Starting a new cohort

Know of anybody interested in starting a new cohort on Classroom 2.o tools? I'm hoping to get another group started sometime after the SDD on the 10th.

Cleaning Things Up

Those of you who have completed the Classroom 2.0 program please add my other blog to your readers. I am going to keep this one based on the 2.0 program for others who are going through the program, and I will update my other blog found at http://techiesteaching.blogspot.com. Hope you are all enjoying your summer! I take off for Nova Scotia on Friday and I can't wait. Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

On a Roll

We met in groups of 4 and got to pick out an object. Then we had to create a short film that formed a short story. Jennifer, Amy, Stefanie and I ended up with a roll of toilet paper, and the rest is....On the Roll...Keep in Mind we had less than 3 hours to write, shoot, and edit our story.

Sleep Away Camp

I'm currently sitting in my dorm room trying to be quiet now that "Quiet Hours" are in effect at the TTTC - Teach the teacher collaborative workshop in Ojai, CA. There have been highs and lows, but I got really pumped up tonight at the Google Earth workshop. The potential for exploring the world through Google Earth is amazing. We looked at Google Lit Trips and created our our Teacher Tour including links and images to locations throughout the world. Amazing stuff.

My second favorite find of the night was a program called iShowU which is an inexpensive ($20) screen capture program that records your actions on screen as well as any dialog you speak as your presentation evolves.

Week 9 Thing #23

Wow! How is this already over? I have enjoyed this process very much and I have enjoyed working with our "cohort"! - On to the questions -

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I appreciated the task element of this program. Having just completed my Master's in Educational Technology I was a little done with discussing theory and ready to apply that theory to new technologies. This program allowed that and I enjoyed every one of my tasks.
2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? This program gave me some great ideas about structuring online courses. I also enjoyed the comments of other teachers and watching others' blogs evolve.
3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I had used Google docs before, but was pleasantly surprised with the options in Zoho. - Poor Microsoft! ;-)
4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? Offer a 2nd level course.
5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Yes and I'd encourage others from my district to do the same.
6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote Classroom Learning 2.0 learning activities?Classroom Learning 2.0 is an ideal environment to experiment with online technologies!

Week 9 Thing #22

I hate reading books on my computer, so ebooks have never appealed to me. -Could be from all of those online courses I took. - What I do like about online books is the availability. I've used them before to reference scenes from many of Shakespeare's plays. There are many sites that include his entire plays. I also love to get audiobooks read by their authors - although they are expensive. The Harry Potter series read by Jim Dale is also phenomenal! I have to admit I am a little intrigued by Amazon's Kindle device. Seems like it might be very handy to take on vacation - depending on how well the battery worked.

Week 9 Thing #21

I am a fan of the podcast. On a regular basis I download shows from NPR then I listen to them on my iPod while I'm out walking my dog. People must think I'm a little off as I seem to spend much of my walk laughing out loud. I have also found travel podcasts to be helpful, although people have caught on and now vendors are starting to post their pay-for podcasts through iTunes. There are also a number of great Photoshop Tutorials and I also enjoy Grammar Girl's podcasts.

Week 9 Thing #20

We are one of the lucky districts in the state that does not block YouTube. It has such amazing potential, and is a real godsend when I need a quick tutorial on new technologies. As we get more comfortable with technology I have no doubt that we will begin posting our own educational resources on YouTube. One example may be a book talk link with students discussing a book they have read or a movie review to post for their peers.

I have already posted my favorite YouTube video Did you Know III in a previous post, so I'm going to post a less educational video in this one. Enjoy - this kid is amazing!

Week 8 Thing #19

The Library Thing was fun. I have a similar feature in my Facebook and MySpace accounts, but this one was even easier to use. Check on my Random Library below my avatar on the left.

Week 8 Thing #18

Online productivity tools are showing up everywhere. I follow a lot of people in the EdTech field on Twitter and many of them are presenting about and using Google Docs etc for their classrooms. It eliminates usability issues and teachers no longer need to worry about what version of Microsoft Word or Works their students are using. Zoho is also an amazing tool. The ability to create mathematical equations and use them in other programs such as Moodle or Quia will make creating electronic assignments and activities significantly easier for math teachers.

The one problem I had with Zoho spreadsheet was every time I tabbed to the next cell it tried to connect with the server to save which slowed the whole process down. I tried it again on another computer at a different location and no longer ran in the continuous "scipt" error. It was probably that computer, but it was very frustrating never the less.

Week 7 Things # 16 & 17

The thing I love most about 2.0 tools is that anyone can now be a content creator for information on the web. We are no longer limited by programming skills and expensive software. I see the potential of wikis in many different environments. Students can maintain class encyclopedias for science terminology or maybe students could contribute and post different types of poetry for a language arts class.

I know I'm a MOODLE pusher, but the thing that I love about Moodle is that your classroom is limited to your students. Once they post to a wiki their posting is linked to their account along with any edit or changes made to that wiki. That way you can track their contributions as well as monitor the appropriate uses of posting.

Posting in the "Sandbox" was fun. I posted information gleaned from Wikipedia. It's amazing what information is out there. Has anyone ever posted on Wikipedia?

Week 6 Thing #15

I like the idea of discussing the evolution of the library. We are currently having this discussion in our district as there's been a movement to eliminate librarians at our secondary schools. My response to this now and then has been utter disbelief. Our libraries are already evolving. Our librarians are the guardians of resources both text based and electronic. One of our major concerns for the future is teaching our students how to manage the vast amount of information out there and our librarians are the key to this process. As a TOSA I have spent the last year training teachers on the use of technology and in one of the videos we show to everyone is Howie DiBlasi's YouTube video Did You Know III? (If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it!) DiBlasi says More than 1442 new books are published....Daily and It's estimated that a weeks worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century. The libraries are crucial to preparing our students for the future, and our librarians are the front line in that preparation.

Vacation

I apologize for my recent absence in cyberworld. I've been visiting my grandfather in South Dakota where there is an actual dead zone for technology. No Internet and even my phone found zero service. After the first couple of days of slightly freaking out...I found I was able to function and it was actually kind of nice to stop compulsively checking my e-mail and voice mail. Of course, I wasn't at the airport for 5 minutes before I picked up my old habits, but it was nice to know I could survive without my technology.

Reminder: Web 2.0 gathering at the District Office on July 23rd from 2:00 - 5:00. You can get staff development hours for this or Tier 2 pay!

Week 6 Thing #14

I have already discussed Technorati. I find it a little thick to wade through, but the information is helpful. I really enjoyed the non-Disney video on copyright! It reminded me of another video I found on the TED website. The video is entitled How Creativity is being Strangled by the Law. It's worth watching. I love the analogy of land owners owning the sky above their land!

Week 6 Thing #13

Yeah social bookmarking! I have been using social book marking since the mid 90s. I started out using Backflip.com and I love it because it put a little tool on our toolbar to help us "backflip" our favorite websites into folders. It worked pretty well. Now, I'm working on updating my del.icio.us page. It took me a little time to get used to the tagging aspect, and I still have way too many categories, but I'm gaining on it. I love that I can access those bookmarks anywhere and share links with others. Some of my classmates from SDSU have shared their links with me and I can get lost for hours browsing their favorites.

Week 5 Thing #12

Ok, so maybe I'm just tired. I can see that eventually something like Rollyo may be helpful to set up searches for teachers looking for specific topics. I prefer a simple hotlist or using backflip.com or del.icio.us. What am I missing here?

Week 5 Thing#11

The web award winners was a lot of fun! I was very excited to see many familiar faces under some of the categories i.e. Flickr, Linked-in, Etsy, Twitter, del.icio.us and Pandora to name a few. Now I've added Spanish Pod, Picnik, and yelp to my list of favorite sites. I have great delusions of learning Spanish, and I've been working (a little) using the Rosetta Stone software. I think the Spanish Pod website may be a good way to inspire my learning....besides who really needs sleep?

Week 5 Thing #10: Image Generators

This could be painfully addicting! Fortunately I'm at a computer where I have very few images to play with. I really wish I had taken this course while I was still teaching middle school computers. My kids would have loved to do projects like this!

Week 4 Thing #9

So many blogs and RSS feeds....so little time. I'm sticking with my basic headlines and technology news for now, but I did love spending (way too much) time on the Technorati website. Does anyone have an eeePC or know of someone who does? They're only $399 and they seem to be a great possibility for laptop carts for our sites? I read the reviews on BestBuy and people seem to be impressed overall.

Week 4 Thing #8

RSS feeds are very handy to keep a finger on the pulse of topics you are interested in. I set up RSS feeds on my iGoogle page to monitor major headlines from NPR, CNN, and of course People. :-) I also follow certain topics such as Technology, Education, and the California Budget...boo!

I also have a couple of friends who travel constantly and they use RSS feeds to stay in touch with what is happening back home. It's a great way to keep abreast of major topics and find more detailed information on topics of interest.

Week 3 Thing #7

I checked through the 23 Things and noticed that Twitter was not on the list. I love Twitter. Twitter is a social networking tool used by people to post short snippets of blogs. Many times a twitterer will post a tweet that includes a link to his or her blog, but it's a way to get information out there in a succinct way. You can select different people to follow and I'm always looking for people with great EdTech ideas. I follow Kathy Schrock, Bernie Dodge and Leigh Zeitz, a professor from my undergrad years, to name a few.

One of the twitterers posted this amazing lesson about creating emotion and tracking it through a song/video.

I am constantly picking out great things from the tweets. Many times people will be attending seminars and will tweet the main points back to their audience. It's a great way to connect with people with very little effort. My Twitter page.

Week 3 Thing #6

Ahhh, the joy of 3rd Party programmers. One of the amazing things about the web is that we are now surrounded by content creators. Those with the knowledge and initiative to create different and often better versions of current programs can post and share their knowledge with the world.

This is my mash-up of Riley as a pup. Terrifying huh?

Week 3 Thing #5

Floppy Disk
Originally uploaded by mahamre

The Flickr - "blog this" option is very easy to use. The hardest part was picking a picture to blog about! I love all of these tools, I can see how they could really streamline your photo sharing capabilities. I just need to figure out when I have the time and energy to front load Flickr. I, like many of you, keep my photos in albums in iPhoto. I've also set up a number of other websites to share information and pictures with friends and family. I think Flickr could play a pivotal role in my web 2.0 experience, I just need to discipline to set it up. If you get a chance check out this Flickr account. Trey Ratcliff is a computer geek who takes AMAZING HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos and even has an exhibit at the Smithsonian. Great travel photos!

Course for Credit

Ok, so I'm a little behind! I logged into the Fresno Pacific Moodle course (I'm taking this for credit, so if you're not just ignore this whole post.) The assignments seem pretty easy to do, so I'm no longer worried about them. My due date is August 1st, so I'm assuming that anyone else who signed up around the same time will have a similar due date. Let me know if anyone is interested in meeting this summer. Perhaps we could find a library where we can use wireless for free. :-)

Week 2: Things #3 and #4

Ok, now we're getting to the techy stuff! Woo-hoo! This week you have two pretty serious tasks before you. 1) Set up your blog and Avatar 2) Register your blog.

Read the directions for Thing 3 here.
(Hint: an avatar is traditionally a cartoon representation of you.)

Register your blog by sending the link to me. Once you are registered you will see your name listed under Cohort Blogs to the left.


Make sure to check out the blogs of our cohort. There are some really nice things happening. (Feel free to drop a comment too. )

End of Week 1

Once you create your blog send the link to me so I can add it to the Cohort Blogs listed to the left. Go ahead and start adding your colleagues blogs to your Google Reader.

Have a great weekend!

Getting Started

Ok, gang. Here are the directions for registration for credit through Fresno Pacific University.

Registration steps - *Only for those who want credits for this class!*

Step 1: Go to the Fresno Pacific website http://www.fresno.edu/cpd/
Step 2: At the bottom on the left, click on Professional Development Workshops
Step 3: In the middle of the page there is a link that says Register online - click it.
Step 4: Fill out the information - Make sure you choose course IND 1140 - School Library Learning 2.0
Step 5: Send an e-mail to Rob Darrow at *Robdarrow@cusd.com* with “FPU Classroom Learning 2.0 Units" as the subject. He will be facilitating the learning for credit aspect.

Also, time to set up Google Reader!