A Final Thing...

Oh my goodness...I made it to the end...

What a ride...what a trip...I think my brain's about to rip...

Actually, I am not sure what to think about all the horror stories of the 23 Things. I loved most tasks. They were time consuming, especially in a five week class, but I will use most of these as I start my career as an English teacher. I have found that technology is what engages students in learning, and it is my responsibility as an educator in the 21st century to find that engagement level. 

My top five favorite discoveries:

1. Remember the Milk will help me send bits and pieces of information out to students and parents when needed. Ultimate Favorite!!!
2. Live Binder is another new helpful site that will allow me to clean up all my past saves. 
3. Gliffy is going to be used for fancy seating charts for the first days of school. The students will know that I mean business right from the start. 
4. RSS feeds will keep me up on things I don't have time to search on a regular basis. I will also be able to follow new friends I have made at APSU. 
5. Animoto will always conclude my year with a reflection video for my students. Yes, under this hard Will Ferrell loving crust, I am a softy. 

I have a new appreciation of the web and will share my findings with fellow teachers. I was surprised that I had such an easy time with each task. I think it helped that each task was guided. I really have no suggestions for improvement; I am not sure that I would take this in the summer again though. I feel like I did not have as much time to explore all that was out there in the depth that I normally explore. 

I think that all these tasks will help me get my foot in the door when looking for those competitive English jobs. Principals are looking for those that can change with the times without too much pushing. I copied the list of the 100 top Web 2.0 programs and will venture out as time allows. 

So...where do I go from here? 

I plan on either re-purposing this blog for my classroom or just starting a new one. I love to write. I love to laugh, and I will hone in on those two abilities and combine them into something interesting that people will want to read. Knowing that I will probably move from Tennessee in the next one to two years, I will show my administrators this site in hopes that maybe we could start this as a professional development process for teachers who are fearful of the web. 

I will subscribe tot he RSS feed Learning 2.1 and see where it goes. 

Thing #23

The example that I found was from the PLCMC Learning 2.0 website http://plcmcl2-about.blogspot.com/.  It was built to encourage staff to experiment with technologies that might be unknown to that staff. Helene Blowers, the technology director from PLCMC designed the program and based it off of an article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_2_10/ai_n16133338/ written by Stephen Abram’s.  The site author has a Creative Commons license that allows for sharing as long as the user attributes the work to the original author. This cannot be used for profit and work cannot altered without the consent of the author.

Creative Commons is a new thing for me and the knowledge gained by it has helped me pay closer attention to mistakes made by unknowing copycats. I will teach this in my English classes at the beginning of the year to expose my students to ethics on the Internet. As I post things to the web (i.e. original lesson plans, YouTube videos and educational activities) I will take the time to attach a Creative Commons attribution tag on my work. 

Thing #22

Okay, this is another extremely useful site. Thank goodness I have kept a notebook of all the likes and dislikes of this 23 Things project.

With LiveBinder, I can clean up my "favorites folder" on our home computers. Both computers are jam-packed with sites I have accumulated over the years that need to go somewhere.

If you look on the LiveBinders gadget to the left, I started a grammar folder. It includes a folder for parts of speech, commonly misused words, and 6 Traits of Writing. I put a sub-folder in each of them. I will use this one the most, as I like to look up grammar rules often. The other two binders that are online in LiveBinder are videos that I have used in education. The folders within that binder are entitled: literature, grammar, and character building. The last LiveBinder I set up was literature sites. The folder in that binder are Shakespeare, Victorian Age, and Romantic Period. As I teach more, I will add sites that I find good information. 

Thing #21

Animoto is my favorite THING! I may even upgrade this to make family videos with the boxes and boxes of pictures in my closet. This site can also be useful when wanting to acknowledge student work. I think I will snap photos throughout the year (of course after asking permission from the students' parents) and create a end-of-the-year video. Love love love this!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The video below is just some random photos of my son, Evan. I didn't realize how fast 21 years goes. Cherish your children; they grow up too fast.


Try our slideshow creator at Animoto.
My Animoto Video

Thing #20

During my methods class, I used YouTube videos in my PowerPoint presentations. I had to embed them with the YouTube downloader in order for them to play correctly, but I could not have had the success I had teaching the Romantic Period if I had not used the videos.


I found a video from YouTube that I could use for similes and metaphor in my classroom. Students retain knowledge when material is relevant. This video shows students that some of their favorite films or rap artists use figurative language. If you stick around long enough you will see my boyfriend, Will Ferrell surrounded in similes and metaphors.





This is my own video that I uploaded into YouTube. It really has nothing to do with school, but it is a video of my son, Evan, repelling out of a Blackhawk helicopter in May. He is the second man out the door.

Thing #19

I joined TeacherPop and left a comment on Katrina Motter's page. I also uploaded my photo as you can see on my badge to the left. I joined Goodreads, which is a place I can track all the books I read over the course of time. It is a great site that people can write book reviews.

I am a member of Skype and Twitter. I use Skype to communicate face-to-face with my family. My husband deploys ever so often, and Skype is a great way to have a one-on-one conversation in real time. I like to check up on my college student now and then and make sure his room does not look like a frat house. I am getting used to Twitter. My problem is that I have so much to say and the character number often runs out before I am done Tweeting. I can see why students have poor grammar; they shorten everything they write into Tweeting-Twitterish grammar.

I might use Skype to talk to an absent student or have a conference with a parent that cannot seem to get off work in time to meet with me during school hours. I think as a teacher, we need to be open to situations that arise such as the time constraint parents have. especially with the status of the current economy. Five minutes of our time can often deter any misunderstandings or even open up a few doors that have been shut in the past. As a teacher, our hours are not 7:00-4:00. If you are committed, you are available to students and parents outside the brick and mortar. I plan to have an online office hour twice a week in order to talk with concerned parents.

Thing #18

I am now an egghead!


I set up a Twitter account. Follow me @englishamy70. Of course I found Dr. Jerles without any problems. I even tweeted him. We shall see if I did it correctly. I also found some of my favorite singers and television shows. I even found the money man, Dave Ramsey.


I will use this to keep in touch with what is going on in the world around me. School bogs me down and I often miss the evening news and/or reading the Leaf Chronicle each morning. I can have up-to-the-minute Tweets that keep me up on what is going on in our community. I would feel comfortable following students and having them follow me on Twitter. This might be a fun way to answer questions on homework, since I have my iPhone on my all the time. When you are a teacher, you are out there in the public spotlight. One might as well jump on the Twitter bandwagon and put it to some good use.

Thing #17

I love Delicious about as much as I love my screen name...Hornerlicious! I joined this and will compare and contrast Delicious with Diigo and consider keeping both. I am comfortable with Diigo, as we have used it all semester long. I do like the set-up of Delicious and have found multiple grammar and language arts sites that I will use in my classroom.

I also love avatars and found Voki...my favorite. Hit the button and hear a delicious message from me. I saved Voki and added the tag "Hornerlicious." I hope I don't get hauled into Voki prison for tagging my name on their sight.

Thing #16

I liked the iGoogle start-up page. Most of what I use is in Google. It keeps things nice and tidy. You also do not have to remember a bunch of passwords. I have made it my permanent home page because it gives me the latest on what I need to know. I can also check up on thing happenings in my old hometown. I love this. I also have comics, Spanish Word of the Day, and the local movie times....oh by the way That's My Boy was hilarious. My husband and I went last night and laughed our way through the entire movie.

I got my Google Calendar all set up with this activity. It looks to be that next week and the following week are packed. I like an activity calendar with all my other Google pages so I don't overextend myself (ya right) and don't overbook.

I looked at the to-do lists and I still love Remember the Milk that I talked about in Thing #6. I will use this in my classroom to communicate with students and parents. I am really starting to familiarize myself with RTM and it seems to be user friendly for me and I will put an interactive "how-to" video on my class blog in order to help those not-so-tech-savvy parents. Jott has been taken down according to the link. They refer you to the AT&T voice to text as a partner option. I have used voice to text on my iPhone. I don't particularly like it because it does not always recognize my gibberish.

I liked the Zamzar file converter program. There is a charge to join, so I will not at this time. I think I would use it mostly for videos that I needed to convert in order to embed them into my PowerPoint presentations that I use in my classroom.

Thing #15

Thing fifteen was a little more intensive for me, since I have never played with Wikis.

I looked around the Wikis that were provided in the Content area of our D2L and liked the one entitled English 10 Literature Wiki. This educator is utilizing her technology to get students to respond to literature they are reading in class. You have to join her Wiki in order to comment, but I went as far as I could and saw the questions she posed for the student responses. Very intuitive way to use technology. I will have to look at this after I am more comfortable with my abilities to use Wikis.

I went to the APSU Sandbox link and made a new folder. In that folder I added my thing #6. I was going to try and add the Remember the Milk log to it in this screen but was unsuccessful. Instead I just took a snapshot of my presence in the sandbox (see page below).

 

Next, I joined Wikispaces and posted a Wiki on banned books around the country. I would like to compile a legitimate list from teachers on these books that have been taken out of the classroom. There are lists all over the Internet, but some of the books are still being taught in the banned book areas. We shall see how lucky I get.