Thing #23 - Reflections

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I have quite a few favorites and discoveries for different reasons. The two that were the most fun were creating my avatar and starting a family cookbook using Lulu (#19) and starting to write a science fiction novel. The one that has been the most useful to me personally has been LibraryThing to catalog my books. The one that I think will be the most useful to me as a teacher will be my searchroll in Rollyo. I plan to add sites throughout the year and then take out the ones I don’t use that often.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

I used to teach Computer Science as well as math and for a few years I spent so much time on the computer doing things I had to do that I didn’t think of the computer in terms of relaxation and entertainment. The 23 Things has rekindled my enthusiasm for the computer again. After I assimilate all of these things, I am going to start exploring other aspects of the web. Having stepped out of my comfort zone, I don’t intend to lose what I have learned and plan to go on from here.

3. What were any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

The biggest surprise is that I have enjoyed all these hours so much, and don’t feel that a single minute has been wasted. There are some things I will use more than others, of course, but the joy of learning something I would never have done on my own has been worth the journey. I feel that I have taken a world tour, going places I never thought to visit and meeting people that I never would have known. Anne McCafferey actually commenting on my comment was a thrill. Who knew I would be writing a cookbook AND a novel?

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I can’t think of anything that would improve the program. There were a few places that I got confused – Sandbox and Audacity – but I think I just missed something the first time around in the instructions.

5. If we offered another discovery program in the future, would you choose to participate?

Sign me up!

6. How would you describe the experience in ONE WORD or ONE SENTENCE?

Finally, a professional growth that is not only educational but enjoyable – well worth the effort!

Comments on other Players’ blogs:

I made lots of comments on lots of blogs. I read almost every blog. The vast majority seemed to think this experience has been totally worth it. I agree.

Thing #21

T

This is it!! My last thing!! Thanks, Vaughn!

Thing #20 If I Only Had the Nerve..

I have always thought of YouTube as Facebook or MySpace on steroids. There are some useful and entertaining vids. I also found some done by nieces and nephews that I KNOW their parents don't know about. There have been some lively discussions about what I've learned in 23 Things when the family has gotten together. I can't wait to casually mention YouTube, my inlaws' lake house and tattoos the next time the family gets together.

In Teacher Tube I found some math jingles created by a high school teacher. She had a whole DVD of these. She and her classes perform the songs. The one included here shows her wearing a 'pi hat' and costume while performing. Who knows - since I have gotten so far out of my box with the 23 things, I might even be brave enough to do this. Or at least, let the students make some videos and post them on my web page for review.

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1692049fca7e1bb5c4ac

Thing #17 Search me!

I made a searchroll in Rollyo and added a few sites I use repeatedly. I am going to have to play around with this one some more and figure out exactly how I want to use it. Her is the link (I think) to my searchroll. I have a lot of sites I need to add to this when I have some assimilation time.

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=Try+it+out...&sid=414241&x=13&y=11

Thing #16 Wild about Wikis

I have used Wikipedia countless times, but never really thought about the development of a wiki. Once I finally figured out how to get into Sandbox (I'm still not sure why I had so much trouble) it was easy.

I may use a wiki to let students suggest problems for reviews and/or tests. I am going to have to think about this for a math class.

Thing #12 A Few Comments about Comments

This one has taken me some time, but it's been worth it. I looked at Cool Cat (as a teacher, where does she find the time?) and the 10 Commandments. Cool Cat talks about using comments as a communication tool. I had never thought of it that way. Teaching good commenting is teaching effective communications. Many of our students need to learn to communicate more effectively using different mediums. Most of them can shortcut text messages, but can't write a complete sentence using proper grammar and punctuation. Another comment she made was comments being a source for renewal of purpose. Several comments I read from teachers were exactly how I feel. The summer's too short, but I can't wait for school to start to try out all the new things I have found this summer. The 10 commandments suggests using emoticons as well as using comments to actually contribute and add ideas rather just saying 'I agree'. The 10 commandments also suggests going back to look at the comments made after your comment - this could get a meaningful dialog started.

I made a comment on Anne McCafferey's blog telling her how much I have enjoyed her novels through the years and that every year I reread every one of her books. She commented back and I was thrilled!

I have added comments to several blogs of fellow participants. I read most of the blogs and my goal is to send everybody a comment about something.

Thing #14 - Tagging more than the side of a building

I went through blog posts, tags and the blog directory searching for School Learning Library 2.0. I don't know if I did something wrong, but they looked the same to me. I was surprised when I looked at popular searches to see what looked like Arabic script. I wonder if those sites are terrorist related??

As more and more information is available through the web, tagging is going to become an absolute must to use in doing research. When a search request pops up with 1 or 2 million links, it's difficult to know where to start.

Thing #13 Tags

Tags would be invaluable for research. With descriptive tags someone could save a lot of time by not going to so-so websites and find the ones best for the topic. A teacher could use tags to bookmark the best sites for students to use for a project and keep students limited to 'teacher approved' sites. Teachers and librarians could use the social tagging sites for the best tags to use for their blog, picking widely used tags instead of more obscure ones.

Thing #22 Nings

Part of me thinks that all we need are more Myspaces and Facebooks. But I can see a use for subject dedicated Nings. I read several comments from teachers. Reading other teachers comments could save a bunch of money on therapy, knowing others are going through the same thing. I found some useful blogs by Geometry teachers I plan to use during the school year.

Thing #19 I'm An Author!

To get the ball rolling with the awards list I clicked on Lulu - a site that lets you create your own book for yourself or publication. I didn't get any further. About 10 years ago my parents and I did a family cookbook. My mom is the oldest of 5 girls, and my grandmother's twin sister has 4 girls. My grandmother and greataunt left a great legacy - 24 grandchildren, 57 great grandchildren, and to date 6 great-great grandchildren. We have been tossing around doing another cookbook for several years, but it was so time consuming the first time with everything involved I haven't wanted to tackle it. Now, thanks to the wonder of the web, I think I can have the cookbook redone in a couple of months, and it will look great!

I plan to use some of the other sites for graphics for the cookbook. When it gets finished I'll let everyone know!

PS: I also started a science fiction novel I have been wanting to write since I was 14.

Thing #18 Free For All

For many, the cost of MS Office can be prohibitive. The free programs can allow students that have access to a computer and the internet to do papers and presentations and whatever else they need to do without having to buy an expensive program. One of the disadvantages is that internet access is required, and not everyone has internet access. The greatest advantage, of course, is that anyone with internet access can be as productive as those with costly programs such as MS Office.

Thing #15

I titled thing #15 as thing #14.

Thing #14 Library 3.0 and beyond

The fact that so many teachers are participating in Library2Play indicates the growing need for a paradigm shift in the teacher mindset to meet the needs of today's students. When I was going to graduate school I thought the Eric database was so much better than my undergraduate and high school tools for research of going to the library - usually several libraries - and finding the information that I needed to do a paper or find out some tidbit of information. Now, with the world literally at your fingertips, we can accomplish so much more in a much shorter time.

Libraries, as well as teachers, need to be aware of the changing learning styles of students and the general public. For many of us, we will always prefer to curl up with a good book for leisure reading, and may prefer to read lengthier text out of a book rather than scrolling through a computer screen. Sometimes it's hard to find just that right spot on the trifocals to read the comptuer screen. I envision a future where going to the library will be a virtual reality trip to libraries and books and exotic locations.

Thing #11 Here a book, there a book, everywhere a book-book

I added my Harry Potter and Anne McCaffrey (arguably one of the premier science fiction writers ever, in my opinion)books to LibraryThing. I didn't know how many closets and cubbyholes in my house contained books. I stopped counting around 500. I have books that my mother and her sisters read when they were growing up (1930's and 1940's), a collection of old school books including some original McGuffy's Readers circa 1900, and scads of books I read to my niece and now read to my grandkids. I probably won't post in LibraryThing I learned more history from romance novels than I ever did in a classroom.

When I was adding my books I also found out I had missed some Anne McCaffrey published in the last year or so - I definitely need to get to the library and book store more often. I am on my way to Barnes and Noble to get them as soon as I post this!

I'm not sure how I could use this in the classroom, but I will enjoy sharing thoughts with other bibliophiles on my favorite authors. I am certified to teach math and English: most of the sites I have looked at have tickled the math side, this will nourish the creative side.

Thing #10 I Spy With My Little Eye - Images

Once again, I found that hours had passed and I had added too many websites to my favorites to include in my blog. There were websites to add countless creative customized images to websites, blogs, and emails. The 'Dummies' bookcover was one of my favorites. Creating the book covers can be found at http://dummies.book.cover.txt2pic.com/. Another site I enjoy is the Confucius signs that can be found at http://buy4cheap.brinkster.net/signs/confucius/quotes.asp. I also found a sight that uses 'Clippy', the paper clip icon used in MS Word. These websites and more can be found at http://www.imagegenerator.org/.

I thought of one application for students - using one of the sign or book cover generators to creatge a novel way to illustrate a rule or definition. Students could put these together in an Activboard flipchart or Powerpoint slideshow.

Every new Thing seems to be more fun than the last!

Thing #9 Information overload

I spent several hours looking at Cool Cat Teacher blog, Google blog search, Topix, and several others listed in L2P and mentioned other places. I am defininitely going to have to spend some time deciding what is the most use to me. In Google blog search there are over 5 million blogs tagged Geometry, and in Topix over 11,000. Technorati was the most confusing for me, and Google the easiest to use, even though there is so much there. The most unusual thing I found: At one point I got sidetracked in Second Life - a virtual reality world that I found a little weird. There was an ad to 'Add your school or business' to the world in Second Life. I'm not sure that is a direction that I want to go in for my students. I can see some addictive personalities getting 'lost' in virtual reality.

I plan to used the list of top 100 educational blogs as my starting point when I am looking for a specific topic. I need to work on my Circle of the Wise. I am glad I am doing this over the summer when I have more free time to explore and wander.

Thing #7 - Google is an action verb

I have created a Google calendar, added iGoogle to my favorites, and found several buildings to use from Google Earth in various geometric shapes to use for a lesson on polygons I am going Tuesday in summer school. I also found my house - decorated for Christmas - on the street view for Google maps, and saw my car in the parking lot at school. I saw the building in east Manhattan where my son is living while working as a traveling nurse at Sloan-Kettering. With the cost of flying, this may be as close as I can get to a visit this summer.

Thing #8 RSS

It's incredible that information can be accessed even faster - your new information coming directly to you and not even have to go to the website to check for updates. Through RSS I could use a blog as an assignment and know when students have posted a comment instead of having to check repeatedly. For my next get-together with friends I am going to post a blog and will know who responded and when.

I can see this as saving invaluable time for librarians. The news will come to you instead of you going to the news.

Thing #4

Thing #1 - thing #4 now completed - I think!

Thing #3 - Avatar

I loved playing with Barbie and dressing her up when I was smaller. Creating an avatar is even more fun.

Thing #6

A couple of years ago one of our math teachers created a set of 100 trading cards we used for TAKS review. The trading cards were very elaborate with photos of teachers and famous mathematicians, graphics, vivid colors and a TAKS problem. I just ran across my set cleaning out my room for the end of the school year and wanted to surf the web for the program she used to create the cards. What timing!

In addition to the trading cards, I also had some ideas for creating puzzles for both my students and my grandkids and putting our family cookbook online.

Thing #5

I searched for 'Geometry' and there were 42,971 photos. Wow! I spent at least an hour looking at the images and thinking about how I could use these as part of my lessons.

The hard part was picking just 1.

7.5 Habits

For me, the easiest habit it to make a goal. The hardest is looking at problems as challenges rather than as an excuse to abandon the goal.

Thing #1

I've finished Thing #1. Only 22 more to go!

One Giant Leap into Cyberspace

This just goes to show you are never too old to learn something new!