Technology Wonderings

We have finished the audio museum (YEA!!) and you have had a chance to listen to your own and those of your classmates. Please evaluate the project by responding these questions :

-What parts did you do really well?
-What parts did you struggle with?
-What component did you most enjoy working on?
-How could the project be improved?

Teachers all over the building are using blogs as a new way of communicating with parents and families in town and across the country. Check them out:
2nd Grade (O/L): http://class2ol.edublogs.org/
5th Grade (S/W): http://5swnh.edublogs.org/
6th Grade: http://6thgronline.edublogs.org/
7th Grade: http://seventhgradenews.blogspot.com/
8th Grade: http://8thgrquest.edublogs.org/

Mike A and I have been playing with adding audio files to our blogs. Mine is in the works, his is posted. You can then subscribe to the blog rss feed in iTunes as a podcast and every time there is a new audio file on the blog, the feed is updated in iTunes-SUPER COOL! I’m going to make a podcast telling my self-directed learning teachers how to interact with the ning site for our course. Check back, hopefully I’ll have something posted in a few minutes. ~Steph.

Update!!
Here is my podcast-directions to use the ning site for LTT-SDL:
ning.mp4

Thanks to Cathy Wo for this cool link: http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini/kidsafe.htm

Here’s the new mini-me! What a neat way for kids to create their own version of “self” for their blog/wiki posts.

It is hard to believe that this class is only a week long. As I look through the topics and resources on the class wiki I’m overwhelmed (in a good way!) by how much “stuff” is there! It is so cool to know that my learning will go well beyond the end of the week thanks to access everything in the wiki that we’re all still adding to.

I am officially del.icio.us! People have been talking about social bookmarking for years and I’ve heard but not understood until the 10 second (seriously!) demo in class. Now I’m a tagging-fiend! Am still working out my tagging system but getting really excited about the “social” aspect of this cool tool. I have used ikeepbookmarks for years but am finding the tagging concept to be very powerful. I can send links to my kids and teachers and then we can sort for subjects or topics or tags to put everyone else’s bookmarks to work for us! Brilliant!

This is a fun photo of me taken w/the photobooth app.

So we were asked to write about what we want to get out of class this week. I’m sitting here already feeling overwhelmed by all the potential, the possibilities of web 2.0 tools in my school for both my teachers and students. Thanks to the randomness of the web…As I was searching for one topic, I came across something totally unrelated and interestingly enough it is the blog for the book that we’re using this week. In one of his posts Will R is talking about how hard it is for teachers to focus on their own learning. http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/why-is-it-so-hard-for-educators-to-focus-on-their-own-learning/

This is me!! I’m thinking about blogging with kids and using social bookmarking to push out resources for teachers. I’m NOT thinking about how blogging for myself and if I can get in the habit of it, my kids will follow my lead. Not that they really need to be convinced to blog, but anyway. I’m NOT thinking about uploading pictures of my new house or my niece on Flickr b/c it is an easy way to share images. What I’m struggling with already is that there are so many different ways to do the same thing. Like working with RSS, I currently subscribe and view feeds through Safari but I need to learn about Blogglines and Google Reader and the other 10 ways to do this “simple” thing.

So my goal for this class is to focus on learning these tools for me. And then, once I’ve fully immersed myself in these cool tools-I will be able to share them in meaningful ways with my students and teachers.

I’m taking a Web 2.0-Read/Write Web in the Classroom class this week. I’ll be using my blog to post things that I want to remember and explore more.

A mashup allows you to combine two tools-like Google Earth and My Maps working together.

shifthappens.wikispaces.com
-to download the thought provoking movie for “back to school”

democracytv
-like iTunes for web videos