THING #11 Flickring Sailboats

Well I am Flickred out! I have been working on this Thing for 3 nights now..and I still am a little confused. Ok..more than a little confused. I see that you can upload your own photos. I understand that you can use other peoples photos with creative commons. I guess what is overwhelming is what do you do with all these photos. More importantly how do you do it. So I still need to research that end of it.

I chose sailboats as my subject because I am in the mood to just sail away. These photos were just so very peaceful and calming. I just imagine myself on each and everyone of them just floating away..ahhhh! Especially after this assignment haha! One of my favorite photographers is Wisdoc. His stuff is beautiful!

The only way I could think to download each photo was to save them into "my pictures". Then I cut and pasted them into my sandbox...but I could only paste 2 for some reason. No matter how many times I tried, the third one would replace the second and the second would disappear into cyberspace somewhere???

I really want to try some flickr toys. In my travels I have seen links to websites such as bighugelabs.com, and and krazydad.com for picking photos all in the same color story..oh yeah and deviousgelatin.com for creating a montage of mini flickr images. I'll just have to save these projects for all my spare time...

So on that note..I am off to investigate krazydad's website. He is a pretty cool guy. He not only is a great photographer, he is very tech savvy and he creates puzzles like Sudoku..my absolute favorite!!
I'm out.

THING #10 Creative Commons

Ok..this one was an easy one. I have always been frustrated by copyright laws. They can be so picky..you can copy excerpts but not entire pages or chapters blah, blah, blah. So this was refreshing. To be quite honest I have never noticed the creative commons logo before this lesson. I will sure be aware of them now.

I think students can have alot more creativity with the availability of cc. Now they will be able to build off from each other..I picture it as a gigantic set of legos ..one student starts a project and others from all over add to it, personalize it, learn others creative tricks, and make them their own..it's just another type of giant classroom, where freedom reigns. t Teachers won't have to worry about getting confused by the legalities. It's really just a relief to know this exists.

Once again, 23 things is opening up a new world for us. What we are capable of with the internet. What a goldmine!

OK.. I'm out.

THING #9 Diggin in the Sandbox

Well I am still more than a little confused about wikis and sandboxes, but from what I think I understand...sandboxes are for playing around with what "real" wikis can do....I think.

I had fun making my page. My kids were gathered around me while I followed the directions step by step. I had my 10 year old help me move my "gilligan's island" image from the top of the page to where I needed it to be. Of course he did it in 2 easy steps..whereas I was pushing, clicking, dragging all to no avail. My older son was home from college and he helped me download the image to begin with...they are just more confident all around when it comes to computers and the internet..so it was good to have their moral support! haha!

I think I have completed this assignment by writing this post, but I will have to go back and double check. It seemed like there were alot of steps to this "Thing". I really liked the billboard and newspaper snippet programs that we can add so I think I will go play with those for awhile. I am constantly being stretched creatively by these assignments. Come up with a catchy title, create your own license plate, how about a newspaper headline...my mind is being stretched out due to previous underuse haha!

OK...I'm out for now, I'm going back to play in the sandbox.

Thing #8 Wiki Wiki What?

Well I have been doing this assignment for the last two nights...and I think I am still a little confused about wikis. I mean yes..I understand that "it's a really easy way to make a website", but I guess I had a hard time navigating around some of them. I think unless the main home page has anything of interest on it..they lose me in all the links and tabs. I never knew if I was really getting the main idea or not.

For example I really felt lost in 1001 Flatworld Tales. I would click on something and I would be reading a story and then I wasn't sure where to go from there. I think that it was just a website with many students stories posted on it. Some were actually pretty good. Time consuming and fun if you knew the students I guess.

I really enjoyed several others though. I thought Kindergarten Counting was very cute, but the photography needed improving for it to really work. A lot of the photos were out of focus, or had busy backgrounds. Several shots were just too far away and would have been better if the subject had been closer. But the idea of the wiki was adorable. I think the idea of starting kindergartners on computers is wonderful. Salute to Seuss was enjoyable and simple.

Primary Math was great..you could tell the students really enjoyed the process. The patterns section was particularly cute. But my favorite was Schools in the Past. What a great way to get the students talking to their Grandparents. Older people like nothing better than reminiscing over their child hoods..and young people need to hear about their heritage...how their parents and grandparents lived.

I learned the most from Wiki Wiki Teaching of course. Cool Cat Teacher..is one cool teacher. Her students are to be envied. I hope they understand how very special she is! I loved the story about her overhearing students in the hallway squealing about adding English notes to their wiki..when is the last time you heard student excited about learning or studying anything? So yeah..that was pretty great. I especially loved number 3. in her original assignment; ask yourself what don't you understand yet about the topic you are investigating and research some more until you do understand and record your findings..I think that is so key in everything about the computer! So that was worth the whole assignment!

As far as creating my own wiki...I think it is something I would like to play with for sure. I think that it would be fun for long distance family members to keep in touch with each other...I think especially if you could load music and photos and even voices..yeah that could be really fun. Grandkids could play their violin solo for their grandparents and a message to NY from TX. Other family from Atlanta could add their soccer pictures and scores from their latest game etc. for all to see. I could really run with this if wikis did all that :)

Ok....I'm out!

THING #6 CIRCLE OF THE WISE

Wow..the world is truly at our fingertips...and it's a little overwhelming!
I started out this activity by reading cool cat teacher's blog entry called How to create your Circle of the Wise. It was inspiring. The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are..C.S. Lewis
She mentioned the things that were her criteria for choosing to add someone into her circle of the wise. Among them were, good character, inspirational, responsibility, life-long learners, excellence, conversationalists...she said "You become like your circle".

She closed with the most thought provoking and inspiring question; "Let me ask you this: If you were able to read the writings of Abraham Lincoln, or C.S. Lewis, or Ghandi, or Dale Carnegie on a daily basis would you have done it? The are among you now. Find them and become transformed".

So it motivated me to go out and choose and re choose until I find my personal Circle of the Wise.

One I was especially impressed with was The Fisch Bowl by Karl Fisch. He had several articles I enjoyed and even a YouTube Video called Life=Risk that was so great I had to show my kids. Check it out it's short and encouraging.

Another article he wrote was about the ability to connect with others anywhere in the world in real time. He said that because of this it could virtually change the way we do almost everything. Because of that fact alone shouldn't that mean that schools need to help students learn how to do these things really, really well? I agree wholeheartedly. If nothing else this class is teaching us that we really need to step it up where our students are concerned.

On a funny note..I also read an article that google has a new feature available on your gmail account that you can enable to keep you from "drunk emailing" haha! During that questionable time if your reflexes are too slow, this feature will not allow you to "send" the email but will save it for later..in case you want to rethink your comments! Loved that!

Thing #7

You know it's funny, I didn't think that I would learn much about commenting from the various blog posts we were assigned to read. I thought it was pretty obvious what commenting entailed. But I found the posts both interesting and informative. I must admit though, I find it a little intimidating to comment. Even though I really relate to something I've just read...I find myself all tongue tied and suddenly I have nothing to say. I'll sit with my fingers poised over the key board and just wait..haha! I'll type something and then delete it...type something else..and think no that sounds wrong..I need to just relax and remember that it is only a conversation. That's what blogging is all about...sharing ideas with folks who share the same interests...opening up communication with people you wouldn't normally be able to converse with because of time and distance. It's a whole new world and I'm loving it...nervousness and all.

Thing#5

The blog I chose for my reflective post was What is Learning? I felt it was the most appropriate for my personal journey...my lifelong educational quest so to speak. I never want to stop learning..I never want to be "obsolete". I don't want to gather moss and be irrelevant. Two quotes from her post that especially moved me were "Teachers are the guardians of knowledge" and "Sapere Aude" or dare to know.

The author expounded on the fact that without knowledge there cannot be thinking, and without thinking there cannot be change. She said that learning is the process in which a person takes themselves farther away from ignorance.

Now the quest will be to light the fire under our students to get them excited about learning, and therefore thinking.

Thing #4

Well this "Thing" has been a little more time consuming, but very enjoyable. I got alot out of each of the blogs that I visited. I am very impressed with the fact that many teachers are successfully using classroom blogs..and it seems they've been doing it for a long while. I feel a little behind the times...but catching up!

So the first blog I checked out was "Why I don't assign homework". I found it very interesting in that I realized that I agreed with most of the teacher's ideas. I didn't think that I would...I thought I believed in homework! But after listening to his very logical and intelligent arguments I had a paradigm shift. I also enjoyed many of the comments left by the readers.

The second blog was my favorite site that I visited for this assignment. Mrs. Edmison's Class Wow! I only wish I would have had a grade school teacher like Mrs. Edmison! She has literally put the world at the fingertips of her class by introducing them to the author of their favorite book and opening up a dialogue! How exciting and wonderful. The possibilities are endless! You're learning about space? Let's see if we can get an astronaut to answer some of our questions online...you want to know about what's on the ocean floor...let's talk to this marine biologist. Politics? our senator, our governor, or mayor...endless possibilities! Loved her creativity.

My least favorite was "Spies like us" it left me a little paranoid and fearful. So I choose not to dwell on the negative possibilities of technology. Next was "Teaching Brevity", and I really liked that. Brevity is something I should concentrate on more. I loved the idea that we should assign an essay not on the length, for example 5oo words, but on the brevity of perhaps one paragraph. So that each word is packed with meaning...it takes infinitely more thought. We'd have to choose our words much more carefully if we knew we only could use 50 words to describe and entire book.

Last I chose Duck with a Blog, and I thought this was adorable. How fun for parents to check out their childrens comments, with all the misspellings intact. I really marvel at the teacher's bravery and ingenuity.

I enjoy blog reading very much. It opens up a whole new world of conversations that you wouldn't normally have...it is uninterrupted thought recorded for any and all to see. I find it enlightening and mind expanding. I also think an important part of the experience is reading other readers' comments. They sometimes give opposite opinions or expand on the author's original idea and take it to the next level. Lastly, most of the blogs I read, illuminated the fact that blogs really work for your class. It was pretty much..."If you build it, they will come"! haha!
Loved this assignment.