Thing # 23 – Summarization

1. What were my favorite discoveries or exercises?
This is hard for me to pinpoint. There were many discoveries in this journey. I guess my favorite one would have to be Photo Story. I really enjoyed going through the pictures of my daughter’s wedding to make the slideshow and inserting the song that was sung in her wedding. This is a tool that I plan to continue to use in my professional and personal life.

2. How has this affected my lifelong learning goals?
I am a person who used to be afraid of the computer. When I was an undergrad, I typed all of my papers on an electric typewriter. I have learned so much about myself and the internet in this process. I plan to continue this endeavor by going back and revisiting sites where I can discover more tools to use in my career and personal life.

3. Where there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes?
Yes! I expected to get through this assignment and go on with my life. I am amazed at what I have learned and will continue to use. I will use Flickr for school projects. I will continue to use Google Docs for presentations and collaboration with fellow teachers. I have shared things that I have learned from this assignment with family and friends.

4. What could be done differently to improve the format or concept?
This format worked well for me. It was user friendly and easy to navigate. The links were all informative and I learned something new with each “thing”.

5. Would I participate in another discovery program?
Definitely! I enjoy learning about things that impress my daughters who think that they are much more computer savvy than their mother.

6. How would I describe this learning experience in one word?
Eye-opening (That may be two words.)

7. Now I will go and check out other blogs.

Thing # 22 - Nings

For this assignment, I looked at a few of the Nings listed and chose to concentrate on the Ning for Teachers. It took me to the Teacher Lingo website. This is a great website to share ideas about teaching. This interested be since I am currently a classroom teacher. My favorite features of this Ning are the Featured Lessons and lesson plans. I also enjoyed reading some of the blogs written by teachers.

After several attemps I could not get this link to work. To get to the website, you will have to copy and paste this URL.
http://teacherlingo.com/

Ning can be used in education for social networking so the teachers and librarians do not infringe on the students’ MySpace or Facebook accounts. I could see this being used with older students who spend a lot of time on their computers anyway. Ning could be used for projects through the library or classroom. This would be a great tool for the teacher and librarian to use in collaboration for a specific teaching unit.

Thing # 21 - Podcast and Videocast

Creating this Photo Story was my first experience with a videocast. It took me a few tries before I could download it. I can see many ways that this could be used in my classroom. I plan to use Photo Story to make a presentation for my end-of-the-year awards ceremony with pictures of my students.

Thing # 20 - You Tube, Teacher Tube and Zamzar

Videos can really enhance learning. The following You Tube video titled Embedding You Tube Videos taught me to embed videos into my blog.



I could not get the Teacher Tube video that I liked embedded. Here is a You Tube Video to go with a lesson on plants.

Thing # 19 - Web 2.0 Awards List

There were so many choices to decide from for this assignment. After connecting to a few and not being able to connect to others, I chose to explore Live Maps. The link too me to Bing Maps. I really liked exploring the US National Parks link under Explore a Place. I can see how this website could be used with geography lessons. The website provides pictures and descriptions of the U.S. National Parks. It can give students a chance to visit many locations without leaving the library.
http://www.bing.com/maps/

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

Google Docs is a free online tool that can be used instead of Microsoft Office Suite. I have found that Google Docs is a great tool to use for presentations. More than one person can be working on the same presentation from different locations. One disadvantage is that I could not figure out how to hyperlink to a picture.
Document can take the place of Word. I found that it does not have as many fonts as Microsoft Office Word.
Spreadsheet is comparable to Excel. I could not find a way to change the font using this tool.
Here is a You Tube Video explaining Google Docs. It is titled Google Docs in Plain English.