Thing 23! I made it!

Oh wow, have I learned a lot in the past few months. And I feel like the best part of it all is that this is just the beginning. I remember something from the first thing- something about how so many times we teachers are trying to fight technology in our classrooms (mp3 players, phones, etc)... when it's really not going away, and we need to embrace it and use it to our advantage. Using the students' desire to be interacting with technology constantly is turning into one of the best ways to reach them. I graduated from high school less than 10 years ago, and I feel like even in that short time, SO much has changed in the way teenagers think and work and live.

Many of the things I've learned about are things I can use both in my classroom and in my life outside of school. I've pretty much become obsessed with my delicious and bloglines accounts- a lot of the things we've done seemed like work at the beginning, but now have become part of my everyday or every week routine. The program has helped to changed the way that I view the web in general. I used to think of it as a place to find information... now I see that it's really more of a set of tools than a destination. And those tools are getting more useful and plentiful every day! How great is that??

Thing 22!

Well- here's my wiki! Obviously, it's just the beginning, but there's so much you can add to it that it could pretty much be a never-ending project! Well, I guess that's kind of the point, isn't it? I did feel a little like an invader adding to somebody else's wiki, but I suppose you probably lose that feeling as you do more. Blogs and wikis have some similarities, but the major difference is that while a blog is basically from one person, the wiki is really best used as a collaboration. So, I suppose that would affect my decision as to which one to use. I like the idea of using wikis for student group projects. I could also see my department using it for many things- from keeping track of who is using the lab on certain days, to lesson planning, to... well, anything else that we could think of! I currently have a blog for my classes, but it's pretty one-sided- just keeping parents and students updated on what's going on in class.

Thing 21!

I found some really great wiki's in my search (a number of them ended up on my delicious page!), and the biggest thing I noticed is just how much there is on each of these sites. I think I can see a few problems in using one in my classroom. First, it seems like a lot to put together on my own, especially when there are a lot of great resources out there anyway that are ready to use. This might be great as a department-wide thing when putting together ideas for labs or activities or common assessments. At this time, I can't really see a way to use this as a collaboration tool for my students. I hate to say this, but giving teenagers free reign to edit and add at will makes me a little nervous. It would take a lot of time on my part to monitor and stay on top of everything to be sure that it's appropriate content that they're adding. I think I'm going to spend some more time looking at the ones out there for ideas to see if there is a good way to bring this into my classroom.

Thing 20!

nclude in your post the name of at least one podcast to which you subscribed. Describe your experience using the various search tools. Which do you prefer and why?

Whoops, I guess I already did part of this one in my last post. Oh well! Anyway, all of the tools were pretty user-friendly. EPN had a number of podcasts that were older and are no longer updated, but still had some great content. Podcast Alley had a number of great podcasts. Not particularly easy for browsing, but good if you're looking for a specific topic. I really like iTunes- easy to browse, easy to download. A few of the things I found were the Mr. Science Show, which was pretty interesting and updates regularly, and also the Slightly Mad Science show (this was an old one on the EPN site, but in Googling it I found some great demo videos of many chem or physics topics).

Thing 19!

I have downloaded a few podcasts in the past, so this thing wasn't entirely brand-new to me like many of the others have been. I found some really great 5-minute podcasts about each of the elements- they offer some great info as well as some interesting facts I didn't know before! As for the ones on the site, I really enjoyed the K12 science in Michigan podcast, and ended up subscribing to it through iTunes. I also like the Merriam-Webster's word of the day- it's always cool to add a great word to my vocabulary!
My main problem with podcasts is spending the time to actually listen to them. I imagine if I had an mp3 player, it'd be a lot easier!

Thing 18!

Ch 9 Stoichiometry

View more presentations from kermis.

Here is a presentation I found on slideshare... this is a topic that I'll be starting this week with my students, and will probably end up embedding on my class blog too as a study aid. There were a lot of things I liked about slideshare- first, there are many, many different presentations on all sorts of topics. I'm trying this from home today (thank you snow day!) but I imagine this is accessible from school, which would make it all the more useful. Something I didn't really like was the lack of description of presentations when you're searching for something- it's tough to see if what you found is really what you want until you actually go through the whole thing. This is a tool that I can see myself using in the classroom. I also found some great quilting tutorials too, so it looks like it has some uses at home too!!

Thing 17!

I tried out a few of the tools for this thing- here are my thoughts on those:

Zoho show- I think this could be a very useful tool for students to use when collaborating on a group presentation. it seems one of the toughest parts of group presentations is actually finding the time and means to get together outside of school to work (seems like students are so much busier than I remember being in school!). This way, each can contribute and modify on their own timeframe and it will still be a cohesive, finished product.
Remember the Milk- great tool for those of us that can't seem to remember what's going on next week, let alone this afternoon. Easy to update and modify.
Trailfire- I wasn't crazy about this one, or at least the trails that were posted by other users. Kind of confusing to use, and I'm not sure how I could use it with my students or in my life at home.
Knowtes- I think if done right, this could be a great tool for my students. I could see creating decks on polyatomic ions, group charges, vocab, really a whole lot of things.