Janice’s Notes

This course has been wonderful!  I have learned so much about so many tools and am anxious to use them with my students.  I know I still have a lot to learn about the management of them, but I know that I have a huge community out there to help me along the way.  I have several at my own school, but I now realize how much help is out there through Ning and by just exploring the ins and outs of the tools.  I plan to partner with one of my fifth grade co-teachers who took this course last spring as well as others who took it with me this summer.  So…..here goes!  We’re off to try this out for real!

It is obvious from news reports, the teens in my youth group, and family members, that social networking is alive and well in the 21st century, especially with students.  Often the social networking sites get bad press because of reports of sexual predators or cyberbulling.  As I explored these tools to be used in an educational setting, I reflected on how helpful these can be if used in the right manner.  I also saw the potential to do some great teaching about approriate use for my students that could help them to be more responsible when online.

As I explored Classroom 2.0, I found several things to be helpful.  Under the forum section, I came across a discussion about teaching writing with web 2.0 media.  The replies were excellent and I got some really good ideas.  Under groups I explored the elementary school 2.0 and found some good podcasts on smart board lessons.  The tags helped me see how to quickly find just what I needed.  I checked out flckr and smart boards.  This tool eased my mind about jumping into using many of the things I have learned this summer.  I now know that I have a HUGE group out there who could help me with any question I have.  I also saw a place where I can contribute my ideas as well.

As I explored Ning in Education, I found Classroom N where I can set up social networking for my classroom and Fireside Learning: Conversations About Education.  There topics concerning the field of education are discussed.  I also checked into School 2.0- The Transformation of Education.  It looks like education truly is transforming, and I need to keep up!  My school has set up a Ning and I have joined it.  This helped me to understand how to best take advantage of it.

I enjoyed reading the article called Need Ideas on Ultimate Intro Flipcharts in Adventures in Education Blogging.  Here Susan was sharing ideas on how to help her teachers who have new activeboards.  She knew that they would want to use them on Back to School Night, so she designed some flipcharts for them to use.  She was also asking others to contribute ideas as well.  She included some good links from Promethean Planet that gave several ideas and helps.  There was a fun link reviewing the information about using the activeboard in the format of “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?”

I found this helpful since I have an Activeboard and am still learning how to use it.  I need all the help I can get!  My students love when I use it or when they use it as well.  This year I want to jump in there in many more ways so we can get the most out of this valuable tool.

Pageflakes has so many possibilities!  I can see it as a great way to communicate with my students, their parents, and/or other teachers.  With over 230,000 different flakes to add to you page, there are so many tools that my students and I can use.  I really had a lot of fun customizing my page and changing out what I wanted on it.  I plan to look over more of the possible flakes for when I make new pages.  I was amazed that you can add podcasts, YouTube, and so many more things.  I chose to add my podcasts about the U.S. Presidents for my students this coming year.  I love Sudoku puzzles, so I added that to my page and already had fun solving one.  This will be a great tool for me to use!

Here is my first Pageflake.  Enjoy!

There are so many different kinds of documents that I use at school and at home. Google Docs is so much like what I have already played around with that it was easy to experiment with them. As always, a few things slowed me down, but I ended up learning a lot from my snags. There is still a lot I need to learn about the various kinds of tools for each kind of document. I will now be even more comfortable with them and will be looking for more uses of various types.

I can see me usi Google Docs to make my yearly spreadsheet to gather information about math skills of my students as I plan their instruction. I could use spreadsheets to gather information such as birthdays, names, addresses, interests, etc. I can see having students enter all kinds of data such as the information about their summer that I did for my document. They could also share about books, interests, collaborate on a project and imput their findings on a given topic in the shared document.

I just barely played around with the presentation portion of Google Docs, but could see huge potential for various teacher made and student made presentations. My students could work as individuals or in teams on their presentation.

All of these also have the potential to be shared easily with the audience of my choice or my students’ choice, so that adds an exciting element for my students and me as well.

You Tube has been something I have checked out several times when friends would tell me about particular ones, but I had not spent much time searching it before.  There is a lot out there, isn’t there?  And some of it is very helpful and worthwhile.  However, a lot of it is inappropriate for my students, so I will have to be diligent about filtering it for my classroom use. 

I found several videos that I could use in my classroom.  One was In the Wake of Lewis and Clark where you traveled some of the the course they traveled and got a good feel for what the land and water might have looked like for them.  Of course, now it all has the touch of mankind on so much of it.  I also enjoyed “School House Rock The Preamble.”  It was the typical fun School House Rock fare that would help my students understand the Preamle of the Constitution when we study that this year. 

For my how-to video, I watched “How to Hang pictures, shelves, mirrors, and more.”  My husband and I are trying to figure out how to hang 2 very large mirrors at church, so this and 3 other related videos gave us some ideas to ponder.

For my interesting video, I watched “Louie Guiglio- Laminin.”  I had watched this at a work camp with my teens at church this summer and was fascintated by it.  I want to share it with my class during Bible this year, so I am going to embed it here.

In Teacher Tube, I watched several videos that were produced by teachers or students.  Lexi and Maria’s Book Review 3 and Surviving the Applewhites Discussion helped me see how my students could share what they are reading with others.  The Surf Kickoff was a clever video produced by teachers to inspire their students to read for a contest their school has.  OH, Janice in front of the camera?- It could happen!  I might even get my 5th grade co-horts to join the fun!  I also enjoyed a student produced video about the U.S. Presidents.  I will definitely share that one with my class when we learn the presidents!

Scary, Janice has hit the air waves!  That was pretty fun and easy and I am looking forward to podcasting with my students.  I know they would love it and it would make their writing, planning, and working together on a podcast project so real life and worthwhile. 

I would like to have my students record books for other students, both at our school and outside of our school.  I would like to podcast their plays, project presentations, and discussions for their parents to hear so they get a feel for what we are doing in our classroom.  I would especially like to use it in prepartion for and as follow up to our Rock Eagle trip in the spring.  There are several subject areas where I could podcast information for my students to respond to from home as well.

Watch out, world!  Janice has hit the waves!

This activity opened my eyes to new uses for iPods and podcasting.  I have seen the iPod craze around me, but have not caught up with it.  I viewed iPods as somewhat of a distraction.  Now I see that they can be a great learning tool for my students and me.

I did some exploring using the Grazr and found PRI’s The World- Geo Quiz podcasts.  These were very interesting for gaining up to date information about various places around the world.  I also explored the History podcasts about Jamestown, Kennesaw, GA (which is 5 miles from me), and America’s Wickedest City (Phoenix City, AL).  I checked out Webster’s Word of the Day as well.

I then explored 2 other sources for podcasts: The Education Podcast Network and Learn Out Loud.  They were both very helpful and I subscribe to 3 podcast sites and copied them to my google reader.  The 3 that I subscribed to were Aesop’s Fables Podcast, U.S. Presidents Podcasts, and Personal Growth Podcasts.  The first 2 I can use with my students, while the third one was for me personally.  Another one that I found interesting was called Alaska Readers Theater.  On these podcasts, third graders were reading aloud from a book for others to hear. 

I found all of them to be helpful in their own ways.  Some I could see as being good sources for information for my students about a given subject.  Others were just fun ways to find out interesting trivia while others provided good literature for us to hear or maybe perform for others.  I could see me using some for my students to listen to at home, or to use to share things were have learned or presented in class.  We could provide our podcasts for our parents or others to hear as well.  I will be excited to learn even more about making a podcast next!

Wow!  Library Thing is a great tool.  I belong to a book club at church and I was thinking that this would be a great site to use to share reviews and find other good books for future book club lists.  It could also expand our book club to others who have read the same books.  And the author chats would be fascinating.

I also liked the fact that you can write reviews and do things like the 50 book challenge.  I think these would inspire my students to read more since they have a way to share their books and a contest to encourage them to set goals for their reading.  My fifth graders love competition!

Reading is one of my favorite things to do and I try to share that love of reading with my students.  This would be another tool to help me with that, so I can see me using this personally and at school.

I have had some experience with del.icio.us and was already very impressed with the possiblilities of sharing information about websites, etc. with so many others, especially other educators.  But I learned even more and added several sites to my delicious list. 

I added information about the Osage Indians and the Lewis and Clark Expedition to use in social studies this year and I found several other sites about technology tools and helpful hints such as Tools4u2use>home.  I cleaned up some of my tags and realized that I need to be more consistent with tagging so I will be able to find exactly what I am looking for in my own favorites.  This is something that I will continue to use a lot.  It just opened up my world to boat loads of others who have already found great tools for helping my students.