Wow, summer school is pretty doggone demanding this year- it is taking up all my time. But I want to keep up with the Classroom 2.0 and I'm on thing 16, which means there aren't that many left. I have also been running into even more toys and playthings on the internet - facebook in particular. I also heard about Shelfari and Ning, and still want to learn about Twitter - I haven't had the time to explore.
So - Wiki's! Well, I am a Wikipedia queen - I use it especially when researching my radio show. I realize that it's just people writing the entries, but you can always pull out and verify any information on other sites - especially if it is official type information. If it's just gossip, well, gossip may not be so accurate anyway no matter where you get it - even People magazine!
I really like the idea of wiki's for the classroom, particularly the classes where writing is involved: English, Social Studies, History, Economics. And there may be a case for writing in math that could use a wiki - but it's a stretch right now for me to come up with something for the lower level students - they have such a hard time 'getting started'. And when they can't get started, they are content to just write down what someone else has, particularly what I have written down, since teachers are the 'experts'.
Personally, I think it would be a blast to have a wiki with input from all my friends, especially those that travel, with things like restaurant reviews, places to hike and play, things to do on a rainy day, things they find on the internet that are interesting and/or relevant to our lives depending on who we are and how we set up the wiki. If it's primarily teachers, then writing things that come up about classroom management, student learning styles, assessment, using the web - these could be great ways to keep information organized with input from anyone who had additional information on the topic.
I know we tried to start a wiki here at Sonoma Valley HS, but too many people are not really into technology yet, and there doesn't seem to be a guiding organization either, so we'll see if we can't kick it up an notch next year!
Friday, June 19, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Week 6, Thing 15
Copyright, Creative Commons, and What's coming down the 2.0 road!
Copyright - the thing that makes you think twice as you xerox ® pages from a book. The thing that makes you think twice when you use the word 'xerox' ® as a verb. Makes me wonder if kleenex® and xerox® qualify as words in Scrabble®! I remember the brouhaha with David Letterman and his 'intellectual property' as he left NBC®.
I understand the need for artists and writers to benefit from their own work, and they deserve recognition and compensation. So with the amazing technologies we have via the internet, these issues are even more present. I was a little confused in this lesson - the cute video, a Fair(y) Tale, leaves me with the impression that copyrighted material is available under the Fair Use laws as early as 14 years. So does that mean you cannot make Fair Use of materials before 14 years? And why 14 years? The good news for educators is that there is a Fair Use clause that allows us to copy many things in the name of educating the next generation, as long as we don't benefit economically from the use of copyrighted material.
Then there is this thing called Creative Commons. "Creative Commons is a copyright license that allows us to choose to share our intellectual property. This course is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, they have given permission for you to share." (Classroom Learning 2.0)
Above was an example of using someone else's words, but again, without a works cited page, I'm not sure how you credit the authors - so I posted the link. But let it be known to the copyright lawyers - the preceeding paragraph was lifted directly from the authors of the Classroom Learning 2.0 program. Thanks authors!
on to wikis!
Classroom Learning 2.0 - the 23 Things
Copyright - the thing that makes you think twice as you xerox ® pages from a book. The thing that makes you think twice when you use the word 'xerox' ® as a verb. Makes me wonder if kleenex® and xerox® qualify as words in Scrabble®! I remember the brouhaha with David Letterman and his 'intellectual property' as he left NBC®.
I understand the need for artists and writers to benefit from their own work, and they deserve recognition and compensation. So with the amazing technologies we have via the internet, these issues are even more present. I was a little confused in this lesson - the cute video, a Fair(y) Tale, leaves me with the impression that copyrighted material is available under the Fair Use laws as early as 14 years. So does that mean you cannot make Fair Use of materials before 14 years? And why 14 years? The good news for educators is that there is a Fair Use clause that allows us to copy many things in the name of educating the next generation, as long as we don't benefit economically from the use of copyrighted material.
Then there is this thing called Creative Commons. "Creative Commons is a copyright license that allows us to choose to share our intellectual property. This course is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, they have given permission for you to share." (Classroom Learning 2.0)
Above was an example of using someone else's words, but again, without a works cited page, I'm not sure how you credit the authors - so I posted the link. But let it be known to the copyright lawyers - the preceeding paragraph was lifted directly from the authors of the Classroom Learning 2.0 program. Thanks authors!
on to wikis!
Classroom Learning 2.0 - the 23 Things
Monday, May 25, 2009
Week 6, Thing 14 - Technorati and tags
When I first explored Technorati I didn't really get it. The tutorial helped me understand how I could use this tool, and after signing up, the ideas started to flow.
They provide lists of blogs using tags so you can get a quick list with just the criteria you are looking for, and guess what- food and wine are a category. So I was able to increase my list of blog sites on my Delicious web page bookmarker. The up side is that they have a little blurb about each site, the down side - the only blogs they have are the ones people have 'claimed'- the blogs are the ones people voluntarily post to Technorati.
I do like this site, it certainly helped me get through many blog sites, more than I could have found with a search engine.
They provide lists of blogs using tags so you can get a quick list with just the criteria you are looking for, and guess what- food and wine are a category. So I was able to increase my list of blog sites on my Delicious web page bookmarker. The up side is that they have a little blurb about each site, the down side - the only blogs they have are the ones people have 'claimed'- the blogs are the ones people voluntarily post to Technorati.
I do like this site, it certainly helped me get through many blog sites, more than I could have found with a search engine.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Week 6, Thing 13 - Delicious
Yum! Delicious - again, it's not about food, although it will be. This is a bookmark aggregator - I actually used one in the Earn While You Learn, now called something else, program. I don't remember it having all the features that Delicious has, but I haven't visited it in a long time. So! Delicious. I do like it, it will take time to transfer all my bookmarks from all my computers to the site, but it is a place where I can get to my bookmarks from any computer, and I like that since I'm at home sometimes, in the computer labs and just can't remember that one site that the kid who finished early could go to so he can keep busy in a good way, or I bookmark something at home and have to send an email to myself with the link so I can get to it at school.
So Delicious has this wrapped up. All my bookmarks in one place - web based, accessible when I have the web (and if I don't have the web, bookmarks aren't going to help!) Plus other features like tagging - so I can tag all the math resources for kids that use technology with 'math' 'resources' and 'tech' tags and can search for my sites based on tags. You can name your own tags too, they aren't preset, so they have meaning to you.
I think Delicious covers some of the perks of Rollyo (see previous post), but with Delicious you can add a little commentary along with the web site URL and title that allows almost 1000 characters, so if you can sum it up in 1000 letters, well, . . .
And now about food - it is great for compiling all the food blogs, recipe sites and anything else related to cooking, such as finding equipment (I need a canner before my next batch of golden plums ripen on the tree so I'll have jam next winter!) or cooking classes, Ramekins being my favorite, but there may be others in Santa Rosa or the CIA in Napa.
And the really nice thing is that you can share your bookmarks and even better, find people with bookmarks that are shared with you. So when I find that rockin' chef and her bookmarks, I can widen my options ( like I need that - I have more recipes than I have time to cook given a basic 100 year life span - oh well!)
I see Delicious as a way to organize my sites, and then maybe Rollyo will make sense, since Rollyo can actually search the sites for something specific - is that true? I'll be looking into it, and I'll keep you 'posted' ( pun intended!)
So Delicious has this wrapped up. All my bookmarks in one place - web based, accessible when I have the web (and if I don't have the web, bookmarks aren't going to help!) Plus other features like tagging - so I can tag all the math resources for kids that use technology with 'math' 'resources' and 'tech' tags and can search for my sites based on tags. You can name your own tags too, they aren't preset, so they have meaning to you.
I think Delicious covers some of the perks of Rollyo (see previous post), but with Delicious you can add a little commentary along with the web site URL and title that allows almost 1000 characters, so if you can sum it up in 1000 letters, well, . . .
And now about food - it is great for compiling all the food blogs, recipe sites and anything else related to cooking, such as finding equipment (I need a canner before my next batch of golden plums ripen on the tree so I'll have jam next winter!) or cooking classes, Ramekins being my favorite, but there may be others in Santa Rosa or the CIA in Napa.
And the really nice thing is that you can share your bookmarks and even better, find people with bookmarks that are shared with you. So when I find that rockin' chef and her bookmarks, I can widen my options ( like I need that - I have more recipes than I have time to cook given a basic 100 year life span - oh well!)
I see Delicious as a way to organize my sites, and then maybe Rollyo will make sense, since Rollyo can actually search the sites for something specific - is that true? I'll be looking into it, and I'll keep you 'posted' ( pun intended!)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Week 5, Thing #12 - Roll your Own
No, this isn't about keeping Sonoma Valley HIGH - it's about search engines. I guess. Although for the life of me, I'm not really sure why this site has value. I am having a difficult time navigating through it. I created a mini-search engine, called it J5 Math Resources, but I don't see it unless I am logged in. After going through this site about 5 times, I finally discovered hundreds of other people with search engines, but wasn't able to access them. Could well be they are not open to the public - you have that option when you create a search roll. Oh, by the way, the site is called Rollyo, and it has limited options if you don't have an account. I could see using this for a project or for students to access, but would they need an account to see my search engine? I'm still working on this one - if anyone out there has other experiences or can clue me in to the usefulness of this tool, I would be grateful. I can see it may have potential - but it's difficult to navigate.
I know one thing that would be good to do before you create your mini-engine: have your list of URL's in one spot and ready to copy and paste - I can't tell you how many times I accidentally navigated away from Rollyo, only to find that my partially created, unsaved list was gone!!
Good luck, give me some feedback, I'd love to come back to this, but for now, I'm moving on to thing #13.
Classroom 2.0 - the 23 things
I know one thing that would be good to do before you create your mini-engine: have your list of URL's in one spot and ready to copy and paste - I can't tell you how many times I accidentally navigated away from Rollyo, only to find that my partially created, unsaved list was gone!!
Good luck, give me some feedback, I'd love to come back to this, but for now, I'm moving on to thing #13.
Classroom 2.0 - the 23 things
Week 5, Thing #11 part 2
Web 2.0 - wow, how much fun is this. The website I chose to investigate is Im Cooked - a sweet little place to find very homemade videos demonstrating all kinds of wizardry in the kitchen. They all last about 4-6 minutes, and cover something simple - but the one I am in awe of is this woman doing a six strand braid of Challah - and I just want to go home and make some bread. This looks so cool, and I know I never would have figured it out on my own. The link above will take you to her video.
Web 2.0 puts so much at our fingertips, it's amazing. I truly can't even imagine what the next generation - Web 3.0 - will offer - it just boggles the mind.
Classroom 2.0 - the 23 things
Web 2.0 puts so much at our fingertips, it's amazing. I truly can't even imagine what the next generation - Web 3.0 - will offer - it just boggles the mind.
Classroom 2.0 - the 23 things
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Week 5, Thing #11 - Web 2.0
From Wikipedia on Web 2.0 definition:
"Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of web-delivered content. "
"Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly Media) states Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects. (O'Reilly Radar,Principles and Best Practices, 2007)"
"More than just the latest technology buzzword, it’s a transformative force that’s propelling companies across all industries toward a new way of doing business. "
35 years ago I heard the first rumblings of the 'internet'. I worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, a subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph, and we were using a modem to connect from San Jose, California to the Bell Labs in New Jersey. It was one of those monster couplers where you push the receiver of the phone into the two receptacles to carry the signal over the phone lines.
At that time you had to have specific locations to navigate towards - you had to know where you were going ahead of time - no searching to see what's out there. The scientific community, especially in academic realm, was using the internet, but they knew each other's addresses and they were in url format. Take a look at a url after you have navigated through a few pages and you will see it's not something you want to remember!! Without the concepts of web 2.0 we wouldn't be able to use the web the way we do today. Imagine me telling you to remember this site to see the poster of Buddy in a previous blog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aluckygirlproduction/3444443233/
who wants to remember all those numbers and letters??? and that's just one picture.
So I am grateful for the point and click convenience of web 2.0.
More on the web page I chose to investigate later. No surprise on the site though - it's I'm Cooked - a funny, funky little site where wanna be top chefs upload their own cooking demonstration videos. Honestly - you may want to bookmark this page - I think I'll try to put something up. Let's see if Jill beats me to it!
"Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of web-delivered content. "
"Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly Media) states Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects. (O'Reilly Radar,Principles and Best Practices, 2007)"
"More than just the latest technology buzzword, it’s a transformative force that’s propelling companies across all industries toward a new way of doing business. "
35 years ago I heard the first rumblings of the 'internet'. I worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, a subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph, and we were using a modem to connect from San Jose, California to the Bell Labs in New Jersey. It was one of those monster couplers where you push the receiver of the phone into the two receptacles to carry the signal over the phone lines.
At that time you had to have specific locations to navigate towards - you had to know where you were going ahead of time - no searching to see what's out there. The scientific community, especially in academic realm, was using the internet, but they knew each other's addresses and they were in url format. Take a look at a url after you have navigated through a few pages and you will see it's not something you want to remember!! Without the concepts of web 2.0 we wouldn't be able to use the web the way we do today. Imagine me telling you to remember this site to see the poster of Buddy in a previous blog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aluckygirlproduction/3444443233/
who wants to remember all those numbers and letters??? and that's just one picture.
So I am grateful for the point and click convenience of web 2.0.
More on the web page I chose to investigate later. No surprise on the site though - it's I'm Cooked - a funny, funky little site where wanna be top chefs upload their own cooking demonstration videos. Honestly - you may want to bookmark this page - I think I'll try to put something up. Let's see if Jill beats me to it!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Week 5, Thing #9 Education Feeds
I checked out the Technorati blog accumulation site. It's huge - the demographic breakdown of bloggers was interesting though. To tell the truth - I didn't find anything related to education, most of the suggested sites were either down and non-functional, or had info that you can get on aol or msn.com. And I find aol and msn.com to be much easier to navigate for the latest news and such. There was a fun little item on Topix.net - this links you to news feeds in your area - and there is a great job listing for someone to do tech writing/blogging/web feeding for the Murphy Goode winery - $10,000 a month!!!!! yes, 10,000 a month! they must be having some good sales over there. The job is only for 6 months, but hey! if you can write and love playing around with facebook, twitter and all the other social networking sites, go for it!
so all in all, my jury is out on educational rss feeds. I will keep you posted on what I discover as we go. That's it for thing #9.
Classroom 2.0: the 23 things
so all in all, my jury is out on educational rss feeds. I will keep you posted on what I discover as we go. That's it for thing #9.
Classroom 2.0: the 23 things
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Trading Cards
This is a great way to present research on mathematicians and the history of math. This is another Big Huge Labs application.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Week 4, Thing #8 RSS feeds
So I have subscribed to a bunch of feeds, including locating blogs of a few friends, a few random cooking blogs, a few links to npr programming - my favorite is the soapbox blog with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition, Saturday. I used the Google Reader and right now my feeds seem awfully cluttered, and not so accessible. I looked at the Bloglines website as well, and it seems to be very similar to Google Reader. The advantage to me for Google is that I have an email account with google already, so I can get to email and my reader at the same time. I wonder when aol will start putting this together with their service (yesterday?? - am I behind here??)
I'm not sure how often I'll be reading these - this little box already sucks up significant amounts of my time! And I guess I have been subscribing to a education news feed for a few years now, under the auspices of ACSD. And those are stacking up in my school email account. But if you're interested in signing up, here's the link.
On to thing #9, Education feeds!!
Classroom Learning 2.0 - 23 Things
I'm not sure how often I'll be reading these - this little box already sucks up significant amounts of my time! And I guess I have been subscribing to a education news feed for a few years now, under the auspices of ACSD. And those are stacking up in my school email account. But if you're interested in signing up, here's the link.
On to thing #9, Education feeds!!
Classroom Learning 2.0 - 23 Things
Week 3, Thing #7 Technology
This 'thing' is to report out on technology - very open-ended, hard to know where to go, but I have so many irons in my life fire and technology is definitely a part of it. So I checked out Cafe Press.
I do audio production work for Jackie Baldwin, the host of Storylover's World on KSVY 91.3, Sonoma. She has a wonderful web site, Story-lover's World, with information about stories and folk tales from all over the world. Jackie has done a tremendous amount of work to make her website accessible and useful to storytellers, librarians, and especially teachers. And in her work, she has uncovered hundreds of wonderful, old, out-of-copyright pieces of artwork that will make fabulous notecards, t-shirts, buttons, coffee mugs, aprons, baby clothes, and many many more things that she can sell without having to do the actual production work.
Her problem is getting the images ready to upload and set up shop in Cafe Press. It is very time consuming for the initial startup, but once it's up, the sales will take care of themselves and the 'proverbial' money will start rolling in. Jackie is a retired film producer, and she doesn't have much income, so having her Cafe Press site up and running will be a huge benefit to her. And she said if I help her get it going, she would share with me, so I am motivated doubly so!
So in researching Cafe Press and getting images ready to make products I learned that images in a '.png' format are much superior to those in '.jpg'. With .jpg you get 'ghosting' or fuzzy little pixellations on the edges of your picture. I never noticed it before, and well, honestly, to my eye, still don't notice it, but I have seen mugs and shirts where the image is not that pristine, and I guess if you are transferring your image to clothing or mugs, ghosting really picks up.
I also learned more about tagging images. When you are preparing a product for sale, you want to get as many targeted hits as you can, so you need to think like your customers and think about what the people who would buy your product might be looking for and keep those tags specific, yet encompass the topic areas. These tags allow your product page, or your virtual 'shop' on Cafe Press to come up in a search.
Now how would this transfer to the classroom/school? Well, you can make just one t-shirt without the huge expense of a template that we have here in town when we want to do t-shirts for events like homecoming. And with Cafe Press, classes could upload their image to the site and then only the students that actually want it could purchase it. That way - no overruns on t-shirts that get handed out by the MAC team for dress code violations!!
Cafe Press is also great for individuals and families that might want to make gifts of things like mouse pads, or coffee mugs, etc. with family photos or images. You could also do a shirt with your child's artwork. And the best part is that for families and their friends you can 'open up shop' free of charge. There would be no need to try to reach customers if your images are family things and you can easily direct your family to your Cafe Press site.
So! Technology - wow, we are only limited by our imagination.
Classroom Learning 2.0 - The 23 Things
I do audio production work for Jackie Baldwin, the host of Storylover's World on KSVY 91.3, Sonoma. She has a wonderful web site, Story-lover's World, with information about stories and folk tales from all over the world. Jackie has done a tremendous amount of work to make her website accessible and useful to storytellers, librarians, and especially teachers. And in her work, she has uncovered hundreds of wonderful, old, out-of-copyright pieces of artwork that will make fabulous notecards, t-shirts, buttons, coffee mugs, aprons, baby clothes, and many many more things that she can sell without having to do the actual production work.
Her problem is getting the images ready to upload and set up shop in Cafe Press. It is very time consuming for the initial startup, but once it's up, the sales will take care of themselves and the 'proverbial' money will start rolling in. Jackie is a retired film producer, and she doesn't have much income, so having her Cafe Press site up and running will be a huge benefit to her. And she said if I help her get it going, she would share with me, so I am motivated doubly so!
So in researching Cafe Press and getting images ready to make products I learned that images in a '.png' format are much superior to those in '.jpg'. With .jpg you get 'ghosting' or fuzzy little pixellations on the edges of your picture. I never noticed it before, and well, honestly, to my eye, still don't notice it, but I have seen mugs and shirts where the image is not that pristine, and I guess if you are transferring your image to clothing or mugs, ghosting really picks up.
I also learned more about tagging images. When you are preparing a product for sale, you want to get as many targeted hits as you can, so you need to think like your customers and think about what the people who would buy your product might be looking for and keep those tags specific, yet encompass the topic areas. These tags allow your product page, or your virtual 'shop' on Cafe Press to come up in a search.
Now how would this transfer to the classroom/school? Well, you can make just one t-shirt without the huge expense of a template that we have here in town when we want to do t-shirts for events like homecoming. And with Cafe Press, classes could upload their image to the site and then only the students that actually want it could purchase it. That way - no overruns on t-shirts that get handed out by the MAC team for dress code violations!!
Cafe Press is also great for individuals and families that might want to make gifts of things like mouse pads, or coffee mugs, etc. with family photos or images. You could also do a shirt with your child's artwork. And the best part is that for families and their friends you can 'open up shop' free of charge. There would be no need to try to reach customers if your images are family things and you can easily direct your family to your Cafe Press site.
So! Technology - wow, we are only limited by our imagination.
Classroom Learning 2.0 - The 23 Things
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Thing #6 - making a poster
More fun things to do with flickr and their toys. I love these inspirational poster formats - and now they are even more fun with my own photos and quotes. you can go to the poster maker and create your own. I think this would be a fun activity for students to do - we could even make 'math' posters with an example of a something real in the world that can be described with an equation or something geometrical - I'm thinking on this one. I have a new camera - instead of going somewhere for break, I spend my money on toys- so I will see what I can work up. Watch for future updates.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Week 3, Thing #6 all the fun things on flickr
Retrievr: Oh my - the disclaimer was on target - they said 'be careful - you may be spending way more time than you thought you would' on something so silly as drawing sketches with different colors and seeing what photos match it in the flickr archives. This is an interesting sketch , see what it pulled up as matches. The first sketch I did was awesome and had an interesting match with the black labrador.
Classroom Learning - The 23 Things
Classroom Learning - The 23 Things
The Storm - thing #5, part 2
Found this photographer in flickr - one of her photos came up on the interestingness section - the colors, natural images, and extreme closeups make this a photographer to peruse. You should see the bee's!
Week 3, Thing #5
Flickr: ok, I don't really have that many photos anyone would want to see - I don't really travel, and ironically when I do travel, I don't usually bring a camera. And then, like I said, I don't know anyone who would want to look at my pix. That being said, it was really fun uploading pictures of Buddy! When I created an account the first thing they asked me to do was create a "buddy icon" - so I did - with a picture of Buddy, my little guy. It's pretty cute - so you may want to check it out: my page at flickr
The Ag group at Sonoma Valley High School led by Christina Story has quite a collection of photos on Flickr - fun photos from trips and from competitions. Their photostream name is Sonomaffa. Andy Mitchell also has his photography students work on SVHS's Photos. Good things happening at SVHS!
The Ag group at Sonoma Valley High School led by Christina Story has quite a collection of photos on Flickr - fun photos from trips and from competitions. Their photostream name is Sonomaffa. Andy Mitchell also has his photography students work on SVHS's Photos. Good things happening at SVHS!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Week 2, Things #3 and #4
Ok, Blog created and 'registered' - I think! I hope!! We'll see.
And I have an avatar, isn't she cute? Not sure what she's going to be doing, but we'll take it a thing at a time, eh?
The one thing I really like about the blog process vs. the web page is that when we update the blog, everyone with it on an rss feed will automatically get the updates. If new information about a math concept is on the blog I know that my subscribers will get it automatically. If parents are the subscribers, they know what we are doing in class. If students are my subscribers they know what they will be doing or have done in class. Win-win.
I can see actually having more than one blog depending on it's purpose and audience. I would really like to blog about research and information on my subject area specifically and learning and how the brain assimilates knowledge in general. So that is the big idea for today, figuring out how to use this blog. And since it is all learning all the time right now, I will consider my audience to be other teachers with an interest in how to make learning interesting, fun, productive and effective. Stay tuned for links, podcasts, and all the other "things" I'll be doing as part of Classroom Learning 2.0.
And I have an avatar, isn't she cute? Not sure what she's going to be doing, but we'll take it a thing at a time, eh?
The one thing I really like about the blog process vs. the web page is that when we update the blog, everyone with it on an rss feed will automatically get the updates. If new information about a math concept is on the blog I know that my subscribers will get it automatically. If parents are the subscribers, they know what we are doing in class. If students are my subscribers they know what they will be doing or have done in class. Win-win.
I can see actually having more than one blog depending on it's purpose and audience. I would really like to blog about research and information on my subject area specifically and learning and how the brain assimilates knowledge in general. So that is the big idea for today, figuring out how to use this blog. And since it is all learning all the time right now, I will consider my audience to be other teachers with an interest in how to make learning interesting, fun, productive and effective. Stay tuned for links, podcasts, and all the other "things" I'll be doing as part of Classroom Learning 2.0.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Week 1, Things #1 and #2
Lifelong learning and the Seven (and a half) habits of a lifelong learner: great tutorial to remind us that we learn continously whether we realize it or not, and if we are purposeful, we can focus our learning to bump our way up to the top of Maslow's pyramid.
As for me, I typically use all of the habits, especially play, in learning new tasks, so all of them are easy for me to embrace. If I had to choose one habit that is particularly easy it would be using technology to my advantage.
I love this whole new world, I love the verb google - it has answers for everything I need: what's the best recipe for Irish Soda Bread, I have a bottle of Pinot Noir - what is the best protein to match with it, I'm not feeling too well - what does it mean when I have these symptoms, or facebook with it's constant updates of people, some of whom I only know through facebook. And then the games - Chicktionary or Lexulous and Word Scrapper, today I found Text Twist.
I use technology extensively for my weekly radio broadcast on KSVY 91.3 in Sonoma. Itunes organizes my music, again, trivia and fun facts about the show are found by googling. I even google while songs are playing to check facts, names of groups, and tidbits for my listeners. So embracing technology is my strength, and what led me to this project in particular.
Now to the one habit that isn't as easy for me: setting goals. Having an end in sight is not my strong point. To that end, I like the learning contract concept, especially with specific task identification and target dates with the check in. We'll see how that plays out!
Classroom Learning - The 23 Things
As for me, I typically use all of the habits, especially play, in learning new tasks, so all of them are easy for me to embrace. If I had to choose one habit that is particularly easy it would be using technology to my advantage.
I love this whole new world, I love the verb google - it has answers for everything I need: what's the best recipe for Irish Soda Bread, I have a bottle of Pinot Noir - what is the best protein to match with it, I'm not feeling too well - what does it mean when I have these symptoms, or facebook with it's constant updates of people, some of whom I only know through facebook. And then the games - Chicktionary or Lexulous and Word Scrapper, today I found Text Twist.
I use technology extensively for my weekly radio broadcast on KSVY 91.3 in Sonoma. Itunes organizes my music, again, trivia and fun facts about the show are found by googling. I even google while songs are playing to check facts, names of groups, and tidbits for my listeners. So embracing technology is my strength, and what led me to this project in particular.
Now to the one habit that isn't as easy for me: setting goals. Having an end in sight is not my strong point. To that end, I like the learning contract concept, especially with specific task identification and target dates with the check in. We'll see how that plays out!
Classroom Learning - The 23 Things
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