Summary

Well, I got kind of scared that I wouldn’t finish, but it feels really good and exciting to know that I finally am!! A few of my favorite discoveries from 23 things were Image Chef, learning about RSS feeds, iGoogle, and animoto. These were all things I just did not know anything about. This program has affected my learning goals as far as spurring me on to learn about as much as I can and learning about a whole new area—the internet. It’s kind of like that saying “The more you learn the more you realize how little you know”. I would really like to continue learning about wiki’s and try to set one up at least for the Kindergarten team at my school. There were a lot of things that surprised me. I’ve gotten a lot of friends back through facebook, I’ve started a blog and learned how to put fun images in it, and I’ve learned about all these cool organizational tools for me and the internet.
The only thing I would improve upon for the format is to make certain things due at certain times. However, I would want that mostly because I am bad about procrastinating, and I did a lot of the things at the very end. I think I would have gone into more depth on some of the things if I had spread out my time a little better. I would definitely participate if there was another discovery exercise like this. It’s really good and fun for me to learn through exploration and do it at my own speed. This class will influence my teaching in a lot of ways especially in the area of communication and collaboration. The more I put out there for the students, the parents of my students, and the people I work with the more things will develop and improve. I have already gained a whole lot of ideas, and I haven’t even gotten to share with my team and get their feedback yet. It will also help me to be more organized. Like I said above, from here I want to continue learning about wikis and all of the tools used for wikis, and I would really like to continue my blog. In the beginning of our learning, one idea I found was to write down cool ideas you find in your blog, so you can go back and use them. I think I am going to be able to do that now, but I would like to continue adding to my ideas in the future. I also plan on keeping up with my rss feeds and I want to find even more that I can add to my feed. I see a whole lot of good coming from this class—not just 23 things but infinite possibilities.

Thing 4

I totally agree that commenting creates a sense of community. My first comment made me so excited to know that someone had seen my blog. I also agreed with some of the blog articles about adding ideas and thoughts to people's blogs to make them better and thanking people for commenting on your blog. Another point I agreed with wholeheartedly was that I don't want to comment if I have to log in, join something, or give a bunch of information. I want to do the commenting quickly. That is why I liked commenting on the blogs from our class. I commented on teachartiscool, mimiswordsofwisdom, boog-phil, readandgiggle, and Kimberly's Corner. I decided to comment on these because they were either finished with the whole assignment or I thought their blogs had interesting names. I also commented on two blogs I found on the "outside". They were clutter cubed and Kim's Kindergarten Kaleidoscope. These had some good ideas for organization and teaching Kindergarten.
The comments I made were mostly admiring some aspect of their blog and thanking them for their ideas. I also asked a couple of people how they got some features on their blog.

Thing 23

This example was on the page that lists the 23 things.

Learning 2.0 is a discovery learning program created by Helene Blowers and adapted by the California School Library Association and others. Content and style for Learning 2.0 - 23 Things has been borrowed and duplicated with permission, under a Creative Commons License.

I know that I need to be better about giving credit, but I usually only use small clips of things if I show them to my students.  Starting all this blogging, though, and with my hope to start a wiki, I need to be careful about giving credit where credit is due.

Thing 22

I listened to a podcast called TechChicks.  It was about different technology tips and it was given by two moms.  I did not like this assignment at all.  I did not find any of the directories very useful, and I don't really like just listening to something.  I would rather read it.  I kept trying to find some good ones that I could play for my students, and none of them were what I was really looking for.  I wanted some kind of storytelling podcast.  I feel like this would have to be like Cool Cat Teacher talked about with blogs.  You have to find good podcasts through recommendations or something.   This frustrated me because I was aimlessly looking through tons of things trying to figure out what would be good.  I did subscribe to Podcasts for Educators on my bloglines account.  Hopefully that way I can sift through those and see if there are some I would like to listen to.

Thing 21

Using animoto was really cool and from what I've heard, you can do even more if you pay.  The only thing that was frustrating to me is that it made me use 10 messages but no matter how many times I remixed the video it would not use all 10 images.  I think it's really cool because it does some neat effects, but I think that I will probably use imovie more often because you can have more control on it.  For a quick little movie though, it's really neat.  I also think that it is cool that you can use the stuff you've loaded on Flickr.  I didn't do it that way for this, but I might try it that way when I've loaded more on Flickr.

Thing 20

I love You Tube. The bad thing about it is that I watch one video and see the other videos that are like it and keep on watching more and more videos. The good thing about it is stuff like the video I'm posting. It's about a cat and how he wakes up his owner. I've watched it several times and it always makes me smile because the artist captures the essence of a cat. He has some other videos that made me laugh too. For school, you tube can house school videos, how to videos, etc., and like so many things we've looked at, these videos can be viewed anywhere.

Thing 19

View my page on 23 Thingsters

I joined the 23 Thingsters group and posted a badge and the clock for the end of class. Ning is another cool thing for schools!!