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.

Flickr

Here are my thoughts about Flickr and all that it has to offer: Anything having to do with playing with the pictures I have taken is always a great deal of fun for me. I also like the fact that you can access pictures easily to enhance a presentation. My frustration with all that Flickr has to offer is that it is a bit overwhelming (so much and where do you begin). You really could spend all summer (or all year) playing with all of the options. Needless to say, I have spent about 2 hours on three of the toys (trading cards, maps, & slideshows). My other frustration is that I wanted to share it with you and haven't been able to figure it out (YET!). I think Flickr will be fun to use with our students. Maybe we can each become an expert with one Flickr tool/toy that we like and teach each other? The one thought I had about classroom use was when I was playing with the maps on Big Huge Labs was that the children could trace their family roots using the maps as a visual. These maps can be used to track their travel or to track the travel of a character in a novel. So much to do and so little time (sigh).

I'm back

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am headed home and will no longer be MIA. I have a had a worldwind 2 weeks: wonderful time with family and amazing faculty development. The first faculty development opportunity took place in Atlanta, GA at The Westinster schools attending a workshop on developing and sustaining professional learning communities with 6 of our colleagues (representing all 3 divisions). The workshop was great (and I would love to share what i learned with whomever is interested in knowing about professional learning communities), but the time spent with our amazing colleagues was just as wonderful. I am in the process of returning from Boston where I had the opportunity of participating in Harvard's Graduate School of Education Future of Learning Institute. The was another unforgetable experience that has changed me forever. Just to give you an idea of what I experienced, I spent 2 hours each day with my assigned learning group of about 16 people. In our group of 16, 11 countries were represented. The topics we focused on were globalization, the digital revolution, and mind/brain research (the biologocal revolution. We were in a fairly inimate setting on Harvarvard's campus with Howard Gardner, David Perkins, Chris Dede, David Rose, Kurt Fischer, and other renowned experts in various fields that address the topics mentioned previously. It was truly an experience of a life time. You will hear from me alot this coming week because I alot to do to complete our Web 2.0 class. Enjoy your coming week. See you soon!

My first introduction to Wordle was this past school year where students that I was working with after school had Wordle as an option for homework in practicing their spelling words. Needless to say I was in awe and thrilled to be able ot learn from my students. My immediate thought once I was able to spend time playing with Wordle was to make personalized gift art. After investigating some of the sites that Sandy provided links for in our assignment, I began to think about Wordle in a broader sense. I realized that Wordle could be used for any subject or topic where a visual representation of an idea/concept might impact or make an impression on the individual who is on the receiving end of the visual (whether it be the individual who creates the Wordle or the inidvidual who the Wordle was created for). Some of the ideas I really gravitated to were:

• Character Education (i.e. personal self esteem poster where everyone contributes something positive to say about a classmate and you are really able to see what positive traits are most noticed about an individual)
• Language Arts - word walls, list important ideas in a passage, summarizing skills, pre-reading predictions, character trait analysis, vocabulary
• Content Areas: compare and contrast, defining characteristics, vocabulary, summarizing skills, polls

I would also use a Wordle for problem solving and critical thinking. Inidivduals could create Wordles and the group would then have to decide why a particular Wordle was created and/or what purpose would it serve. You could also ask those who are studying the Wordle "How would you change the Wordle and why?" Depending on the group, I might provide varying criteria for each person to consider when creating their wordle.

Web 2.0 is the next generation (2nd generation) of World Wide Web products that (simply put) facilitates: communication, sharing information, and collaboration (among more technical practices). An interesting piece of trivia that I came across during my exploration is that "Web 2.0" has been declared the 1,000,000th English word or phrase by the Global Language Monitor.
Three important things that I learned about 21st Century Learners is:

• we are all 21st century learners (even my 85 and 88 year old parents)
• we are all better multi-taskers than we were 5 years ago because we are all 21st Century Learners
• the older generation of 21st Century Learners will need to expect shorter attention spans due to fast response times which are a result of the younger generation of 21st Century Learners being so connected to unlimited amounts of information.

What will we do? We will adjust, but we better do so quickly!

The 21st Century Skills that will help the digital natives meet with success and the digital immigrants acclimate are:

• creativity and innovation
• communication & collaboration
• critical thinking & problem solving resulting in decision making
• research & information fluency

BPS Web 2.0 Exploration

While you are exploring, be sure to check out an 8 minute video titled Digital Youth Portrait: Jalen. One way you can access it is by going to the Task One--Exploring page that we placed on our desktops. From there, scroll down to where the question "What are 21st Century Skills?" is asked. Go to the suggested site regarding this question. The last tab on the left hand side of this page is titled Snapshots. The video is on the page you access when you click on Snapshots. This video provided me with a great reference of what the possibilities are when learning in the core academic subjects and 21st century tools come together for a perfect union called 21st century skills.