Final Reflection

Overall, I found this course to be one of the most interesting. There were things that I already knew how to do, but I had forgot about them. I really enjoyed learning about flickr and creating my family website. As for my life long learning goals it only enhances how important it is to keep learning. I am so excited about next year and teaching all the new technologies, I've learned about, to my students. The most surprising thing about this course is how much fun I had with it. I actually started to get behind because I was playing around with everything too much. Now that I'm done I can go back and it explore it more. If you offered another course like this in the future I would definitely take it. In fact I have recommended 23 Things to several of my colleagues. As it is, I want to keep up with the new 2.0 technologies so I have subscribed to several blogs that post things about what is being developed and I intend to try to keep up my blog about the new things I've discovered. I'm also looking into creating a classroom blog for my students so that they can share their experiences as well.

Thing #23

Classroom 2.0 has a lot to offer educators. I found several groups that I thought might be interesting to follow. There was a lot to look at so I am going to go back later and take a look at more of the features and groups that Classroom 2.0 has to offer. My overall impressions of Classroom 2.0 is that at first it looks very overwhelming. There is so much information on just the first page that it is hard to determine where to start. I was surprised that you had to wait to be accepted to Classroom 2.0. I thought that it would be automatic. When I looked at the MISD 23 Things ning it wasn't as overwhelming. I was able to navigate that page more efficiently. I had a little difficulty trying to figure out how to get back to the page I created, but after that it was really easy to add new things to my page.

Overall, social networking is a valuable tool. I can see it being used not only in my professional career, but also in my personal life. In fact I already do a lot of social networking and I've been doing it for a long time. When I first discovered Classmates I was using that as means to finding my old friends. As far as I'm concerned that is a form of social networking as well. Social networking just opens so many opportunities both professionally and personally.

Thing #22

Social networking is starting to play a major role in society. My husband uses his Facebook to help him network with other friends and former co-workers. In fact that is how he is finding about several job openings that he may be interested in. It's also a great way for students to meet other students and to work with each other on assignments. I've heard several of my students talk about how so and so helped them with a math problem over Myspace. As for educators being familiar with these sites, this is a great way to work with our students. Many of my students have asked if I have a Myspace account, since they could contact me that way instead of through e-mail. I think it is a very valuable tool in reaching our students.

On a personal level I just joined Facebook this summer so that I could stay in touch with my family and friends. I like the fact that I can see what is going on with my friends and family on a daily basis without having to call them. Instead, I can just see if something new is posted on my Facebook page. A nice feature about Facebook is that we can control who can see us and who can't. I've already had to do this due to some problems with an extended family member. I like Facebook the most only because I meet more of my friends on this site than on Myspace.

Thing 7B

I found a very interesting blog about "Asking the Right Questions." It discussed an article by Ira David Socol about asking the right questions about Technology. In the article it discusses how chalkboards and slates were once viewed as a form of technology that should not be introduced into the classroom. It really ties into the debate we are having today about whether or not we should start using all of the new technology in the classrooms. Socol made a great argument about how books, pens, chalkboards, and so much more were once considered technological advances for the classroom. Today we take those things for granted and couldn't imagine today's classrooms without those things. They had such a huge impact on education and the new technologies can do the same. I agree with his arguments about the fact that the "traditional" learning in the classroom has not been changed enough to meet the needs of our varying students. Technology can help change the way we teach and it is something we definitely need to pursue.

Thing #21

One of the Google tools I chose to explore was the Google Sites. Since our family is growing, I created a family website. I thought this would be a great way to share with our family and friends what is going on in our lives. Other family members can add to the website as well, which makes it a great way to keep the family updated. Students can also use this to create an informative website about their research projects. I have never had a student create a website for a product before, but I think with Google Sites they could do it fairly easily.

Another Google tool I explored was Picasa. My siblings have already been using Picasa to share pictures of my nieces and nephews with us. Now that we are expecting our own little one I thought it was time to create an account so we can share our pictures as well. Right now it only has our Disney World pictures on it, but I will add more pictures after Elena arrives.

Thing #20

I have already been using Google Docs for my Cohort classes. It was a great way to share our group PowerPoint, especially when all of us were at different campuses. My students could easily work on a group PowerPoint this way. I also had one of my students create her PowerPoint in Google Docs so that she could work on it at school and home. This made it to where she didn't have to keep saving it to a flash drive and it was very easy to load her PowerPoint when it came time for her to present. The other nice thing about saving something to Google Docs is that you don't really have to worry about losing it. I had one of my computers crash and I could have lost some very important things. However, since I had what I needed saved to Google Docs I could still get to it. This is a tool that I use a lot.

Thing #19

I have never heard of voicethreads before. It would be a great way to share family photo and to be able to talk about them. In fact, I may play around with this when I have more time with our family photos. We have a lot of old pictures that only my grandmother knows about and her health is beginning to fail. However, if we used voicethreads we could have her record something about the pictures, thus preserving it when she is gone. I also liked how the math teacher used it for a warm-up activity. That probably freed him up to take attendance and do other things at the beginning of the class while his students were working on the problem. I can also see using this when I have a substitute. Sometimes it takes too long to write down the instructions. However, using a voicethread could save time and energy of the substitute, teacher, and students.