Jenny’s summer blog!

final blog post reflecting on your overall course experience and next steps.

Wow! I can’t believe we’re at the end of the course! Although it was pretty time consuming, I really enjoyed this course! I keep bragging to my friends about how high-tech I’ve become! I have really enjoyed being able to create and maintain this blog. It was so cool to learn how to embed pictures, slideshows, podcasts, and videos in my blog (and my wiki). I also am really impressed by the concept of RSS. I’ve already used my Google Reader to sign up for family blogs and other useful blogs. I’ve learned a lot from using my RSS reader!

I definitely plan to come back to this blog to remind myself during the school year of websites and other resources that I can be using. I am planning to use either a wiki or a blog as a part of my classroom website (depending on which is more compatible with the websites we have to use). I will also definitely haev some kind of wiki project where all of my kids will be asked to edit and contribute to the site.

All in all, Web 2.0 is an amazing thing! The amount of social networking tools that I’ve learned about blow my mind! Thank you for letting me be involved with this course!

I came across RetroJunk as I was exploring VoiceThread and just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put this gem in my blog!  I laughed out loud.  RetroJunk is awesome!

TMNT on RetroJunk

In this task, I learned about the Social Networking tool Ning and how it can be used for both personal and professional purposes.  I enjoyed exploring social networks in Atlanta.  I think this could be a really great way to meet other people with similar interests.  It could also be a cool way to keep my whole extended family connected!

I also looked at Classroom 2.0 and Ning in Education, two Ning groups focusing on social networking of teachers.  Most of the online discussions I saw were discussing how to use Web 2.0 in the classroom, which I found really interesting as I come to the end of this course.  What a cool way for teachers around the world to collaborate!  I also liked seeing that other teachers had asked questions about using Web 2.0 in the classroom.  Some people even had some of the same questions that I have had.  I am thrilled to know that there are so many people in this network who can be there to answer any questions I may have!  I also found the discussions to be quite helpful since I am considering using a blog or wiki as a part of my class webpage.

In addition to exploring Classroom 2.0, I also looked at Elementary School 2.0.  I enjoyed reading the discussions on this page because so many of the Web 2.0 concepts are more easily geared towards older children.  This site helped me get a few more ideas of things I can do with my younger students!

I will continue to use Ning as a resource for asking questions and seeing what other people are doing to use Web 2.0 in their classrooms!

One blog post that I came across in my Google Reader was called 100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of. I was REALLY excited to come across some of the websites that were listed in this site. There are sites from a number of different categories including Dictionaries and More, Teacher References, Librarian References, Just for Fun, Health Care, References for Students, Niche Sites, Search Engines, Open Source Sites, Internet and Computer Reference, Consumer Research and Public Information, and News and Pop Culture. WOW! I had never even heard of some of these websites, but I am certain that many of them will come in handy, especially when I am creating class resources. I will definitely add this page to my favorites and my Pageflakes page! A couple resources are not appropriate for kids, so I will have to gather sites and put them somewhere else.

Today, I learned about Pageflakes and created my own Pageflakes page.  I actually ended up creating two pages… one for professional use and one for personal use.  The personal one has fun stuff like Sudoku, Facebook, an address book, weather, an RSS feed to my sister’s blog, and my horoscope.  All useful, fun things, but no need for them on my professional Pageflakes Page.  On my school/ professional page, I have two sets of links- resources for students and resources for teachers.  I also have Grammar Girl podcasts, a calendar, a calculator, dictionary and Google searches, and other related flakes.  I really enjoyed learning about Pagecasts because I feel like it’s a great way to integrate a lot of things I’ve learned in this course!

I liked using Pageflakes.  I haven’t decided if it will be my homepage yet, but it will definitely be useful.  I think that creating a Pageflakes page could be especially useful if we are studying any type of current events.  I thought the page about the Crisis in Darfur was a really interesting away to approach current events.  I could also see using a Pageflakes page to communicate about upcoming class events.  I like being able to have easy RSS feeds right in the page… this would be a great way to check on my favorite blogs, podcasts, or other favorites.

Well, my brain is in total pre-planning mode.  I enjoyed using Google Docs to make some materials that I can use in my classroom in preparation for the school year.  I started by making a categorized list of things I need to do in my classroom to prepare.  As soon as the pre-planning starts, I will share it with Laurel (my assistant) so we can both update the list as we complete tasks.  I also created an excel document to work on figuring out my schedule.  I am really looking forward to being able to access this from any computer (either at home or at school).

I think that Google Docs will be a really helpful collaboration tool to use with the third grade team as we plan activities, field trips, and lessons.  I really like the idea of us all being able to work together and collaborate without having to use email or meeting face to face.  I also like the idea of having many documents on Google Docs so I can access them from any computer.  I am sick of emailing documents to myself!  I also loved being able to work on my schedule at home since right now my computer doesn’t have MIcrosoft Office.  I really like this tool!

One video that I loved watching was a video by Bill Nye (the science guy!) The video was about the earth’s crust, which will come in really handy when we study mountains in third grade! It talks about the thickness of the earth’s crust, as well as how volcanoes are formed. Cool!

I also found some cool videos about the book Because of Winn Dixie, including some book reviews, interviews with the author, and even clips from the movie. These might be really cool during our third grade study of the book!

I have been having trouble keeping the yolk in my fried eggs from breaking lately, so I looked up a video on Frying an Egg. Did you know that it helps them to cook if the egg is room temperature? I didn’t.

I thought the video about the Evolution of Dance was really clever. I also LOVED the video Where the Hell is Matt? (Although I wasn’t crazy about the title). It is so cool how it shows this one guy dancing with people all over the world! I liked it so much I’m going to embed it here! Trust me, it’s worth watching!

TeacherTube was also a really neat resource, not only for videos to show students, but also for professional development videos.  I would love to eventually make a video with my class and then be able to share it on TeacherTube.

In this task, we were asked to use Evoca to create a podcast sharing at least three ideas for student and/or teacher-created podcasts to support classroom learning. Here’s my podcast!

Yay! Finally something in this course that I have actually heard of before! And done! The Spanish department at Trinity makes occasional vocabulary and song podcasts, so I have done this before! Because listening and speaking are both so important in foreign language learning, we decided to have students listen and then repeat after us.  What I hadn’t realized was that, in order to be a podcast, you have to not only have an audio file but also an RSS feed. Cool!

I really like that, with podcasts, you can watch or listen at your convenience rather than having to be available to watch or listen at a specific time. I guess I’m really spoiled by things like tivo, because, by this point in my life, I often think of the ability to watch or listen on my own time as a given!

I also like that you can subscribe to podcasts.  This could be a really cool way to listen to files in the classroom.  I enjoyed listening to the sample podcasts on the Thing 17 description.  Grammar Girl’s quick tips  (in the category English) were really interesting!  I imagine that listening to podcasts might be a really useful way for auditory learners to learn.

I looked at some podcasts on The Education Podcast Network.  There were many types of educational podcasts to choose from.  I also looked at educational podcasts through itunes.  I again found Grammar Girl’s tips and subscribed to the podcast.  I really enjoyed listening to some of them!  I also subscribed to 60 Second Science.  I am hoping that I might hear/ find some interesting things to share with my class for further enrichment.  Of course, not all things on these podcasts would be appropriate for third graders, so I will need to preview them.

In this task, we looked at Library Thing. Library Thing is a way for people to network about books. One thing that you can do with Library Thing is to create an online catalog of your books. In an ideal world with unlimited time, I would love to make an online catalog of the books in my classroom library. Unfortunately (or, really, quite fortunately), I have a ton of books. I really don’t think this would be a feasible goal for me. Who has time for that?

I think that Library Thing could be useful to help find book recommendations for my students. Since I am so new to third grade, there are many third grade level books that I have not read. With Library Thing, I could read book reviews and get good suggestions. It was really very easy to search by author and by tag. I searched by Newbery Medal winners (by looking at that tag) and was glad to see a very comprehensive list!

I think Library Thing could also be a cool way to tell other people what we are reading as a class. If I have a class blog, I might try to use the Library Thing widget to tell people what we are reading.

The 50 book challenge was really cool. It is a way for people to keep track of what books (and how many books) they read in a year. This could be a really cool activity for the class!