Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

Whooo, finally!  My 23 Things are complete!  As apprehensive as I was to start a blog in the first place, I really had a good time doing this one.  It was a lot more fun going through the activities and doing things I didn't even know were out there.  My absolute favorite post in this blog was Thing #21, the Animoto video.  I just thought that it was so fun and so cute to do.  I also just love the idea of making something similar for my students at the end of every school year as a small keepsake.  It is something they and their parents could look back on for a long time.  I also realized what a good tool blogging can be.  It will be so useful as a teacher.  I could set one up and have my students' parents follow it.  I can post homework assignments, examples, important dates, school events, class pictures, activities, etc. on the blog and parents could keep up with what their children are doing at all times.  As a teacher I want my classroom to be as open to parents as possible.  I want parents to feel free to always come in and visit and know what's going on with their children and I think that a blog, or even a social network page, such as Facebook, would help to make that possible. 

Thing #23

Creative Commons is something that will be very important to me, as a teacher.  It is important that you make sure you're not inadvertantly stealing someone else's work.  How can you discipline your students for plagiarizing or cheating when you, the teacher, have stolen someone else's idea for a worksheet, or class video, or what have you.  It is crucial that if you are going to use technology and the internet to enhance your lesson plans that you make sure you do it legally.  Even if it is something as small as inserting an image from a Google search into your PowerPoint presentation to make it a little more interesting, you still need to make sure that you are obtaining that image legally and that you are using it in the right way.  Teachers cannot ethically get on to students for cheating or plagiarizing when they themselves are essentially doing the same thing.  Teachers have to set the example.

Thing #22

I really like the idea of on online 3-ring binder.  It's a great way to keep things organized and keep ideas that you find on the web.  One thing I really liked was the automatic Google fill feature.  I liked being able to just type in a google search and have the site autmatically fill the binder with great ideas and topics. It's a lot more effective than going through Google yourself and having to sit there and scan through each result.  This site narrows it down and chooses only the most relevant and effective resources.  The titles of my three binders are "2nd Grade Vocabulary", "2nd Grade Alphabetic Principle", and "2nd Grade Language Arts Games".  The last one is my favorite because it is filled with lots of ideas for games, everything from interactive sites to sites with free, printable worksheets.  I think there would be a lot of uses for this in the classroom.  Teachers can create their own binder and have the resources needed for whatever lesson they are using at the time right there in one spot.  That is much more convenient than having to search around for them or even just having several tabs open at one time.  I like how this keeps everything in one spot and it keeps it together.

2nd Grade Language Arts Game

Thing #21

I LOVED the Animoto video project.  How cute is it to be able to make your own little video using pictures of your friends and family (or in a teachers' case, her students) and share it?!?  I think this would be a great tool to use in a classroom, if for nothing else than to create a cute video of your students at the end of the year as a memorable project for them to keep.  I think parents would enjoy it as well.  Teachers could create the video and then post it on their blog or social networking site and share it with their students' parents, who could then share it with their friends and family.  I absolutely love this idea and plan to use it with my students!




Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Thing #20

For this post I chose to use a School House Rock video for "Interjections".  Anybody that knows me knows I LOVE School House Rock!  I have loved it ever since I was a kid and I use it a lot.  In fact, I just used the video for "Nouns" for my lesson plan in my instructional strategies class.  My daughter loves the videos, as well.  When I was in eighth grade my teachers played them for everything from language arts to social studies.  To this day, whenever I have to recite the preamble to the Constitution of the United States (which surprisingly is not that often!), I can't do it without singing the School House Rock version in my head! 

I think YouTube is a great tool to use for teachers to find videos to enhance their lessons.  The only drawback to it is there are some videos that can give your computer a virus, so you have to be careful of what you click on.

Thing #19

Teacher Pop is pretty cool.  I had never heard of it before now but the more I explore it, the more I like it.  It's a lot like Facebook but restricted to teachers.  I think it is a great place for teachers to get together and share ideas.  I also like how not just anybody can sign up and have an accout.  You have to be approved.  That is a good privacy feature that will keep people who don't need to be a part of it off of it.  Teachers can feel safe posting pictures of themselves or their classroom and not have to worry too much about the internet dangers that come along with sharing those things publicly on Facebook or elsewhere.


Visit TeacherPop

As far as other social network sites, I have accounts with Facebook and Pinterest.  I use both of them frequently.  I think Pinterest is a great site to share ideas.  I have gotten a lot of teaching ideas from that site.  There are a lot of educational blogs, curriculum ideas, etc.  I even used some of them for one of my assignments in another class.  It's a really great site to use.

Thing #18

Social networking is a very important aspect of today's education.  It is very important that teachers know how to use this tool because it is one of the biggest forms of communication now.  Facebook and Twitter are extremely popular and used widely so they are a valuable way to get in touch with students' parents, or to keep track of what is going on with the school.  Students can use them to "like" or "follow" the school's page or the teacher's page.  Teachers can post homework assignments, projects, due dates, etc. on their Facebook or Twitter page that way students (who spend the majority of their time on these sites) won't have the "I forgot" or "I didn't know it was due" excuse.  I think, as a whole, Facebook is more useful than Twitter.  Twitter only has a limited number of characters to use for each update, while Facebook allows the post to be as long as you want it.  Both sites definitley have their classroom uses, as stated above, and I can almost certainly say that once I get my own classroom, we will definitely have a class Facebook page (with parents' approval, of course).  That way my students' parents can see what goes on in the classroom, I can post pictures of the fun activities we'll do, and parents can always know what homework or assignments are due and when they are due.

Here is a link to my facebook page:  Stephanie Stevens

Thing #17

Social bookmarking is a great way for teachers to keep track of interesting websites that they might want to use to get information for a lesson.  After joining Delicious, I started poking around a bit under the "educational technology" tag and I found myself actually reading some of the websites, not just scanning over them.  One of them, How Stuff Works, had a link to an article titled "5 Earth Facts to Blow Your Kid's Mind" (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/conservationists/5-earth-facts-for-kids.htm).  Having an almost-7 year old myself, who is sure she knows everything there is to know about everything, I thought this would be a pretty cool article to read.  It has some neat facts about Earth that would be pretty awesome to share with an elementary science class.

I can definitely see the potential for using a site like this in a classroom.  You can bookmark your own websites that you come across so that you have them there for future reference.  It definitely beats having to go back and search for that site or article you read but can't exactly remember where you saw it.  I think teachers can absolutely take advantage of this type of site for classroom use.  It would definitely come in handy!

Thing #16

I chose to do the iGoogle start page because it is something I use a lot.  It is not my permanent home page (AOL is my home page for the simple fact that it has been since I was a teenager and I am reluctant to change anything, no matter how small it is!) but it is something that I access quite often.  I like all the different themes you can pick with iGoogle and all the various widgets and features you can add to customize your page. 

I also chose the Google calendar because, again, it is something I already use.  It is useful because it keeps track of the events of the day hour by hour.  I can always know what I have going on for each hour of the day which is important because being a working mom who also goes to school full time, I stay pretty busy and need something to help keep me organized and on track.  As far as the to-do list goes, I think an electronic version is too much work.  I tend to forget that I have things placed on it and that is an area where I believe having it written down and physically in my hand is more helpful than having to go in and access it electronically. 

Thing #15

For this post I chose to share my Thing #14--the flowchart made from Gliffy.com--on the APSU 23 Things Sandbox Wiki.  I chose the flowchart because I just think it is a really fun tool for teachers and students to use to help keep students focused on the various steps of long problems. 

I really liked using the wiki.  I enjoyed just browsing through the other things other students had posted from their blogs.  There are a lot of great ideas out there and I think that it's really neat that there is a place out there where we can all get together and interactively share our ideas with eachother.  I think it would be a great tool for teachers to use within a school district, or even outside of one.  It's a good place for teachers to get together and share ideas with one another. 

Thing #14

For the flowchart portion of this blog assignment, I used Gliffy.com.  I really liked this site as a tool for creating flowcharts for my classroom.  It's very easy to use and it would be beneficial for students to use to help them out with homework assigments that have a lot of steps to them.  As an example, I created a flowchart depicting the Order of Operations:

As for the mindmap, I tried MindMeister and Bubbl.us and I am still not 100% sure of what I am supposed to do with it.  I know it is used for brainstorming ideas and other things of that nature, but to me, it's not very useful.  It just seems like more trouble than its worth to me and it's not something I can see myself using very often, if at all.

Thing #13

Before this assignment I had never even heard of Zoho writer and had never given much thought to Google Docs. I think both sites have their pros and cons but one thing that I really liked about both of them is that by using one of these sites you eliminate the need to purchase Microsoft Word, which can be a bit pricey.  Students will be able to type up their homework and print it out for class without having to spend a lot of money on a product that their families may not be able to afford.  Also, with either of these programs students can work together on projects, even when actually getting together may not be an option, through the share feature.  This would be extremely helpful for students in completing group assignments.  After trying both of them out, I have to say that I like Google Docs better.  There was one feature that it had that Zoho writer did not and that was the Translate feature.  With Google, you can type up your document and then use the translate icon to translate it into any language in a separate document.  I think that this feature alone would be invaluable to teachers who do not speak any other languages but who have students whose parents/guardians struggle with the english language.  Here is an example:

March 31, 2012

Dear Parents,

    We will be having an Easter party next Friday, April 5.  Please send 24 candy filled eggs to school by April 4 for our Easter Egg Hunt.  We also need parents to sign up to bring refreshments, plates, napkins, etc.  There is a sheet in your child’s folder for this.  Please fill it out and return it to school as soon as possible.  

Thank you!
Mrs. Stevens

de marzo de31 2012

Estimados padres de familia,

    Vamos a tener una fiesta de Pascua el próximo viernes, 5 de abril. Por favor, envíe 24 huevos rellenos de dulces a la escuela el 4 de abril para nuestro Easter Egg Hunt. También tenemos a los padres a apuntarse para traer refrescos, platos, servilletas, etc Hay una hoja en la carpeta de su hijo para esto. Por favor, llénelo y devuélvalo a la escuela tan pronto como sea posible.  

¡Gracias!
La señora Stevens

Thing #12

The first one I chose was the Google Calendar.  I really like the it because I can put in everything that I have written on my calendar at home--birthdays, homework due dates, important school functions, etc--and I can sync it with my phone and have the notifications sent directly to my phone.  I think it would definitely be a great tool for teachers to use to help them keep organized and keep everything on track without having to keep up with a paper calendar or desk calendar. 

I also chose iGoogle, which I really liked.  You can have everything from the local weather/date/time to news links and any other topic you choose all on one homepage.  For mine, I have news topics, such as CNN and NY Times as well as entertainment and sports news and a recipe section so that I can get new recipes whenever I log in.  You can set a theme at the top so that you're not looking at the same boring image all the time.  It's basically everything all on one page.   

Thing #11

Searching for blogs was so much easier through Google.  Topix and Technorati were just a little more difficult to work with.  Through Google, I found 2CoolTools which had, on one of its posts, a social media timeline, which I thought was pretty cool.  I found Free Technology for Teachers through the link on 23 Things for EduBlogs Award Winners. 



Check it out!



 I also found a couple of blogs through Pinterest (my new addiction!).  I have a habit of pinning elementary education blogs and I thought First Grade Blue Skies was a cute blog.  It has a lot of really cute activities to do with your first graders.                                                                    

 
Another blog I found through Pinterest is The Alphabet Garden.  This blog has so many ideas for everything from centers to homework.  The first thing I noticed when I accessed the blog was the cute President's Day activities.  



The Alphabet Garden



Cellblock 303



I'd have to say, though, that my most favorite blog is not education related but I have been a follower for quite a while.  I'm a big hockey fan and Cellblock 303 is an awesome site for any Nashville Predators fan and anyone who has ever been to a game knows who they are!  The Preds are a big part of our lives, thanks in part to my husband, and during hockey season a lot of the conversations between him and I, my sister and I, or my cousins and I are about this team.  (We are all a bunch of hockey nuts!)







Thing #10

RSS and Newsreaders...I'm not too sure that I like this type of technology just yet.  I had never used it before and I found it kind of frusturating.  I didn't know how to go about finding feeds and that sort of thing.  But once I figured it out I did subscribe to several feeds.  NPR Education, CNN Education, Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education, and Infoplease--This Day in History being a few of them.  Out of those I liked CNN Education the best, but being that I am a regular on CNN's website I kind of find the newsreader pointless.  I can see how for some people it would come in handy because you can get everything all in one place without having to go from site to site.  That aspect of it is very useful but as for me, I will probably never use it again.  I do think that it would be useful with teachers.  If you had to find an article that you had read very quickly and you didn't have time to search the entire internet, this would be useful because it narrows it down so much.  It definitely has its benefits, I'm just not sure it's totally for me.

Thing #9

For this post I chose the Image Chef website to make a star patterened template with the words "You are a SUPERSTAR!" on it.

I browsed around through some other sites but I thought this was the cutest idea.  To make it I just looked through their given templates and found the star and then thought of a cute little motivational quote to put on it.  I think this would make great wall art for a classroom.  It's cute (if not a little cheesy)  and it also reminds students that they are "Superstars"!  

Thing #8

For this post I chose to do a mosaic with pictures I found from Flickr using Mosaic Maker.  I chose pictures of the beach because it is one of my favorite places in the whole world and right now I have a really bad case of beach fever!  

I think the Mosaic Maker would be an awesome tool to use in a classroom setting.  Teachers could use it to make a mosaic of the students in their class to post on their blog.  It could be used as a learning tool to show students various examples of a subject.  For example, for my unit plan I am doing for another class, my topic is nouns.  I could make a separate mosaic for common/proper and singular/plural nouns and use as a handout for my students to give them examples of each category.  They could use it to take home and study with.  I think there could be many helpful uses for this site in a classroom setting and it's so easy and fun to play around with.  

Picture credits:  1.)  beach  2.)  beach walk  3.)  beach grass  4.)  Beach--Shadows on the beach  5.)  Tunnels Beach Kauai  6.)  Curracloe Beach 2  7.)  Beach Photography  8.)  Life's A Beach  9.)  the beach

Thing #7

Flickr is a pretty awesome site.  I had heard about it before this but never visited it.  Finding a picture for me to use for this post took forever because I sat there browsing so many of them before deciding!  I finally chose one of an orca whale by Raymond J. Barlow.



I love whales and have always been fascinated by them.  I am a complete Animal Planet/Discovery Channel/National Geographic geek.  I love watching shows about the ocean and the animals that inhabit them, especially whales.  My biggest dream is that before I die I get the opportunity to go whale watching in Alaska.  It's a bit far off right now because for that to happen I have to overcome two of my biggest fears:  flying in an airplane and being out in the open ocean. 

I searched around on Flickr for quite a while, looking at pictures of everything from flowers to landscapes to basically anything involving nature.  One thing I really liked about the site, as opposed to just using a search engine to find pictures, is that while searching for a good whale picture that I wanted to use I came across a lot of professional photography pages.  These are people who actually went out and photographed these animals and did not just photoshop or copy/paste the images on their page.  That makes it so much more authentic and credible.  I think teachers could find a lot of uses for Flickr, using pictures from the site to lend a real world touch to enhance their lesson.

Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/43039595@N02/4933463522/in/gallery-gettyimagesloves-72157627987809903/
Site:  Frozen Planet

Thing #6

The site I chose to use for this post is YouTube.com, which can be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/.  Everybody knows what YouTube is and how it operates.  It is a site where thousands upon thousands of videos can be accessed and posted by anyone around the world.  That, however, is one of the aspects of the website I do not always like.  It's great that any and everyone can post, but the problem is that any and everyone can post.  Sometimes the video you expect to be what you wanted is nothing more than a parody of what you were looking for, a horribly shot video from some random person, or worse still, it could be a video which contains a virus that can crash your computer. 

Even still, YouTube is a valuable website that has many positive uses in the classroom.  Teachers can use it to show video clips that are relevant to their lesson.  For example, I am going to teach K-6.  One of the techniques I hope to employ during my lesson on the parts of speech is to use School House Rock video clips.  A couple of teachers of mine in elementary and middle school used these videos and they really helped us to learn the lesson.  We learned things from these videos that stuck with us to this day, so I believe that School House Rock is a valuable tool and a fun way to teach children.  However, I do not own any of the videos so I can use YouTube to access them and show them to my students in order to give them a fun way to learn a typically boring subject such as the parts of speech.  With all the video clips available on the site, there is a never-ending stream of useful clips for teachers to use in order to enhance their lesson.

Thing #5

School 2.0, to me, is basically the school of the future.  It’s using tablets and computers as opposed to pen and paper and SmartBoards instead of overhead projectors.  It’s communicating with your child’s teacher (or student’s parents) through email and social networking sites rather than letters and phone calls.  It’s also students getting help with their homework through blogs and other aspects of the internet instead of calling the Homework Hotline or just guessing when they cannot figure it out.  Technology is an integral part of education today and there really is no choice but to embrace it and use it nor is there no reason not to do so. 

When I was in school everything was done by hand.  Papers, homework, every assignment was handwritten.  My senior year of high school we had to write a five page paper—by hand (and I graduated in 2005, so it’s not like we didn’t have the technology, it’s just that my school did not embrace it very much).  I cannot even imagine doing that today.  Technology has changed everything so much in a relatively short amount of time and it continues to change constantly.  Schools are now using everything from SmartBoards to iPads as a replacement for textbooks.  Homework is no longer done by paper and pencil in some schools, it’s done and sent to the teacher through the computer.  Technology is opening up so many doors for so many students and teachers alike.  Teachers’ lessons are no longer limited to only what they can find in a book in their local school or library.  They now have the entire world at their fingertips and are able to employ so many different teaching techniques.  Completely replacing textbooks with iPads on a 100% level may still be a few years away, but the idea of it is very intriguing.  Students will be able to gain a much better understanding of a subject by being able to be more hands on with it rather than just staring at it through a textbook.  Technology in the classroom is extremely beneficial for both student and teacher, as it provides an endless amount of opportunities to teach and to be taught.

Thing #4

Commenting on blogs is an essential part of the process.  It helps to create a sense of community in that it makes the blogger feel like he/she has something important to say and that others agree with him/her.  Even if the comments are in disagreement with the original post, by adding your opinion in a polite, effective way, you are making the writer feel as if he/she has contributed something of value.  From the given blogs about commenting I thought that writing a meaningful comment and criticize kindly were two of the most important features of commenting.  It doesn’t do the writer any justice to just reply “Yeah” or “No”.  You should give some feedback, whether it is positive or negative.  Also, by criticizing in a non-productive way you are just doing yourself a disservice.  It’s fine to disagree with someone but remember your manners and watch your tongue. 

For this post, I commented on Rebecca Black’s blog post for Thing #3, Myleah Gallagher’s post for Thing #4, Tonya Haley’s post for Thing #2, Ashley Nalley’s post for Thing #6, and Reneice Glasper’s post for Thing #6. 

For the two outside blogs I picked two that I found from links on Pinterest (my new favorite site!).  The first one is the First Grade Parade, which you can access at http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/.  This is a blog that has lots of great ideas for classroom activities and gives examples of the ones she has completed in her own classroom.

The second blog that I picked is called ObSEUSSed and can be accessed at http://www.obseussed.com/.  I absolutely LOVE this blog.  It is chock full of Dr. Seuss themed literacy activities, DIY crafts, and printables.  It also has links to various other blogs where you can access similar things.  This site has ideas for everything from One Fish, Two Fish printable placemats that you can use to practice numbers to Thing One and Thing Two paper bag puppets with templates, all the way down to Cat in the Hat themed cake pops.  Did I mention I LOVE this website?!?

Thing #3

Blogging as an educational tool would be extremely beneficial.  I like the idea of using it as a tool to communicate teaching ideas and strategies to other teachers.  I think it would come in handy to be able to see what works for other teachers as well as to gain creative ideas that I could employ in my classroom.  I also think using a blog in order to communicate with parents would be amazingly helpful.  It would benefit myself and the parents of my students to be able to use a blog to post homework assignments and answer any questions the parents might have.  Having a blog as an educational tool would also be beneficial because I could post examples of the work that have been done in the past so that my students would have a concrete example of what is expected of them right at their fingertips, any time they need it. 

Thing #2

Setting up this blog took a little bit of time.  I wouldn't say I had a difficult time doing it but I also wouldn't say it was easy.  I think the problems I had were more along the lines of trying to rush through everything and do a quick setup in the time alotted to us in the classroom.  Once I got home and had more time to sit and play around with the program, it was actually kind of fun.  I enjoyed getting to create a page that fits me.  For the name of my blog, I just chose my first name.  Nothing too personal, just simple.  I wasn't sure of what to title it, as this is the first time I've ever done anything like this.  I honestly think the title is a little boring and will probably change it if I ever come up with something more creative.  For the address of the blog, I chose predsfan22 because (if it wasn't obvious) I am a huge Nashville Predators fan and my favorite player is Jordin Tootoo.  It has absolutely nothing to do with education, mainly because in the rush of trying to set this up and get it registered during class my brain just didn't think that far ahead.  I wanted something that pertains to me but not something personal and usually when I'm in a rush and trying to think of something in that category, the Preds are the first thing to pop in my head.  As far as the avatar of the blog...it looks nothing like me.  The only similarities are the brown hair and eyes.  I think the overall experience of setting up the blog was a good one.  Like I said, once I got the time to play around with it, it became more fun.  I am also beginning to enjoy the whole blogging experience, something I never thought would happen!

Thing #1

When going through the presentation for Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, the phrase "I will..., I can..., I do..." caught my eye.  In order to do anything in life you have to have that attitude.  You have to commit to doing something, believe that you can do it, and then just go on and do it. 

 I believe that out of the seven habits, number three: "View Problems as Challenges", is the hardest for me.  No matter how motivated I am to complete something, if I hit a wall and run into problems that are not solved rather quickly, I tend to think about the idea of quitting.  If I stick it out and complete whatever it is I am doing, I am always glad in the end but it's getting to that point that can be a problem.  I am someone who likes to map out a plan beforehand and I try to stick to that plan as meticulously as possible.  If things do not go how I imagined they would, I tend to get frusterated and that's when I can run into trouble.  I have to learn to just stick it out and push through to the end. 

The habit that comes easiest for me is number two: "Accept Responsibility for Your Own Learning".  No one can do my work for me and no one can force me to do the work.  If I want to succeed I have to be the one to do it.  Accepting responsibility for that comes easily to me because I know that whether I succeed or fail, that falls on me and no one else.  It is my job to do it and even though I may not feel like it at the time, or maybe it is not what I would consider "fun", I have to buckle down and do the work.  The rewards of completing what I have started will far outweigh everything else.