Web 2.0 Reflections (Thing 23)

Well - the 23 things course is coming to a close! I want to revisit the first assignment, my first blog post ... where I stated what I wanted to get out of the course.

By taking this course I hope to bring together all of the bits and pieces and build a cohesive presence for myself, to pull together all the haphazard pieces of my online "self" as it relates to education - and to be a more active part of the online PLN community. I have lots of ideas of how to use Web2.0 tools in special education particularly, I just feel like I need a framework and some accountability to get it all out of my head and online :-)

Well - I totally think that I got a lot of my ideas out of my head and online! I rediscovered some tools that I had been neglecting (Ning!), learned how to use tools I had heard about but never tried (e.g. voice thread) and discovered ways to use some web2.0 tools that I use for personal purposes but never thought about using professionally (e.g. Flickr). I think that being more familiar with the tools has helped me to be a more active part of my online PLN because I am now confident enough to feel like I can offer advice, opinions, or just converse about the different tools. So all in all I feel like the course was a personal success.

Because I was already familiar with many of the tools, I didn't expect to learn about many new ones - my main goal, like I said, was to tie it all together. I did, however, discover some new things! One of these was voicethreads. I had seen voicethreads on other people's blogs before but never really thought about what they were or how I could use them. I can't wait to use them in my class with my students as a way for us to work together to create a digital story. One of my first lesson plans of the year involves voicethreads now, to let the students share "what they did this summer" with the rest of the class. Since I took each student on a fun adventure, I have created the voicethread with my comments telling about what we did. I am going to have the students add their comments to their adventure as well (some already have), then play the voicethread for the class.

I am also excited about creating my own wiki and starting that blog I've been jotting down ideas for for 3 years now lol. I'm using bubbl to plan them and I can't wait to use glogster and wordle to create things for them, embed photos/slideshows/videos in them, and share them with my PLN via Ning and plurk! :-)

I think that the world is changing and technology is becoming more and more integrated in everything that we do in life. Because our main goal as educators is to prepare our students to live in the world, it is imperative that we teach them to use technology - and use it appropriately. Just as our generation's curriculum focused on new concepts than our parents, grandparents and ancestors, 21st century learners are facing a future requiring that they learn new skills. Just as we have evolved from chalkboards to white boards to overhead projectors in our lifetimes, today's technology provides us with even more effective and interactive tools for teaching in new and engaging ways that allow us to accommodate different styles of learners.

Plus, the bottom line is that the majority of the children we work with are going to use Web 2.0 tools outside of school whether or not they use them in class. We have a duty to teach them to be responsible when doing so - we must teach them internet safety and etiquette just as we teach them other types of safety and citizenship!

Podcast (Thing 19)

Well - I couldn't think of what to do a podcast about :-) Finally today I had Sam and Seth help me create one with us counting to 100. After the 4th try I resigned myself to the fact that Sam was *not* going to speak without putting the microphone practically IN his mouth and decided not to re-record it again lol. If you listen, I'd recommend turning your volume down.

What I learned from this first attempt: don't let my students hold the microphone lol

Ideas for using podcasts: The main thing that I see myself using podcasts for would be to share things we've done in class (vodcasts) with parents or to share "how tos" (teaching techniques, etc.) with parents and other educators.


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Other things (Thing 22)

For thing 22, I wanted to look at something I'm not familiar with. I first checked out clipmarks. I expected it to be similar to google notebook, but it's much more! Again, the addition of the social aspect adds a whole new dimension. I see shades of Diigo's sticky notes, as well. I signed up and look forward to playing around with it!

The second thing I explored was ooVoo. I looked here to see what the difference is between it and skype, which I use. I found these to be interesting:

ooVoo allows for your friends who have NOT downloaded ooVoo, to still be able to talk with you from their web browser with their Web Video Calling feature. I think that's a pretty nifty idea, especially for those who may be on the move, at a public place, friend's computer, etc., who can't download the program, or don't want to for whatever reason.

ooVoo also has a web video chat feature which allows you to embed video onto your blog, website or social networking site.

I think I will spend a little more time checking out ooVoo, I'm intrigued :-)

The wrong questions (Thing 5d)

Ira David Socol wrote Technolgy: the wrong questions and the right questions over at education.change.org.
He begins with a quote from William Alcott in 1842 discussing how he considers books to be useless because of the availability of chalkboards and slates. He goes on to point out:

Then, as now, the wrong question was being asked. In 1842 the doubters wondered what these new technologies could do for schools as they existed. Today, educators and policy makers constantly wonder what computers, mobile phones, and social networking will do for a curriculum largely unchanged since 1910.

That was the wrong question then, and it is the wrong question now. The right question is, what can schools, what can education, contribute to these new technologies?

Just as in 1842, just as in Socrates' time when literacy appeared, the technologies of information and communication have changed radically this decade - the ways in which humans learn about their world have changed radically, and schools will either help their students learn to navigate that new world, or they will become completely irrelevant.

While I don't completely agree with all that he says (I don't advocate "throwing out keyboarding classess", for example), I do think that he makes some excellent points, which he sums up in this paragraph:

Now we must give up teaching that ink-on-paper is the primary information source. It is not. We must give up insisting that students learn "cursive" writing. Instead, they must learn to text on a Blackberry and dictate intelligibly to their computer. We must toss out our "keyboarding" classes and encourage students to discover their own best ways to input data. We must abandon much of Socrates' memorization and switch to engagement with where data is stored. We must abandon the one-way classroom communication system, be it the lecture or use of the "clicker," and teach with conversation and through modeling learning itself. We must lose the idea that "attention" means students staring at a teacher, or that "attendance" means being in the room, and understand all the differing ways humans learn best. We must stop separating subjects rigidly and adopt the contemporary notion of following knowledge where it leads us.

Podcasts (Thing 18)

I personaly prefer vodcasts on the computer - I am way too ADD to sit and just listen without any visual input lol - but I do like to download podcasts to listen to on the way to and from class (anything to make that 2 hour round trip drive less of a huge block of wasted time). I obviously don't get to take notes while driving, but I figure if I didn't listen while driving I wouldn't listen to many at all - so listening without notes is better than not listening :-) Plus when I get to school (or home) I can quickly jot down anything that struck my fancy (and I will admit that I have, on more than one occassion, called and left myself a voicemail when something was really interesting). I subscribe to Autism Podcast which is done by the father of a child with autism and has several interesting podcasts. Several of the blogs that I follow also periodically have pod or vodcasts.

Some of my recent favorite pod and vodcasts come from someone that I met on plurk! Her name is Andrea Keller and she teaches students with autism and they have created several podcasts that are posted on their blog. Another that I like is BigStoryTime - they have lots of "bedtime stories for kids" read by kids - I use this to let my students listen to stories.

I usually go to either Podcast.com or PodcastAlley to search for podcasts.

Nings and Microblogs (Thing 17)

Nings

I joined Classroom 2.0 last summer - and didn't really do much after that ... I've re-discovered it today and have no clue why it hasn't been one of my "dailies" (websites I check at least once a day)! It certainly is in the rotation now :-)

I really enjoyed the forum post (that linked to this google document) about using Twitter to update students and parents - there are some good ideas there!

I think Nings are great - another aspect to the online PLC that (like I've said before) is so important, especially since mine is the only class like it in the county ...

I'm also a member of these Nings:
Teachers 2.0, Technology Integration in Special Education, Assistive Tech, Special Ed in the 21st Century, Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs, and Special Ed Voices.


Microblogging

I use twitter and plurk (actually I post to plurk and it automatically posts to twitter - but I do check my twitter page periodically). I certainly think that it is one of the main components of my PLN - especially for quick answers. For more in depth or complicated things, plurk isn't the best option, but it's a great way to get quick feedback from lots of people.

Also I would like to start using microblogging as another tool for collaborating with parents - to keep them updated about class and school happenings and updates.

Why spend more?? (Thing 5c)

Firefox on the rise
Originally uploaded by MrTopf

In Refusing Free, Depriving Students, Ira Socol writes:

Students do worse in school than they need do, they struggle more, they even drop out more. All because schools won't take the two minutes to download something free.

Ira is referring to Firefox and the many available add-ons that can be used to allow disabled students to access the internet. He then goes on to mention other free software that is available:

From Ghotit (the world's best English-language context-based, text-to-speech Spell Check system) to WordTalk (turns Microsoft Word into a talking word processor), from OpenOffice to Linux (stop paying for Microsoft licenses), from Google Earth to GraphCalc (free complete graphing calculator), from Click-N-Type (the best virtual on-screen keyboard) to PowerTalk (reads presentations outloud), schools could be providing their students with a world of software and supports at zero cost, but are refusing.

The result? Rich, white, Protestant, normally-abled students get what they need at home, and vulnerable students fail.

That last line cuts right to the chase! As does this one:

And I won't accept the answer, "fear" anymore either. If an electrician was too afraid of electricity to touch a wire, he'd be an electrician no more. So if an educator is afraid of the information and communication technologies of his/her age, then he/she can no longer be an "educator" in any meaningful way.

I think that Ira asks several fantastic questions - I won't quote his entire blogpost here, but I do highly recommend reading it - and the comments!

It brings to mind another blog post I read recently ... where Daniel Dage asked "Is the Promethean Whiteboard Worth It?". He says:

Our school district is ordering tons of the active whiteboards at no less that $2000 each. I can do the exact same thing for less than $100. So can you, and you can do it easily and painlessly by checking out the folks at PenteractiveThe Wii setuhe Wii setup might be somewhat inferior to the Promethean whiteboard. But how inferior is it? Is it 20 times worse?

I think that, especially in the current economy, we should at the very least look for less expensive options that may achieve the same (if not better) results as the costly ones!! And that's not possible unless you are familiar with the technology available, which is where that online PLN comes in pretty handy!!

PLNs (Thing 16)

Of course I'm on facebook (and myspace though I never log on there anymore). And it's great to keep in touch with old friends, family members, etc. But beyond that, online professional networking through PLNs occupies a lot of my "free" time :-) And sometimes the two combine!

Before taking this course, I was a member of a PLN but not a very active one. I read a lot of the conversations on plurk, other blogs, Ning communities, etc. but never really felt knowledgeable enough to participate. That's actually the main reason that I took the course - so that I could learn more about Web2.0 and gain the confidence to become a more active participant. I felt like more of a "taker" (always going to my online PLN with questions/problems) than a "giver" (never really felt like I could offer advice for others or answer their questions).

As for the benefits of PLNs - a mastercard commercial just screaming to be made:
*laptop - $1000
*internet access - $40/month
*having a colleague there anytime of day to bounce things off of, ask for advice, etc. - priceless!!

I teach special education. There are 3 other self-contained special education teachers at my school, none of them have a similar class make-up as mine. While they are valuable resources for many things, sometimes I really need to talk to someone else who teacher students like mine. Problem is, I'm the only one in the county! Enter my online PLN members! From Kansas, Texas, England, Australia - they can help!!

Google Docs (Thing 15)

I did know about Google Docs before this class and I use it occasionally. I think it is great for sharing documents (I'm notorious for forgetting to attach documents when I email them to someone so it eliminates that hassle) without having to worry about whether or not the recipient has the same software (and version) and will be able to open the file - it eliminates the need to save documents as "97-2003" compatible! (I can't count how many emails I have gotten saying "I can't open the file" because the person I sent it to uses an older version).
The collaboration aspect is also great. I've used it in grad school to work on group assignments and with fellow teachers to create and get feedback on lesson plans.

I had not ever created a form in Google Docs before today - and I was surprised at how simple it is!! I've used MS Access to create forms and have them linked to spreadsheets, but this was much easier! I could see myself using this to collaborate and get input from parents, as a formative and summative assessment tool to get feedback from students in college courses that I teach, and even for data collection! I really want to get DDTrac (data collection software) to allow me and my paras to collect data on a PDA - but I *think* that I can play around with the forms on Google Docs and come up with something similar to hold me over temporarily until I win the lotto or convince the school system to order DDTrac lol.

I see several advantages (mentioned before - collaboration, access from anywhere, eliminate problems with incompatible software) but the only disadvantages that I see are 1)that you couldn't access your documents unless you were somewhere with internet access and 2)not a lot of the more advanced options (though plenty for basic documents) like mail merge, automatic table of contents, etc. And though there are several templates available, not as many as for Microsoft Office applications. (I also noticed that there aren't very many presentation templates for the presentation - which could be a good thing since many people over-decorate their powerpoints, but also gives you much less personalization and creative options.)

Wikis (Thing 7)

Wiki Wiki
Originally uploaded by elkit

(In my previous post (not really thing 7) I discussed how I would like to use a wiki in my classroom - and in another previous post (wordle, polldaddy and bubbl, oh my!), I linked to my bubbl map on that same topic. So this post is just the rest of thing 7 - observations from my exploration of other wikis)

Schools in the Past was very interesting, and seems like the beginning of a great idea - and I liked how it involved the parents, grandparents, and other people directly. It was a pretty simple wiki with just the one page, kindof bland ... I would have liked to see other pages with perhaps student-created material (maybe have the students draw what they think schools in the past might have looked like?). Maybe some students could even take home a flip camera/vado and interview their grandparents then post that video clip. I would also have added some visuals (photos of old schools). As far as learning outcome, I didnt' see anything that shows that the student applied what they had learned - or even that they had read what was posted.

I loved the Kindergarten Counting Book. I would have liked to see a byline for more of the photos, just to show that multiple children participated ... and the OCD part of me would have liked it if all of the photos were the same size :-) I also would have either added content to the pages tabbed at the top, or removed the tabs. But I think the idea is great and may even "borrow" it :-) But I think the idea might be better suited to another format (perhaps bookr? or a slideshow? maybe even a voicethread?) that could then be posted to a wiki rather than making it the only content on the wiki.

The third wiki that I visited was Code Blue - I think this is a fantastic job. You can tell that the students put a lot into it, it's obvious that they learned about different diseases from reading the patient pages. Looking at the hospital/doctor info pages it also looks like they had a lot of fun and were creative. I like the list of links on the front page, as well. They did a good job finding different resources. Finally, I enjoyed the hospital "signs" and other visuals on the pages - enough to make it interesting but not so much that it detracted from the information. Kudos to mscofino and her students! I explored some of her other wikis, as well, (like this one on Native Americans) and was quite impressed :-)

YouTube and TeacherTube (Thing 14)

I use YouTube a lot when teaching college courses or doing inservice presentations on Autism - there are a ton of great videos out there (manyby people who have Autism), describing and explaining the disorder. Some of my favorites are:
A Way of Describing Autism
If You Can Do X, Why Can't You Do Y?
About Being Considered Retarded & In My Language
My Experience With Autism

I also sometimes upload videos of things that my class has done so that I can embed them in my blog or on my class webpage (in the future - my class wiki!) such as when we sang This Land is Your Land on the morning announcements.

For use in my class, there are videos of public places that I can use to "prime" my kids before going on a CBI or field trip. There are also social story videos like this one and this one that I can show. And my students love this phonics video and I can't wait to use this one on symmetry.

Usually, for sharing things with parents of my students, I use TeacherTube since I can access it from school. (And of course now, I will embed the videos in my wiki).

I also watch videos from members of my online PLN that they have posted in their blog through youtube and teachertube. One that I really enjoyed (though not educational, it's nice to know I'm not alone in my struggles lol) was this one by Daniel Dage at The Life That Chose Me.

And, just for fun, here is my current all-time favorite video on YouTube :-) Enjoy!

My first VoiceThread (Thing 13 stretch)

I'm trying to figure out why the volume is so low - I had the mic volume at it's highest ... but you can barely hear me and sometimes can't hear the kids' comments at all ...

This summer, I'm taking each of my students to do one fun activity - either alone or with one other student. (Actually because I'm doing private therapy with Seth and Sam, two of my kiddos, they get to go to more than just one fun place - because that way I can *sneak* lots of communication and academic practice in without them knowing that they're working). Anyway, I was thinking - a voicethread would be a fabulous way for them to share memories of their fun when school starts back! So I made this voicethread of the trip Sam, Seth and I took to White Water last week. And when they come back over (Tuesday), I'll have them add their comments!

Tomorrow, I'm taking another student to Stone Mountain and plan on doing the same thing with him, and with all of the rest of my students after each "playdate"! Stay tuned!!!

VoiceThread (Thing 13)

The first time I ever heard of voicethreads was at the CEC convention in 2008 in Boston. Kate at Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs "live blogged" that session and has some excellent ideas on her post and in the comments. She also has a great post on how VoiceThread is helpful for parents of children in special education classes. My students, for example, can't go home and tell mom/dad/whoever about what they did in school that day. But I can post a voicethread (or video) to my class wiki and the parents can then see it. I can only imagine what it must be like to have no idea of what your child does all day at school. I mean, even the kid who answers "nothing" every time you asked what they did that day will occassionally give you a little more detail. I think that Voice Threads would be a great way to collaborate with parents - let them see AND COMMENT on what their child is doing! How wonderful would it be to go back to the voice thread the next day and let some of my students listen to their parents (or Uncle Fred miles away in California) commenting on their work?

Kate also posts voicethreads of activities -such as the Princess Bride unit, snow activity, and texture lesson - that she does with her high school class of students with severe and multiple disabilities. (Can you tell that hers is one of my favorite blogs? lol) I think this is an awesome way to collaborate with other teachers!! Especially in classrooms where we do so many "nontraditional" activities, it helps so much to see ideas that others have come up with.

For general education classes, Leila Weir blogs at edutopia that Bill Ferritter (a 6th grade LA and SS teacher) says he is able to get more students to participate by using voice threads in his class, and is able to get students to write about things they normally wouldn't.

I'm excited about voicethreads and can't wait to start using them on my class wiki!

Wordle, Polldaddy, Bubbl - oh my! (Thing 12)

Probably the most obviously useful of the web2.0
tool choices to explore for Thing 12 (to me)
was bookr. I could use this to make books about
content (as above), to create personalized social
stories for my kids, to have them create books
about their experiences - the ideas are seemingly
endless.  A very simple, instant-gratification
way to publish simple books online - I love it!


I put the URL of my 23 things blog into wordle
and created the above image -pretty cool!
Nothing immediately comes to mind about how to
use in in myclassroom (because my students cannot
read), but I can think of several applications
to a general education class.  The first thing
that I thought of was to introduce a new topic -
create a wordle with different words relating
to that topic and see if the students can guess
what the topic is.  Similarly,use it to practice
finding the "main idea" or other inferencing
activities. Sort of the reverse of that, you
could assign a topic and have students create
a wordle of words related to the topic, as well.


I have, on several occassions, "meant to"
check out bubbl.us but it's one of those
things I never got around to (like so many
things lol).  I am always drawing mind maps
about something (ever since my ADD coach
recommended it andI realized what a
sanity saving technique it can be!) and,
I think Bubbl.us will now get lots of use
because it is SOeasy! I assumed I would
need a long stretch of time to sit down
and figure itout, but I was able to create
an account, log in and then create
the mind-map above (on ways I can use a
classroom wiki) in less than 15 minutes.
I think it would be a great tool to allow
students to brainstorm (similar to inspiration)
for a paper or project.  Plus,you can
share access with your "friends" so that
others can have input.  For example, if
anyone reading this has ideas for how I
could use my wiki, please add them to my map!

More on being technologically illiterate teachers (Thing 5b)

I found this post from Pat at Successful Teaching (linking to this post from Bill Ferriter) to be an interesting extension of the post from the Fisch Bowl that was one of our choices to read for an earlier "thing". I particularly loved Pat's analogy comparing computers to automobiles: both in that we need to teach students how to use them responsibly rather than just saying "the kids don't use the internet appropriately so we'll just not let them use it"

By learning how to use the tools and ways it can improve our lives, we can help the students use them responsibly too. I believe that when the automobile first came out, that society frowned on the use of them when young people used them irresponsibly. Then eventually we started to teach our young people how to drive responsibly (Driver’s Education classes came about). The automobile wasn’t going to go away and neither is technology.

and here:

When educators refuse to learn digital forums for communication and growth, it is like showing up at school today with a horse and buggy because you refuse to learn how to drive. The world is constantly changing and educators need to be able to look at the big picture and see the changes that are coming. We need to be the “go to” people for our students and not the “left behind” people.

From Bill's blog post, I was amazed to find that the Met Life Survey of the American Teacher found that:

To be specific, less than one out of every three teachers (28%) report having read or written a blog about teaching even as blogs become an increasingly common forum for conversation and resource sharing between experts in every field. Making matters worse, less than two in ten (15%) teachers have participated in online communities or social networking sites like Tapped In, Ning or Facebook.

While principal responses to the same questions were---surprisingly---higher, less than half of our leaders (42%) are reading and learning from blogs and less than one quarter (22%) are participants in online communities.

I guess that's why the 23 things course exists, to try to get teachers involved in using technology so that they can discover how useful and vital it is to our profession, as well as to see that it's not as scary and difficult as people seem to think.

Most of the students in my class function below the kindergarten level cognitively, so the way that I use web2.0 tools in my classroom differs from the "norm". My students don't research, they don't write papers or responses to literature, they really don't create much "tangible" work without significant assistance. I can't imagine if I were teaching a literature class, or a science or history class, especially at the high school level and *not* incorporating web2.0 into my teaching repertoire - to an extreme degree! There are so many resources out there and so many opportunities that allow students to collaborate with each other in ways that weren't possible when I was in school - and I truly feel like witholding those opportunities is doing the students a great disservice. Yes, students need to know how to write "traditional" papers - but even those are becoming less important. In college and beyond (in the "real world"), things are done more and more on the computer. The student who can write an amazing term paper but doesn't know how to participate in an online community (for example, ULearn or WebCT) is not going to do well in many college courses. I know that for some of the undergrad and graduate level courses that I and my colleagues teach, participation in the online portion of the course (even though it's not an online-course per se) counts as much as class participation, written papers, and tests.

Beyond college, this article from BusinessWeek points out, web2.0 is infiltrating the corporate world. I love the quote at the end of the article:

It may turn out that keeping up with the slick technology won't be the most important thing to master. Corporate folks accustomed to clear lines of authority may have to tolerate bottom-up Web 2.0 technologies in order to help their employees reap the potential productivity gains. After all, notes Dave Girouard, vice-president in charge of Google Inc.'s (GOOG ) enterprise division, which sells search and other technology to corporations: "This isn't people fooling around. It's people trying to do their jobs better."

I think that, similarly, *teachers* who are accustomed to clear lines of authority may have to tolerate bottom-up Web 2.0 technologies in order to help our *students* reap the potential productivity gains!

Slideshow (Thing 11)

Cows!!

This is a slideshow of 10 different examples of a cow. I would play the slideshow for my students (without the captions - distracting!) and as each picture displayed, I would ask a student "What is it?" or "What does a cow say?", "Where do cows live?", "What do we get from cows?" (depending on the level of the student).
I would then add 10 pictures of another animal (say, a pig) in with the cows, then a third animal - until I had 10 different animals with 10 pictures each (100 photos) in random order. We would practice until the students could name all 10 animals, then I would introduce another set of vocabulary words and pictures :-)

With that said, I usually don't use slide or rockyou to do the slideshows that I use in class, I stick to plain ol' powerpoint because then I can have the photo take up the entire screen with no distracting elements. I usually use slide.com for informal slideshows to post to my blog - when I want it to look more "professional", I use flickr slidr.

Flickr (Thing 10)

pretty cow
Originally uploaded by MNicoleM

I really don't know how to reflect on my flickr experience lol - I've been addicted to flickr for over 3 years ...

I do use flickr frequently in class. My students have lots of basic communication goals - identifying pictures of common objects, animals, foods, actions, classmates, etc. Here are some activities that we do in my class using flickr:

• we look at pictures of things we have done as a class and talk about it (working on communication, retelling past events, etc.)
• we look at multiple pictures representing our vocabulary words for that week (ex: if we are doing an animal unit, we may have 10 different animals for the week - so we will watch a slideshow with 100 pictures (1o different pictures of each of the 10 animals) and the students have to tell me which animal is pictured)
  
• I may show a slideshow of pictures representing different actions and students have to produce a sentence (ex: he is jumping) about the picture
• I use Multicolr Search Lab to find pictures in different colors and have students identify the colors
• I search for pictures of letters or numbers and have students identify them

Basically, I use flickr in place of flashcards. The images are much larger, photos are more realistic than most flashcard pictures, and there are practically endless examples of each thing I need a picture of! Because students with autism frequently have trouble generalizing, showing them multiple examples of the same thing is important. Using flickr to create slideshows saves me from having to purchase or make 10 different sets of flashcards just to get 10 different examples of a cow. Plus I can take my own photos (of classmates, objects in the classroom, places in the school, teachers, etc.) and incorporate those as well!

I also use flickr frequently to share what we're doing in class with parents. I give my students' parents my flickr web address so that they can look at the pictures that I take throughout the year. Then at the end of the year, I use Qoop (a flickr partner) to create photo books for each student. Here is a slideshow of the photos in this past year's photobook. (btw, I do have the parents' permission to post the photos on my blog)

Creative Commons (Thing 9)

Strange timing, but I got an email through flickr yesterday regarding creative commons! Most of my public flickr images are Creative Commons, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike ... because, frankly, if someone wants to use my pictures I'm flattered - but I don't want them to make money off of them (especially since I'm not making any money off of them lol).
Here's the email: (btw, the subject of the email is "Why CC is bad")

Hello, I just want to send you a message on why CC photos are bad. People can use your photos without paying to use them, all they have to do is give you credit. They do not even have to notify you. for example, your new kids on the block photo: www.flickr.com/photos/mnicolem/2988302727/in/set-72157608512874713/ has been used here: www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/06/19/new-kids-on-the-block-blame-lousy-ticket-sales-on-recession/ now if it was not CC, you probably would have been paid about 100 bucks for this usage. Also, with you having your photos marked as CC, you are undermining the concert photography industry as sites like this would rather use a free photo rather than pay a professional for it. anyways, hope this is a eye opener.

(end of email)
Now - like I said before, I don't mind that my photo was used - I'm flattered! And if it weren't for CC, I probably would NOT have made $100 off of the pic, they would more likely have found someone else's photo to use ... then I would still not have the money and no one would have seen my photo, either ... so my wallet and head would be the same size, and at least with CC I get to have a big head :-) I actually enjoy going to flickr's stats page and seeing all of the places where my photos are being used - in my opinion, my photography skills can be legitimized by the fact that someone felt my picture was good enough to use, even if they didn't pay me for it. Now if I were a professional photographer and my livelyhood depended on getting paid for my photos, that would be a different story! I would obviously reserve all rights in that case. And I do reserve all rights on a select few of my photos, just in case I decide to try to sell them at some point.

On another note, I do sometimes use material from the web when teaching. People with autism often have difficulty generalizing - so a generic picture of a restaurant has much less meaning to them than a photograph of the particular McDonalds that we are going to be visiting. I've gotten kicked out of a Publix before for taking photos of items on the shelves (I have since learned that if I call ahead and explain what I will be using the photos for, they are happy to oblige) so I have to find photos of specific brands of items to create picture shopping lists when we go on CBI trips. And I find lots of pictures of environmental print to use during reading lessons.

One thing that I have run into regarding fair use/copyright involves Boardmaker pictures and files. Boardmaker is a software program used by almost every special education teacher in the world - and lots of teaching materials that I (and others) create use Boardmaker pictures. I have seen some teachers save the boardmaker files as a PDF then upload them to the web but I am hesitant to do that, because the images are copyrighted. If I upload it as a boardmaker file, then at least anyone who downloads it also has to own the software to open the file. For now, I stick to uploading my boardmaker files to Adapted Learning the online sharing site that Mayer Johnson (the company who makes Boardmaker) has created.

Wiki example (not really Thing 7)

Here is an example of a wiki created by a special education class about a CBI trip to the grocery store. I LOVED this!!! I was kindof stuck when thinking about how my students could create a wiki - all of the usual ideas (class discussion, sharing notes, etc.) don't really apply to my kiddos. But we can certain take pictures and share our CBI trip adventures with parents! Or other activities we do in class! My mind is now reeling with brilliant ideas of how I can use a wiki with my students.

I had planned on creating a wiki for my class - one with information for parents, basically taking the info from my class website and putting it in wiki form, because updating and adding new information (like the videos I mentioned in a previous post, demonstrating how to do homework activities) would be so much easier than with a traditional website (not to mention that Barrow County Schools won't let me link my webpage to the school's webpage lol). But then adding in the student participation element brings a whole new level of excitement :-)

I'll be back later (probably tomorrow) to do the actual Thing 7, but I wanted to look for at least one wiki created by special education students and there wasn't one on Madame O's list of links :-)

(by the way, I found the wiki on the NECC ning on a forum about using blogs and wikis with special education students)

Diggo (Thing 6)

My main problem with diggo (and delicious) is that I am too OCD lol. I try to keep my tags to a minimum because I still fall into the habit of thinking of tags as "folders" and I want everything to fit neatly into a folder. I'm not a good tagger at all - not on flickr, not on diggo, not on my blog, etc.

Here's a story to illustrate: Let's say I find a cool web-tech website/blog post/whatever. I tag it with web2.0. Now if this particular website is specifically about plurk, I should tag it with "plurk", right? But in my mind, the conversation goes like this: "But there are a couple of other sites that I've bookmarked that mention plurk - so I guess I should go back and add a plurk tag to those - but they also talk about twitter, so I should tag it with twitter too ... but then that meas I'll have to go through ALL of my links tagged with web2.0 and tag them with whatever specific tool they mention" then I look and see that I have hundreds of sites tagged web2.0 "Geez - that's gonna take FOREVER! And then, I guess I'll also have to see if any of my inks tagged with productivity mention plurk, twitter, etc. - oh and those should really be tagged with GTD if they mention that! And I think there's one somewhere about jott - I should see if any others need that tag too" etc. etc. - and because in my brain, EVERYTHING is all or nothing (no way could I tag just that one website that started all of this with "plurk" without tagging ALL of them!), I end up just tagging it with web2.0 because I have to be at work in the morning and don't have hours and hours to go through and retag all of my bookmarks.

I also try to only keep sites that I refer back to in my diggo and delilcious accounts (I will admit that I usually save to deicious unless I'm at school where it's blocked - then I just import my delicious links to diggo periodically). Sites that I find interesting and may want to come back to when I have time, I usually just add to my google bookmarks - then if I find I'm going back to it frequently, I will add it to delicious/diggo. And I don't often bookmark blog posts, I will star them in google reader ...

In other words, I guess I don't really use diggo as a "social bookmarking" tool like it's meant to be used, but more as a "personal bookmark organization" tool - which I should change now :-) Which is partially why I'm taking this course. I may have to increase my zoloft, but I'll try to be a better tagger and share more bookmarks that I find interesting :-) Perhaps I should use google bookmarks to handle and organize the frequently used bookmarks I've been saving in delicious and diggo and start saving/sharing the ones I've been putting in google bookmarks ... that might make more sense :-)

And/or - I could use lists as "folders" ... hmm... hadn't thought of that one ...

So here is the link to my diggo bookmarks - which I've just looked at and there are several untagged items - my delicious site is much better organized It's a good thing it's summer - my diggo may be getting an overhaul lol