Thing 23 - My journey through Web Tools 2.0 - Thank You RESA!

Warm wishes for a happy holiday season to all!


This was a wonderful, albeit time-consuming, experience and I am so glad I took the course. There are so many ways I can use what I have learned, and I hope I can pass this on to my teaching staff so that they can become more creative in their teaching. I know that I cannot access many of these sites from school, and this presents a problem. However, if teachers set up their own accounts from home they can direct their students to their own sites. This, of course, is not fair to those students who cannot afford a PC at home. (I even have students at my middle school whose mother teaches in the district and they have no Internet access at home!)

How can we present all these wonderful applications to use in education, when we cannot access them in our buildings? This is a great dilemma we face with accountability issues. To make education exciting and interesting we need to convince others that Web Tools are essential to educating today's youth and should be integrated into the curriculum.

Thing 22 - Creating a wiki

This was really fun to do and my Wiki at lpdragons.wikispaces.com is all ready to give to my teaching staff to learn about Wikis. I think it is more fun than blogging as it seems a lot easier to add things. Instead of making comments and receiving them on a blog, you can actually disseminate information in a very easy way. I like the format much more. I hope my teachers will see the benefits once they view this. I think it would be a great way for them to collaborate within their Clusters.

Thing 21 - Wandering through Wikis

First of all, I think this is a great idea for teachers who collaborate on projects to use. Our school is divided into Clusters with each cluster containing a teacher for each subject. Sometimes, there are things all the Cluster teachers have to work together on, and this would certainly help them to do this, without emailing each other constantly and waiting for responses.

I have printed out the article and plan to place a copy of it in their mail boxes, before I send them some websites to explore. I hope they will consider this even though they are all so busy with everything else they do during the day.

Once again, I am afraid they won't be able to access some of this information at work, as they will be stopped by the Firewall!

I especially thought WikiHow was a very interesting resource. The Arbor Heights Elementary school site was unique in that it changed their entire school website into a Wiki. In this manner, news from all the classes can be posted and edited. What a great way to keep in touch with the parents and community.

Thing 20 - Subscribing to Podcasts

I preferred using ITunes to look for podcasts, and found not only audio, but video podcasts. The 2 audio podcasts I subscribed to were: Spanish Pod; about learning the Spanish language (as many of my students are bilingual), and the other was "The art of storytelling." The video podcast I subscribed to was Izzy Video (all about digital video tutorials).

Thing 19 - Podcasts for students, by students and prof.dev.

I enjoyed listening to several podcasts while hunting around. One was on "putting your garden to rest" by a Minnesota gardener and another about animals at the San Diego zoo. I think the idea of teachers using podcasts by posting them to a blog for review or assignments is a great idea. However, I think students today are so visually oriented, that just listening to something may have them tuning out. I think educational video clips from YouTube may be more effective in teaching students today. The students who did the podcast on Henry Hudson used visuals to accompany the audio, which I think would be a better presentation. I was also extremely impressed by the first graders who made their own podcast about ants. Wow! I have worked with first graders, and it must have taken a great deal of work to produce something at that level.

Thing 18 - Slidesharing

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe(p. 9-52)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: narnia; the)

As with YouTube, there are many differerent kinds of slideshows to explore. Since I am all about reading, I like to stay within that topic. This gives not only information about the author and story, but offers a quiz as well. I can see where teachers would benefit by using these with their classes.

Thing 17 - Library Thing

I really enjoyed searching this site and already started my own bookshelf. It is great for reviews, reading others' comments, recommendations, and finding new titles my students will be interested in.

Best of all, when you join, you are connected with people that have a similar occupation, it seems. I will refer to this site often in making my selections for purchases.

I didn't explore the others yet, but bookmarked them, so I can go back. Library Thing was an instant draw.

Thing 16 - Google Docs

This is the way I plan to use Google Docs if I can access it at school(?).

• As a means to get information from teachers to post on the school website

• A way to post information for the teachers to access.

I would like to be able to share this with students , as I have to write news scripts for them. In this way they could access them from home as I create them before we air, instead of waiting for me to hand them an actual copy. This becomes a problem as they have to find time to come to the Media Center during their classes.