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.

Thing 16

I think this could be so useful for working with all of my colleagues. There are over 9 of elementary music teachers. This would be an excellent way to preview new docs and work on them together. I'm not quite sure how we access eachothers files yet, but look forward to figuring that out. I think this would be a great way to lesson plan share as well. This way if there is anything within someone elses lesson that you might want to change you could do that without recreating the file.

Thing15

I have not become addicted to my bloglines account. I think that it's mostly because of lack of time. I think that this is a very powerful tool and I've been sharing it's powers with others. I can't wait to have a little more time, maybe over the summer to become more efficient at all these things.

Thing 14

I think that this thing will be great for me at school and at home. There have been multiple times at school that I lost all of my favorites because they rebooted our whole systems. Very aggravating. Plus I can look up things at home, tag it at home and access it at school, I think. I'm hoping that delicious is accessable at school.

My access name is pianojess2000

I mostly tagged sites for at home right now seeing that I am doing all of this on my home computer. Hopefully next week I'll tag some site for my classroom when on that computer.

Thing 13

I think Tagging could be a great way to organize all my sites. I'm concerned for all the protocal for tagging it properly. I'm worried I might tag something wrong and then not be able to find it. I think I'd like to clean up my computers, but don't want to delete anything until I know that I know what I'm doing.

I'm also concerned that if I'm publically labeling things wrong, others may be relying on me or I on them and getting the wrong information. I guess I'll find out after use, how it goes.

Thing 12

Widgets


Kind of silly. I guess it lets you personalize. A litte bit of a waste of time to me though. I'm not into games and silly stuff like this. I did like the counters, clocks, and maps though.

Thing 11

Comments are very important to the blogging world. It makes it exciting for the writer and the reader. It offers different opinions and keeps others informed. I was very excited to see comments left on my blog. It's neat to know that people are out there reading and caring about what you have to say.

I enjoyed finding out that some of my colleagues had very similar responses to Things that I was having. It's nice to relate.

Thing 10

This is Great!! I just posted the video of the UGRR and now I downloaded it to my computer. I can't wait to use it as a short introdution at school. It shows photos and artifacts.

Again, another great useful tool for me. THANKS!!

Underground Railroad Video

Here is a neat introduction video to the Underground Railroad. The recorded voices aren't the best quality, but overall a nice show.

Thing 9

I love You Tube and am a big fan already. My kids and I love to watch our favorite artists videos. We also like to find comical ones as well.

I can see myself finding educational and fun things for my students to view through You tube. I wouldn't let them have free reign of it on their own but I can see bringing in a specific video to show them. Kids love it when I say "movie" no matter what it is. It's always educational and curriculum based in my room, but they don't have to know that. To them, this is like another way of watching videos.

Thing 8

This was by far the most fun Thing yet for me. I've been looking for these kind of great websites to combine my digital pics and do creative things with them. This pic was done on bighugelabs/motivator.com. But I also played with a lot more. This was definately a day project. I tried to create a fance letter title but couldn't figure out how to save it once I was done. (spell with flickr) Maybe if someone reads this they could comment and let me know. I will definately be revisiting these sites a lot. I love digital photography and taking pics of my kids so these will be great!!! This made the whole class worth it for me!!

Thing 7

I think Flickr will be a great resource for me at home as far as backing up my pics on a second source. I'm not sure yet how I will use it at school with the kids. With being the music teacher, we really don't have to many photo like opportunities. Unless we were sharing something together as a group and combing our favorite group photos or something of that order.

The only problems I can see running across is the privacy of it. As long as I mark private on everything, I think it would be ok.

Thing 6

It was fun searching through Flickr. I was frustrated though because all of the pics that I really like were protected by copyright laws. I did find an amazing photographer that I wish I could have put one of her pics on my blog. She had an amazing way of capturing human beauty with natural surrounding beauty. It was captivating. This is a beutiful sight with the relection, but didn't compare to the other pics.

Thing 5

Like I said in Thing 5, just today I was at a moms 2 mom meeting discussiong all these deal and coupon blogs for moms and I was overwhelmed with the sites and how to keep all the info straight. This easily let me load 3 of the sites into one spot and lets me view them easily with one click.

I can see myself using this for other craft ideas as well.

Thing 4

Well right now I am on a little bit of information overload but am excited about these new things. I just went to a moms club meeting today where some presenters spoke about coupon clipping savings and different blogs and websites that help you save. All I could think is "how can I keep up with all of these?" Hopefully this is the way.

I am not too familiar with blogs so I guess only time will tell how much this organizer will help me.

Thing 3

For me to incorporate blogging within my classroom I would definately have to use it with the older grade levels unless I turned it into a parent/student type assignment. I can maybe see while we're discussing a certain genre of music beginning a blog that not only incorporates student thoughts but also thoughts of our parents so that we can compare them. Students and parents would both have to listen to the same sound bank of music that maybe they could do through a webquest together and then reply to the blog separately.

Since I am new to the blogging world the concerns are still new to discover, but one that I can think of would be the filtering of words. I would hope that students would choose wisely with their words before posting. I can only imagine some of the goofiness or other things that might come out if they were to not take it seriously.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I wanted to do 23 things to learn more about computer technology. I'm not computer savvy, but I'm not totally out of the loop either. I was hoping there would be some cool things I could incorporate into my classroom.

I am very nervous about the whole posting things on the Internet. Not so much the writing, more the pics. I've always been a very speak my mind kind of person, so I'll have no problems with that, but I definitely don't want too much personal information about myself out there.