Thing 23

WOW I learned so many things these last ten weeks and I will continue to review and explore over the summer. My favorite thing was delicious.com due to the fact that I now have a way to save all my bookmarks on one site rather than spread out over several computers. Now that I have a wiki page I will use that next year as my sign up sheet for parents. As I reread my previous posts I can see which "things" I liked and which I did not enjoy as much.
I teach at a small school and I will share the knowledge I gained from this course with my fellow teachers so that they too are ready for the Web 2.0 World. It's not that scary after all.

Thing 22

I created my wiki page for use in my classroom and while right now it is a public page I will be changing it to private. I created the page as a way for parents to sign up and bring in needed items for the classroom. I will use the wiki page when I need parents to sign up for various things. This will save me a ton of emails and notes back and forth to parents. Setting up and using the wiki page was easier than I anticipated. I even added a widget (the map of Michigan) just to see if I could do it. Now that I have used the wiki page I plan on developing more pages and using them next year in my classroom.
This is the link to my website

 http://3room21.wikispaces.com/

Thing 21

I found two wikis that inspired me and they were the Book Trailers for Readers and the other one was Comparing Hemispheres. I was amazed at the production of the Book Trailers and as a result was intimidated to even trying something like that. I also went the Comparing Hemispheres and that one seemed more basic and got me to thinking how I could use a wiki to start a comparison between my school in Michigan and another school in another part of the country.
I am not sure that I would use wikis for peer editing or group projects as of yet since I teach third grade but I would like to use them more as whole class like the Comparing Hemisphere project.

I think wikis are a great tool but I would need to become more comfortable with it before utilizing it in the classroom.

Thing 20

I had a hard time with this thing. I started it several times before getting to this point. At first I wasn't finding any podcasts that interested me on the EPN site and I found Podcast Alley too big and too confusing. I tried googling free podcasts and wasn't very successful on finding something of interest. I then quit for a couple of days. I read some of the other 23 Thing blogs to see what else was out there. Several of the bloggers mentioned itunes so I tried that but I couldn't get to the podcast page. After several frustrating tries I figured out that I needed to download the newest version of itunes. Finally success! I subscribed to storynory, a podcast I mentioned in Thing 19.
After all is said and done I probably won't be subscribing to podcasts unless they are ones recommended to me. I enjoy making and posting my class podcasts but I did find this Thing frustrating. I am willing to try it again over the summer to see if if becomes easier.

Thing 19

I currently make and broadcast podcasts for my classroom website. About every 5 weeks my class does reader's theater and I record them and then create a podcast of each group so their parents can listen to their reading.

As I was exploring podcasts for this activity I came across the website storynory for great podcasts of stories to be listened to by my students. This site has original stories, classic stories, and fairy tales. I will use this site in my reading class to work on listening skills as well as expose my class to different versions of a story.

The link is: http://storynory.com

Another site I found for English is Grammar Girl. She gives great advice on using grammar correctly. This podcast will reinforce my grammar lessons.

The link is: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

Thing 18

20 Powerful Habits Of Happiness

View more presentations from Sompong Yusoontorn

I love the brightly colored flowers and the inspirational message of this slide presentation. I can see using slideshare as part of my class presentations. This slide show could be the starting point of a class discussion on what makes you happy. I can also see it as a way to decide "Does money make you happy?"

Thing 17

I played around and created a set of flashcards on the flashcard site. I found this site very easy to use and I can see recommending the site to parents so they can develop flashcards for their children. I will also use it to make flashcards for content area vocabulary. The only thing that is missing is a quick summary page explaining how to retrieve or have others retrieve the flashcards I made.

Thing 16

I posted one of my documents along with the share button to allow others to see and edit it. It was SCARY...I wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly and then I worried that allowing others to view that one document would give them access to my other goggle documents. I do know that the document (Week of June 6) I uploaded is not formatted the same as the original as my text boxes and borders are missing. I can see that google documents (once I get over my irrational fears on privacy) will be very valuable as I have been at school and needed a document that I created and saved at home. I am not sure how I will use this in the third grade classroom with students but I can see how I will use it with parents. I could create a google document when I need parents to sign up for an activity or to bring in certain items.

Thing 15

I read through the blog headlines that I subscribed to and also deleted those that are no longer valuable to me. I added the Click on Detroit site to my RSS feeds. I am not sure how much I will use the RSS feeds with my students but it is a great resource for me. I am becoming more comfortable adding RSS feeds to my account so I have to watch it so I don't add too many blogs and then not have time to read them.