I very much enjoy. But, to be honest, I use a fake name, just to avoid students finding me. And no matter how professional the use is, the public never seems to be fond of teachers have FaceBook accounts at all, let alone being friends with students...even if it is just a "asking questions and posting homework notices" kind of page. I think that that is one I will just stay away from. That being said, while I still have my limited time, free account with Elluminate, I am going to see about "attending" a webinar to get the full experience, and I would like to continue looking for pictures and video that I can share in class. Just because I do not build units around these tools, or use them multiple times a week, does not mean I can't look for other users to connect with, and information to share with and suggest to my class.
My PLN is still young and small...I look forward to helping it grow and take shape. Hopefully, I can work on that this summer,and go into next year with some new ideas and resources.R
Also at the very beginning of class, I was rather dreading the fact that we were going to have to sign up for many new accounts on many different web 2.0 tools. I was not looking forward to all the different places that I was going to have to check in with, so that I could find out the latest updates. However, with the ability to follow others on Blogger, subscribe via RSS feed, and get Tweets right in my browser using a client for Twitter, it is possible to condense some of these web 2.0 tools into fewer central locations to make it easier. And there are many tools that allow for email notifications, so that you only have to go check them out when you are told of a change, instead of taking the effort to login and look, when nothing has happened.
As I stated in my last post, one thing that I noticed about my PLN was that as I expanded it outward by exploring different web 2.0 tools, the more I found it folding back in on itself. Blogs can link to wikis and Twitter feeds. Twitter accounts can link to blogs and wikis and other resources. Delicious is centered on sharing links, and can help you connect with people of similar interests. Once you decide what you want to focus on, the way that the web 2.0 tools interconnect becomes an extremely beneficial portion of the development of a PLN. The bigger it gets, the more resources you find, and the easier it is to narrow it down to the ones that are truly useful, making your PLN meaningful to you, and inclusive of links, networks, resources, connections, and tools that you will really use. My own students work on a graduation portfolio, and for the last few years, I have been telling them to add as much as they can, as often as they can. In the end, it will be so much easier as a senior to narrow down what they include in the final product if they have a lot to choose from, instead of having to go hunting for good examples. I think that they same is true of a PLN. Adding new things often and as they strike my interest is the first step. Checking and following them for a while to determine if they are useful, and then making the decision to keep them or delete them is the second step.
Another thing I was unsure about as I began to form my PLN was what the focus would be. So often in college, I remember out texts, professors and TAs giving examples for all the core classes, and not really being sure how to include the foreign language group. I was a little apprehensive that we would be focusing entirely on the generic and core aspects of a PLN, and content specific areas might be left to the side. However, we really did get to work on our PERSONAL learning networks. The whole point and aim was for us to find things that interested us, and that we felt would benefit us in our professional growth. While core subject areas do seem to have more emphasis that "electives," even online, I have been finding more and more blogs, wikis, links, and twitter feeds to follow that I find helpful. I am the only foreign language teacher in my district at the high school level, and being able to find and connect with other language teachers is a great benefit to me. Having people that I can bounce ideas off of, ask for resources, share and get lesson plans from, and network with is something that I am looking forward to.
At this moment, I feel that I am still very much in the exploring, developing, and organizing stages of my PLN. I have a lot of new tools and accounts that I can utilize as I continue to develop this set of resources. The major benefit of the PLN is that it can take any direction and any focus that I want, and it can change over time. I still feel like I am early in my teaching career, and finding resources, colleagues, links, ideas, and lessons to supplement and spark ideas in my teaching may be my focus. However, as soon as I can, I would also like to be able to contribute ideas and share links and lessons, etc. A PLN using web 2.0 tools is invaluable because, just by its very nature, it will constantly be evolving, both in content and in the tools themselves. We want to teach our students how to stay current, and doing so ourselves is one of the best ways to ensure that we can help them do so.
I am on a communications committee at school, and I think that the idea of a PLN may be something that we should discuss and try to work on at school. That, or, we have a committee of teachers called the DISC committee, with representatives from each building level in the district. These teachers are part of the decision-making group for our early release professional development topics. Bringing the idea of web 2.0 and PLNs up to them might help to get some early release sessions on these ideas for teachers in the district. On a smaller level, I can see mentioning some of these tools to teachers that I talk with frequently, or referencing a particular tool that seems useful in a situation when a teacher asks for help or ideas. It may be easiest to start slowly, and once someone gains familiarity with one tool, interest in others will follow.
Web 2.0 tools that I found of particular interest and can see being included in my classroom are GoogleDocs, blogs, wikis, Delicious, and Voice Thread. I was very impressed with GoogleDocs during our first activity with it, and have since used it to post a link to a document on my school website, collaboratively edit a document with a colleague, and work on my Unit Plan project form home and school, and share it with Dr. Schroeder during our Elluminate session. I often do a review activity at the end of the semester where students work together to create review sheets and handouts, and this would be an excellent way for them to continue working after class time has run out, and to have it available to everyone, no matter where they are. The wiki and blogs are tools that I outlined a specific use for in my Unit Plan, and can also see playing roles in activities such as that end of term review--wiki pages created on each topic by each group--and journaling/written dialogue activities--blogs. Delicious is a great way to share resources, whether it be for a research project, or just to compile a list of links that students can visit for extra practice in the foreign language. And Voice Thread is something that I really want to look at for next year. I often think of having students do pronunciation practice by reading aloud or responding to visual prompts. The downside to this is that it takes class time for me to listen to them, or is difficult to schedule times for them to come in outside of class. Voice Thread would be a way around this. they could use a computer at school or at home, and record when they had time.
For my own personal use, blogs provide a great way to network and follow specific people that I find of interest, and share my own thoughts. Wikis are a great way to collaborate, find, and share information with others in a community with similar interests. While I am interested in finding more wikis, I have thus far not been very successful finding wikis that are CURRENTLY active....so that is my goal over the summer. I also hope to continue looking for links, and refining my tags and included bundles, networking, and links on Delicious. I know how to use it now, I just have to get better at using it efficiently.
Twitter is a tool that the jury is still out on for me. In my personal life, I like it, yet, with both my personal and professional accounts, I find that if you don't check in often, it can sometimes be hard to scroll back through countless tweets to find the ones that really interest you. Also, so often what is shared is a link, and then you have to go to that site to find out if you really want that information. I have subscribed to a lot of news sites, and there is good information coming through, and I don't have to go look for it separately. But, 140 words can be restrictive. Also, I am unsure how supportive my school would be of this technology. But, again, I am on a communications committee, and Twitter is an excellent for of fast, concise communicating. I may just have to bring it up, and see if my fellow committee members think it might be worth suggesting a school twitter feed to the district.
Finally, in terms of tools that I do not really expect myself to use, I think that Elluminate, YouTube, Flickr, and social networking sites like FaceBook are pretty much out. Elluminate was very interesting and easy to use, and seemed like it had a lot of great features. I just do not feel like our school is currently equipped with the space, time, hardware, and bandwith to deal with it. Streaming video is not currently allowed, which puts Elluminate and YouTube out of the running as options for frequent inclusion in class. Flickr seems like it would be best utilized if students could use it from school, and if I had a regular and easily accessible way of projecting images and accessing them in group settings at school. However, having to check out the InFocus projector to use a larger screen than my computer monitor, and the school frowning upon uploading large files, much of the use of Flickr would have to be out of class. I have no problem encouraging or allowing students to use Flickr, but I want to try and focus on things we can do at school and get everyone access to, even if they happen to not have internet or a computer at home. Similarly, there would be security issues with what students might access on Flickr, and that would cause a problem for school access. And finally, social networking sites like Facebook.....well, to be honest, they make me extremely nervous when talking about dealing with students on them. I have a FaceBook account, which I very much enjoy. But, to be honest, I use a fake name, just to avoid students finding me. And no matter how professional the use is, the public never seems to be fond of teachers have FaceBook accounts at all, let alone being friends with students...even if it is just a "asking questions and posting homework notices" kind of page. I think that that is one I will just stay away from. That being said, while I still have my limited time, free account with Elluminate, I am going to see about "attending" a webinar to get the full experience, and I would like to continue looking for pictures and video that I can share in class. Just because I do not build units around these tools, or use them multiple times a week, does not mean I can't look for other users to connect with, and information to share with and suggest to my class.
My PLN is still young and small...I look forward to helping it grow and take shape. Hopefully, I can work on that this summer,and go into next year with some new ideas and resources.R
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The Tree Becomes a Bush
You know what I have noticed as we go through this class, and work on expanding our PLNs? The more we expand out, by learning new tools, and gaining new accounts, and following new people to branch out and form the tree of our PLN.....the more it curves back in on itself and folds back into a bush. We created blogs, and fed them into an RSS aggregator. But, lots of blogs have links to Twitter accounts and Wikis on them. We went looking for Wikis to join, and some linked to Twitter accounts, and Blogs, and Delicious bookmark lists. I joined Delicious, and found users that I had already found on Wikis and Blogs. And then we joined Twitter, and there are links to Wikis, Blogs, and other sites. This is all a good thing, as all these links and references help us find more sources, and build our PLN. But it does make me laugh a bit that the more you branch out and the more you join, the more you are led back to resources in areas that you've already been.
The bigger the internet gets, the smaller the world gets, don't you think?
The bigger the internet gets, the smaller the world gets, don't you think?
Web 2.0 at school....Can we? Please?
As we go through this class, and the safety discussion from this week, it really does make me want to revisit some of these topics, and what we have accessible and available for use at my school. So often, the response we get when we want to use something that is blocked is that "we can't monitor that, they might abuse it." Well....shouldn't we show them the good ways in which they can use it, and supervise them? I know this has been brought up many times, by many of us, during this class.
I feel that we are starting to make some progress at my school. Some things that didn't use to be allowed are now unblocked. Wikipedia has been unblocked for teachers, and Blogger has been unblocked for teachers, and YouTube is starting to be accepted....for teachers. I think that if we give a reason why WE want to use it, we are being listened to. Now, we need to look at supporting an argument for why the students can use it as well.
Blogs and Wikis seem really useful to me, as they can be used in so very many ways, and in any content area. They can be used to address pretty much all of the 21st century skills, and students can create, respond, discuss, collaborate, and share. At school, we now have access to Moodle, and Moodle has its own Wikis and Blogs built in. I think over the summer I want to explore these tools, and see how they compare to sites such as PBWorks and Blogger. Perhaps we can start in the structured, tightly-modereated areas that the school currently has access to, and use products and successes there to expand outwards.
In addition, I think that Twitter would be a great tool for communication with students, parents, and community. It could be used for prompts, assignments, reminders, announcements, and links. There are schools that already have school accounts, such as the one I mentioned a few posts ago in my Twitter blog. I am part of a communication committee at school, and we are trying to come up with new ways to make communication effective and successful. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if a Twitter account might be one small way to do that. Putting it on the internet would be an easy way to reach a lot of people, and for those that already have Twitter, they could just add it in to the accounts that they follow. I'm sure kids would love to get up early on a snowy day and log in to Twitter to see if school was canceled!
I know full well that the best solution is not to unlock everything at once and just go crazy. So, maybe we need to pick a few tools here and there, or more moderated/educational versions of things, to see how they go. Here's hoping!
I feel that we are starting to make some progress at my school. Some things that didn't use to be allowed are now unblocked. Wikipedia has been unblocked for teachers, and Blogger has been unblocked for teachers, and YouTube is starting to be accepted....for teachers. I think that if we give a reason why WE want to use it, we are being listened to. Now, we need to look at supporting an argument for why the students can use it as well.
Blogs and Wikis seem really useful to me, as they can be used in so very many ways, and in any content area. They can be used to address pretty much all of the 21st century skills, and students can create, respond, discuss, collaborate, and share. At school, we now have access to Moodle, and Moodle has its own Wikis and Blogs built in. I think over the summer I want to explore these tools, and see how they compare to sites such as PBWorks and Blogger. Perhaps we can start in the structured, tightly-modereated areas that the school currently has access to, and use products and successes there to expand outwards.
In addition, I think that Twitter would be a great tool for communication with students, parents, and community. It could be used for prompts, assignments, reminders, announcements, and links. There are schools that already have school accounts, such as the one I mentioned a few posts ago in my Twitter blog. I am part of a communication committee at school, and we are trying to come up with new ways to make communication effective and successful. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if a Twitter account might be one small way to do that. Putting it on the internet would be an easy way to reach a lot of people, and for those that already have Twitter, they could just add it in to the accounts that they follow. I'm sure kids would love to get up early on a snowy day and log in to Twitter to see if school was canceled!
I know full well that the best solution is not to unlock everything at once and just go crazy. So, maybe we need to pick a few tools here and there, or more moderated/educational versions of things, to see how they go. Here's hoping!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Reflecting on Delicious
One of the many web 2.0 tools that I have acquired a (professional) account for this semester is the social bookmarking site, Delicious. It is a site that many of my friends have been using for a while, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to check out. It didn't seem all that worth it to have another place with all my bookmarks stored, when I use my own computer most of the time, and already had them listed here. However, I think that this may be a tool I will continue to use, and work on developing a better system for using. Already I can see the benefit in not having to email myself links back and forth between school and work, as I have been known to do!
In going back over the set of links accumulated by myself and my classmates, I see many links that I will be adding to my own set of bookmarks. Specifically, I am interested in many of the "how to" links for our web 2.0 tools and the sites that are titled along the lines of "X number of ways to engage students with 'this' web 2.0" tool. So often, it's a great stepping stone to start using something new, with suggestions from others as a basis. Then, once you and the students develop some familiarity with the tool, creativity and innovation come next. And, of course, given that I have a fellow Foreign Language teacher in the class, I am interested in a lot of Trish's links. Being the only Foreign Language teacher at the high school level in my district, with a part-time colleague at the middle school that I do not see as often as I would like, any resources that I can get from, and share with, others are great!
Tags are something that I think I am still developing as we near the end of this course. I know what they are, and how to create them, and I see them as invaluable in finding sources, searching my own blog entries and links, and developing connections throughout the whole of my PLN, but I think I often tend to be either too specific, or too wordy with my tags. I have entries and links with one word on them, and others with six or seven. I'm still working on figuring out the main concepts that I will want to look for later (which seems like it should be easy, doesn't it?). I have definitely tried to be consistent with my tags, and the fact that most data entry boxes for tags have a memory for what you have previously typed is exceptionally helpful. I find myself trying to tag the big concept of the blog or link, often with something from the title, as well as using tags that are required for class, and common amongst other people tagging similar items. (The suggestions on Delicious have come in handy more than once, and have helped increase my "tag vocabulary".) I have changed my mind about the tags I'm using, either to simplify or be more specific for myself, or because I saw what others were using, and it seemed more logical. Being consistent seems the best idea to me, as does finding the main idea of what you are tagging. While more tags help something to be found in more ways, a few accurate tags seem like a better idea than multiple vague tags. This would be something that I would try and impart to students. The two important ideas in tagging are consistency and accuracy.
Tag bundles are something that I did not use very much, but I did set up a bundle titled "class" where I combined everything that I tagged with both "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" into one group. This helped me to organize the links that I had bookmarked for class. That way I knew how many links I had shared, and which categories I had bookmarked most for my web 2.0 wiki page. I see tag bundles being useful in education for projects. Not all websites related to one research project will carry the same tags, as they might be for different areas of the project. Or, perhaps, a teacher/student will realize that links they had previously marked for something else are now relevant for a new set of research. By making a new bundle, they can combine the sets of links that they think they will work with, and they can click on that bundle to get the list up, instead of having to search for each tag separately. A few minutes to set up a bundle will save time when sharing links, and when returning to the list to find additional links.
My tag cloud at this point is not very large. The class tags of "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" are the dominant tags, but after that I have "technology," "flickr," "video," and "youtube." It gives a visual representation that my Delicious use has thus far been dominated by work for this current class. I would like to broaden that, and start to get some content area tags showing more prominently. I'm just starting with Delicious, and it may be interesting to see where my tags, clouds, bundles, lists, subscriptions, and networks grow from here.
Annotations are a great feature on Delicious! When you get the link for a page and the title shows up in your bookmark, it only gives you a basic understanding of what is on the web page. So often, we bookmark sites because there is a specific example, link, video, or other small piece of information on the page, that we may forget about that when we go back days, weeks, or months later. Even if it was very generic, I found myself jotting a note down every time I made a link. That way, I can get into the habit, and when there is something small and hidden on a page that I want to revisit, I will remember to write about it.
Using Delicious to connect with others that have similar interests is actually quite easy. The most basic way to go about this is to do a search for links of interest and find users who have made those links, or to click on your more frequent tags and see who else is using them. One of the people that I found when searching for Foreign Language tags ended up being the person who runs the Wiki that I had joined a few weeks ago. She uses the same username on both sites, and I followed her on Delicious. She is constantly adding activities relating to both Spanish and Foreign Language teaching, and even following someone who teaches a different language can yield activities and ideas that can easily be transferred. Once I found this person, I added her to my network. I like that your network list shows up on the side of the Delicious page, so that you can see who you are following, as well as who is following you (indicated by flags next to usernames). This allows you the chance to go right to a person's feed, by clicking on their username. In addition, you can use the messenger to share links personally with another user that you think will find them of particular interest. (I also really like that the tagging/bookmarking data entry box has a box to "share" with others right away. It's easy to see a site and thing "Oh! She'll love this." And you can enter that in, and send it to them right away. It makes the site that much more social, that you can share links within it, instead of having to bookmark them and then email the person to go look.)
I think that Delicious affords a great opportunity for sharing lists of links with others, whether it be students, colleagues, or friends. Common tags will allow groups to subscribe to certain sets of links, and tag bundles can put related groups of links together. Creating these common tags and subscriptions would be an excellent way for students to collaboratively build up a set of resources for a project, and for a teacher to give the students a base set of sites to begin with. Teachers could make a subscription/tag that would allow them to share resources amongst each other in a department, building, or district. And friends can easily share links on common interests. And, as I mentioned before, using the message feature on Delicious allows you to send a link to an individual--whether it be a link to a certain content-area specific page for a colleague, or a site that pertains to a particular student's project, or a link that a friend would find really entertaining. The collaborative nature of Delicious allows people to connect, share, and work in groups, and any time that you can do one step and have multiple people see it, it helps everyone out.
(As a sidenote, I happened to be trying to use Delicious at school today (I must admit, for the first time) and I realized that I am unable to access it. When I signed up, it sent me to sign in via Yahoo, which I never thought about as I was doing it. However, being predominantly thought of for games and email, Yahoo is blocked at school. So, because I have to use that briefly to get into Delicious, I am unable to use Delicious at the moment at work. I think I will have to ask our tech guy about that, and see if he can unblock Yahoo on my computer, as I do have a specific, academic reason for the request.)
In going back over the set of links accumulated by myself and my classmates, I see many links that I will be adding to my own set of bookmarks. Specifically, I am interested in many of the "how to" links for our web 2.0 tools and the sites that are titled along the lines of "X number of ways to engage students with 'this' web 2.0" tool. So often, it's a great stepping stone to start using something new, with suggestions from others as a basis. Then, once you and the students develop some familiarity with the tool, creativity and innovation come next. And, of course, given that I have a fellow Foreign Language teacher in the class, I am interested in a lot of Trish's links. Being the only Foreign Language teacher at the high school level in my district, with a part-time colleague at the middle school that I do not see as often as I would like, any resources that I can get from, and share with, others are great!
Tags are something that I think I am still developing as we near the end of this course. I know what they are, and how to create them, and I see them as invaluable in finding sources, searching my own blog entries and links, and developing connections throughout the whole of my PLN, but I think I often tend to be either too specific, or too wordy with my tags. I have entries and links with one word on them, and others with six or seven. I'm still working on figuring out the main concepts that I will want to look for later (which seems like it should be easy, doesn't it?). I have definitely tried to be consistent with my tags, and the fact that most data entry boxes for tags have a memory for what you have previously typed is exceptionally helpful. I find myself trying to tag the big concept of the blog or link, often with something from the title, as well as using tags that are required for class, and common amongst other people tagging similar items. (The suggestions on Delicious have come in handy more than once, and have helped increase my "tag vocabulary".) I have changed my mind about the tags I'm using, either to simplify or be more specific for myself, or because I saw what others were using, and it seemed more logical. Being consistent seems the best idea to me, as does finding the main idea of what you are tagging. While more tags help something to be found in more ways, a few accurate tags seem like a better idea than multiple vague tags. This would be something that I would try and impart to students. The two important ideas in tagging are consistency and accuracy.
Tag bundles are something that I did not use very much, but I did set up a bundle titled "class" where I combined everything that I tagged with both "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" into one group. This helped me to organize the links that I had bookmarked for class. That way I knew how many links I had shared, and which categories I had bookmarked most for my web 2.0 wiki page. I see tag bundles being useful in education for projects. Not all websites related to one research project will carry the same tags, as they might be for different areas of the project. Or, perhaps, a teacher/student will realize that links they had previously marked for something else are now relevant for a new set of research. By making a new bundle, they can combine the sets of links that they think they will work with, and they can click on that bundle to get the list up, instead of having to search for each tag separately. A few minutes to set up a bundle will save time when sharing links, and when returning to the list to find additional links.
My tag cloud at this point is not very large. The class tags of "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" are the dominant tags, but after that I have "technology," "flickr," "video," and "youtube." It gives a visual representation that my Delicious use has thus far been dominated by work for this current class. I would like to broaden that, and start to get some content area tags showing more prominently. I'm just starting with Delicious, and it may be interesting to see where my tags, clouds, bundles, lists, subscriptions, and networks grow from here.
Annotations are a great feature on Delicious! When you get the link for a page and the title shows up in your bookmark, it only gives you a basic understanding of what is on the web page. So often, we bookmark sites because there is a specific example, link, video, or other small piece of information on the page, that we may forget about that when we go back days, weeks, or months later. Even if it was very generic, I found myself jotting a note down every time I made a link. That way, I can get into the habit, and when there is something small and hidden on a page that I want to revisit, I will remember to write about it.
Using Delicious to connect with others that have similar interests is actually quite easy. The most basic way to go about this is to do a search for links of interest and find users who have made those links, or to click on your more frequent tags and see who else is using them. One of the people that I found when searching for Foreign Language tags ended up being the person who runs the Wiki that I had joined a few weeks ago. She uses the same username on both sites, and I followed her on Delicious. She is constantly adding activities relating to both Spanish and Foreign Language teaching, and even following someone who teaches a different language can yield activities and ideas that can easily be transferred. Once I found this person, I added her to my network. I like that your network list shows up on the side of the Delicious page, so that you can see who you are following, as well as who is following you (indicated by flags next to usernames). This allows you the chance to go right to a person's feed, by clicking on their username. In addition, you can use the messenger to share links personally with another user that you think will find them of particular interest. (I also really like that the tagging/bookmarking data entry box has a box to "share" with others right away. It's easy to see a site and thing "Oh! She'll love this." And you can enter that in, and send it to them right away. It makes the site that much more social, that you can share links within it, instead of having to bookmark them and then email the person to go look.)
I think that Delicious affords a great opportunity for sharing lists of links with others, whether it be students, colleagues, or friends. Common tags will allow groups to subscribe to certain sets of links, and tag bundles can put related groups of links together. Creating these common tags and subscriptions would be an excellent way for students to collaboratively build up a set of resources for a project, and for a teacher to give the students a base set of sites to begin with. Teachers could make a subscription/tag that would allow them to share resources amongst each other in a department, building, or district. And friends can easily share links on common interests. And, as I mentioned before, using the message feature on Delicious allows you to send a link to an individual--whether it be a link to a certain content-area specific page for a colleague, or a site that pertains to a particular student's project, or a link that a friend would find really entertaining. The collaborative nature of Delicious allows people to connect, share, and work in groups, and any time that you can do one step and have multiple people see it, it helps everyone out.
(As a sidenote, I happened to be trying to use Delicious at school today (I must admit, for the first time) and I realized that I am unable to access it. When I signed up, it sent me to sign in via Yahoo, which I never thought about as I was doing it. However, being predominantly thought of for games and email, Yahoo is blocked at school. So, because I have to use that briefly to get into Delicious, I am unable to use Delicious at the moment at work. I think I will have to ask our tech guy about that, and see if he can unblock Yahoo on my computer, as I do have a specific, academic reason for the request.)
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Trying things out--GoogleEarth, Surveys, and Podcasting
GoogleEarth
I checked out GoogleEarth because I thought that this would be an interesting tool to use for a foreign language class. Being able to zoom in on cities in areas that speak the language, and "visit" cities, monuments, and places of interest that would normally take a hugely expensive field trip is a great feature of this tool. I was looking at both GoogleEarth and the Earth view recently added to Google Maps. I like that students could view both the actual road maps, and the 3D images associated with the area. Right now, one of my classes is learning about places downtown and giving directions. They could use this tool to plot out a path for a vacation day, describe where they are going, and give directions. Using real streets and places, and being able to SEE the places they are going would make the activity something authentic, that they could actually use, and show them a different culture and atmosphere, which you can often see just by looking at a different city.
Surveys
While I have taken a few surveys online before, I have never created one. I used Survey Monkey from the links provided and I found it to be extremely easy to create a survey with. They gave a lot of options on types of questions and how many answers were possible, or how they were organized. My first thought for class was to create a survey for students as a method for feedback after units. I was easily able to create questions asking how comfortable students fell with the material, from "I could teach this to someone else" to "I'm confused and need help." And then, I could make a multiple choice question asking which of the topics in a given chapter students would like to review the most. These would be easily collected and graphed pieces of data that would give me concrete information and feedback from the students. I could also see doing an end-of-term evaluation this way.
Podcasts
I wanted to check this one out, as I actually have audacity on my computer. But, up until now, I have really only used it to record audio that was already playing on my computer. I have never used it to record anything that I have created myself. Having the headset that I use for Skype, the microphone picked up my voice well (after I found the setting to get it to take the proper input). I like the fact that, being digital, you can make multiple attempts without wasting any resources, or having to rewind and tape over things. Trying to put background music into the podcast takes a little bit of tinkering, as you have to make sure you have the two volumes--voice and music--done correctly so the voice is the dominant part. Or, really, depending upon what you are doing, the music may not be necessary. I like that the wiki page creators mentioned things like preparing a script and pacing. Knowing what you are going to say ahead of time helps a lot, and pacing is important for everyone listening. Trish's example of vocabulary podcasting is great. I have had a few students this year say that hearing the vocabulary words would help them a lot and this would be something I could do to provide that for them. Also, I can see doing audio skits with the students, or having them create radio broadcasts in podcast format. I think they would really get into it. So, this tool could be a student activity, or something that I use as a student resource. Maybe, I could even post quick explanations/review of things, so that students who need to go back over something, or were gone that day, could listen.
I checked out GoogleEarth because I thought that this would be an interesting tool to use for a foreign language class. Being able to zoom in on cities in areas that speak the language, and "visit" cities, monuments, and places of interest that would normally take a hugely expensive field trip is a great feature of this tool. I was looking at both GoogleEarth and the Earth view recently added to Google Maps. I like that students could view both the actual road maps, and the 3D images associated with the area. Right now, one of my classes is learning about places downtown and giving directions. They could use this tool to plot out a path for a vacation day, describe where they are going, and give directions. Using real streets and places, and being able to SEE the places they are going would make the activity something authentic, that they could actually use, and show them a different culture and atmosphere, which you can often see just by looking at a different city.
Surveys
While I have taken a few surveys online before, I have never created one. I used Survey Monkey from the links provided and I found it to be extremely easy to create a survey with. They gave a lot of options on types of questions and how many answers were possible, or how they were organized. My first thought for class was to create a survey for students as a method for feedback after units. I was easily able to create questions asking how comfortable students fell with the material, from "I could teach this to someone else" to "I'm confused and need help." And then, I could make a multiple choice question asking which of the topics in a given chapter students would like to review the most. These would be easily collected and graphed pieces of data that would give me concrete information and feedback from the students. I could also see doing an end-of-term evaluation this way.
Podcasts
I wanted to check this one out, as I actually have audacity on my computer. But, up until now, I have really only used it to record audio that was already playing on my computer. I have never used it to record anything that I have created myself. Having the headset that I use for Skype, the microphone picked up my voice well (after I found the setting to get it to take the proper input). I like the fact that, being digital, you can make multiple attempts without wasting any resources, or having to rewind and tape over things. Trying to put background music into the podcast takes a little bit of tinkering, as you have to make sure you have the two volumes--voice and music--done correctly so the voice is the dominant part. Or, really, depending upon what you are doing, the music may not be necessary. I like that the wiki page creators mentioned things like preparing a script and pacing. Knowing what you are going to say ahead of time helps a lot, and pacing is important for everyone listening. Trish's example of vocabulary podcasting is great. I have had a few students this year say that hearing the vocabulary words would help them a lot and this would be something I could do to provide that for them. Also, I can see doing audio skits with the students, or having them create radio broadcasts in podcast format. I think they would really get into it. So, this tool could be a student activity, or something that I use as a student resource. Maybe, I could even post quick explanations/review of things, so that students who need to go back over something, or were gone that day, could listen.
Twitter Polls, too!
Oh, and I totally forgot in my last post. There are ways to post polls to Twitter as well. This would be a quick way to get feedback from students, and they could do it at their convenience.
For example, PollDaddy.
For example, PollDaddy.
So, I have had a personal Twitter account for a while now. I held out thinking it was kind of stupid for months after my friends started to get accounts, and eventually was "peer pressured" into it, as so much of their conversation moved away from e-mail and other social networking sites that I was missing out on things. As a personal web 2.0 tool, I have really just used it to keep up to date with people, share personal updates and occasional pictures and links, and to follow some celebrities.
Thinking about it more as a professional tool this week was a bit of a change, and made me think about it in a different way. At first, I really couldn't see how Twitter would be all that useful as an educational tool. I joined up and found a few specific users to follow based upon my professional interests, but was thinking, really, I could do that kind of thing with following a blog. But, with a blog, you may have to read the whole thing when, in essence, all that person is really sharing is a link. Twitter is perfect for this! Also, in one of our recent MSE-PD classes, we were following educational new sites. Now, I still check those sites much more regularly than I ever did before, but it takes more time and I often forget. And what is it that we see on an educational news site when we first visit? The headlines! I found a few of these same sites that I was looking at before--like Education Week--on Twitter, and they deliver exactly that to you, the headlines. You get it sent straight to you, similar to the RSS feed for blogs, and you can pick and choose which ones you go read. Also, using hashtags, I looked up the topic #edchat (mentioned in the Twitter panel video in our D2L page). Hashtags are great to organize discussions, but this one has been taken a whole step farther, with a schedule time of Tuesdays at 6 PM CST. They have a different topic each week, and often try to get experts in. They had Alfie Kohn involved the week they discussed homework. And if you miss the chat, they have even created an EdChat Wiki to share the information from each week. I had thought about Twitter as sharing ideas and links, and being more of a network and resource for teachers, but the scheduled discussions and news sources that you can bring to your computer without having to go out and look are fantastic!
Many of the same things apply to students with Twitter. They can subscribe to users on Twitter that are of academic interest to them, and they can follow topics and perhaps even conversations with hashtags. Also, as far as receiving information from school, there are many ways that Twitter could be used in the classroom. Teachers can post homework for absent students, links to resources, or reminders about assignments. As a foreign language teacher I can think of ways that students could play word or vocabulary games via Twitter. Maybe I send out a verb and a form. The next student has to conjugate it, and then put out another verb and form. Or, we play scattergories, where I send out a category, and they all have to answer with a vocabulary word that fits in that category. I have also in class given them longer words on the board where they need to rearrange letters to make other words, or we have broken into groups where one group gives a word, and the other group must come up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. All these little things that we may not have time for in class could be a fun way for them to use the computer and practice, without really thinking of it as "work." Or, if it were something longer, I could put out a sentence prompt for a journal or blog entry, or link to a picture or video they have to narrate. Or...I'm just thinking now. Maybe, this could provide a type of "office hours." A teacher could set aside a time frame where they will actively be online, or a time when they will stop taking questions. Students could all send questions via twitter, and then the teacher could answer them all. This would provide an excellent resource for them to get their questions answered, and then almost a FAQ for the other students as they work on their assignment or study.
I also like the idea that both teachers and students have the opportunity to reach out to experts. Whether or not a response is received is one thing, but it is a fairly low-stress environment to reach out, and see what you can get back. EdChat has had Alfie Kohn in a discussion, and in my personal use, I have had exchanges with Dee Snider and Lita Ford (I'm a big rock music fan!). You just never know who you might be able to talk with, and what information they might help you with.
Or...there's always a real basic, yet informative way to use Twitter....as a bulletin board/announcement space. I was searching for some Twitter uses and came across this feed for Buhler High School. It is the school's account for Twitter updates. Could be an easy way to convey general announcements, or even things like school closings for Snow Days.
Thinking about it more as a professional tool this week was a bit of a change, and made me think about it in a different way. At first, I really couldn't see how Twitter would be all that useful as an educational tool. I joined up and found a few specific users to follow based upon my professional interests, but was thinking, really, I could do that kind of thing with following a blog. But, with a blog, you may have to read the whole thing when, in essence, all that person is really sharing is a link. Twitter is perfect for this! Also, in one of our recent MSE-PD classes, we were following educational new sites. Now, I still check those sites much more regularly than I ever did before, but it takes more time and I often forget. And what is it that we see on an educational news site when we first visit? The headlines! I found a few of these same sites that I was looking at before--like Education Week--on Twitter, and they deliver exactly that to you, the headlines. You get it sent straight to you, similar to the RSS feed for blogs, and you can pick and choose which ones you go read. Also, using hashtags, I looked up the topic #edchat (mentioned in the Twitter panel video in our D2L page). Hashtags are great to organize discussions, but this one has been taken a whole step farther, with a schedule time of Tuesdays at 6 PM CST. They have a different topic each week, and often try to get experts in. They had Alfie Kohn involved the week they discussed homework. And if you miss the chat, they have even created an EdChat Wiki to share the information from each week. I had thought about Twitter as sharing ideas and links, and being more of a network and resource for teachers, but the scheduled discussions and news sources that you can bring to your computer without having to go out and look are fantastic!
Many of the same things apply to students with Twitter. They can subscribe to users on Twitter that are of academic interest to them, and they can follow topics and perhaps even conversations with hashtags. Also, as far as receiving information from school, there are many ways that Twitter could be used in the classroom. Teachers can post homework for absent students, links to resources, or reminders about assignments. As a foreign language teacher I can think of ways that students could play word or vocabulary games via Twitter. Maybe I send out a verb and a form. The next student has to conjugate it, and then put out another verb and form. Or, we play scattergories, where I send out a category, and they all have to answer with a vocabulary word that fits in that category. I have also in class given them longer words on the board where they need to rearrange letters to make other words, or we have broken into groups where one group gives a word, and the other group must come up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. All these little things that we may not have time for in class could be a fun way for them to use the computer and practice, without really thinking of it as "work." Or, if it were something longer, I could put out a sentence prompt for a journal or blog entry, or link to a picture or video they have to narrate. Or...I'm just thinking now. Maybe, this could provide a type of "office hours." A teacher could set aside a time frame where they will actively be online, or a time when they will stop taking questions. Students could all send questions via twitter, and then the teacher could answer them all. This would provide an excellent resource for them to get their questions answered, and then almost a FAQ for the other students as they work on their assignment or study.
I also like the idea that both teachers and students have the opportunity to reach out to experts. Whether or not a response is received is one thing, but it is a fairly low-stress environment to reach out, and see what you can get back. EdChat has had Alfie Kohn in a discussion, and in my personal use, I have had exchanges with Dee Snider and Lita Ford (I'm a big rock music fan!). You just never know who you might be able to talk with, and what information they might help you with.
Or...there's always a real basic, yet informative way to use Twitter....as a bulletin board/announcement space. I was searching for some Twitter uses and came across this feed for Buhler High School. It is the school's account for Twitter updates. Could be an easy way to convey general announcements, or even things like school closings for Snow Days.
Friday, April 23, 2010
A Context for Technology Use in the Classroom
When we use technology in the classroom, the most basic question is what technology do we use. However, there are also the questions of how and why to be answered. Sure, in a basic computer skills class, the answer to those questions might be centered upon learning how to use a program--such as Word or PowerPoint or Excel. Yet, once students have a familiarity with a tool, we should start to focus on how they can use that tool to convey what they know, and how they can use that information to create an end product.
In his article Technology-Transformed Learning Environments, David Warlick lists and describes 5 characteristics that a technology-infused learning experience should have.
1. The learning should be "fueled by questions." Whether these are questions based on student interest, questions encountered while researching, or questions presented by problems that students encounter, they wind up more successful at the task as they work to find the answers and creative solutions to these questions and problems.
2. "Students are engaged in a way that provokes conversation." Whether this conversation is with classmates, teachers, experts, or the data itself, students are working with the material as a two-way street, and learning and growing from the process.
3. "The learning situation is responsive to the learner’s actions." Whether students are getting feedback from classmates or teachers, or responses such as blog comments, they are hearing back about the final product that they have created, and getting genuine responses about its impact.
4. "The learning experience compels a personal investment by the learner and contributes to the learner’s identity." I think that all students are more engaged and successful with tasks when they feel a connection to the material, and see how it is affecting themselves and others. Technology and web 2.0 offer a much wider area for them to cast their nets and see the effects.
5. "The learning results from significant opportunities to safely make mistakes." It is an ever-present concept that we learn from our mistakes, and this goes back to something I said in my previous blog post. Students will never learn as much as they are capable of if we go about blocking anything and everything that *might* abuse or have issues with on the internet. What we need to do is supervise them, and help them learn to use some of these tools effectively, and Warlick is saying the same. Making mistakes and having the help available to navigate through them will be extremely beneficial when mistakes are made later on, and no one is there to hold their hand.
As I think about the web 2.0 tools we have talked about this semester, blogs and VoiceThread are the two tools that spring into my head at the moment as being usable in my class in the near future, and that address many of these ideas of Warlick's.
Blogs and VoiceThread would be a great way to address questions. A teacher could pose a question as a starting point for commentary on either of these tools, and through collaboration or individual responses, students would raise further questions that they could then research, or try and answer for their classmates. Responses would both answer portions of the discussion/research, and lead to more questions to continue with. Similarly, as these questions are created within answers, students are holding a conversation, and giving feedback to their classmates at the same time. They are carrying on conversations, validating and encouraging others' opinions, helping others to develop/change their arguments, being able to show why their position is important while at the same time hearing the positions of others, and having the opportunity for processing time before giving an answer. I think doing this activity first within a single-class group would help students feel better about mistakes, as their main audience is a set of people that they are already familiar with. In addition, the online format gives them a chance to think about and formulate their answer before typing in a text comment, or deciding they are ready to turn the microphone on and record.
While I think that connecting with other classrooms and communities is an ideal direction in which to head, when we are introducing our students to some of these tools, working with the limited group of their classmates at first may be the best way to go. We all started riding a bike with training wheels on, and this is part of what Warlick is getting at with his fifth point. Mistakes can be good, but perhaps we should show our students that on the smaller scale, before immediately jumping to the BIG picture and letting them sink or swim as they learn the piece of technology, the class information, AND the life skills all at the same time.
In his article Technology-Transformed Learning Environments, David Warlick lists and describes 5 characteristics that a technology-infused learning experience should have.
1. The learning should be "fueled by questions." Whether these are questions based on student interest, questions encountered while researching, or questions presented by problems that students encounter, they wind up more successful at the task as they work to find the answers and creative solutions to these questions and problems.
2. "Students are engaged in a way that provokes conversation." Whether this conversation is with classmates, teachers, experts, or the data itself, students are working with the material as a two-way street, and learning and growing from the process.
3. "The learning situation is responsive to the learner’s actions." Whether students are getting feedback from classmates or teachers, or responses such as blog comments, they are hearing back about the final product that they have created, and getting genuine responses about its impact.
4. "The learning experience compels a personal investment by the learner and contributes to the learner’s identity." I think that all students are more engaged and successful with tasks when they feel a connection to the material, and see how it is affecting themselves and others. Technology and web 2.0 offer a much wider area for them to cast their nets and see the effects.
5. "The learning results from significant opportunities to safely make mistakes." It is an ever-present concept that we learn from our mistakes, and this goes back to something I said in my previous blog post. Students will never learn as much as they are capable of if we go about blocking anything and everything that *might* abuse or have issues with on the internet. What we need to do is supervise them, and help them learn to use some of these tools effectively, and Warlick is saying the same. Making mistakes and having the help available to navigate through them will be extremely beneficial when mistakes are made later on, and no one is there to hold their hand.
As I think about the web 2.0 tools we have talked about this semester, blogs and VoiceThread are the two tools that spring into my head at the moment as being usable in my class in the near future, and that address many of these ideas of Warlick's.
Blogs and VoiceThread would be a great way to address questions. A teacher could pose a question as a starting point for commentary on either of these tools, and through collaboration or individual responses, students would raise further questions that they could then research, or try and answer for their classmates. Responses would both answer portions of the discussion/research, and lead to more questions to continue with. Similarly, as these questions are created within answers, students are holding a conversation, and giving feedback to their classmates at the same time. They are carrying on conversations, validating and encouraging others' opinions, helping others to develop/change their arguments, being able to show why their position is important while at the same time hearing the positions of others, and having the opportunity for processing time before giving an answer. I think doing this activity first within a single-class group would help students feel better about mistakes, as their main audience is a set of people that they are already familiar with. In addition, the online format gives them a chance to think about and formulate their answer before typing in a text comment, or deciding they are ready to turn the microphone on and record.
While I think that connecting with other classrooms and communities is an ideal direction in which to head, when we are introducing our students to some of these tools, working with the limited group of their classmates at first may be the best way to go. We all started riding a bike with training wheels on, and this is part of what Warlick is getting at with his fifth point. Mistakes can be good, but perhaps we should show our students that on the smaller scale, before immediately jumping to the BIG picture and letting them sink or swim as they learn the piece of technology, the class information, AND the life skills all at the same time.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Four Things the Net Generation Needs to Know
As we go through the school year, we are following a certain curriculum in our classes. Whether that curriculum is something that we have helped create, or something that was given to us to follow, we know the basic topics that we are covering in our subject area. Our curriculum map outlines what we are teaching...but was isn't in there that should be?
Upon reading the article Four things every student should learn...but not every school is teaching, I find myself agreeing with the four things that Alan November says we should make sure that our students, the "Net Generation," know--global empathy, social and ethical responsibility on the web, the permanence of information posted on the web, and critical thinking about the information found online.
When a new idea, theory, method, or resource appears on the educational landscape, it is often a good idea to take notice of it, but how much we address it will often depend upon its usefulness and longevity. In my opinion, technology and the internet have long since proven that they are becoming required and interwoven with our everyday personal and professional lives. As such, it really is a necessity for us, as teachers, to make sure that we are helping our students learn to navigate the web 2.0 world.
One comment that particularly struck me was when November referred to social networking sites such as FaceBook. Just because we block them at school does not mean the kids are not going to use them at home. Now, I don't think that means we need to open up any and every website for their unsupervised use at school. Yet, I often think that we should allow them more access in general while at school, so that we can help and guide them in responsible internet use. We shouldn't be banning everything in a preemptive strike to keep them safe. We should proactive showing them how to use it safely...and there is a difference!
The permanence of the information posted on the internet is still something that I find myself having to think about some days. I remember being surprised when I first learned that "the Internet" is being archived nearly continuously. It's similar to the tangible items of diaries and photographs. If you don't want someone to see it, don't write about it or provide evidence. The same is true of the internet. I can even see making the parallel with the tabloid magazines and TV shows. Those celebrities sure don't want all those personal photos and videos surfacing, but...if you make them, and leave them laying around, you never know who will find them and what they will do with them!
Critical thinking about the information on the internet is SO IMPORTANT! All through this class, we have been bringing up the idea of Wikipedia and how inaccurate it sometimes is. We OWE it to our students to emphasize the idea of checking their information, and looking at where/who it is coming from. One of the best things about the internet is that everyone can contribute. Yet, one of the worst things is that everyone can contribute! Take what you read with a grain of salt, if you've only seen it one place, and it doesn't look like a very reputable site.
And finally, global empathy. This is the skill that seemed most easily addressed in my class, as a foreign language teacher. I am constantly trying to relate my experiences in other countries and with other people to my students' lives, and make them aware of those differences. And any time I get a foreign exchange student in my class, I make sure that we ask them about customs and concepts in their home country. Allowing for, knowing about, understanding, and embracing differences between cultures is so important anymore, and will help students so much in their lives and future careers. I think that this is the skill I would most like to try and find web 2.0 tools to help integrate more into my classroom next year. Perhaps we could pair with a classroom in a different country and share blogs or voicethread commentary on certain customs. I could also see exchanging pictures on Flickr or creating a wiki where two classrooms could share their views side-by-side.
Upon reading the article Four things every student should learn...but not every school is teaching, I find myself agreeing with the four things that Alan November says we should make sure that our students, the "Net Generation," know--global empathy, social and ethical responsibility on the web, the permanence of information posted on the web, and critical thinking about the information found online.
When a new idea, theory, method, or resource appears on the educational landscape, it is often a good idea to take notice of it, but how much we address it will often depend upon its usefulness and longevity. In my opinion, technology and the internet have long since proven that they are becoming required and interwoven with our everyday personal and professional lives. As such, it really is a necessity for us, as teachers, to make sure that we are helping our students learn to navigate the web 2.0 world.
One comment that particularly struck me was when November referred to social networking sites such as FaceBook. Just because we block them at school does not mean the kids are not going to use them at home. Now, I don't think that means we need to open up any and every website for their unsupervised use at school. Yet, I often think that we should allow them more access in general while at school, so that we can help and guide them in responsible internet use. We shouldn't be banning everything in a preemptive strike to keep them safe. We should proactive showing them how to use it safely...and there is a difference!
The permanence of the information posted on the internet is still something that I find myself having to think about some days. I remember being surprised when I first learned that "the Internet" is being archived nearly continuously. It's similar to the tangible items of diaries and photographs. If you don't want someone to see it, don't write about it or provide evidence. The same is true of the internet. I can even see making the parallel with the tabloid magazines and TV shows. Those celebrities sure don't want all those personal photos and videos surfacing, but...if you make them, and leave them laying around, you never know who will find them and what they will do with them!
Critical thinking about the information on the internet is SO IMPORTANT! All through this class, we have been bringing up the idea of Wikipedia and how inaccurate it sometimes is. We OWE it to our students to emphasize the idea of checking their information, and looking at where/who it is coming from. One of the best things about the internet is that everyone can contribute. Yet, one of the worst things is that everyone can contribute! Take what you read with a grain of salt, if you've only seen it one place, and it doesn't look like a very reputable site.
And finally, global empathy. This is the skill that seemed most easily addressed in my class, as a foreign language teacher. I am constantly trying to relate my experiences in other countries and with other people to my students' lives, and make them aware of those differences. And any time I get a foreign exchange student in my class, I make sure that we ask them about customs and concepts in their home country. Allowing for, knowing about, understanding, and embracing differences between cultures is so important anymore, and will help students so much in their lives and future careers. I think that this is the skill I would most like to try and find web 2.0 tools to help integrate more into my classroom next year. Perhaps we could pair with a classroom in a different country and share blogs or voicethread commentary on certain customs. I could also see exchanging pictures on Flickr or creating a wiki where two classrooms could share their views side-by-side.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Delicious<-->Browser: Sharing your links
So, I was just reading my classmate, Trish's, blog and she said she was transferring her bookmarks from her browser to Delicious one-by-one, and she wanted to know if anyone had a faster solution. Seemed like there MUST be a faster solution, as even Deliciousitself would realize that this would be a slow and annoying process. So, I checked out the Bookmarks tab in my Firefox browser and then the Delicious page itself, and found a few options.
**I should note, I have not yet actually tried these two methods, but they look like they should be pretty easy to implement.**
1. In Firefox (which is my personal default browser), go to the Bookmarks tab on the top of your Firefox browser. Then, click on the option that says "Get Bookmarks Add-ons." If you scroll down the list of possible add-ons, about the 20th one says it's for Delicious, and will sync your bookmarks between Firefox and Delicious.
2. Go to Delicious, and click on "settings" on the top right of the screen. It will take you to another screen where the second section down is "Bookmarks" and one option is "Import/Upload Bookmarks" which says it will transfer a copy of the bookmarks in your browser.
Hope these work, and that it helps someone! :-)
**I should note, I have not yet actually tried these two methods, but they look like they should be pretty easy to implement.**
1. In Firefox (which is my personal default browser), go to the Bookmarks tab on the top of your Firefox browser. Then, click on the option that says "Get Bookmarks Add-ons." If you scroll down the list of possible add-ons, about the 20th one says it's for Delicious, and will sync your bookmarks between Firefox and Delicious.
2. Go to Delicious, and click on "settings" on the top right of the screen. It will take you to another screen where the second section down is "Bookmarks" and one option is "Import/Upload Bookmarks" which says it will transfer a copy of the bookmarks in your browser.
Hope these work, and that it helps someone! :-)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
I used GoogleDocs!
So, I hope to use GoogleDocs in larger ways than this, but I found a quick, easy use for it this week at work. The teacher websites that we can create at work are based upon saving a Word document as a webpage, and copying over the HTML code. Now, this doesn't allow for very much flexibility, and we only get the one page, no subpages. Also, to include any images or documents, we are limited based on space the school has/pays for, and we have to take those images/documents to someone in the building capable of uploading them, and have them put up when they have time.
After our DC trip, the students are doing a cross-curricular assignment that was due this past Friday. Many of them were coming to me for copies of the assignment sheet, having lost it. I wish I had thought about this earlier, but I was able to copy the assignment into a GoogleDoc, and provide a link to it on my page. That way, they can get it at home, when they realize last minute that they do not have it.
It's a basic use of GoogleDocs, but a convenient one that was able to immediately help a few people out. And it was extremely easy to do!
After our DC trip, the students are doing a cross-curricular assignment that was due this past Friday. Many of them were coming to me for copies of the assignment sheet, having lost it. I wish I had thought about this earlier, but I was able to copy the assignment into a GoogleDoc, and provide a link to it on my page. That way, they can get it at home, when they realize last minute that they do not have it.
It's a basic use of GoogleDocs, but a convenient one that was able to immediately help a few people out. And it was extremely easy to do!
Thoughts on Delicious
As I keep messing around with Delicious, I'm finding more aspects of it that I like. I believe it was Sarah E that said she was trying to use the inbox. I checked that out, and while I do wish you could send a bit of a message (if you can, I haven't figured it out), you can send bookmarks right to individual users. If the person uses Delicious, this is a great way to do things. If you send it to their email, then there are extra steps for them to get it to Delicious. If you send it right IN Delicious, they just have to add it.
However, that said, if someone does NOT have Delicious, I just noticed a "send" tab when I was tagging a link in Delicious. It offers options to email the link to someone, or post it to your Twitter account. These are nice options to have right in the Delicious program itself.
Also, in my network "friend" list, I see that it has sections and flags to denote who you are following, who is following you, and whether you are following each other. It's kind of nice to know those separations, and have a visual cue that someone is not seeing your link list, in case you specifically want them to. And, there is the option to make links private for yourself or hide them from some people, which can also be a bonus.
I may just have to make a personal account for Delicious and start transferring my long, jumbled, and untagged list of firefox bookmarks over there.
Also, for students, I see this as making things easier for them working between home and school. They can get online for a few minutes in one place, and have the sources that they found available in the other class. In addition, so often students are working on multiple projects at one time, this would be a great way for them to have one location to save links in, yet be able to tag them for the appropriate class. They don't need 4 different link locations, but can have one list and search it by "history project," "english project," etc. And if it's a group project, they can subscribe to each other's feeds, or share links between each other, which definitely helps to promote the 21st century skills of networking and collaboration.
However, that said, if someone does NOT have Delicious, I just noticed a "send" tab when I was tagging a link in Delicious. It offers options to email the link to someone, or post it to your Twitter account. These are nice options to have right in the Delicious program itself.
Also, in my network "friend" list, I see that it has sections and flags to denote who you are following, who is following you, and whether you are following each other. It's kind of nice to know those separations, and have a visual cue that someone is not seeing your link list, in case you specifically want them to. And, there is the option to make links private for yourself or hide them from some people, which can also be a bonus.
I may just have to make a personal account for Delicious and start transferring my long, jumbled, and untagged list of firefox bookmarks over there.
Also, for students, I see this as making things easier for them working between home and school. They can get online for a few minutes in one place, and have the sources that they found available in the other class. In addition, so often students are working on multiple projects at one time, this would be a great way for them to have one location to save links in, yet be able to tag them for the appropriate class. They don't need 4 different link locations, but can have one list and search it by "history project," "english project," etc. And if it's a group project, they can subscribe to each other's feeds, or share links between each other, which definitely helps to promote the 21st century skills of networking and collaboration.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
My Delicious Account
And speaking of accounts, both personal and professional, I forgot entirely to include my Delicious username in any of my other posts. I can be found at schultzjm03.
Personal vs. Professional....All these accounts
So, when we first started this class and I saw the list of sites we were going to be using, I was really dreading having to sign up for everything and having all these new/different accounts. As we progress in class, I'm thinking....
1. I am enjoying most of these web 2.0 tools a lot more than I thought I was going to, and just might end up using them after class more than I thought I would (or at all)!
2. We really are starting to reach out and find ways to connect, and I hope I can continue to do this after class ends, when I don't have an assignment "to connect" each week.
3. Now that I'm learning all of these tools....I have to remember to check them! :-) I'm already getting better, and things like tags, subscriptions, and the RSS feed are helping a lot.
4. I find that as we sign up for new things, or I look forward to web 2.0 tools that I already use...I have been, and intend to continue, to sign up with a "uww/teacher" identity. You so often hear about teachers getting in trouble online, that I really want to avoid that. It's NOT that I do anything inappropriate elsewhere online in my personal life. I try to be extremely careful about that. Yet, I find myself wanting to keep personal and professional still separate here. I'm liking Delicious a lot so far, but I think that if I use it for personal bookmarks, I will end up with another account. Sure, kids end up knowing a fair amount about us and our interests/lives. Yet, even if it's something totally innocuous and innocent, I don't necessarily feel the need for them to know exactly which sites I bookmark and visit for fun.
1. I am enjoying most of these web 2.0 tools a lot more than I thought I was going to, and just might end up using them after class more than I thought I would (or at all)!
2. We really are starting to reach out and find ways to connect, and I hope I can continue to do this after class ends, when I don't have an assignment "to connect" each week.
3. Now that I'm learning all of these tools....I have to remember to check them! :-) I'm already getting better, and things like tags, subscriptions, and the RSS feed are helping a lot.
4. I find that as we sign up for new things, or I look forward to web 2.0 tools that I already use...I have been, and intend to continue, to sign up with a "uww/teacher" identity. You so often hear about teachers getting in trouble online, that I really want to avoid that. It's NOT that I do anything inappropriate elsewhere online in my personal life. I try to be extremely careful about that. Yet, I find myself wanting to keep personal and professional still separate here. I'm liking Delicious a lot so far, but I think that if I use it for personal bookmarks, I will end up with another account. Sure, kids end up knowing a fair amount about us and our interests/lives. Yet, even if it's something totally innocuous and innocent, I don't necessarily feel the need for them to know exactly which sites I bookmark and visit for fun.
Delicious vs. Diigo
So, this class finally got me to join up with Delicious and see what it's all about. I have friends that have been using this for a while, and talk about it all the time. I have to admit, my initial thought was "Ok, that's great, but I can put bookmarks in my own web browser, what's the big deal?" I DO very much like the buttons that have been placed in my navigation bar, but I had those before for local bookmarks in Firefox.
Well, the obvious benefit of Delicious being web-based is that I can get at my bookmarks everywhere. More and more, I'm seeing this as a bonus, because it's becoming so much easier to get access elsewhere. And more than once since we have started this online MSE-PD program, I've been in one place finding resources, and ended up having to email myself the links somewhere else to use them. Delicious would have been a perfect fix for that! I also see this as a bonus for doing any sort of research in class. I find it's best to give students a few "starter" websites when we do research, or if we are doing a web-quest, perhaps there are places they have to go. Delicious might be a way that I can set up this portion of an assignment from work or home, and then have the students access that list at each of their own computers--saving time, and paper (if I were to print them out instead).
When I first opened up Diigo, I was assuming it was going to be nearly the same as Delicious, but the introduction presented some really great tools that Delicious does not have. Being able to highlight, and having it save is great. And being able to highlight in multiple colors is even better. I may want students to separate their focus for any number of reasons, and different colors would be a real visual cue. In addition, I like the idea of the sticky notes. This would be both a way to get a students' attention, or to place a question for them right IN the reading. Or, if that website is being used as a resource, maybe a sticky note/highlighting could be used to find my/their way back to a specific quote of interest.
The part of Diigo that really struck me, was that you can take a screenshot of the website and have it saved along with your bookmark. For sites such as news, blogs, and even perhaps wikis, that can change frequently, having a picture of the specific screen that you found interesting would be really useful. Sharing news coverage of a current even with a class, or even just showing something "cool" or "fun" to friends would be made so much easier this way.
I'm looking forward to using Delicious as I have already set up my account and a few bookmarks, but I think that I may just have to try Diigo out as well. There seem to be a few additional features on Diigo that would be very worthwhile--both in personal and professional use. The fact that both offer the option to network with other users is a big plus.
I think, even if these are not tools that I could use IN school, due to technology restrictions, these would be something that I will look into as resources for students to peruse outside of school. It would certainly be easy enough to set up a link on a school webpage, or have them set up accounts if they were interested. They could check from home, and find a tagged, relevant list of web resources waiting for them.
Well, the obvious benefit of Delicious being web-based is that I can get at my bookmarks everywhere. More and more, I'm seeing this as a bonus, because it's becoming so much easier to get access elsewhere. And more than once since we have started this online MSE-PD program, I've been in one place finding resources, and ended up having to email myself the links somewhere else to use them. Delicious would have been a perfect fix for that! I also see this as a bonus for doing any sort of research in class. I find it's best to give students a few "starter" websites when we do research, or if we are doing a web-quest, perhaps there are places they have to go. Delicious might be a way that I can set up this portion of an assignment from work or home, and then have the students access that list at each of their own computers--saving time, and paper (if I were to print them out instead).
When I first opened up Diigo, I was assuming it was going to be nearly the same as Delicious, but the introduction presented some really great tools that Delicious does not have. Being able to highlight, and having it save is great. And being able to highlight in multiple colors is even better. I may want students to separate their focus for any number of reasons, and different colors would be a real visual cue. In addition, I like the idea of the sticky notes. This would be both a way to get a students' attention, or to place a question for them right IN the reading. Or, if that website is being used as a resource, maybe a sticky note/highlighting could be used to find my/their way back to a specific quote of interest.
The part of Diigo that really struck me, was that you can take a screenshot of the website and have it saved along with your bookmark. For sites such as news, blogs, and even perhaps wikis, that can change frequently, having a picture of the specific screen that you found interesting would be really useful. Sharing news coverage of a current even with a class, or even just showing something "cool" or "fun" to friends would be made so much easier this way.
I'm looking forward to using Delicious as I have already set up my account and a few bookmarks, but I think that I may just have to try Diigo out as well. There seem to be a few additional features on Diigo that would be very worthwhile--both in personal and professional use. The fact that both offer the option to network with other users is a big plus.
I think, even if these are not tools that I could use IN school, due to technology restrictions, these would be something that I will look into as resources for students to peruse outside of school. It would certainly be easy enough to set up a link on a school webpage, or have them set up accounts if they were interested. They could check from home, and find a tagged, relevant list of web resources waiting for them.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Wikis as a way to share resources and build and find connections
In my first post about Wikis, I shared a link to a Foreign Language specific wiki, which relates to my own curricular and interest areas. After a little more searching, I found a few wikis that are essentially lists of links that can be edited by members. What's interesting about these lists is that they are specifically designed to help teacher find connections and resources, and to build their Personal Learning Networks. A quick glance makes me feel that these wikis could be exceptionally useful in leading to other sites, and I would love to add links that others can use. In addition, these wikis are also geared toward building your Delicious bookmarks, and your twitter connections, which will both come in handy during this class!
Twitter4Teachers has an alphabetical list of different interest and content areas. Once you choose an area, it gives you a list of twitter accounts that discuss those areas, so you can find one that is of personal interest.
Delicious4Teachers is also split up by content/level and is geared towards helping educators connect with others via blogs, websites, and Delicious links.
Of particular note to those of us in the online class is that both of these wikis are in PBWorks, so we already have an account to view and edit them!
I'm really looking forward to exploring some of the resources listed on these pages!
Twitter4Teachers has an alphabetical list of different interest and content areas. Once you choose an area, it gives you a list of twitter accounts that discuss those areas, so you can find one that is of personal interest.
Delicious4Teachers is also split up by content/level and is geared towards helping educators connect with others via blogs, websites, and Delicious links.
Of particular note to those of us in the online class is that both of these wikis are in PBWorks, so we already have an account to view and edit them!
I'm really looking forward to exploring some of the resources listed on these pages!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Google Docs
I have to admit, I am much more impressed with Google Docs than I thought I was going to be. Getting into a standard word processing document was really easy, and it definitely does work just like you'd expect Word or Open Office to. After a bit of familiarization, the tools for inviting people, sharing documents, and starting new documents, forms, and presentations were easy to use. I was looking at the presentation section a little ahead of when our group needs to be doing that, and it reminded me very much of PowerPoint (which I'm sure is the point!).
This seems like a great tool for collaboration, sharing documents without having to email files, and perhaps providing a way for students to save a file and work on it elsewhere, even if they do not have a flash drive with them, or multiple students may need to look at the sheet between class sessions.
The similarity between menus, tools, and navigation on Google Docs and programs like Word and Open Office is also a real bonus. Even for someone who is not experienced with Google Docs, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for. I had never used it, and most things were right where I was expecting them to be!
The invite to view/edit feature is also really useful. The control it gives you over your document is quite useful. If a final product is being shown to someone, they have no reason to need to edit, so there is the view option.
I think my favorite feature may be the option to view revisions, and then revert back to any of them. I think this is KEY when working on something with others. It's easy enough to make a mistake on your own, and cut out something you wanted. When working with others, that possibility increases. By providing all previous versions, and access to them, Google Docs has created an excellent back up system.
Teachers and students could use all of these features to work together, and share final products. It really just takes the basic Microsoft Office suite, and makes it easier to share with others.
This seems like a great tool for collaboration, sharing documents without having to email files, and perhaps providing a way for students to save a file and work on it elsewhere, even if they do not have a flash drive with them, or multiple students may need to look at the sheet between class sessions.
The similarity between menus, tools, and navigation on Google Docs and programs like Word and Open Office is also a real bonus. Even for someone who is not experienced with Google Docs, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for. I had never used it, and most things were right where I was expecting them to be!
The invite to view/edit feature is also really useful. The control it gives you over your document is quite useful. If a final product is being shown to someone, they have no reason to need to edit, so there is the view option.
I think my favorite feature may be the option to view revisions, and then revert back to any of them. I think this is KEY when working on something with others. It's easy enough to make a mistake on your own, and cut out something you wanted. When working with others, that possibility increases. By providing all previous versions, and access to them, Google Docs has created an excellent back up system.
Teachers and students could use all of these features to work together, and share final products. It really just takes the basic Microsoft Office suite, and makes it easier to share with others.
New blog to follow/Learning to use Delicious
While I was looking for my Wiki, I happened to come across the blog Vamonos. A quick glance shows that it looks promising, and as of today, is moving from being a Blogger journal, to residing at http://lisibo.co.uk/. This blog seems to be fairly active, and focused on Spanish teaching and learning, sharing resources, videos, and ideas.
Also, with the addition of the wiki and this new blog to my PLN, I am learning to use the "Tag" feature from Delicious in my Firefox toolbar, to add these links to my list on Delicious.
Also, with the addition of the wiki and this new blog to my PLN, I am learning to use the "Tag" feature from Delicious in my Firefox toolbar, to add these links to my list on Delicious.
Wikis--Links, Uses, and Differences, Oh My!
In searching for a Wiki to follow/join/participate in, I found myself wanting to find a Wiki that was centered on Foreign Language/Spanish teaching. After doing a few searches and trying different key words, I found the Wiki Language Links. It was started as a resource for student teachers, and now has areas for student teachers, beginning teachers, and experienced teachers.
I like the fact that it has links to resources, language-specific resources, and a discussion area for teachers to share ideas. This sharing makes it useful for professional development and professional use. These interactive features, and information sharing aspects, are what make wikis so useful to educators. Also, the ability to edit helps create a community where people can share information and answer questions, instead of just looking for help. It makes me want to look for a particularly active Wiki that interests me, and be part of it. The more dialogue and sharing there is, the more useful the Wiki will be. Teachers can share anything from moral support, to organizational suggestions, to specific lesson/unit plans and ideas. There are so many ways to use a Wiki professionally. Finding the right one is probably the trick.
As I think about it, I think that that may be the biggest difference between blogs/RSS feeds and wikis. You read what comes to your RSS feed. You can make comments on a blog. But, with a wiki, you can be part of a group that shares and works together. I think a really successful wiki would be one where the end result is creation, and not just comments replying back and forth.
I like the fact that it has links to resources, language-specific resources, and a discussion area for teachers to share ideas. This sharing makes it useful for professional development and professional use. These interactive features, and information sharing aspects, are what make wikis so useful to educators. Also, the ability to edit helps create a community where people can share information and answer questions, instead of just looking for help. It makes me want to look for a particularly active Wiki that interests me, and be part of it. The more dialogue and sharing there is, the more useful the Wiki will be. Teachers can share anything from moral support, to organizational suggestions, to specific lesson/unit plans and ideas. There are so many ways to use a Wiki professionally. Finding the right one is probably the trick.
As I think about it, I think that that may be the biggest difference between blogs/RSS feeds and wikis. You read what comes to your RSS feed. You can make comments on a blog. But, with a wiki, you can be part of a group that shares and works together. I think a really successful wiki would be one where the end result is creation, and not just comments replying back and forth.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
RSS Feeds/Google Reader
As we begin to form our PLNs in class, and start to subscribe to blogs and other pages with RSS feeds, I found the Google Reader Aggregator to be really easy to use. I have subscribed to RSS feeds before, but never really had a reader that I liked, and I never ended up following any feeds for very long. What I like about the Google Reader is that, as we are using Blogger blogs in class, and many of the blogs I found to follow are also on Blogger, these automatically showed up in my Google Reader. In addition, Google Reader recognized some of the other sites I had been to recently that had an RSS feed, and listed them as suggestions.
As the instructional video on RSS feeds told us, an aggregator brings the news and updates to us in one step, without us having to go visit all of our classmates' blogs and our PLN blogs individually. Can't beat that!
As the instructional video on RSS feeds told us, an aggregator brings the news and updates to us in one step, without us having to go visit all of our classmates' blogs and our PLN blogs individually. Can't beat that!
How should we use blogs?
The uses for blogs in LMS, teaching, and learning seem to be many and varied, from superficial informational posts, to more complex creations involving links, pictures, critical thinking skills, and more. Blogs are commonly thought about as "Look at Me!" creations on the internet, where people partake in a one-way street to share about themselves. However, when used for educational purposes, blogs can become a two-way street in which discussions and learning are present.
A basic use for teachers and LMS that I see for blogs is information sharing. Teachers can post assignments, classroom happenings, changes, or general announcements for parents and students to see and keep up to date. LMS can do the same with library happenings, new materials and resources, etc. This allows students and parents the chance to check on what they need to do, and stay connected, even when they are not in the classroom. It would be a useful way to share information about the day with students who are absent, and would not require all the extra technology skills that might go along with maintaining a full class website to share this information.
Moving from this one-way communication to two-way communication is where we help our students to develop their 21st century skills and higher level thinking abilities. A teacher can post a question prompt on a blog, and either have students respond as comments to the teacher blog, or in their own blogs. Personally, I see comments in a teacher blog lending themselves to shorter answers, with personal student blogs being more useful with "essay" type answers.
Having the students respond online gives them the time to process and reflect on their answers before sharing. This processing and reflection allows them to fully form their thoughts before sharing, which is not always possible with oral responses in class. Class time can also limit how many students are able to share on certain days. Blogs give the chance for all students to respond. It also allows them to analyze different points of their argument, think about the point that they are trying to make, and how best to make that point. Once they have shared their post, interaction and discussion with other students' posts will help them to ask questions, agree and disagree with different viewpoints, work to support their opinion, and create new opinions.
One of our readings this week discussed 21st century skills and the idea of students becoming a part of a democratic society. Last semester we read "Democratic Education" by Gutmann. Though it is a small step in the larger process, if blogs are used as a means of discussion, sharing, and learning, instead of just talking about oneself, this web 2.0 tool can be a way for students to share, learn, question, and form opinions. In a democratic society and learning environment, we do not have to agree with everyone else's opinions, but they are allowed to have them and share them, which is exactly what blogs are meant to facilitate. Exposure to new ideas is what helps us to shape, modify, and strengthen our own ideas.
Whether it be information sharing, responding to critical thinking questions, having discussions, or posting short question responses that practice grammar, vocabulary, or basic ideas, blogs are a tool that could prove very useful in a classroom. They seem to me to be a tool that would catch a student's attention and keep them engaged, and any time we, as educators, can pair student engagement and excitement with learning, the outcome will be more successful.
A basic use for teachers and LMS that I see for blogs is information sharing. Teachers can post assignments, classroom happenings, changes, or general announcements for parents and students to see and keep up to date. LMS can do the same with library happenings, new materials and resources, etc. This allows students and parents the chance to check on what they need to do, and stay connected, even when they are not in the classroom. It would be a useful way to share information about the day with students who are absent, and would not require all the extra technology skills that might go along with maintaining a full class website to share this information.
Moving from this one-way communication to two-way communication is where we help our students to develop their 21st century skills and higher level thinking abilities. A teacher can post a question prompt on a blog, and either have students respond as comments to the teacher blog, or in their own blogs. Personally, I see comments in a teacher blog lending themselves to shorter answers, with personal student blogs being more useful with "essay" type answers.
Having the students respond online gives them the time to process and reflect on their answers before sharing. This processing and reflection allows them to fully form their thoughts before sharing, which is not always possible with oral responses in class. Class time can also limit how many students are able to share on certain days. Blogs give the chance for all students to respond. It also allows them to analyze different points of their argument, think about the point that they are trying to make, and how best to make that point. Once they have shared their post, interaction and discussion with other students' posts will help them to ask questions, agree and disagree with different viewpoints, work to support their opinion, and create new opinions.
One of our readings this week discussed 21st century skills and the idea of students becoming a part of a democratic society. Last semester we read "Democratic Education" by Gutmann. Though it is a small step in the larger process, if blogs are used as a means of discussion, sharing, and learning, instead of just talking about oneself, this web 2.0 tool can be a way for students to share, learn, question, and form opinions. In a democratic society and learning environment, we do not have to agree with everyone else's opinions, but they are allowed to have them and share them, which is exactly what blogs are meant to facilitate. Exposure to new ideas is what helps us to shape, modify, and strengthen our own ideas.
Whether it be information sharing, responding to critical thinking questions, having discussions, or posting short question responses that practice grammar, vocabulary, or basic ideas, blogs are a tool that could prove very useful in a classroom. They seem to me to be a tool that would catch a student's attention and keep them engaged, and any time we, as educators, can pair student engagement and excitement with learning, the outcome will be more successful.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Why use a blog as a teacher?
When thinking about the value in using a blog as a teacher, both as an individual and with my students, the biggest use that springs to mind is much of what we are doing in this class. We are using our blogs as a tool for reflection. As we think about, learn about, and explore web 2.0 tools and ways to grow our Personal Learning Networks, we are writing about how we can use these tools and what we are learning and gaining from our PLNs. I would even say that this may be one of the biggest uses for blogs in general, people voicing their personal opinions by reflecting on their day, their thoughts on a current news topic, or reflecting on an academic topic.
As teachers, one of the ways we improve is to reflect upon our teaching and learning, so that we can keep what went well, and change or improve what didn't. We should be passing that same skill along to our students, and a blog would help them do that.
I also see a blog as a way to have a discussion around a central topic. If each student had an account, or anonymous commenting were enabled (where then, of course, they would still be required to sign their post with their name), a teacher could put up a question for class response, and students could have to either post one answer showcasing their knowledge, or have a discussion with other students based upon their classmates' responses.
If each student had their own blog, it would be a great way for them all to share their opinion or take a position on a topic, and then have the class respond to them. The benefit of this would be that students have an opportunity to think about and process their statements before sharing with the class, instead of the more on-the-spot thinking in a class discussion, and then everyone would have an opportunity to share and respond, something that might be hindered by in-class time restraints.
As teachers, one of the ways we improve is to reflect upon our teaching and learning, so that we can keep what went well, and change or improve what didn't. We should be passing that same skill along to our students, and a blog would help them do that.
I also see a blog as a way to have a discussion around a central topic. If each student had an account, or anonymous commenting were enabled (where then, of course, they would still be required to sign their post with their name), a teacher could put up a question for class response, and students could have to either post one answer showcasing their knowledge, or have a discussion with other students based upon their classmates' responses.
If each student had their own blog, it would be a great way for them all to share their opinion or take a position on a topic, and then have the class respond to them. The benefit of this would be that students have an opportunity to think about and process their statements before sharing with the class, instead of the more on-the-spot thinking in a class discussion, and then everyone would have an opportunity to share and respond, something that might be hindered by in-class time restraints.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Blogs to follow
When I was looking for blogs to follow, I had a few interests in mind. First, were there blogs that pertain to my specific classroom content? And, are there blogs that might lend themselves to content in this graduate class that we are taking? Well, I was able to find both.
First, I looked for blog relating to Foreign Language and Spanish teaching. I was disappointed when I found a few that looked very promising in content, but had not been updated in over a year. I am going to continue looking for blogs relating specifically to Foreign Language/Spanish teaching, but I was able to find two that I think will be useful.
The Teaching & Learning Spanish blog is maintained by a woman who has been learning Spanish since high school, has also taught the language, and is encouraging her children to learn Spanish. In addition, she has links to resources and videos on her blog.
The Foreign Language Fun blog is similar in providing links, ideas, lessons, and resources. The difference is that the woman is a French teacher, but is learning Spanish with her children, and is sharing resources for both languages. However, methods and ideas can work well between languages.
As far as more educational/technology blogs, I was able to find three that seem to be a mix of talking about life as an education, educational news, and using technology in the classroom. Because of this, they will be useful to read in general as an educator, and may provide some interesting insight for this class. They are Weblogg-ed, Brave New World, and The Power of Educational Technology.
With any luck, all five of these blogs will be worth continuing to follow. If not, I hope that two of them will be interesting and worth the shared resources.
First, I looked for blog relating to Foreign Language and Spanish teaching. I was disappointed when I found a few that looked very promising in content, but had not been updated in over a year. I am going to continue looking for blogs relating specifically to Foreign Language/Spanish teaching, but I was able to find two that I think will be useful.
The Teaching & Learning Spanish blog is maintained by a woman who has been learning Spanish since high school, has also taught the language, and is encouraging her children to learn Spanish. In addition, she has links to resources and videos on her blog.
The Foreign Language Fun blog is similar in providing links, ideas, lessons, and resources. The difference is that the woman is a French teacher, but is learning Spanish with her children, and is sharing resources for both languages. However, methods and ideas can work well between languages.
As far as more educational/technology blogs, I was able to find three that seem to be a mix of talking about life as an education, educational news, and using technology in the classroom. Because of this, they will be useful to read in general as an educator, and may provide some interesting insight for this class. They are Weblogg-ed, Brave New World, and The Power of Educational Technology.
With any luck, all five of these blogs will be worth continuing to follow. If not, I hope that two of them will be interesting and worth the shared resources.
Goals for this Technology class
The focus of this class is on technology, and I would generally say that I am interested in using and learning about technology. Looking over the syllabus and the first few activities and readings for this class, I would like to do two things over the next eights weeks.
As we building our Personal Learning Networks, I hope to become more familiar with the programs that we are using, and to accumulate a list of sites, blogs, and groups, etc that I feel comfortable with and excited enough about to continue visiting after this class is over.
Also, I would like to find at least a few of the programs and web 2.0 tools that we are going to be using that I can incorporate into my classroom. Unfortunately, the trick in doing this is the filtering and blocking system that we have on our internet access at school. To make this successful, I would need to be able to have the students guaranteed of access to the tools. There are some that do not have internet at home, so they would need to be able to work at school. While it is not overly difficult to get websites unblocked on a teacher's personal computer, there would need to be more justification and proven uses to get the site unblocked school-wide. As we learn about these tools and their applications, my goal is to be able to find applications for them in my classroom, that will help to engage my students.
On a much more superficial layer, there are some web 2.0 tools like Niing and Delicious that I have either not heard about, or have never used. In these cases, I would just like to gain some familiarity with them.
As we building our Personal Learning Networks, I hope to become more familiar with the programs that we are using, and to accumulate a list of sites, blogs, and groups, etc that I feel comfortable with and excited enough about to continue visiting after this class is over.
Also, I would like to find at least a few of the programs and web 2.0 tools that we are going to be using that I can incorporate into my classroom. Unfortunately, the trick in doing this is the filtering and blocking system that we have on our internet access at school. To make this successful, I would need to be able to have the students guaranteed of access to the tools. There are some that do not have internet at home, so they would need to be able to work at school. While it is not overly difficult to get websites unblocked on a teacher's personal computer, there would need to be more justification and proven uses to get the site unblocked school-wide. As we learn about these tools and their applications, my goal is to be able to find applications for them in my classroom, that will help to engage my students.
On a much more superficial layer, there are some web 2.0 tools like Niing and Delicious that I have either not heard about, or have never used. In these cases, I would just like to gain some familiarity with them.
Who Am I?
My name is Jennifer and I am a middle/high school Spanish teacher. My school is 7-12, so we have many shared staff between levels. I typically have just high school level classes, but taught 8th grade for two consecutive years two and three years ago, did not have them this year, and will have them again next year. Our high school is on a block schedule (though it is modified, we do have some skinny classes), and my 8th grade class will be a 9-week exploratory.
I am interested to see how we use the different technologies here in class, and to explore the different ways I may be able to use some of them in my own classroom.
I am interested to see how we use the different technologies here in class, and to explore the different ways I may be able to use some of them in my own classroom.
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