Relay 2009

Thing #23 - 23 Things - Finished!

This workshop has been a great activity and I have spent much more time on the activities than was estimated in the description. Why did I spend so much time, one activity lead to another, with a list of choices to check out, why check out just one or two. Checking out Twitter lead me to look at the tweets posted on the site, a couple of the tweets lead me to students posting videos and joining Stickam, while I'm not pleased with some of what I saw on Stickam (I don't recommend young people have built in cameras, on their laptops, in their bedrooms), it was a great learning experience. The Stickam site gave me some new information to include in my Internet safety lesson for freshman, which is sure to surprise a few folks. So basically 1/2 hour per lesson easily grew to an hour or more How could I stop playing with Pimpampum or the Flickr Toys? How could I stop reading others' blogs with their ideas and information?

I use and spend a great deal of reading about technology so there were no real surprises, no wow I didn't know that existed but there was an opportunity and motivation to get out there and take a look at new sites, improved sites, and creative uses of the sites. Resources were listed with new information on the topics and users shared ideas and experiences. I will continue to use as many Web 2.o tools as I'm allowed when they support the curriculum (the filters this week even blocked the 23 things blog from teachers, not just students.) With a review of some of the sources and a few new sites I have more tools and options to offer the students, I also have the "other school districts let them..." line when my ideas get blocked. I really would like to see teachers able to use some of the flickr toys, Google docs, and the comic strip generators. I plan to continue to work with teachers to post audio to their websites and use blogs for projects and maybe start using a wiki in some of the classes.

The big thing for me is the PLNs and how to continue to learn about all the new Web 2.0 items. I would love to see a group start a PLN and discuss and share new items monthly. Wouldn't it be great to discuss the online photo applications, people sharing their favorite sites and why, best way to use with students or teachers, why or why not the site should be blocked from school, which age students would the site be good for etc. The one thing I missed with this format is the chance for us to have one location to discuss a topic, a place where I could see every one's opinion, where we could ask each other questions and see the different answers. Thanks for every ones time.

Thanks for all your time.

Thing #22 - 23 things

School Tube, Teacher Tube, TED and YouTube all have useful features and lots of potential depending on what you need. Right now none of them are blocked at my school but because of Internet access speed you can not always view them at school. One of my concerns with YouTube is that some of the comments and videos that are posted are not always appropriate for school and there doesn't seem to be a way to filter the good from the bad when students have access. I work with freshman, so the teachers and I talk to the students about appropriate content, usage and making good choices. School and Teacher Tube are nice because they filter themselves but they don't yet have the variety of content that make them the first stop. I did enjoy some of the student posted projects and I like that fact that they can be shared there instead of YouTube because of the controls. I am more comfortable sending a student to School and Teacher Tube than YouTube but because of the choice on YouTube we often use it. TED is great for some serious, upper level content and I like the fact that they make it easy to download the video for viewing later. I think all of these services are going to continue to grow in importance for education.

Thing #21 - 23 Things

Twitter could be useful for keeping track of each other at major outings, family outings are even a possibility, keeping updated on major happenings (news in your area) by subscribing to a Tweet from a news agency is another possibility. I see some potential for temporary uses and for keeping up on news but I would want the posts to be kept private. After looking at some of the tweets online I was struck but information that was out there for others to see. I also pay for each text message and I don't feel a strong enough need to use twitter to change that, it could be an expansive way to communicate. I'm not sure I would want to see teachers or students using it in the daily settings I feel that it would be too distracting for the actual benefit.

Thing #20- 23 Things

My Delicious account is under kblunt. I orginially tried it in 2007 after hearing about it at a MAME conference where I also heard about Diigo, for whatever reason I became a Diigo user and that is what I've been using since then but I took another look at Delicious for this class. Both Delicious and Diigo have some nice features. I love tagging, looking up links by other peoples' tags, creating groups etc. I really can't see where one is a better tool than the other. Since revisiting delicious I have been using both services as a search engine for link on topics that I use for school. I find this helpful to find unique and unusually sources that I might not find in Google. Both services can also be used as a shared source with teachers and students as an active on the go way to share and organize resources. Both can be useful at school, if not blocked.

Thing #19 - 23 Things

I LOVE tagging, it allows me to put something (a website, photo, etc.) into more than one group. The tag clouds are a wonderful way for me to remember what tags I've been using and to see where most of my items are grouped together. I do try to be careful and think about the tags I'm going to use, how many and whether to use a dash etc. I don't want to create an overly long, complicated system of tags. When looking for resources using tags I get frustrated with non-related items from people that are being careless or rude with tags on public items.

Thing #18 - 23 Things

Nings could be a great way for groups of people to communicate, share, discuss and work together. Teacher Libarian Network is a good example, Nings are like an interactive listserve, which many of us have benefitted from in the past. A ning could be used to a class, a school, a committe, or any other group to work and communicate in a collaborative way. Setting a ning up, maintaining it and monitoring it become time consuming. Keeping people active in the Ning gives it strength so if the Ning's members don't keep participating it isn't as useful, it really is a lot like a listserve, it's strengths is its members.

Thing #17 - 23 Things

Community Walk is a mapping tool. I played with it awhile trying to create a map of a trip I'm taking this summer. It had some nice features; searching, adding markers, paths and photos. A site like this could be used to study geography, map the locations in a story, highlight historical activities and plan vacations. It was easy to use and you have the options of sharing your map publicly, inviting others or keeping it private. I like having the choice on the the privacy settings.

Thing #16 - 23 Things

Both videos make a point that education needs to change, I would agree that education needs to adapt and evolve but students also need to learn that learning is not always entertaining and that sometimes it is a challenge. Learning how to meet a challenge and how to adapt to different learning environments will be important the in working world.

Sir Ken Robinson speaking in "Do Schools Kill Creativity" makes some interesting points. My favorite quote to carry away from that speech is "if you're not prepared to be wrong you'll never come up with anything original." The major emphasis in education now is preparing students to take test and to make sure we are all teaching the same thing for common assessments. Neither of these allow much room for "being wrong" or for creativity. Projects and activities that allow students and teachers to take risk, be creative, or allow time for being wrong are being cut from the curriculum. Activities that allow for dancing, moving, dramatics and creativity are being cut and it has very little to do with technology but has to do with time and resources. I strongly agree that we need to develop people's gifts of imagination and educate the whole being and technology tools should be a part of that.

Thing #15 - 23 Things

I've thought about using podcasts at school and have tried in the past to get students to podcast book reviews but without the activity fitting into a class assignment I haven't been able to get very many participants but I do plan to keep trying. The administrators didn't have a problem with it and I had to work with our technology department so that we could use the programs on the school compuers. We use Audacity (free, very cool program) to record and edit, then I add the files to a webpage or to a blog. I have also offered to help teachers create podcasts and have suggested having students create them, while I haven't had a firm takers on creating actual podcasts our Chinese teacher has worked with me to post audio files for his students to access and I work on a joint project with our Product Design teacher where the students use the same technology to create audio/radio commericials. So even though we haven't taken the full plunge into podcasting we've taken baby steps and I have students and teachers getting more comfortable with the technology. I would love to see our language classes create student podcasts of review or language lessons, our Food for Fitness classes creating healthy eating programs or have our social studies classes do current events or this day in history podcasts. Lots of options out there but it is hard for teachers to find the extra time to fit in new activites.

Thing #14 - 23 Things

I like the NPR podcasts for keeping up on the different stories and topics. All Things Considered is interesting and covers a variety of topics.. NPR could be used to discuss a variety of topics, students could be taught to include some of the podcasts in their presentations. The BBC has several interesting podcasts that can give students a different prespective on the events in the world. Several libraries had podcasts for book reviews, Booktalks Quick and Simple has a neat layout with student involvemet which would be a great project at school. I've tried to set up student podcasts about books in the past but haven't been able to get more than one or two students involved - still I would like to try it again.

Thing #13 - 23 Things

I couldn't connect to Thumbstacksto and I have alread posted using Slideshare so I decided to play with Zoho Show. I spent some time just creating sample slides and playing with the tools. The site works well and is fairly easy to use and has a lot of nice features. I plan to check it out more and see if students can use it to work at home and then transfer it into PowerPoint at school. I need to see which features will transfer well, it could be a nice tool for students that don't have PowerPoint and don't want to download Open Office. I'm considering checking out the features in Zoho and other programs like Gooogle docs for the group projects and I may try this next semester with our project design classes.

For this lesson I uploaded part of my PowerPoint lesson on Internet Safety. My links came in well and most of my plain next, obviously my animations and transitions didn't come in so well. I wouldn't really be able to upload my PowerPoints with videos and other copyrighted materials though. If we were using white boards to capture lessons I could see some of these online presentation tools being very helpful for sharing and posting class activities. These online presentation tools have most of what the students need and use and could be a good alternative to PowerPoint.


http://show.zoho.com/public/bluntkimberly/RFC-internet-safety-08

Thing 12 - 23 Things

I spent some time trying out several of the programs. I've already been using LibraryThing and have used it to set up a preview of the new library books at school so I spent more time on the other applications.

Zoho looked interesting because I have several projects were students work in groups on PowerPoints. I think both Google prentation and Zoho could be use with the students. Projects could be worked on from multiple locations with teams or partnerships. Both programs are easy to use and have enough features to be useful. I like the way Zoho could be used for remote presentations but I don't have a specific use for that feature at this time.

Trailfire was a new application for me and I was impressed, I can see using Trailfire to set up webquest type activites for students and for having students create a webtrail with notes highlighting what they have learned. Other students could follow trails created by their classmates to review and study from. I'm trying to think of some topics and activities that will lend themselves to the trailfire app, I plan to share this with some teachers as soon as I find out if it is blocked at school.

Thing 11- 23 Things

I do like Google docs and think that it solves some of the problems we have with students ability to work in different locations. Our students have a difficult time transporting work back and forth for several reasons.

• They don't all have the same program we use at school and not all documents will convert to our format, I've used Zamzar to convert documents on a regular basis, works great but takes time.
• Our students don't all have e-mail programs to forward documents to and e-mail servers are sometimes blocked.
• Students working with partners or groups usually need to use SharePoint to share documents but they don't have access to SharePoint from home or teachers have to move documents between teacher's folders and students. Both good work arounds, but not very efficient.

Google docs does allow sharing and portability but for school use and in the future I can see where we will be paying for some type of secure service - so yes Microsoft has some competition. I wouldn't store or share everything there and I would want backups of important documents. Since the Internet is sometimes slow, blocked or otherwise unavailable I wouldn't want to count on it for a presentation without a plan B. Technology as I am sure most of you would agree needs a plan A, plan B and just in case a plan C -that comes with a large bottle of aspirin.

I'm actually getting ready to use this with some students but I still have some questions and concerns. In their Terms of Service document :

• section 4, they can stop the service at any time without giving you access to your files
• section 11.1 " By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."
• section 2.3 you may not accept the contract if you are not of "legal age"

WHAT IS THE LEGAL AGE for students? I can see in the elementary setting up student accounts and a teacher controlling them much they way I'm doing student blog accounts right now, but at what age can we ask a student to set up an account?

Thing # 10 - 23 Things

Wow, I've now created wikis using pbwiki, wikispaces, wetpaint and even seedwiki. In all fairness I haven't used seedwiki in a long time, wetpaint was new to me for this project and wikispaces is the one I've done the most work on and keep coming back to so I must find it the most useful. Wikispaces has security settings that I like, I can block it from public view and set up accounts for users without e-mails so that's the one I've tried to use with students in the past. All of the wikis were easy to use and wetpaint certainly had some nice theme options and a nice layout. PB wiki lets you block the site from public view but I didn't find a way to add accounts for students. Although I find them easy and fun to use they are still time consuming for me.

Wikis could be useful for class projects where collaboration was an important part. Students could upload files, images, sounds etc. Students could comment and edit each other's work. That's why I thought that the wiki would be a good place for students to publish and post creative writing and book reviews. Wikis could also be used for professional projects where teachers want to collaborate and share ideas in one space, a white board so to speak.

Thing #9 - 23 Things

MAME booklist wiki is just in the start up stages and is laid out nicely but is suffering from the lack of participation. The navigation was simple and easy to follow. I like the idea of a wiki book list and have tried the idea with some students in the past. For the most part the students that like to talk about books at my building like to talk face to face and not so much online, I'm having better luck this year with a book blog though.

wikiHow is laid out very nicely, easy to navigate by using the categories, organized links and interesting "how to" articles that people could edit and add to. I could see some classroom uses for the topics but also some classes would lend themselves to the same type of "how to" wiki. "How to": play a sport, do a science lab, cook a meal etc. I think it is a nice use of the social tool but like a lot of social sites not all the participants and pages were appropriate.

Michigan Policy Network is run by MSU college students, it has some interesting articles and the headings at the top and the menu on the right side make it easy to navigate. The print and the color scheme make it easy to read. The MSU site looked and felt very professional students could use it for local and state issues but they political classes could also build their own similar site for issues that they are studying.

I also came across some professional education wikis that covered some interesting topics but for the most part they would only be useful for general information, not in depth. Using wikis for information is like using any webpage and I always feel the need to investigate and evaluate the source before I give it serious credit. The fluid nature of the wiki is cool and is it's strength and weakness.

23 Things - Thing #8

There are so many RSS feeds out there that keeping up is impossible. Using and exploring the different search tools for RSS feeds and blogs really proves that finding information isn't the problem, sorting through and evaluating it is. Syndic, was not as user friendly as the others search tools although I like the idea of searching by language. Looking at feeds posted in other languages could give students different view points (as long as someone could translate.) Topix was easy to search and the front page had an interesting layout, it was easy to browse the stories and setting it up to bring in local stories was a nice touch. Technorati was easy to search and I liked the layout. Feedster just wouldn't work for me and I tried it several times. Using Google blog search was easy and without all the extra stories coming up like they do in Topix and Technorati, I didn't get side track browsing through other topics. I also liked how you could subscribe to a search, it would make it easy to keep track of a current topic. BlogPulse was interesting and the tracker feature was fun to play with. There are so many features in those services that it is hard to check them all out.

To keep track of blogs and news stories I added Technorati to my Diigo account, to search for blogs I added Google Blog search. I could see using either or both of those tools with students to search for current events, teach about evaluating sources, and to look up specific events (if blogs weren't blocked at school.)

Michigan UP