Thing #23

Thing #23 Summarize Your Thoughts about This Program

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

I loved the idea of Google Docs; I hope to get my grade team to work using these instead of email clusters this year. I also am thinking about embedding all videos I show in-class from now on, perhaps in this blog, which I'll continue whenever I have something educational to note for posterity. I'm going to look into using Lulu, if only to bind my own self-made children's books. Oh, and I've got to use a couple of attention-catching custom images this year.

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

I thought of myself as fairly technologically savvy and competent at the beginning. I guess the program has helped remind me that we can always learn more. Vicki left a great quote on my open Google Word Doc along the lines of "daring to classify ourselves as developing." To the extent that one of my lifelong learning goals is to simply keep learning, this has been great.

• Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I was surprised to find so many great things under the mash-up category.

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

The format is good. Loved the "in plain English" videos that accompanied many lessons. On the whole easy to follow and nicely telescoping - each lesson opens a door to the next. It would be nice if there were more networking opportunities. A 23 Things Ning? A Google Doc for participants to sandbox in? A 23 Things wiki?

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

Sure.

• How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

I'd say 23 Things inspired me to gladly classify myself as developing.

• Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs?

Is this a question? I don't know the answer. Er, yes?

Thing #22

Thing #22: Nings

I knew nothing about Ning until this Thing. I was totally Ning-norant.

I joined the Ning Teacher Lingo. It appears to be a good resource for lesson ideas and interesting or amusing articles geared to the industry. For elementary education I think Ning is solely a teacher-specific tool, like an educator's magazine.

For middle school and later grades, I gather that Ning can also by students be used as an alternative to more anarchic social networking sites such as Facebook. While it's a commendable idea and it's always good to have a safe space for school networking (or global networking), it's pretty clear that nothing school-endorsed is going to take the place of sites like Facebook. Students will always want a refuge from school, just as adults want a refuge from work. Still, it's great for students to have an opportunity to create their own networks based on their own interests.

On the whole I find Ning somewhat off-putting. Unless you've created your own group, it gives off a vibe of being rather exclusionary to me.

Thing #21

Thing #21: Podcasts and Videocasts

I really do like those "In Plain English" explanation videos. So helpful!

Photostory, being a Microsoft product, only downloads to Windows, so isn't going to be very relevant to the MacBook Pro machines we all have at work. Which is a great shame, because it looks like a lot of fun. I looked at a few vidcasts made by the 23 Things community and they're very impressive! (Love this one!) I believe the same effect can be attained with iPhoto, but I'm not sure how. Help me, Steve Jobs!

However, I downloaded Audacity, which is a wonderful program! I have a microphone, and used Audacity to record this truly professional-grade podcast. I'm not so sure if podcasts have a practical purpose in elementary school education, but I'm glad this program showed me the tools to do one if I need to.

Thing #20

Thing #20: YouTube, TeacherTube and Zamzar

As I mentioned last time, I've used YouTube in the classroom before. This is the first time I've embedded a video. Turns out to be so easy, a child can do it.

Embedding video is a useful tool because it gives students access to the video that you want them to watch and no others. As I said about Google Search, sometimes just being on YouTube can lead to some quite inappropriate videos or even video titles. I saw that there was an option to not include "related videos" at the end (which I have enabled in the video below), which I'm highly thankful for. Again, sometimes the videos YouTube suggests are decidedly not what you want to see. I am very seriously considering embedding all videos I show in the classroom from now on.

In conclusion, I love They Might Be Giants.

Thing #19

Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards List

I perused quite a few of the winners and runners-up on the list. I regularly use one or two of the more common ones, like YouTube, Last.fm and Google Maps, but my interaction with many of the others (Flickr, Del.icio.us) has been entirely though the 23 Things Project. For which I'm grateful! My horizons have expanded already!

Though YouTube has been a source of vaguely educational fun for my class every year, the winner that I'm most taken with is Lulu. I've never used it before, but have heard about it. Yes, it's vanity press made accessible and easy, but it seems to me that the classroom potential is great. Books can be customized for lessons, schools, even specific classes (repairing my shattered dreams of being a children's book author). And of course content created by the students themselves can be published, which gets kids involved in the entire creative process and boosts self-esteem.

I guess in the end I find Lulu to be the most inspiring Web 2.0 tool because like the others it demands a commitment to creativity but, unlike most of the others, promises to transform your work into a physical artifact. Perhaps I'm just stuck in the old Life 1.0 mode of thinking.

Thing #18

Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

I downloaded and installed Open Office, and I think it's terrific that a full set of Microsoft-clone writing and spreadsheet programs are available for free. Schools and students without a surplus of resources can use these programs to do schoolwork and promote computer literacy and office skills. It really levels the playing field.

But - and I don't mean to keep harping on the same string here - Google Docs (which we explored in Thing #7) are also free, and better suited for collaborative research because they're accessible to any computer, at a school lab or the library. For the same reason, they're better suited for those without easy access to computers.

So, in short, Google Docs, the wave of the future.

Thing #17

Thing #17: Rollyo

Rollyover Google, and tell Ask Jeeves the news.

Ahem.

Rollyo is a site that allows you to customize a search filter by limiting the search to only the sites you select. This is a useful tool for the classroom, since despite Google's Safe Search setting and even with our school's sometimes over-zealous blocking software, it's still possible to get highly inappropriate results from Google image search. I enjoy modeling for kindergarten kids how I create PowerPoint presentations or Mimio games using Google, but I can't look for even the most innocuous pictures while they watch, on the slight chance that something unexpected will pop up.

So it's definitely a neat tool, but custom searches are probably of more use in older grade classrooms. Teachers can set search criteria and students can do their own research without being distracted by unwanted web sites, and staying away from legitimate sites that the teacher does not want them to use for research.

As I see it there are two negative aspects to consider Rollyo. One, it discourages browsing, as I discussed in the Thing #15 entry; it's often the case that we find what we were looking for when we stumble upon it, sometimes while looking for something else. Two, it requires that the teacher know what he's looking for in the first place; it presumes familiarity with a wide variety of sources, which may not be the case. It's a tool that requires advanced planning to use.

For my own use and just for this project, I created this linguistics search roll which covers six terrific sites about language and expression.