had never heard the term “Creative Commons” before, and, like most teachers, I was taught to steal other peoples’ work without giving credit, yet, hypocritically, get on to the students for doing the very thing. The fact is that it’s all too simple to steal copyrighted material. But that doesn’t make it right. With Creative Commons, I can borrow, not steal, material and set a good example for my students at the same time. I noticed at the bottom of every “Thing” page, there is a little blurb that the information has been borrowed or duplicated under a Creative Common License. As for using it in my classroom, flickrleech, from the creative commons website, looks promising. Not only will it help me find pictures to include in my handouts, presentations, etc., but it will help my students find pictures as well that they can use. The best part, of course, is that there will be no stealing involved. I’m glad that you included information about Creative Commons as one of our “Thing” activities.
Ever since I went to the TETC Conference in Nashville last year and sat in on a podcasting session, I have wanted to learn more about it. Unfortuately, the focus of that session was the technical aspect of podcasting, and not ways it could be used in the classroom. I used Educational Podcast Directory and Podcastalley and both were very user friendly. On Educational Podcast Directory, I found a literature game where the teacher reads a passage from a book and the listener is supposed to e-mail her with their guess on the book’s title, author, and character that is speaking in the passage. This is too cool for literature geeks like myself. The link to that podcast is
and it’s worth checking out! I subscribed to it so I can try to challenge my students with it, or maybe even other teachers! This has inspired me to check more into podcasts. After the technical explanation that I received initially, I was a bit intimidated, but it really doesn’t look that hard to do one of my own. There are so, so many opportunities to use podcasts in the classroom, I don’t know yet how I will use it, but I definitely feel motivated to use this tool somehow.
What a hidden little gem Animoto turned out to be! I had never heard of this site before (probably because it is still in the Beta version) but it is fabulous! I can envision my students doing a visual storytelling project using this website. This site makes it seem like I spent hours doctoring the presentation, but it’s very easy to use! I noticed that it only used 8 of the 10 pictures that I uploaded. I don’t know why. Well, here is the one that I created. It is pictures of my daughter, Mariana, on her first cruise!
It is importat for educators to know how social networking works because, at least at the high school level, our students do! I actually had an incident last week where a female student in one of my classes asked to be moved to the other side of the room because her “friend” sitting next to her bullied her on myspace! No joke. Also, it’s a way for educators to connect with other educators about teaching practices. With MySpace, I found it pretty easy to search for people, but a lot of times, too many hits came back. The postivie side is that there are so many people with MySpace pages that friends are easy to find!
I think with this particular assignment I was at a distinct disadvantage trying to create a Flowgram while on vacation. I did not have access to a microphone to record audio, and I don’t have any music downloaded onto this computer. So, I did not have any audio to play in the background of the presentation. I did notice that all of the animation and slide transitions did not transfer onto the website, which would have changed how I created the Powerpoint. The tools seem easy enouh though, there’s not very many of them. Overall, in terms of doin demonstrations where I can explain what is going on in the pictures, I believe this to be a VERY helpful tool. It would also be good for students to create their own Flowgrams to give them practice in creating presentations and especially in explaining things, which they are generally not very adept at due to a lack of practice. Between Flowgram and PowerPoint, I don’t think that one is really more effective as a teaching tool than the other, because it mainly depends on the purpose of why the program is being used. PowerPoints are better when doing a presentation in front of a live audience where pacing is important and could vary from one audience to the next. Flowgram is better for posting “how-to” videos online or for presentations where pacing is not very important. The pictures that I included in my slide show did not, in my opinion, convey messages or emotions that words could not express. This is probably because I chose to use clip art pictures, and there was not a whole lot going on in each picture.
YouTube is a very easy site to maneuver around. I have used it in the past, and I love it. I chose Chris Farley’s skit “In the Van Down By th River” because it is one of my favorite SNL skits ever. It always cheers me up. YouTube is also blocked on my school server, so the only way to use content from it would be to embed the videos on a blog like this one, which is an option I have never thought of before. The possibilities are endless, with instructional videos and the like. Librarians could post videos about books, authors, or even reading skills.
I joined four social networking sites: MySpace, TeacherPop, gather, and Shelfari. All four of these sites are appealing to me for different reasons. MySpace I would probably use purely for social reasons. The school filter blocks all myspace pages, so I would have to use it from home anyhow. TeacherPop is a place where I can communicate with other teachers. Gather I would probably use in a political sense and have my ideas heard, and Shelfari I will probably use in the classroom. I would like to have my students all sign up for shelfari, and network our shelves together, along with perhaps any other teachers that may want to join. It is always interesting to students to find out what their teachers are reading, and it also sets a good model for the students to know that their teachers actually are reading for pleasure. Teachers and students alike can learn a lot about each other by what they are reading, so I really love this site. I am trying to find a way to add my “shelf” to my blog or class web site. That will make it easier to access.
I have heard of del.icio.us before, but put it on that unendingly long list of websites that I would eventially check out, and of course, until this assignment, never actually did. I see unlimited potential for this website. The first thing I thought of was using this website in the classroom as part of an assignment for my students. I could have them do research over a topic and bookmark various sites on del.icio.us with tags. Then, expand the project to include resources from other students. In essence, it could work similar to a wiki, where students and find and build on each other’s information. Another thing I thought of is to suggest this website to my department chair, who is very tech savvy. He created a website where the department could share files and websites, and I think del.icio.us would work better than the website that he created. Additionally, if the teachers in my department get in the habit of sharing websites (some of us are better at doing this than others), then it will greatly benefit the students because we will be consistently using resources in our classrooms that work. On a grander scale, this English Dept. site could be connected to other English departments around the country, or even around the world. It could be a “flat earth” activity where my department collaborates with another department in another country. I think the possibilites for using del.icio.us are limited only by the user’s imagination.
I chose to use igoogle because I already had a google account set up. I did at least look at the other ones (Pageflakes and Netvibes) but I thought I would keep it simple and use igoogle. I think I will make it my home page when I return back to the states. I currently have my English II calendar as my home page, but with igoogle, I can put the calendar on there along with a lot of other information. How useful! As far as the online calendars go, they are VERY useful to me. I actually plan my lessons on my calendar first, and then transfer that to Word where I turn it in to the assistant principal over me. Aside from that, I am getting my students in the habit of going online to check the calendar anytime they miss class for any reason. I do not accept the excuse “I couldn’t get on the internet” becuse it’s everywhere! Additionally, parents also enjoy me having an online calendar for my class so that they know exactly what we do in class each day. So when my students try to go home and tell their parents “I didn’t do anything in class today” or “I don’t have any homework” the parents will know better! For the “to-do” lists, to me it is more trouble than it’s worth. I know that it may be easier to do these things online so I can access them from any computer, but the process of writing things down, and not typing them, helps me remember my to-do lists better. Perhaps one day I will be converted, but right now I much prefer the pencil and paper method. As for tools to use at my school, we already use PDF Converter. In fact, it has almost become standard practice at my school to convert attachments into .pdf files before sending them. Aside from that one, I LOVE the stickynotes.net site. I am the kind of person that writes sticky notes on anything and for anything. I have stickies on my teacher edition of the textbook, in other books that I’m reading, on student papers, etc. So this site is definitely for me. I also think it’s really neat that I can send these stickies to other people. This is definitely a site that I will share with others at my school. I’m compiling quite a list of those websites for my toolbox!
I chose to search the entry “legend” in wikipedia, since this is the genre that my students will read during the next grading period. I found it interesting that at the top of the page, there is a box that says “This article needs additional citations for verification.” If I had searched for some obscure term, then I might expect to see that message, but on a term like “legend”? It was quite surprising. The information in the article at least appeared credible. The information was written technically, almost like a text book. The list of references at the end of the article looked credible to me. There were plenty of sources. When I clicked on the “Discussion” tab, I noticed that it has been rated a “B” and of “high importance.” I have to be honest. I have never noticed that the “Discussion” and “History” tabs were even there. I like the fact that wikipedia rates their own entries, but, again, it’s alarming to me that a term like “legend” would not have a higher rating. When I clicked on the “History” tab, I looked for the date of the earliest entry: 2005. 2005?!? Is this because wikipedia was not popular before 2005, or is there some deeper, underlying meaning? I have always mentioned to my students that wikipedia is not the most reliable source when working on a term paper, and now I have a better understanding of why.
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