Summary - Learning Thing 1 -23

Wow! This class was an adventure, I learned some new things and got to become more familiar with some oldies. There are so many tools that I can take away from this program and use in both the classroom and in my personal life, like I have said before the possibilities are endless. I know some were disappointed that Web 2.0 was not an application/program that you could use with your students, but a multitude and compilation of a toolbox of some really stuff, I on the other hand am a 100 percent tech geek, and was excited to dive into all the technological stuff, I stayed up till 1:00 some nights, just playing around, learning about the different components of this "program". Who know that when you were playing on the computer you were "improving your skills". Really that is so true, most of my computer knowledge is self taught, when you have to learn how to do something, you just do! Yes, there were a few things that took time to figure out, but once I had it figured out it was smooth sailing from that point on. I love, love, love the image generators, I also really enjoyed making the animoto video clips, that is something that I really want to figure out how to use in my class at some point. Social networking is something that I was involved in before taking this class, but I was pleased to learn more about the concept. Technology is ever growing, and in the community of lifelong learners it is increasingly becoming something that we need to add to our repertoire of life long learning skills. I have found myself using the Google Reader a lot more than I though I would, I check it everyday and am thinking about subscribing to more blogs (suggestions would be great!). I was suprised at how easily the majority of the stuff was easy for me to complete--- guess thats what I get for being a tech geek :0.
This is going to sound crazy, but it took so long for me to start the classm becuase I didn't know which link to click on to get the directions. I signed up for the social network site, before I had instructions to do so or before I created my blog. I did not realize that the "23 Things" link to the site was the instructions for the course, I thought it was a link to another blog. Luckily I had a friend enrolled in the class and she told me where I could find the directions. Once I got started, though, I did not encounter any real problems. It would have been nice to have more direction to where the directions were located.
I would 110% particpate in another discovery class, it is the most intriguing staff development, and I have taken more away from this than I do most classes.
I plan on sharing and showing some of what I have learned to my fellow teachers, and coming up with projects we can do to utilize these tools, because like us, the students need to be exposed to them, afterall, they will be more prominent when they are adults than they are now.
I plan on keeping up with updates of happenings on the Web 2.0 through the use of Google Reader and blogging ...if anyone knows of any could blogs about 2.0 -- please share!
Enjoy exploring!

Learning Thing #23

Creative Commons...what an interesting way to look at the copyright law. I loved the video clip it from the various "Disney" movies that explained the ins and outs of the copyrighting laws. I like the way Creative Commons works, it gives us a little more freedom, without taking credit away from the original creators. Common creative give individuals the right to use "copyrighted" material for some uses. It is meant to be used with the copyright, not to fight against it. Creative commons gives individuals permission to use work that has been copyrighted. Instead of being displayed with a © it is also marked with a cc mark. This is a really great tool for teachers and librarians alike to be aware of, we know what we can and cannot copy without breaking the ever feared copyright law(s). Check out my animoto that I created using pictures from flickr ..that were licsenced with the cc logo!

Learning Thing #22

Podcasts are a neat tool to be used on the internet, I am not a big fan of podcasts. I am oldfashioned in the sense that I would rather read about something rather than listen to someone talk about something. The one that I found was sort of cool -- it is actuall a video podcast Google Reader (11): "GeekBrief.TV | Video Podcast"

(I listened to the top 10 gadgets episode).
I really didn't like any of the podcast search engines that were provided, so I went to my iTunes account, and felt much, much more comfortable using this search engine. Once I had the name of the podcast, adding it to my Google Reader was very simple, and then I embedded the link to the podcast from the Google reader.

I don't think that I will be using podcasts in my classroom, why they are a neat piece of technology, with everything else that I want to do, podcasts would take to long to create and listen to. (Podcasts jurt aren't my thing).
I have a subscription to the one that I listened to, I may or may not listen to it in the future, I will probably see what the topic was before I listened.