Epilogue, etc.

OK...I'm starting to get the picture. Maybe I'll get to that relaxed point...clicking through all those tools so efficiently. Meanwhile, I'll just plod along, very slowly!

One last concern, beyond the Web tools, which are the focus of this book, is the hardware. I'm very concerned about the relatively short life of electronic devices and about the raw materials used to make them. About 10 years ago I saw a big pile of old Apple computers piled up in a school basement, and thought about that multiplied many times around the world. I think about the constant innovation and marketing of new devices, rendering previous models obsolete. What happens to the old ones. Are all the components really recyclable? And the manufacturing of devices can be problematic. For example, conflict minerals are still problematic, though I haven't been keeping up with the latest developments. Well, maybe the current crop of brilliant, Web-savvy, motivated, critically-thinking students will come up with solutions to these manufacturing and disposal issues!

OVER AND OUT :)

ch 10 What it all means

I think it will take me a long time to figure out "what it all means." I think if I had some of these tech tools in some of my more...boring classes in high school and college I would have learned, and maybe retained more. It's hard to say.

Yes, I do remember filmstrips. Kids always hoped to be picked to turn the dial to the next frame.

I'm glad kids today still are used to using old-fashioned tools like pencils, pens, paper, books...as well as electronic tools I guess we'll be able to be on the "same page." I won't transition to complete paperlessness (sorry Spell check...I like to make up words once in a while) before I retire, but I think I'm headed toward a good mix of media.

On p. 149: "There were newspapers and magazines, and there were books...but all of these resources required more time and effort than the average student wanted to spend." Well, I think that students still will need to spend a great deal of time and effort to access, sort, evaluate, edit, etc. volumes of information, as well as keep up with new technologies and technology malfunctions. They may be motivated and it may be fun, but I can see that at times they just may not want to spend the time and effort to produce quality work. Maybe I'm thinking more about teachers, like me who will have to spend more and more time planning and organizing engaging lessons. It's almost endless due to so many resources. I'd like to have a social life and engage in other activities unrelated to my profession.

ch. 8 Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, and Live Streaming

Multimedia Publishing for the Masses

I spent so long on this chapter. I tried out some of the sites that are recommended, and had mixed results trying to figure out what's most useful and for what purpose, and which sites/tools are most user friendly.

• Podcasts: Radio Willow Web  Cut idea. Seems simple to do. The URL did not work, but I found it by an Internet search. I could adapt this to do a Spanish radio show. Maybe connect with students in a Spanish-speaking country. Maybe we could use Skype also to connect with those students. I'm very interested in ways to connect my students to the cultures and authentic use of the language.
• I also explored Brent Coley's Web site for his 5th grade class...Very easy to navigate, and loaded with resources for students and for teachers. He explains all the tools he used to set up his site and to publish student work on the site. For example, he (or the art teacher) published student artwork using simpleviewer.net to make a nice gallery of student work. I think the work is taken first from Flickr, so I wonder if we can just use Flickr to do something similar. He also used http://kidblog.org/home/ which looks pretty easy to use, to record comments about books they were reading. Just like we're doing with our book reflection blogs for this class.
• SCREENCASTING This is probably one tool that I'll be able to use immediately. I've already started to play with it using Screencastomatic. Richardson recommends Jingproject.com. I started to look at the site. I wonder if it's easier to use...If I understand correctly, after setting up the screencast, then it still needs to go through screencast.com if you want it published to the Internet.

Chapter 7 Fun With Flickr

This is an inspiring chapter. I'm sooooo disorganized with photos. I (actually, my husband) was good at putting photo prints into albums when my kids were little, but we didn't often caption them. At some point I just started putting them in boxes (but neatly). I just got a digital camera last summer, and am learning how to use it and to upload to my computer. I know...way behind the times. I plan to start a Flickr account and to really start organizing family photos, and sharing with extended family.

I also think Flickr will be helpful for my lesson plan wiki. I plan to transform a lesson plan that I've done in the past with 6th grade. Students pretend to visit one of three cities in Mexico and write a postcard about their trip. They make a poster with the postcard and photos of the city. I'm thinking that Flickr might be helpful for that. Also, maybe they could contact students in those cities and share photos of Foxborough and Mass. with the students in Mexico.

CH 6: The SOCIAL WEB: Learning Together

Twitter:  I 'm thinking of Twitter as RSS or Facebook...on speed, and uncategorized. Tweets just keep on coming. Just like FB and blogs, if you don't keep up, it can be hard to figure out what people are talking about. I think you need to keep scrolling down, then back up to follow a thread, if you're interested in it. I checked out the Twitter Collaboration Stories wiki, recommended on p. 87. Interesting.

Diigo and Delicious seem similar to Pinterest and Houzz combined with my regular browser bookmarking tools (favorites, bookmarks).

CH 5: RSS The New Killer App for Educators

I'm starting to get the idea that this guy is obsessed with getting information! Does he ever just spend a day or two hiking, fishing, canoeing, playing with his kids...unconnected to technology? Would he be frantically trying to catch up with everything when he reconnected? Honestly, do we have to spend all day receiving, organizing, scanning and reading information? Now that I got that out of my system...

I just noticed that my gmail account posts all the comments people have made on my blogs. I had been wondering how I was going to keep track of comments on my blogs, without checking each blog post and clicking on "comments" to find recent comments. Having them listed on my gmail Inbox is convenient.

I decided to try one RSS feed. It's the only way I will begin to understand it and to see the value. I just picked out one of the feeds listed at the end of the chapter: Earthquake Notification. It took me to the Website of the U.S. Geological Survey, Social Media page. It lists a number of topics for RSS feeds, so I opted for the Project Alert Notices. I've signed up, and can see the notices on Google Reader. They mostly relate to the droughts in Nebraska and Georgia. I doubt I'll stay subscribed to this for long, but it was quick and easy...to get the idea. Another time I'll search for material that interests me more.

Chapter 4 Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All

I guess I'm a little more reassured about the reliability of Wikipedia after reading this chapter. But I think the key is that it should not be the only resource, except for the most basic factual information. Since I teach elementary Spanish, I don't expect to have my students getting into in-depth research. They do need to look up facts such as dates of birth & death of famous Hispanics, and other basic information. Wikipedia is good for that. I'm still concerned that they'll come across information that's not appropriate for 10 to 12-year-olds.

I'm interested in learning more about Simple English Wikipedia Simple.wikipedia.org   The text doesn't tell much about it. Is it geared for kids, or for adult English Language Learners? I'll have to check it out to see if it's useful for grades 5-6.

I'm getting an idea about what Wiki I want to set up for my students. It will be a project about three major cities in Mexico. I do the project every year. Students get assigned one of the cities. They find out some basic information about the city, especially the interesting tourist sights. They write a postcard in Spanish to someone at home, using the grammar and vocabulary we've worked on in class. They make a poster with the postcard, and photos of sights in the city. I think the project lends itself to a Wiki and look forward to setting it up.

Chapter 3, Weblogs: Get Started!

I like the suggestion to "start small." I'm developing sympathy for students who struggle to juggle all the work they have to do, and to produce quality work. I feel like I don't have very much that's interesting to say. I like the idea of starting with "posting homework and relevant class links" but I wonder how that would work with TeacherWeb, and if a Wiki page would be better.

Blog safety: Students don't use their real names...No problem. They'll be blogging in Spanish, so they can use their Spanish names.

There's a lot of technical info in this chapter. I'll have to come back to it as needed. I think I'll want to control students' posts before publication, so I should have them save their posts as a "draft" and then I can hit "publish" for them. How will that work with 80+ sixth graders to keep track of?

I checked out the Edublogs Awards site recommended on p.44. Found a blog...I think it's done by an ESL teacher, with reflections and links to videos he used with his classes. I'm not sure how to make URLs linkable (?) but I'll try:   http://allatc.wordpress.com/    Pretty complex use of a blog. I can see it will take time for me to get more adept at this.

Chapter 3 (False start)

Just testing out the language feature on Blogger. I changed the language to Hebrew, so all the commands, menus, etc. are in Hebrew. This post is coming out in English, but it's being printe from right to left! OK. Not too useful. I'll try switching to Spanish another time. Might be useful for my purposes right now as a Spanish teacher. Now I have to figure out which button is "publish" and how to switch back to English

Chapter 2 Weblogs-Pedagogy and Practice

Questions I had as I read this: Are Class portal, blackboard, wiki all the same/similar thing? University of New Hampshire has a blackboard which includes a Parent Portal. It's just clicking on different topics to get answers, but I don't think there's a way to post things, so it's not really interactive. I guess I'll figure out what these things are as I move along with the readings and the classes.

I think it would be great to have a Weblog for the Foxborough World language teachers to share ideas and ask/answer questions. Before I knew about blogs, I was thinking about the online bulletin board concept. I wonder if that bulletin board idea is the same as a blog. Anyway, I'm wondering if this World Languages blog idea could work as a group goal for the new Foxboro evaluation program. But I'm a little overwhelmed by all I have to do, and also it gets complicated trying to connect with the staff. Also, they may already have decided on their goals. Well, perhaps for next year, with more time to plan.

Chapter 1 The Read/Write Web

I actually was pretty interested in a lot of the information in this chapter, especially the history of the WWW, Mosaic Web Browser, etc. It's amazing to me how fast the technology has developed. I remember using "Ask Jeeves" to search for information. Seems like ages ago. I imagined thousands/millions of people sitting at computers, searching for information to answer every individual question!

Some concerns/questions that came up as I read this chapter:

• What is RSS (answered later--now I know)
• I was interested that Microsoft and IBM are actually responding to users' comments in order to improve products. I wonder if they'll figure out a way to add an "end" or " Shut down" button next to the "start" button, to be more clear about how to shut down.
• I'm concerned about people's work spreading around the Internet without attribution. I have often been sent by email an entertaining piece about the the Rosh HaShanah tradition of throwing bread crumbs into a body of water to discard sins. There has never been an attribution. I know the author, and feel that his name should always accompany that piece.
• Concerned about balancing the safety of children with benefits of publishing work. Need to learn more about this.