THE END Thing 23

Wow I know that saying it's the end is really not true. It's only the beginning. Now I must take all this info and apply it or it will truly be a waste. Not only that, but if all that info was waiting out there and I didn't know about it, WHAT ELSE IS???? It is mind boggling!!! I am still excited and overwhelmed but have enjoyed the whole process. All along the way I have been informing others about some of my favorite "Things." To me, this is truly the best way to learn. Once you begin teaching others, you will never forget the information.

My favorite Things would have to be the wiki's, the google docs, the photo mash ups and generators, and learning about tagging websites through Delicious. I really enjoy an organized life and some of the above will really lend themselves well to that part of me.

I read in one of my fellow "Thingers" blogs that they would have benefited from some group collaboration. I did like the independent time schedule, but it would have been nice to toss around ideas with others. I think that it would have helped them set in a little better as well. I know that in the next week, I want to go back through all the things and jot down a few notes to keep handy so I don't forget, because I already have. Hopefully I'll still be able to reference the videos in the future if necesarry???

Overall I'm still excited and can't wait to implement some of these "Things" into my classroom and life. I hope to share some of them soon with my colleagues. I think that with some discussion between the music teachers, we would be able to come up with some neat ideas.

Thing 22

This thing took me awhile. I thought a long time about it and visited many other wikis to figure out what to do, but I now have many ideas as to how to use this. My wiki was created to help the Waterford music teachers collaborate better. I love that you can pool ideas together, change them and print them. This is much different than a blog. A blog seems to be more limited. It lets you voice your opion and not let you change and add on to others. I like the way this posts. It is cleaner looking. I don't know that I fully understand the capacity of what blogs can do yet though.

Thing 21

I'm still a little confused on the whole wiki thing. This is where I wish the class met as a group and had time to discuss things. The video that I watched on wikis was totally different than the wikis that I viewed online. I'm guessing that it's a place for students to create a cumulative summary of what they have learned on something. I'm not sure how I could use this yet in my classroom. My biggest issue is time. I only see students once a week for 45 mins. I don't see us having this much time for technology. This seems pretty involved. I may be wrong and hope that the next thing will help me to understand better.

Thing 20

I liked using the search tool EPN the best for finding podcasts. It seemed to have the most professional development tools for me. I'm also interested in expoloring creating podcasts with my students so I will look into the recommended site from the video.

I did find that searching my topic could be very difficult because there are TONS of podcasts on music, but not necessarily related to educational purposes. This could cause a lot of filing through unneeded podcasts.

I chose to use itunes after trying to use my bloglines and was unsuccessful. I'm now downloading podcasts from Music Teacher 911.

Thing 19

I did like learning about podcasts but became very frustrated when trying out the recommended podcast sites. I couldn't get many of them to play. Some of them appeared like they would have relevance to me, but didn't. It was a long journey and kind of a waste of time so I decided to look for my own.

The website :http://epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=3019&openpod=8#anchor8 had pertinent info for me as a music teacher. It actually directed me to music teacher 911 which I think I'll explore in the next thing. But there were some interesting podcasts within the above website as well.

I think that podcasts seem cool, but I again don't know where I'm going to find the time to go through and process all this new internet info and items. It's beginning to become overwhelming.

Thing 18

A project about music

View more presentations from Mariana Stela Popa.

I thought that this could be a great teaching tool for me. There are a few of us in the district that create our own slideshows to help teach melodic direction or other things. I was hoping to find others on this website. I tried multiple search option but came up with nothing that was relevant to what I was looking for. I don't know if I still need a few pointers or if they simply don't exist. There are lots on music and history, but I was looking for more creative educational tools not just facts. The one above is factual. That's the best I could come up with for now relating to music.

Thing 17

I tried out 30 boxes which is an online calendar. I think it sends you daily emails of your schedule. I'm not quite sure how it's hooked up to your computer yet though or if it would be more functional than like an outlook calendar. What I do like is that I am on the computer at home and at work so this would let me access it in both places. I think it would be the most functional for people who have internet access on their phones. They could schedule things in the palm of their hands and access it on any computer.