Here are our cats

I used windows movie maker instead of voxpix ...

Using 23 things in "real life"

Well - taking the 23 things course over the summer gave me OODLES of fabulous ideas and time to consider how to implement them in my class. I knew that when school started back those pipe dreams would be difficult to bring to fruition but I was (and am) determined to do my best to make it work! Here's what I've done so far (in the first 2 weeks of school) and how I plan to expand on it!

• got signed permission forms for all of my students to read and create online content as well as have their photos and videos posted on our class wiki, blog and flickr (I say this as a disclaimer because I know someone will see the pics/videos/etc. and say "You can't put their photos on the internet without permission!")
  
• set up my class wiki - I'm encouraging my students' parents to participate by sharing weekend stories and photos and asking questions or leaving comments on the discussion page. I've also created a page for each student and plan on helping them add content to their pages.
  
• set up my class blog
• set up and began using our wiimote whiteboard
• created a voicethread about everyone's summer vacation (don't have this one posted yet, we're still missing one students' photos)

This week we're working on an activity that incorporates several web2.0/technology tools.

1. First each student typed the word "cat" (some typed in "black cat", "orange cat", etc. - some copied the word using the keyboard, some used an adapted (intellikeys) keyboard with only the letters "C-A-T" - depending on their ability and skill level) into the search box on flickr (I set the search up for creative commons photos only in advance).
   
2. They then chose (by using a mouse or touchscreen) which cat photo they wanted to use for their page of our story. I printed these photos for use in creating the "hard copy" of our book and copied the photos to use later in our digital story.
   
3. We used intellitools Balanced Literacy on our wiimote whiteboard to practice writing the sentence "Here is my cat." by clicking on each word in order.
4. (this part doesn't involve technology)The students put word cards in order to create the sentence "Here is my cat" and glue it on a piece of construction paper (Some matched the words, some copied the sentence on handwriting paper after ordering the word cards). They also glued a picture of the cat they chose on their paper under the sentence.
5. Tonight I am putting the pictures they chose into Voxpix
   
6. Tomorrow they will each read their sentence as narration in the Voxpix slideshow and we will post it on our wiki.

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 :-)

Pageflakes and Library Thing (things 20 and 21)

I am really attached to my igoogle start page :-) I had created a pageflakes page a while back but couldn't get my google reader to show up in it, so I stuck with iGoogle.

For sharing purposes, though, I certainly see the value of Pageflakes. Most of what's on my iGoogle page are pages that I visit daily. That includes previews of my email, which I don't need to share with others :-) My Pageflakes Page that I created for this course has newsfeeds and information about autism. I could share that page with colleagues and parents of my students. I could share my blogroll on a pagecast, or create a pageflakes page with online games for my students to play. Overall I'm not really drawn to pageflakes as much as I am to many other web 2.0 tools.

I know we weren't required to blog about Library Thing but I wanted to say that I once used shelfari, which is similar to Library Thing but quit due to all the fun and signed up for Library thing and I love it :-)

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.