Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
• I LOVED the "thing" where we could create words using snapshots from flickr.  That was super cool and I plan on using that as often as I can for PowerPoints and lesson plans in the classroom.

• How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?
• This has really opened my eyes to just how much the web can help me as a teacher.  I knew the web was a fun place to kill time (hello! Facebook!), but it really has become a valuable resource for teachers. 

• Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
• Again, just the wealth of resources out there for helping teachers to do their jobs easier. For example, LiveBinder. How cool is that site?!? Pretty awesome!!

• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
• I wish there was a way we could have just signed up once for everything instead of signing up for each site on its own. I realize that is probably impossible, but other than having to create an account for everything, I thought this exercise was really fun!

• How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher?
• I am not sure other than I have my blog and Dr. Wall's blog saved in my favorites so that when I do become a teacher, I will have all these web resources at my fingertips when needed.  

• How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.
• I have a Google alert for some topics so that I can easily find blogs and articles related to ideas for future lesson plans.  

Thing #23

I just Googled 2.0 23 Things and this site popped up for me The 23 Things.  I seriously thought that Dr. Wall had created this 23 things all on her own!  I should have known as tech savvy as she is, of course, she used the web to create this lesson plan!

I have heard that a rule of thumb for teachers is share, share, share! We are to share our ideas and thoughts with each other for the benefit of our students.  And with the help of the web, we can share material from so many fellow educators from near and far! We can help each other make our lesson plans even better!

I totally plan on using the works of others who put tag their work with CC logo to help me with my lesson plans and my work as an educator.  Because of creative commons, our world just opened up as teachers and it is very exciting!

 

Thing #22

Ok, I can totally see LiveBinder being a VERY useful tool for teachers and in my career as a teacher. Instead of having a zillion folders with different labels for different lesson plans, I can create an online binder for all my lesson plans and just go back to them as needed and/or add and/or take away information as needed.  A very green approach to saving lesson plans WITHOUT the worry of your computer crashing and losing everything you have have worked on (because if you are like me, you try to back up your computer every so often, but it gets put on the back burner more than you'd like).

The name of my binders are:

• Survey Sampling 
• Graphs 
• How to create lesson plans

Here is one binder I created to help me plan my lesson for Survey Sampling:

Survey Sampling Lesson Plan

Thing #21

Ok, now this was the most fun "thing" yet!  I am totally going to use this every way I can!  I loved this! I made this video in about 3 minutes (and it probably shows), but this was so much fun. I can see myself staying up late playing this this (and upgrading!). 

This could be yet another way for students to make a projects for the classroom in a really fun and interesting way.  Also, much like having students created podcasts for what they did that week in the classroom, this could be another way for students to create something showing their parents what they did in the classroom at the end of the week.  

The ideas on how to use this site are endless!

 
Try our video maker at Animoto.

Thing #20

Using YouTube to help explain something to your students is something I highly agree with!  As teachers, we always want to be able to explain things perfectly to our students, but that simply isn't possible.  Sometimes having someone else explain the same thing, but in a different way is exactly what our students will need for the light bulb to go "ding!" above their heads. I know, for me, having things explained in a variety of ways really helps to understand concepts that are hard. 

For my PowerPoint presentation from our Education class, I inserted this YouTube video to help my students understand how the rating system works (in relation to how surveys work). 

Also, YouTube can help us, as teachers, to find new and interesting ways to explain concepts to our students.  I use YouTube all the time to help me with my own studies when my professors leave me lost and confused. I can see using YouTube when I'm teacher in the a similar way to help me to explain concepts to my students. 

Thing #19

I joined TeacherPop. What a fun site to explore! On the front page there was a presentation, "A Teachers Guide to Using Facebook."  A very good read!  I actually wrote one of my research papers about the "Facebook effect on Teachers." 

The point of this "thing" was to explore social networking sites.  My favorite social networking site is Facebook, no irony there, right?  I enjoyed looking up educators via twitter, too.  I also have dabbled in Google+. 

It seems to me that most EVERYTHING on the internet is becoming WAY more social by the day.  Whatever site I visit, there always seems to be a comment section where users can interact with each other.  You simply just have to Google Teaching Blogs, find one that you like, leave a comment and there you go! You are part of a online social community.  It's so cool! 

To be a teacher in today's social networking world, you are only limited by your imagination with the help of Google when planning your lesson plans.