Voice Threading

I realized that I forgot to let you know my thoughts about Voice Threading (no, I am just really addicted to blogging). I enjoyed working through the process to add my voice thread to the collection that Sandy established for us. Voice Threading can be extremely helpful in getting sutdents to reflect about their learning. Reflection is part of the learning experience that we have such a difficult time fitting into our school day. I can envision teachers presenting an essential question about a topic that was just researched and studied and allowing students to contribute a Voice Thread as a way of finding time to reflect. I am very excited about this option for both our students and for us as educators (reflecting on our teaching practice).

Not Even Near The End of the Journey

The exposure and challenge that we have experienced through this Web 2.0 course has been tremendous. Our journey has just been introduced to us. The rest of our journey will depend on each of our: vision, attitude, passion, persistance, and patience (many of the qualities we expect from our students). We are presented with a greater learning curve than the students we teach when it comes to Web 2.0 tools and skills. I feel it is my responsibility as an educator to think often about the future of learning and how I can best be prepared to serve my students and colleagues (in my PLNs and/or PLCs). We are going to need each other more than ever to continue on our journey. My hope in continuing my own journey is to find time each day to learn and practice/use more of what I have been exposed in this course (I don't think 10 minutes is going to do it). Making some of the tools and skills from this course part of the professional learning communities that I will contribute to this year will definitely be a priority. This is an exciting time for education and all who are involved. I am psyched about taking this journey with anyone who reads this.

Presentation Tools

I find the options that Sandy introduced us to as very good resources and options for creating presentations. Slideshare is amazing to have a resource where an unbelieveable amount of slideshows on such a vast number of topics are available for use (it would be cool if we could make our own contributions to this site at some as well). There has to be something that can be used in our classrooms at this site to make learning more visible and interactive for our students as well as make our teaching have more of an impact for more students (perhaps a good differentiation resource). Using 280 slides to create a presentation seemed easy enough on the first go around. I did take a decent amount of time to create my presentation, but most of that time was spent exploring what 280 slides has to offer as well as figuring out how to embed it onto my blog (which never happened). You can find my slide show presentation on my Diigo bookmarks page. I can see where 280 slides would be a more streamlined presentation tool for our students because the options for the details are more limited than Power Point, but it offers enough creative options (picture, video, etc. download options)to make your presentation imppressive. I had a great deal of fun exploring and creating.

Glogster

Although I knew what Glogster was and was impressed when I was first exposed to it, I didn't know how much fun it would be to create a glog. As I expected once I got started, it was going to take me time to look at all of the creative options that would make my glog look the way I thought it should look. Glogs can offer many options for students in the classroom. They will need some careful guidance so that it won't take them as long as it took me. I just had to see everything that was available. In our effort to make learning visible as a means of differentiation, Glogster provides a viable option. Even though I took more time than necessary to create my glog, it is very easy to use. I look forward to seeing our students can do when given the opportunity to create a glog.

Collaboration Tools

This was a fun one! Wiggio sounds interesting. I would like to explore Wiggio to see if it is something that I can use to help my digital life run more efficiently. WallWisher was a neat forum to be able to get others thoughts on a subject. It was easy enough to contribute to. I would have to go through the process of creating my own wall to see if it would be a tool that I could use, but it was fun to be part of the conversation. I am also curious about how Twitter works and how the one individual got so many replies from a tweet on his WallWisher wall/board (wherever you call it - I haven't quite got all the lingo down yet). The other collaboration tool I am extremely interested in learning to use for many reasons (professional and personal) is Skype. I had quite a bit of exposure to Skype this summer. I got to chat with and/or see my daughters boyfriend daily as they Skyped. They also played all kinds of online games against each other while skyping. They had a great time. I also met the boyfriend's parents on Skype. It was an interesting event. This is what I mean when I say our children are living in the digital age. Those of you who have younger children may be experiencing it in a different way because you have some say in how technology plays out for them right now. It won't be long before you will depend on technology to keep you connected to your children and their world. Last but not least Whiteboard was a fun and easy forum to participate in.

animoto

I felt very much at home playing with Animoto. It that whole thing about being having fun with picutres I have taken. I definitely plan on doing more with Animoto in the future. It was so easy. I did get a bit caught up in selecting the "right" music. It was worth it when I viewed the results. Kerpoof looked like alot of fun as well, but was going to take more creative brain power than I had at the moment. Kerpoof will definitely be fun to use with the kids. I could really see Kerpoof bringing some of their creativity to the surface, and giving the kids a vehicle to show what they are capable of. This tool could could also be a motivator for those students that may be a bit tentative. The entire aspect of digital storytelling has the potential to really give some options to some kids that we haven't tapped into yet because they are not cofident with their skill to tell or write stories (or much of anything). I look forward to seeing what our kids can do (and our teachers too).

Online Writing

Today I had the adventure of exploring online writing options. The only exposure I have had to online writing is through my daughter Ciara who enjoys contributing to one of the fanfiction sites. My favorite sites were: Slice (I am not sure where I found this site), Comic Creator 2.0, and We Tell Stories. Slice gets you to follow the story using Web 2.0 tools (such as blog sites and twitter) which I thought was a clever way to integrate the use of these tools. We Tell Stories used a variety of tools such as google maps to help you follow the characters movement in the story. Comic Creator 2.0 was the site that I played with the most to create a comic tribute to my husband the all the moving he has done to get our daughters to where they need to be at this point in their lives. The comic is called "Moving Man". I was able to save it to my documents, but it did not print out in its entirety. The only things that printed were the captions. It was alot of fun. I also saw a section on creating your personal narratives which is something I have become insterested in recently. There was some discussion about the importance of developing your personal narrative with respect to our profession at the Harvard Institute for the Future of Learning. I think the kids would enjoy using some of these online writing sites for some of their assignments.