Thing 23: Where to go from here?

For the rest of the school year, I am going to continue to build my delicious bookmarks and try to get a good set of resources together for next year. I have already been discussing using delicious with my department in an order to share math resources. I am also going to work on getting my wiki/blog ready for next year. I think it is going to be a great tool. As the at-risk teacher, it is important that I keep parent up to date on assignments and offer my students extra resource they can access at home. Finally, I am going to start making mathcasts for some basic topics I know my students struggle with (fractions, decimals, percents and intgers). I might try to get a few of my students this year to make some for me!

I will be using Flickr to share pics with family and friends. I will also continue to explore the sites I have been exposed to in this class and revisit how I can use it to challenge my students to go make their learning their own (mathcasts, podcasts, wikis). I am lucky to have an administration that really values technology. We are already planning to attend a seminar on using technology to teach math. I have also decided to get my Masters degreee in Educational Technology. Hopefully this class has given my a head start!

I think I will become a cheerleader for web 2.0 in my building. My position allows me to talk and share information with a wide range of teachers. I will continue to share my ideas with them and hopefully a few will take this class as well. Maybe we can start a staff message board or at least all join delicious. We already use google docs for staff surveys and sharing information. Hopefully this is only the beginning.

thing 22 Online PD

I have been exposed to the Michigan Learnport during PD days at school. They look great in theory. There are a lot of choices of classes, anyone should be able to find something of interest. Unfortunatly, I am motivated by deadlines and don't do so well with unstructured coarses. Like this class (I am doing the last 5 things the night before they are due) I would probably drag my feet on getting things done. The amount of time spent on the online classes I have taken at the Graduate level (and this class) seem to be more time consuming than just driving to campus. I prefer the human face to face connection and seeing the people I am conversing with. Also, this class had a lot of information, I could have spent 10-15 hours on each "thing." I feel a little overwhelmed by all of it and am afraid I will forget what and where all the great ideas were. I would probably take another online class if it had more of a timeline with regular due dates. A hybrid might be best for me where I could meet with the group every so often and complete most of the lessons on line. I would love to take any math, science or best practices classes to continue to improve my teaching.

Thing 21: Vidoes

I have already talked about videos in a few of my other blogs. I have used them in my classes and it is time consuming to search the endless list of rubble to get to the good stuff. I would love to spend the summer sorting through the numerous videos and compile a list either on delicious (which I have started to do) or on a wiki of its own. Again, I have a few technical issue at school as far as ease of use in the classroom. But, my students do seem to benefit from the videos, so I will keep using them. Also, it is a great tool for parents to "refresh" their memory on concepts they may not have used in several years.

Thing 20: Podcasts

Most of my students enjoy listening to and finding podcasts and videocasts to help with our math lessons. It is good to let them look at a few and see which one they can relate to and understand best. This is often different from one student to another. I have found several good casts on youtube, teachertube and math24/7.

I think most of my students would love to hear themselve online. This would be a great activity for ice breakers at the beginning of the year. Each student could interview another and even upload their picture on yudio. It was easy using my cell phone! We could also make casts on study skills and mathcasts for test review.

I have just scratched the surface of what is out there in the podcast world. I think I need some more time to really explore this technology.

Yodio - Thing 20: podcasts

Thing 19: Podcasts

Wow this is sooo neat! I went to several different sites:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrpearlharbor.htm
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcubanmissilecrisis.html
Great speeches- better way to teach history, it really brings them to life.
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sugar-rinse-raises-performance-09-04-16
60 second science news- great openers, topic discussions or journal prompts
http://www.mathgrad.com/shownotes.html
math topics in everyday life- great openers, topic discussions or journal prompts
http://sciencehack.com/videos/category/10
video on math and science- trick for multiplying 3 digit numbers

I found the vidoe sites much more useful and I regularly use youtube and other sources to reteach math concepts to my students. It is nice to be able to pause and rewind the teacher when a student gets confused. The audio only clips are nice, but my students like to see something so this might not reach every student. I have had the opportunity to use Mathcasts in my class and now have a tablet so I can create my own. I think this will be a great addition to my class wiki as additional support for both parents and students. Interested in Mathcasts, http://math247.pbwiki.com/ is a good place to start!

The downside to this may be the technology in my school. We struggle with bandwidth during the day and this makes videos and podcasts hit or miss at times. Also, since I travel from class to class throughout the day, it is sometimes hard to find speakers and projectors. Set up time can be an issue. But I think the benefits outway the setbacks and I definitely think it is one more tool worth using.

Thing 17 Wiki vs. Blogs

When I think of Blogging, I think of opinions, ideas and discussions. This is more personal than perhaps a Wiki. Although, with a blog, the blogger has control as to weather to post a comment or not (one person is in control). This can skew the discussion. This could be good or bad from an educaitonal pespective. I like having a heads-up on where the discussion goes, but at the same time my students would want to know why their comments were not posted (if that is the case). For my classes, blogging would be best used to post and discuss daily assignments or projects. I would you it as a support tool for homework and parents.

Wiki's offer more of a finished piece, an opportunity for students to work together to produce a product. Students can work at the same time and edit the page individually. This might work better for long term or group projects. I can see students arguing over changes one member of the group has made that they do not agree with. Also, students will have to monitor each other to assure the information is accurate. To avoid these issues, students must have a strict set of guidelines to follow when working on a Wiki page together, if not the teacher will spent all her time playing judge and jury.

Thing 13

Oops, I uploaded too many pics in Flickr and I couldn't save my editted photo there. So I saved it to my computer and am adding it here. I can see that this would be a problem if you used it to save a lot of photos. I would probably get the upgrade if I was going to use it regularly. As for my classes, it might be fun for students to create there own learning journals and use the cool editting tools. I can see my students getting more into picture editting than into the actuall assignment. On a personal level, I would like to add some editted photos to my next family photo album.

Thing 12 Flickr

I have used Walmart's website to order pics and create a professionally printed photo album of my vacations. The downside was that I had to give all my family members my username and password to see and add to my collection. I like that all my family can see my photos without me having to give them additional information. I have aslo lost picutes due to a bad memory stick so this is a good place to store photos. I am not sure how I will use this in my classes. I will have to think about that a bit more....

Thing 11: Slideshare

I found it very time consuming to find slide presentations in SlideShare. I had to sift through a lot of "stuff" to find some real useful ones. Now, maybe I am just not very good at searching...but I don't think I would let my students search the site (it would not be a good use of time). However, as an at-risk teacher, I try to find as many ways to present information to my students using as many learning styles as possible. This site can be helpful as one more place to find another way to present information. I like that in a slide show allows students can go back to previous slides and pause the presentaiton. I do this alot with online videos to allow all students to process information at their own pace. However, most slide prestentations have quite a bit of written text, which for my group of students may be a turn-off. It was very easy to add the presentations to my blog and they might be a good resource for parents to use at home.

Thing 11: Online Tools to Engage Students

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: This slideshare touches on things covered in the 23 things class and offers other resources and some more tips on using this "stuff" in the classroom. It is worth the time.

Online Tools to Engage Students

View more presentations from Jennifer Dorman.

Thing 11: SlideShare: Interactive Math And Science Websites

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Tons of websites to add to your delicious... All grade levels, math and science.

Interactive Math And Science Websites

View more presentations from Karen Brooks.

Thing 10

I am lucky, we already use google docs at my school. It is great for tracking student performance such as MEAP scores. I like that I can save my document and use it on any computer. I move around the building all day and use several computers for the same document. My sister uses a spreadsheet for her checking register, I suggested she use google docs so that she can see it from anywhere, not just on the computer at home. Also, she and her husband can both update it and noone will have to guess if it is accurate. As for my classroom, I know at least one teacher who assigns email addresses to all his students, so I guess I could set up a classroom account. I like getting feedback from my students in a way that is easily tracked and google docs has nice looking graphs.

There are a few concerns. I saved my logins on an excel doc so I could just cut and paste into the browser and it didn't always paste correctly. Also, my husband brought up the concern of the enormous amount of documents that are stored on this website. Could the docs get lost? How secure are the docs from hackers? With anything new technology it is going to take sometime for google to prove itself secure and reliable. So, I will use it, but will probably still keep a copy on my hard drive for now.

Check out (and complete) my survey at the bottom of my blog. With a little frustration, I managed to create it in a google doc and embed it onto my blog. That was pretty neat.

Thing 8, again

I almost forgot the most important part of the blog.... Please add me to your "people" on your delicious. My username is: ann.crosby1. Thanks bunches!!

Thing 8 is Great!

This may be my favorite thing yet. One, because it is something brand new to me, two, I love working smarter, not harder and three, I don't think educators share enough with each other and this is a great way to do that! As soon as I started adding bookmarks to my delicious site, I couldn't wait to tell all my co-workers about it. It seems like such a simple idea: I have some good sights, you have some good sites, we both teach math-lets share. I try to use the internet as a resource form my at-risk students. We go to the lab and find videos, notes, games... on whatever topic we are learning is class. We print several different versions of notes for students to choose from, we copy and paste instructional video clips into Word and make copies for everyone to take home and do the same for interactive practice games. This would be a great application for social bookmarking. Not only would it save paper and time, it would eliminate students duplicating the same sites. (Sometimes several students will print the same notes from the same website to contribute to our class.) Next year, I would like to build a class delicious site to compile our websites throughout the school year. I think this would also help students review things covered earlier in the class (since I am sure they will have lost all notes by then). I would also like to use this within my department. I seems silly to have 5 math teachers in one building and not share good information. This may be the one "thing" I really use daily. I am hooked!

Thing 7

I am still getting used to having what I think "out there" for the world to read. That is going to take some getting used to. I do however, like reading what other people write and have already learned alot and even changed the way I think about a few things. Blogs allow you to express yourself, but I wonder if my students can think critically enough to weed out the misinformed yet confident bloggers and find those knowledgable about what they blog.

Thing 5: Web 2.what?

Initial reaction to web 2.0: Wow! The sheer numbers of ways a "techie-teacher" can use this new web to engage, empower and challenge students is amazing. But, the problem is, I am far from a "techie." I look at all of the applications, endless websites, and information overload on the web and it is overwhelming. I consider myself an average web user, probably in the old-fashioned information retrieval ways of the past. But using wikis, blogs, podcasts, or other things not even invented yet in daily instruction seems like a long way off for me personally. I worry about not being the "expert" ready to facilitate every lesson with complete confidence and knowledge. How do I keep kids from getting lost in the big www and stay on-task?

After a little thought: I am on facebook, that is a start, right? I have used YouTube to show students concepts and instuctional videos. I just got my first graphics tablet for school. I am taking this class. So, I guess I can do this "techie" stuff. I think the key for me is to take one application and get to know it well, so it doesn't take away from the essence of the lesson. Then move on to the next, slowly building up my own confidence and expertise. Then I can do what we all hope to do: Teacher 21 century kids using 21 century methods. I do feel that Web 2.0 is an important tool to "grow kids brains." It lends itself to that constuctivist model I was told was the way to teach from all my college professors (so, it must be right).

Thing 4: Now vs. Then

The more things change, the more they stay the same. That is definitely true in education. I was amazed and inspired by all the possible ways to use technology to get students "thinking." Yet, I must admit, there is very little of it being done in our school system. Like the old days, we still teach students core content in 50 minute blocks with the occasional integration project thrown in as enrichment. When I was in college (not too long ago) we were taught the contructivist method was the way to go. Inquirery based learning was to get students thinking, comunicating and taking responsibility for their learning. Yet, once out into the "real world" I saw very few examples of true inquirery based learning. So, I wonder why it is we are told one method is best for learning and yet we do another.

Partly, it is our training. I was taught Hyperstudio in college. It was exremely time consuming to make anything useful. We also used Microsoft Office and basic internet research sites. This basic technology education does not support the constructivist classroom. There are all these great tools to make learning more meaningful and make our students true thinkers, yet I was not exposed to them in my teacher training. So, it then becomes each teacher's job to learn the current technology and find ways to integrate it into daily learning. This is a slow and time-consuming process. We need professional development, networking, equipment and time to become proficient before we jump in with both feet. Because of the road blocks, teachers continue to do what we have always done. It is what we know and the only way to change is to get to "know" something else. I guess, the way to change the educational system's view of technology in the classroom, is to change each teacher's view.

A good example of a math blog

I was looking for integer activities for my students and came upon a math class blog. I think it is a good example of how to apply this blogging "thing" to math. Check it out: http://grade7math.blogspot.com/2006/02/integer-games.html

Thing Three

This is my first blog sight and I am not real comfortable having my thoughts permanently "posted" for the whole world to see. I tend to be a perfectionist and like to revise things to death. After reading the information on blogging and checking out others' blogs, I am still trying to wrap my head around how it would work in my specific classroom. I can see it as a tool for communicating to parents about daily activities, but how does that not become one sided (especially when it is public)? I am still struggling with other questions like: What are some good ways to blog for math content? Can I trust my students to use it properly (even with rules)? How can I effectively use bl0gging to truly enrich my students education and not just for the sake of using technology? I know some articles have addressed these issues, but I am not ready to jump in head first. Hopefully as we go through this process, I can resolve many of my questions and concerns.

Hello

Hi, I am Ann Crosby, an at-risk teacher with Ida school. I am very excited to see how all this techno stuff will help me reach my students. I am already a fan of mathcasts and can't wait to make my own soon.