Summary

23 Things has been an awesome experience for me. This class has allowed me to discover valuable tools to use in my classroom, again if the district will unblock some things, that will benefit my students. We, educators, are all the time talking about the different learning styles of our students so why not use all the different teaching styles that are being made available to us. The textbook and worksheet method of teaching is losing our students, lets reach them on the level. Let's use the technology they are using to communicate with them, to teach them. I am very thankful for this class. It has also allowed me to catch up with some long lost friends and that is great. Thanks for the class.

Thing #23

Not having a TAKS tested class allows me to try and explore more options to try and teach my students. But one concern that I have is that I float to four different classrooms and not all classrooms have the same technology equipment. Some classrooms have the equipment in the room but it is not set up for me to use. Other classrooms have equipment that only works half of the time. This makes it very difficult to plan the use of outside technology in my class. My other problem with our system, as mentioned before, is the blockage of certain sites by the district and until that changes it makes it difficult to incorporate technology at its fullest potential.

Classroom 2.0 has great resources that are already set up for the teacher to use, which is very helpful. Great teachers borrow great ideas from other great teachers that is how it should be. Some times we are not sure where to go to find information, Classroom 2.0, is a site I will surely share with others. Just as Teacher Tube was shared with me. I am always looking for websites that I can use for World Geography and I found one that was very helpful. It is called Where in the world are Interactive Geography lessons? So if anyone is looking for some I hope this site helps.

Thing #22 - Social Networking

My daughter has been using social networking since middle school. She started with Xanga and then went to MySpace and now she also has a Facebook. I remember all the times that I have told her to get off the computer and stop taking those quizzes and stop filling out those surveys. Now I find myself doing the same thing she was doing without the quizzes and surveys. My son also has a MySpace, he had a Facebook also until he found out my wife and I also had one. He proceeded to get rid of his because he thought that was weird. I have heard all the negatives about how these sites are dangerous and have talked to both of them about it, but this is how this generation communicates, through the internet and text.

It is important for us as educators to understand how times have changed. Just look at the ages of kids that are now getting cell phones, it gets younger and younger every year. Spending hours and hours on the telephone talking to friends is no longer the thing, both of my kids say they hate to talk on the phone. And when I call them to try and talk to them, they don't conversate very well, so I believe them. They know how all their friends are doing by checking the blogs and posts of their friends web pages. Educators need to figure out how to use this to our advantage, it is a very powerful tool. Posting messages on Facebook to remind your students of an up coming test, or dead lines for projects, or to post a homework question and have them comment or link to a related site would be very a great tool to have in your toolbox.

As far as the the issue of MySpace vs Facebook, I pick Facebook. I found it much easier to use, not as crowded, and I it helps you find people from your past that you may have lost contact with. I have been catching up with old friends that I grew up with, went to middle school with, and high school but just for one reason or another lost contact with them. Having taught and coached for the past 12 years I have even found former students and athletes on Facebook. Being able to keep up with them has really been neat.

Thing #7c - More from my Reader

Oh how glad I am to live in the United States. As I look at the Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ and the chaos that is going on in Athens over the death of 15 year old. Pictures of rioting and tear gas being shot into a local university make me appreciate the country that I live in. It is not perfect, as nothing is, but it allows us the freedoms that too many Americans take for granted. I wish I could get this across to my students as they complain about petty things that happen to them through out the day. Reading up on events that happen in other countries makes me proud to be an American.

Thing #21 - Google Stuff

Google Maps I have used this tool before to look at my house and the houses of other coaches in our fieldhouse. One of the coaches typed in his address and it showed the place but there was no house. This makes me wonder how often a picture is taken of the locations. At the time someone had taken the picture his house was not yet built. My wife told me about my parents' house and when you typed in the address my Dad was out front. I had a good laugh with my Dad when I called him and told him to look it up so he could see himself. It is a weird to see the picture of the actual house where someone is.
Google Maps also allows you to create your own maps for whatever purpose you want. My wife showed me the one she found on Barack Obama's Journey. When you find a map that interests you, you can save it to your own map collection. This would be very helpful in Social Studies to show the routes of the Roman Empire as it expanded or trade routes.

Google Translate Using Google Translate lets you put any URL in the translate a web page box and it changes it from one language to another. I put in the URL for the ESPN website and translated it into Spanish. This would be great for the kids who have trouble with English, it would allow you to translate into the language that the student needed. Then they could see the translation in English when they scroll over the words, so they can compare the two. This is a great tool.

Thing #20 - Google Docs

My wife and I shared a document that helped us list what we were going to get for our three kids for Christmas. Since we are both at work all day and don't communicate all the time during the day, this was easy to jot down an idea whenever it came to me. Plus with me sometimes I may think of a gift during the day but forget about it by the time I get home. Now I can just jot it down and my wife can check it anytime. The sharing of documents like this would be great for teachers to collaborate on topics that are being taught.
All subjects could teach about a specific topic with each teacher adding their own twist to make sure it ties into each subject.
The spreadsheet would be extremely helpful in our field house for inventory purposes. All the coaches are assigned to certain equipment, with one main equipment coach. Each coach could check his inventory input it and be done. Instead of having to track down the main equipment coach, give him the inventory, and make him input it into one file that will be saved probably on a personal server. This would help us update the inventory whenever something new comes in or something is issued out. A spreadsheet would also help our Head Coach with trying to order stuff for the coaching staff. He can send it out and everyone reply when they get a chance. Then it puts all the information together for him.
I recently had to give a presentation for my cohort class and having Google docs would have made it easier to do. There was a group of five and we each had a certain part that we had to do. No one really wanted to take extra time to meet and go over what we had so this tool would have really helped. One member of the group created a wiki page but not everyone felt comfortable using it. I believe this is a lot easier and really would have helped out.

Thing #19 - Voicethread

I am once again trying to find as many things as I can for my class, World Geography. I want my students to see everything about the places that they are studying. This along with You Tube and Teacher Tube are awesome ways for me to show my kids places of the world not just read about them. I found this World Geography voicethread that would be great to use. Placeing the pictures with the maps and then adding the audio makes this a great learning tool.

Thing #18

I have already used both You Tube and Teacher Tube in my class. It is a great source for me, I teach World Geography. I can show the students what a country really looks like. The students feel disconnected with places they are studying because all they see is a picture or two in the book and then they have to read about it. Showing them puts them there. For example we are studying Latin America so I found a Discovery Education video on Peru to show them. Also one on Ecuador.
I found a personal how to video showing me how to trade stocks on-line. Don't know if I really trust it but I am going to follow it for a while to see if the guy really knows what he is talking about.

Thing #17

I viewed two different podcasts, The Mayne Event and Coffee Break Spanish, from iTunes. I thought both of them were very good. The Mayne Event is about sports which I am very interested in and Coffee Break Spanish is about learning to speak Spanish. Coffee Break Spanish is for very basic beginners and gives very short lessons and goes very slow. I would like to incorporate podcasts into my classroom and also use it for my personal learning. I do have iTunes and an ipod but have not used podcasting before, I do know now why you would want an ipod with a lot of memory. I am not sure what all my ipod can hold but I am about to find out. This is a great tool that I will use in the future.

Thing #16

LibraryThing is a site where you can find out about books you want to read. I am not much of a reader and it takes me forever to finish a book. I started reading Tony Dungee's book during the summer and finished it only a few weeks ago.

My son loves to read and I think this would be a great tool for him to use. One of the things I like about it is that when you search for a book you have read there are suggestions about what else you might like. That part would be very helpful to me and others like me who don't like to read that much.

Thing #15

I set up my delicious account and went through tons of searches. It was hard for me to decide what to bookmark and what to leave alone. I always think I can find it again later but never can. I see the benefit of putting them all in one place so you can get to them anywhere and I know I will use it more often now that I know what it is.

There are alot of things saved in this site and I know I could never see them all. I searched for geography and maps and spent about an hour looking at them and still had tons to go. Where do so many people find out about sites like this? I never heard of it until now.

Thing #7b

Why do things make it into the news? When this came into my Google Reader I thought it was crazy. Aren't there things happening in the world that are more important than this? Didn't we just have a very important election? I know that these things are reported also but it is a strange world we live in.

Then I read a post by TeacherDude that I thought was funny. As a male in a mostly female occupation it is apparent almost daily the differences between us. Read it and enjoy!

Thing #14

My wife has been talking about Wordle for a while now. Since it was on this list, I decided to look at it. I saw that it had a place to put in a web site, so I found one about the Cowboys and tried it out. I also found where you can change the color and the layout. I thought this might be a good thing to do with my geography classes. they could find words that described the country we are studying.

I also looked at PollDaddy and thought it was easy to use. It would be good to be able to have students make up their own surveys and see the results. I used to teach math and I know it would help students to see a graph created by the computer for them.

Thing #13

I used ImageChef to make this license plate. This is the name of the football team that I coach. I will show this site to my daughter because she is always on the computer working on her Myspace. I think she would like this, too. I am not sure how I would use this in my classroom, but maybe someone has some ideas to share with me.

Thing #11

I decided to look up pictures on Japan. I teach World Geography and it is always good for the students to see actual pictures from the area. Flickr would be a site they could use to make a presentation over the country we are studying. This picture is of Mount Fuji and it was taken by Samurai Shiatsu.

Thing #10

Creative Commons is a way to give permission to people so that they can use your pictures. It is like copyright in a way and is confusing to understand. It is good to know that I won't be in trouble for using these pictures from the internet.

Thing #12 - Animoto

Thing #12

These are the credits for the pictures from Flickr that I used to make the slideshow. It was easy except for the linking of all the pictures. That was time consuming.

Sunrise in Odawara, Japan by shinnygogo
Red in Japan Mosaic by Oyvind Solstad
Japan Temple Lanterns by Frisko Dude
Japan through photomatix #14 by patsOn
Goth kid with contacts by LeeLeFever
The Inner Sanctum of a Japanese Teahouse by Okinawa Soba
Toy Train of Japan by El Fotopakismo
Katsura imperial villa 京都 日本 Kyoto-Japan jul/2006 by Freakland
Port of Kobe, Japan by sachman75
Japan Night Time - With Lightings on Road by amar v vora
Mount Fuji, Japan by Samurai Shiatsu
Three Priests and One Umbrella by Okinawa Soba

Thing #9

Adventuring in the sandbox was difficult at first, but it was fun to play in after my wife helped me figure it out. She is the greatest!!! Thanks Hon!!! My sandbox page is Burnt Orange Sand. Why does it always have to be a sandbox, why can't it be a sandcircle?

Thing #8

The first time I heard of the word "wiki" was last year when one of our science teachers mentioned he had set one up for his class. I had no idea what he was talking about but everyone was saying how great it was. I now know what a wiki is and look forward to implementing it into my class. I teach World Geography and this would be a great tool for my students if we could get information about places we are studying from people who actually live there. I am excited about this!

I really liked the Thousands Project this is what opened my eyes into implementing this into my classroom. If we can get responses and hopefully pictures from the places we are studying I believe that my students would become more interested in Geography. Also if the students were able to ask their own questions they would become more personally involved.

Primary Math was fun to see! Different classes from around the world were communicating what they were learning through a wiki, how cool is that? It helps students see that what they are learning is not just going on at there school or just here in the United States but all over the world.

The ability to receive the input from people outside of the classroom is awesome. Turn Homeward, Hannalee shows how this fifth grade class is learning about the Civil War era. It also allows parents and outsiders to view and comment on this class.

Thing #7

I know that it is important to comment when you visit a blog not just for the sake of leaving a comment but to let the blogger know that people are visiting their site. My wife has created a blog for our family so that our families can see what is happening with us and our kids. Both of our families may be visiting to see what is going on in our lives but we don't know because no one has left any comments. This makes us wonder if anyone is reading it.

Thing #6

It was good news to hear that the Dallas Cowboys had traded for Roy Williams, the University of Texas and Odessa Permian standout wide receiver. I had the opportunity to coach Roy when he was younger and have watched him grow up into a great athlete. The one thing that most people do not know about Roy is that he is a very shy person, but you sure couldn't tell it from his demeanor on the field. Welcome home Roy and good luck to you and the Dallas Cowboys!

Wow! The virtual world has taken on a life of its own, not only online but now its consequences are real life ones. A lady in Japan is going on trial for the murder of her online husband's digital persona after he divorced her. You have to read this to believe it.

Thing #5

Three Cheers for failure, a million cheers for honesty! When a student is not performing up to his or her potential how come the question is always asked of the teacher "What are you doing to help this student?" When is the question going to be asked to the student "What can you be doing to pass this class?" School life and real life are not the same, that is why so many students have a hard time in college or when they enter the workforce. Our younger generation is not being prepared for the type of situations that they are going to encounter. They have to find out the hard way that not everyone gets a trophy just for participating. Not everyone gets a promotion just because they show up to work everyday and they deserve it. Reality is harsh and the more we shelter our students from this truth the harder it is going to be on them.

Thing #4

I read a blog about a teacher who did not assign homework. I agree with his assessment of classroom discipline and time management. Many students see homework as points and not practice as Dan says in the blog, this being the case the A and B students will do the work and the lower students will attempt to find one of these students to copy their work to turn in. I do not assign homework in my class because I feel that if a student needs help with an assignment who better to help them then their teacher, ME!

Mark's edtechblog brings a great new way of reading into the classroom. With school districts struggling to keep students up to grade level reading what an innovative way to get them to read. It allows students to read what other students have to say about certain topics and agree or disagree with them. But, in order to pick a side of agreement or disagreement the students will have to research the topic on their own. This gets them reading even more, what a great idea.

Thing #2 - Web 2.0

Web 2.0 what is that? I have heard of other teachers using wikis and my kids have blogs but what are those really? I know that technology can be a great tool to teach kids but how do I incorporate it into my classroom? I know that my students know technology so it is up to me to get myself to their level and let them show me what they can create.
A few questions for myself though on how to get this done:
1. How do I get myself trained to do the things I need to do in my classroom so I can lead the kids?
2. How do I get access to everything I need to put this training to work? If it is what we need to be doing and if this technology can better reach the student how do I make sure I have everything I need to get it going?
3. How do I get around having to override topics three or four times to gain access to certain sites for the students to use?
4. How do I make sure students are only gaining access to topic appropriate sites?
5. How do I incorporate the school district's curriculum, the TEKS/TAKS, and the test taking strategies necessary for the students to pass TAKS into a technology based learning?

Thing #1 - Lifelong Learning

I learned a long time ago that we are always learning. We are either learning the way something is suppose to be done or we are learning the way not to do something. Either way learning is taking place. I have not always been an exceptional student until I learned that the previous statement was true. I have always been observant of the way people do things and the effect it had on others to decide whether I wanted to use that same technique or a different one.

The most challenging of the 7 1/2 habits for me would have to be #4 having confidence as a competent, effective learner. I am afraid of messing things up.

The easiest habit for me is viewing problems as a challenge. I don't believe that there are obstacles in our way but hurdles that we can all get over by trying different methods to overcome those hurdles.

The most important habit is to play. To not be afraid to mess things up because they can be corrected if you do mess them up.