Thing 23-THE END

So I have always believed that honest is the best policy so here goes....THIS WAS THE BEST PD EVER. I haven't been so excited about a PD since I took Teach to Future which was an entire class on power point, smartboard, etc almost ten years ago when I first started at Newington. This made me realize that really making good use of all the technology out there isn't as hard as it may seem. Not only will it make things more interesting to my students, it also is more interesting to me. I think a lot of the technology that we played around with is useful in our real lives and our teaching lives and can be invaluable to our classrooms. My plan is to use most of this technology as the school year starts and hope that my students really get the benefit of all these great and amazing technological advances at our finger tips. THANKS FOR A GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!!!

Thing 19-Screencasting

So I'm not going to lie, this was the hardest thing I did. Mainly because I think I went to a site that was not really Mac compatible. Once I found a better site I thought this was much easier. In fact I plan to use these screencasts on my wiki for students who need a bit of extra help when posting online for their psychology today requirements


http://screenr.com/C60
Or check out how it is linked to my Wiki here http://ehuntnhs.wikispaces.com/Psychology

Thing 13-Diigo

For this particular activity I chose to go with Diigo after looking at the comparisons. I thought that since not only would I be able to tag articles I would be able to add notes and highlight key information for my students. I figured I could put links etc up on to the wiki for them to look at and then read articles etc. I have decided that this year on my syllabus I am going to clearly state that students will be doing a lot of work online and with online sources and that should they not have Internet access at home then they need to be sure to stay after school or go to appropriate areas on the building during their study halls. I feel that it will be worth not only my time to set up and use these resources, but that it will also be worth the time in class to show my students how to use them. I think this helps gain student's interest but also to prepare them for the digital world that awaits them after Newington High.

Thing 10-Ebooks

So let me start by saying I am a huge huge huge reader. Not as much as I would like do to two very cute, but very time consuming kiddos. My husband bought me a Kindle for christmas figuring it would be great for me when I was home caring for my baby. His thought was I could hold her, rock her, or nurse her while still reading. Since with the Kindle you don't need to turn pages you just click a button it would be easy, and it was. I loved it. I still love real books and have a small problem when going into library book sales or Barnes and Noble, but there is something nice about the ability to have my Kindle in my hand and if I want to read it is a flick of a switch and its on. Not to mention you can buy just about any book and have it downloaded to the Kindle in less then 30 seconds. As far as the NHS catalog is concerned, I think it is great that we are staring to have this digital resources for students. As we move into a more digital age I think that more and more colleges will be having collections on line rather than in stack in a building somewhere. I think but have such a vast collection it helps prepare students for the future. Additionally, I think that be suscribing to the ebooks that our library does it allows for a great diversity among the choices that students have. Not to mention for those last minute students (and we know there are hundreds of them) this allows them to work from home rather than have remembered to do their work ahead of time and go to the library and photocopy materials. Although personally I am a long way from going completely digital with my reading, I do think this is the way the future is moving and perhaps its time that everyone start to get on board before they miss out!

Thing 22-Editing Wiki

So below is the link to my school wiki As I said in my previous post I really think that wiki's are super useful tools for students and teachers. They are super easy to edit and can be easily done so be even a novice computer user. My only complaint is that because you aren't working with super technically stuff I have found it hard to sometimes to get all of my information to line up correctly on the page. The spacing on wikispaces is a bit rough around the edges in that you manually have to put in the spacing on some items and adjust them with in a chart etc for other times. Also, sometimes on wikispaces the way something appear on the edit page is not how it appears on the final page. Yet, unless people are as anal retentive as I am about those things then wikispaces is a super easy item for teachers to use as well as students. Yet, we already know that it isn't the students that have the problem with technology!

Thing 21-Wiki

So to be honest I really only looked around at a few of these because I already have a wiki and I love it. Last year, Brian Hartley ran a wiki PD for our department and it was amazing. I previously had used a web page and never seemed to be able to keep it update and it never seemed to be able to hold all the information that I really wanted it to. Well then I fell in love with Wiki's. They allow me to post all information that I need up on the web in an easy to find fashion. What I love most is that it is one stop shopping for students. I keep information about upcoming events, how to access your online book, and I also have all the documents that I have handed out in class for students to download at home should they have lost what I gave them in class. I think that wiki's are a helpful tool for both parents and students. As far as my direct inspiration of course it would be Hartley's wiki but also Ashley Muraca had kept an amazing wiki that she even embeds videos for her students to watch along with study tips etc.

Thing 18- Podcasting

I can honestly tell you that I am not a huge fan of podcasts mainly because I am not that good of a listener. I am the kind of person that really needs to focus on what someone is saying in order to remember it. So a podcast for me is not the greats of tools for my own education. That being said, I think there are tremendous resources out there for students to take a look at and use to help them better understand certain topics. Since I mainly teach US History and Psychology there isn't a ton out there on US history since lets be honest not a lot is happening on a regular basis to host a podcast for. So I spent my time looking up recurring and past podcasts that could help my students get a better understanding of some of the topics that we cover is psychology. I think these might be something nice to add to my courses wiki as additional study help.

http://podcast.com/show/38735/PSY-1010-General-Psychology/

http://podcast.com/show/178362/InTouch-with-Carl-Jung-%7C-Blog-Talk-Radio-Feed/

Thing 17-Presentation Tools

So I really had a good time poking around this site. I think this will be helpful when we are back at school to help aid in some of my presentations. Over the years I have found that students do so much better with power points to help them take notes and I found some really good presentations. The only issue I found with this some of them is not everyone is dedicated to citing their information. So I found a great presentation on the Industrial Revolution but it did not list where they had gotten the photos from. I recognized some of them as Jacob Riis photos but I can't say if they all were and I don't really like to use photos if I can't say where they are from. But I did like the above one because of the note taking aspect of the presentation.

Thing 16-Expxloring

So I chose to explore both Remember the Milk and Google Templates. I did spend a good amount of time on Google templates and have to say that I was not really that excited by it. Not that there wasn't an immense amount of options for me to look at, I just felt that there was nothing that I was really into using. What I mean is most of what I saw on the templates was something that I could have easily come up with on my own in less time then it would take me to find something on the template. I did spend some time surfing through the templates for students and educators and found a few things that I might use in my classroom such as surreys etc. Then again, by the time I modified the document to meet my needs it might be easier to do it from scratch.

In regards to Remember the Milk I really liked the site and thought it was super cute and added it to my list of reasons why I need an iphone. This is a cute site but I do think it would be more useful and an application for a phone. Guess I will just start having to save up!!

Thing 15-Cloud Tools

I have used google docs before but it was fun to see how you could have public documents like the spreadsheet that you put out for us. This is something to consider with group assignments in the future. I also spend some time checking out the other recommended site skydive. I am thinking that this would be a useful tool for students. I think students use a zip drive not working as an excuse for not getting their work done. Now if they are all required to have an account such as skydive then that can never be an excuse. I think this is something that I might require all students to use. I require them to post on blogger so they all have to have a google account so then they will all have google docs so this might be a helpful tool for the school year.

Thing 14-Social Networking

So I'm not even going to pretend that I just joined a social networking site. I am full on facebook addict. I love it so much that I even sucked it up and got internet for my phone so that I could never be without my facebook updates. I love it for the social value of seeing my friends both old, new, and work in their lives. If feel that it allows you to feel connected to people even if you might not have time for a full on phone call you can still see how they are doing and post quick comments to them. In fact this week one of our fellow teachers got married and although not everyone in our staff was in attendance, at some level we were after the fact as many of us got to see the wedding photos and make comments to the bride to help be part of her day. As far as educational value this might be tough. I feel like facebook is a part of my life that is private with my friends etc and I keep my setting set that way. I always tell students that they can not request me as a friend until the graduate because then for me it seems acceptable. I think to use a social network site for school would be tough. I would though consider a facebook page for the class of 2012 to keep students informed about what is going on and the newest class information. I am thinking this might be nice to do along with a wiki for the class.

Thing 12-Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Ok so I feel like a wee bit of a low tech loser here, I never knew these things existed. I love this. I hate how every year when I come back to school if my computer has been reformatted I have lost all of my bookmarks. Plus on a personal note I taught myself how to knit last year and now love it and I am always looking for patterns and find them all over the net but feel its a waste of a bookmark on the home computer. This new type of book marking will do wonders for that. Last but not least I think this will be great in terms of transferring work from my home to school. I have often found that I have located a great website but can never remember the address when I am away from the original computer. I am very excited to set up this account in thing 13, my only concern is will we be able to install the tool bars as mentioned in the video on our school computers or will this be something that needs a help desk ticket?