Thursday, April 29, 2010

Thing 23- The Journey Continues

As I go back and review the different topics that I have learned about over the last few months, I am blown away with the new things I have tried. This was the perfect introduction to a lot of possible resources. Now my job is to go back and explore the ones I feel will be most useful to my students. As I said in a previous blog, I need to rethink how I am going to teach my curriculum, and Web 2.0 gives me endless avenues.
I believe this is the "theme" of this class- to "rethink" . In the last 18 years, how students learn has changed dramatically. If I am going to reach my students, I must change too. They don't need to memorize as much information, but they need ways to manage and process it.
I need to make sure I do not get overwhelmed. I have a tendency to want to do everything at once. I need to start small and expand as I get better with the technology. I appreciate the fact we can revisit these resources and videos even after we are done with the course.
Next week I am going to have the students start writing stories on the wiki. I also want to create a wiki book review page. I plan on keeping up with my bloglines and podcasts.
Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

Thing 22

Yeah, I did it! Creating a wiki was fun and easy. I am going to have my 2 advanced English classes write a continuous story. I am giving them each a day that they must log on and add to the story.
It should be fun. They will be my test rats. My Wiki is called davidisonmiddleschool. The link is

https://davidsonmiddleschool.wikispaces.com/space/notify?responseToken=f14aea9b41d57e81b44bfd6b0f8d951f

I think a blog would be used more with a single author, and a wiki has the advantage of being edited by multiple users.

Thing 21

I loved looking at the Wiki's that different classrooms made. The Comparing Hemispheres one blew me away. It was such a simple format to explain hard to get science laws. I could tell the kids really understood. I wonder how long it took to make and plan that wiki.
I think this would be an awesome tool. I already have a plan to work with the librarian next week and make a wiki on which students can upload audio book reviews from the library. She is setting it up and I am providing the students and then we are taping together. I would like to continue this each trimester and expand it to my teaching website.
I also see the potential to create 2 other wikis. My sister is a Kindergarten teacher in Indiana, I would like to set up something with them, or my own children go to school in my didstrict. Maybe their teachers would like to collaborate on something.
The 2 major stumbling blocks I see are the use of computer labs in our school and time. Lab time is at a premium at our school. Also, because our school district went to Trimesters, I need to add our already existing curriculum into the wikis instead of creating more.

Thing 20

Well I guess I jumped the gun. Yesterday, I subscribed to the College Humor Podcasts and the Fresh Air Podcasts. I also used both the EPN and the Podcast Alley to search for podcasts. I thought EPN was harder to use than Podcast Alley. I had a harder time using keywords with that one. With further exploration, I found an audio podcast called "Mugglecast" because I love Harry Potter. It is produced by a young man that lives in LaPorte In where my sister lives, who created an early and famous amateur website. I even logged on and am listening to it as I type this. :)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Thing 19

I have used podcasts before, mostly through Resa. I thought that the Resa video was very informative.
As I was searching for podcasts, I was on educational overload, so I searched for things that I would enjoy instead of things for my classroom. I remember riding in the car with my Dad as he listened to NPR and I always liked the Fresh Air program. When I googled Podcasts: NPR was one of the sites that came up so I copied the link to that. http://www.npr.org/templates/rss/podlayer.php?id=1090

I also used itunes to search and subscribed to one called College Humor Originals which takes pop culture and satirises it. It was very funny. Pokeman- Gotta Buy them All was one of my favorites.

My goal is to develop a podcast lesson plan for my Advanced Language Arts Classes next year as a pilot. This year one of my students won a national essay contest sponsored by Samsung and 5 new mini camcorders were delivered to my room today!!! Another coincidence.

Thing 18 Slideshow

5 Common Grammar Mistakes


Five fatal mistakes in English usage
View more presentations from mumphrey.

This looks very beneficial to me for my classroom. I use powerpoint a lot for presentations and notetaking.

Thing 17

I joined Library Thing. This is a widget from the site.


The Library is a Personal Online Book Shelf. I love it. It catalogs the books into personal categories, tags books and allows the user to look at other user tags, shows clouds, has ratings and book reviews, and member forums. It is very easy to add books and categorize them. (I added 3) It is also easy to create a widget.The only thing I had trouble following was the "conversations". They have many called book clubs or reading groups but because they were written in blog form, it was hard to follow. I bookmarked this in delicious too.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Thing 16

I am not sure how I would use google docs in my classroom. I think I could use it to edit a newletter or news paper. The kids would use their emails, I think at my level most have their own. Students could also save their own research paper on their and then edit it from home and school network.
I think I like the blogging comments better right now, but would like to explore it more.

Thing 15

I have changed my feeds about every other day. I like to use it, but it is not an obsession yet. I found a new blog- Fox Trot. I love that cartoon and I miss my Free Press everyday.

Thing14

Wow! Delicious is awesome! I really thought it was easy to set up, use, and search. I really liked the way you could search other people's tags. I found a few people that had similar tags and than looked at the sites they went to. My user name is bhinzmann.
I found a website for the historical fiction book I am using in class, book lists, and grammar games. Everyone hates grammar, so I am always looking for games.
As a coincidence, the professional development at my school yesterday was presented by our media specialists. They introduced us to M.O.R.E., Michigan Online Resources for Education, http://more.mel.org/index.php.
This is a resource that searches websites by the Michigan Standards and GLECES. Incredible! The only drawback with this website is that you can't look at other people's bookmarks. So, I combined the best of both worlds and bookmarked sites on here in my delicious account.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Thing 13

I think that social bookmarking has a lot of positives. I am often using 2 different computers-1 home and 1 at school. My bookmarks are very unorganized and I have a hard time finding what I save. I also like the idea of using the findings of others to find beneficial sites. This seems especially important in education when I am trying to find resources for my students.

Thing 12

As I mentioned, I really want a new puppy. So... since I can't have one, I decided to have a cyber one.

Get the bunnyhero puppy widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)

I also thought this one was great for me as a middle school English Teacher.
Get the Grammar Girl Quiz widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)


I found this Thing really fun. There are so many cute ideas that I love and would really be interesting for my students. The are going to love the Poll Daddy.

Thing 11

Commenting is harder than I thought. Up until I read my articles, all my comments were "That is funny" , "I agree","Great job on your entry" types. I do think that this is important too. I feel as a new blogger, I would love the reassurance of my "readers" to keep me going. This activity did get me to read some more of the participants blogs. I do think "community" is important in education. I have never thought of community on the internet. I am not a face book user. Now I am starting to see how communities can be could be built in the technology world.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Thing 10

I embeded a video very easily, but I couldn't figure out the download version on any of the 3 sites. I tried, and tried, and tried. It was very frustrating. It kept giving me an error message saying there was no video link found on that site. I am going to try again tomorrow at school. However, we do have access to youtube and the other is so much easier, I am going to stick with that.

That is the part I always dread with technology. It seems like every time I feel like I can do something, I catch a glitch and seem to be spinning my wheels. I get very frustrated when I can't figure out something that seems easy.

Teenage Affluenza

I saw this video on a classmates blog and was fascinated by it. I believe every teen needs a dose of reality. (and many adults too)




Hope you enjoy it!

Thing 9

At our school, only teachers can use youtube and this is the first year we can. The district has made a site where teachers can post useful videos for students called Titantube. This helps eliminate suggestive or unacceptable material. There is a lot out there that can be accessed. I loved the teacher comedy sketch you recommened called What do I make? I watched a video on Rube Golberg and commented on that. It is a very cool contest that we had our 7th graders do many years ago.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Thing 8


This is some of my daughters friends on her cheer squad. She will love the magazine maker and the mashed up images. This would be good for the students in my class to use and then do creative writing with it. They all love to take pictures of themselves and their friends.

Thing 7

For some reason, this was supposed to be really easy and I got stuck and frustrated several times. First I tried to do it at school and I couldn't figure out how to get the cookies to work. Then when I did it at home, I was having trouble with the tags and getting my pictures to come up with the tags at RESA23. I finally got it. I am not sure how I feel about the Flickr. I found it hard to search, and I am still having some internal private/public issues I have not resolved.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Thing 6


I chose this picture from flickr because I thought it was really interesting and reminded me of me. I often have piles of books that drive my husband crazy... I don't have that many classics though. Mysteries are my favorite. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is my latest find. I also spent a lot of time searching yellow lab puppies because I badly want one, but couldn't decide on which was the cutest.

Thing 5

I thought Thing 5 was easy, thank goodness. I use Firefox and dragging it to the bookmark bar was easy. I subscribed to the English Stop and The Magical Middle School Blog from the 23 Things and a blog that my godchild created. I am going to browse around for more. This will really help with time management.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Thing 4

RSS is an awesome tool. I feel like I can totally manage the blogs on bloglines. I am one of the few that is not on facebook, and the primary reason is I was scared away by the amount of time some people seem to spend on it. I was getting an anxious feeling when I was exploring all the blogs from Thing 3. I will definitely like finding a few that I like and just checking the new information. This is an awesome way to keep up with my students blogs too.

Thing 3

As a Middle School English Teacher, I saw endless ways I could use my blog to interact with students. I see this as a wonderful way to get reluctant students to write, they don't realize they are writing. Besides as an informational tool for parents and students, my top ideas were to use my blog as a creative writing prompt, book reviews, interview tool, to showcase student writing, and for the students to comment on issues important to them.
I really liked the Hobo Teacher site, Gus the Teacher, and the High School Journalism Site. I had a hard time telling if they were written by the students or the teachers on some. Also, what is the copyright issue for items posted on a blog- can you pull things off of other sites if you credit the source? Is everything teacher /student original work?
I also found that I was drawn to the shorter blogs, the more elaborate or long, I tended to loose interest. The ones with the simplest designs, pulled me in further to explore. When I went back to my Thing 1 and 2 I realized I was rather long winded...

Friday, March 19, 2010

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I have always felt I was pretty competent on the computer until I watched the video and read the article in Thing 1 and realized how much I really don't know how to do. I have been relying on my 10 year old daughter to help me when I get stuck with programs, which really emphasizes the need for me to take this class. I teach 8th grade English which I find kids either love or hate it. If I can use some of the technology in my classroom, I am hoping to get more to move over to the love side. My librarian was sharing with me the idea of using Wikis to make book reviews. That would really be something that I am eager to learn how to do.
I am a little nervous about remembering all the things we are going to learn, but excited also. I am getting a late start due to the typical school flu that went through my family of 6. But now I plan to dive in and hopefully swim rather than sink. I got hung up a little because I couldn't remember my gmail account user name and password and if wasn't attached to my email. Oh swell, I thought, but I got it done.
Thing 2 was pleasantly easier than I expected. Thank goodness. I am hoping that looking at the other members of the class's blogs spots will be inspiring to me. The idea of the whole learning community collaborating that was presented in the 2.0 article was a dream to aspire to. I feel educators need to "use" each other to cut down on the work load. I know there is an endless supply of information that I can use in my classroom, I just don't know where to find it. Hopefully, this course will help me find them.