Monday, August 10, 2009

THING #23

Wow, I discovered so many things during this experience. I thought I was pretty technologically savvy before this class so I very surprised the amount of resources I was unaware of. Even more shocking, was the amount of these resources allready downloaded on my teacher laptop. I honestly would have a five page blog entry to discuss they many things I have learned and plan to use.
The discovery I am currently using the most is del.icious. I have downloaded the tabs on my browser and use the "tag" tool every time I come across I great website, especially good blogs during this journey. There are certain sites I use on a regular basis and the bookmarking tool will help me quickly access these during the school day and at home.
A few of the sites or discoveries I will use right away this school year are: flickr, rollyo, teachertube, and Podcasting.


How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
As a lifelong learner my goal is to consistantly keep myself educated and continously update my knowledge base. As technology grows at a rapid pace, education has to keep up and attempt to stay ahead of our students. This was an extraordinary experience to learn the key elements to integrate technology into classrooms. I feel confident that I can successfully use techonology on a regular basis as well use technology tools to motivate and inspire my students.

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I was very surprised at the amount of tools I did not know about. As I progressed through the course I was teaching my friends, family members, and colleagues about the newest technologies available. I can not believe how many resources are available for free and easily at our access.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I thought this was a very successful format. I agree with another blog I read, in that we had to sign up for alot of different websites and programs. Maybe at the beginning of the session next year, there could be a note or a note to learners that the project will include many log-in and passwords. Learners could make a word document or spreadsheet including all the information.
I know I have already forgotten so many of mine.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
yes, I travel during the summer and also take graduate classes so the online flexibility was extremely helpful for me. If this was a physical class, I would not have been able to make and would have lost out on this great learning experience.


How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

23 Things takes teaching to the next level.



Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs?

Thing #22

I spent some time on the site Ning for Teachers. What I enjoyed the most on this site were the blogs. There are times where the only people in the world who can relate to the stresses of a teacher are other teachers. I read a blog about 5 things to remember to do in order to stay calm at the beginning of the school year. Hearing comments and blogs about this topic helped remind me that we (teachers) are all in this together and understand each other. I believe teachers have one of the hardest jobs out there so what a great social network to support one another and help each other out during the challenges of each school year.

Thing #21

I plan to use podcasting and videocasting in my classroom alot this year. There is nothing better to a student, then to produce something using his/her own voice or pictures. I struggles to get my microphone to work so used a musical background to go along with my pictures. My plan, when I can get the microphone working, is to use this to show my friends and family pictures of my wedding venue for my March wedding. THis is a great way to describe what each picture is as my friends and family view the pics. I sent them these pictures through a picture sharing site but now I can send them the pictures with commentary.

Thing #20

I found a video on TeacherTube that consitsted of a student discussing the procedures the class went through during their MockRock scientific experiment. I enjoyed this video because I plan to use this idea this year. This is a great way to involve technology into curriculum subjects. THe explanation each student produces on his/her video could be used as an assessment and a great link to send home to parents and families. I struggled to embed the video so I copied the link below. I will continue to explore embeding videos on to my blog.

http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=404&title=3rd_Grade_Mock_Rock_Activity

Thing #19

I actually found two sites that I found very useful for my personal life. Zillow is a Real Estate website that received a #1 ranking. It was very user-friendly and offered easy tools to search homes for sale in certain areas. I also found a social website that I might use to search upcoming events around Houston. "Upcoming" offered a list of various activities, events, shows, etc. around town for certain upcoming dates. This is very helpful when guests come in town or just as we look for things to do on the weekends.
Flickr was ranked #1 for Photos and Digital images. The most useful part of this site will be searching the millions of images for pictures to use in our classrooms. This site offers many excellent images of real life pictures. There are many times where students need to see a real picture of the topic or item studies. I can't wait to use Flickr to search for images as I plan my lessons.




What is special about the tool? What are its useful parts, especially with regards to Libraries and school? How might you use this tool in your own setting?

Thing #18

It is crazy that SBISD computers had open office tool already downloaded and I didn't even know about it. I look forward to experimenting with this program more and improving my competancy with it. A major advantage of this program is the capability to share documents easily with others and the easy access on any computer with internet. It will take awhile to get used to it, though, as microsoft is so easy and second nature to us all. I read on another blog, the concern with internet connection. This is something to worry about because internet connection is not always 100%. With Microsoft word one can complete documents with or without internet.
Google docs is wonderful. I really enjoyed looking at the public templates already availble. This tool can be very helpful for teachers and co-workers colaborating and sharing documents. I don't see many disadvantages to Googledocs except for the same internet connection concern.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Thing #17

Rollyo is a really helpful website. There are so many times when researching that the kids just want to use "google". They feel restricted when we give them one or two websites to choose from. I definetly will use Rollyo in my classroom. I searched for existing Rollyo searches and came across one for studying the Solar System. I changed the title name and edited to make it work for my classroom. I can't wait to share this site with my teammates and our librarian. After I finish the 23 Things I am going to have to go back through everything to remember all these great tools.

http://rollyo.com/hartma2j/hartman_3rd/

Thing #16

I am still getting the hang of Wikis and getting used to managing the SBISD library future wiki. I do see the potential for some great uses in classrooms. I will be teaching Science and Math this year in third grade. Student groups could post results of Science experiments on the wiki to allow students to compare/contrasts experiments. In math different approaches to problem solving could be listed on the wiki to allow students to view varying strategies. It would be great to find out at the beginning of the year if all students have internet access at home or close by. Homework assignments could be to post, at home, a reaction to a math problem or their thoughts on a reading assigned. The possiblities are endless.

Thing #15

I came across something very interesting as I was reading D.W.'s 2 cents worth blog. There was a post called Technology and Teaching. The post discussed a recent poll asking the question: Can a teacher be a good teacher without using technology? The basic idea in this post talked about technology in the classrooms and in education. It refered to the idea that a classroom with out technology is not in the best interest of the students. If a teacher is not up to date with technology than he/she should find another calling. Alot of comments were ragging on teachers who don't use technology, describing the non-use of technology as unacceptable, etc.



The reasoning behind the immediate need for techonology in classrooms (which I 100% agree with) is written in the blog as follows:



Today, being able to read and write and pass a test are not enough. They are not nearly enough. Today our students must become information artisans, able to learn, work, play, contribute, and prosper in a new and constantly changing and enriching information environment, and do so in a way that conserves the planet — rather than consum it. We can not do this today by scratching and printing on pulp-based paper. Teaching and learning must be digital.



My feelings after reading this blog post and the reactions of others following this blog were pretty strong. I absolutly agree that teachers should be trained, professionaly taught, and required to learn the newest technologies, to teach through technology, and to prepare students for the future using technology.

Is anyone outside of education aware of how much is demanded of educators? Do you know how many hours teachers work- beyond the hours of 7:45-3:45? I wouldnt be surprised if the hours a teacher works in the nine months of school are far beyond the total hours some professions tally through out the year. Has anyone looked at a teacher's paycheck lately? Did you know teachers are in the same pay category as Garbage Disposal workers?

As a teacher, I feel disrepected by society. I feel taken advantage of and used. 20 years ago, teaching was all paper and pencil. Teachers used textbooks and simply read the same story to the same kids.

Now, there are no text books, computers line our classrooms, every student requires a different method of teaching. A different book club, a different discipline plan, and varying mathematic levels are taught to each individual student during the same hour. The strong teachers change lesson plans, and academic plans every year to keep up with the newest trends and technologies. We even pay for professional development and certifications out of our OWN pocket with no raise.



On the inside so much has changed in teaching, the demands are higher than ever. Yet, nothing around us has changed. We are still payed the same as if all we did was walk in the room, open a basil and read or hand the kids a worksheet and sit at our desks.



I want educators to be held accountable to learn the newest technologies. Educators need to be held accountable to train and learn how to teach students technology applications. Teachers should be required to know and teach with the most recent computer softwares and programs. However, if this is the case, if this is where education is moving... will you please respect us more? Maybe even move our pay scale out of the gutter. If you are not an educator and ever thought teaching would be easy or "fun"....I Dare you to try it.

Thing #14

I learned something important during Thing 14. I was already familiar with Technorati so I thought I could just browse through it and have a strong sense of the site and how to use it effectively. My plan didn't work out exactly as I imagined. After a long time of my own personal seraching and experimenting I gave in and watched the two videos. The videos were extremely helpful and gave a brief but efficient run down of the Technorati updates. Sometimes it is ok to admit that you need to learn from others first, and then try to master the task at hand.
Following the videos I was excited to use Technorati and saw many great potential uses for myself. However, when I went to the site it did not appear to be updated the same way the video described. I decided to contact Technorati and inquire into my concern.

Did anyone else come across this?

What I did like about this site is the classic blog searches that included the similar heading you would see in a newspaper. I also like how one can view the top 100 blogs and popular tags. In a quick glance this could give me a grasp of popular topics around the world in that moment.
I did not ping my blog with the site because but if I ever start another blog of my own I will be sure to use this site to connect with other bloggers.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Thing #13

After viewing and becoming familiar with the social bookmarking sites available, I found 'declicous' to be most user friendly for me. It took some time to famialiarize myself and understand how this site works. I didn't see the difference, at first, between regular bookmarking and the website. What I realize now is that I can use this application on any computer because it is a website and not saved only on one computer. I know that this will be beneficial as a teacher. The 21st century offers many resources at the click of a button. Many times I will find a website that has great resources. It will be so nice to have it tagged on delicous so I can easily access it, share it with colleagues, and even access at home if need be. I am excited to use this tool and can already see the benefits to this. One way we could use it to benefit students is maybe setting up a class log-in. On that site we could have a list of websites for certain topics. There could be tags for math websites, social studies, etc. Then students could access these sites easily at home and parents wouldn't have to be searching for websites that are good on-line.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Thing #12

I pulled two quotes from two different blogs. I found Merdith Farkas blog about sharing and feeling worthy to comment intriguing. To SHARE was the main focus of her discussion and I feel very inspired by her following quote,
"...most importantly, sharing will encourage others to share. And when there’s a culture of sharing, when we’re all sharing knowledge, we will all benefit."

I love to share with others, in friendship, advice, stories, laughter, knowledge, disagreements, future goals. I grow as a person every time I experience someone else. My life has been extremely blessed because of others sharing their knowledge, expertise, families, and themselves with me. As we continue to advance technologically, commenting on eachothers blogs and interacting with others is another way to broaden and expand ourselves.

The second section I enjoyed came from the "Coolcat" blog. The writer discusses how important it is when one comments on a certain post. I am very passionate about certain education topics. As I read experts' posts about these topics, my comments could encourage these writers to post more. If it is a topic that needs attention drawn to it, I can help promote this topic or cause my commenting and encouraging the writer to keep on. This is what "Cool Cat" says:

"You cast a vote on the importance of a topic I think that as an edublogger, I think commenting is one of the most meaningful tools that we have to show experts where they need to focus. It is like having a vote and when you comment you are saying, "This is important!"You'd better believe that when a blogger receives an incredible number of comments on a post that they are going to be writing more about that topic! If you want more from them on that, tell them!"

Thing #11

I am thrilled to have learned about LibarayThing. I recently mentioned to myself that I wanted to make a journal to keep track of the books that I have read. I love to read and I get alot of good books read in the summer. I think this is a great place to keep track of books I have read and the books I have at my house. I can share with this my friends and they can just ask to borrow any book they see on the list. My grandma, cousin, sister, aunts, mom, and I all love to share books with one another. We can use this to communicate with eachother the books we have and the books we enjoyed. Jodi Picoult became my favorite author after reading My Sister's Keeper many years ago. I have loved reading all her books since and enjoyed seeing the many readers who enjoy her as well.
In a classroom, this could be a place where students list books they have finished and recommend to other students. Students might also enjoy joining clubs or groups of people who enjoy the same books they do. This encourages students to see that people everywhere love reading the same books they do.

Thing #10



The picture to the right is of my fiance and I in Las Vegas. Even though the picture was actually taken in the hotel Rio this was a fun template to use. "Custom Sign Generator" was the link I used to find this. From there I went to a link called "add fun templates". This led me to 100's of templates to chose from. There were a ton of cute and funny scenes. One disadvantage to this website was that there were a large amount of advertisements. I felt the website was very slow to work with because of the many Ads taking up space.
Big Huge Labs has an endless amount of options to use with photos and for me, it was very user-friendly.
Finally, I love "wordle". This is a very nice creative outlet, as one can choose colors, fonts, size, etc. In a library or classroom students can use wordle to describe a character in the book they are reading. THey may use wordle to list words that describe a particular 3-Dimensional shape. Technology can be integrated in ways that help teachers assess students level and knowledge as well as hooking students' attention and motivation.







Thursday, July 23, 2009

Thing #9

I prefered the Google search because I am familiar with Google and it seemed very user-friendly. There was a side bar that included main topics to search through. This was easy for me to find and narrow down topics I was looking for.

I also enjoyed the teacher blog search. This will be very helpful when one is looking for a certain educational topic. It appeared very organized and not crowded in it's small space. One thing about blogging that is concerning to me is that you dont know if the writer is credible or not. I might read up about all this information that is incorrect or just his/her opinion. The Teacher blog listed the top 100 blogs and it seems trustworthy and reliable.

Tecnorati was ok if I focused just on the drop down box called blogs. This option led to all the headers that could lead you to different blog topics. I prefer this as it would help me narrow my options down.
Syndic8 was not visualy appealling to me. It was crowded and seemed overwhelming to navigate. I looked at it briefly but quickly passed this site.

I found useful feeds in the teacher blogs search. There are many educational topics that I am very passionate about and appreciate others discussing. I will probalby save a few of these blogs to keep up with the most recent Educational decisions, read what educationaly is happening in other states around the country, and more. There are times where I feel that teachers are over worked and under appreciated. Having the opportunity to discuss and comment on blogs regarding these topics will allow me an outlet and communication board.

Thing #8

RSS and readers are an excellent way to organize the various blogs and news sources one frequently visits. It was a little overwhelming at first, as there were numerous staff recommended sites on my Google reader that I didn't necessarily want. I did figure out to take those off. I can see the extreme benefits to this tool if one is a frequent visitor to certain sites. I do not particularly visit numerous blogs over and over again. I honestly don't have time. If I did I would be on the computer for hours and never get anythine else done.

I would use this application in my personal life more, if I could have a page for the websites I frequently visit. My email account, bank account, facebook, wedding websites, etc. but these are not blogs. I don't think the reader allows you to have website links just blogs. Please let me know if I am misguided.

In my classroom and school, there could be ways to integrate this. I am sure there are various blogs that are appropriate for students. A station in science could be researching on the blogs for the newest information on a certain topic we are studying. All the blogs could be in one spot so the students would only have to go that one reader to access information. Personally, to keep up with the most recent studies and trends on certain topics, I could have blogs that discuss our unit topic. I could check it each morning and update students with the newest information on, for example, Pluto not being a planet. It could be easy for me to go to my reader, click on the blog and instantly have the most recent data.

I am sure there are endless blogs and resources to be used with reader. It will take some time to find them but I know this can be very beneficial to all of us in education once we locate the blogs that will help us.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Thing #7

I remember working on a research project in Elementary school. My resources were a couple of books from the library and our home Encylopedia set. I thought the encyclopedia set was very cool. It is amazing how quickly things change and encyclopdias are a thing of the past. Now all one had to do is "google" it. I was happy to learn more tools that google offers other than the typical search. The advanced search is really amazing. I experimented with the power point search. My current school does a major study on Rome and other ancient time periods. I was not an expert of Roman History so I needed to study to present the information accuratly to my third grade class. The powerpoint search could be really beneficial to finding slideshows I could learn from or use in teaching my class. Educators have so many demands in a unrealistic time. These tools can really help us in our time management and make one lesser stress.
I also experimented with the googgle Scholar. I see myself using this occasionaly in my job as a teacher but mainly as I study for my Masters degree in Ed. Psychology. It is a quick search to finding many articles and resources on any topic one may be interested. This willl be helpful in future research projects I have. This could also be effective as one encounters various issues with students. For example, students with emotional problems, or a student with dyslexia tendancies. A teacher may want to research certain topics to help work with students.

Thing #6


I really enjoyed exploring the enormous amount of resources on Big Huge Labs. The creative options with pictures on this website is great. Trading cards can be great for many things. In science when we learn about matter, students could each make a trading card for solids, liquids, and gases. Students could also design a magazine cover for a unit of study. A picture could represent the overall study and the side notes might include vocabulary from the unit. There are so many creative ideas that can be used in many different avenues. Calendars with pictures could be very benefical for students who need additional help with organization and are visual learners. If we are studying Botany in science, a picture could represent that study and then the calendar would be available with details of what the class will study each day.




This resource looks to have many possibilities. I am worried about one thing. I wonder how much printing ink it uses to print a set of trading cards or a magazine cover. We don't have to print everything but some unique creations are nice to have hard copies of. Just a thought.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Thing #5



Flickr has just about any type of photgraph one could ever search for. At first, I felt a little overwhelmed with the large amount of photos. However, once I picked a topic or curriculum subject I can see how this site can be very useful. As a third grade teacher, we learn about plant life and the life cycle. The students are pretty narrowed in on a stereotypical imgage of seeds. Looking though the many photos of seeds, I can see a great opportunity to show the students a large varity of shapes, colors, and sizes that seeds come in.

This image could lead to discussions as to how do these particular seeds travel? Students might compare and contrast two or three photos of different seeds.

Thing #4

I sent my information to the email required. Hopefully it went through ok and I will look forward to receiving the follow-up email to make sure. I think I am going to look into changing my blog template. I am getting kind of bored with it. :)

Thing #3

I successfully started my first blog. I have been working on this periodically so I first did the template design and chose the name and website. I came back later ready to post my Thing #2. It took me a while to figure out that I had to log in to make posts. I realized that others can comment but only those who have the user ID and Password can make the initial posts. This is something to keep in my mind if I were to have a classroom blog, with students make the posts. The user ID would need to be available to students. However, students could make posts anywhere there is a computer. Hmm...I wonder if any teachers have tried this and had problems with students' posts.
The avator was fun. I enjoy reflecting on characteristics that describe myself. I enjoyed looking at all the various outfits and accessories. This could be a nice activity for a counself to encourage self-discovery. It is very important for young kids to reflect on themselves, who they are, and gain a sense of self-awareness. Each student could have an avator representative of him/herself.
I am excited to learn the rest of the tech savvy activities in store during the next 20 "Things".

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Thing #2

7 1/2 Habits for successful life-long learners

All 7 1/2 habits listed in this tutorial are so important to successful life-long learning. The habit that is the most difficult for me is to view problems as challenges and learning opportunities. As I reflect back on the many challenges I have encountered in my life, I am able to see how I have grown and learned from each situation. However, the hardest part is to see the learning lesson in the middle of the problem. It is a lot easier to see the negatives and to feel down during tough times, then to continue to persevere, knowing a life-lesson will be learned. I do know that life-long learners are taking risks, reaching for goals, and trying unknown tasks. With this, there are going to be mistakes and tough times. In the end I do know that every experience teaches us something and makes us stronger in the end.

One of the easier habits for is teaching/mentoring others. I love to teach others new things. It feels great to learn something new and then share it with others. There is nothing better then discovering a new invention or learning a new technology advancement. There is no better reward than being apart of an experience that helps others feel confident, excited, and happy to have learned something new.