Thing 9

Creating a wiki was fun! My page is called "A Little Discussion About Nothing." It was very easy to set up the wiki and add a video and pictures and a survey and all the other neat little things that are available. I can see a lot of application for wikis. I would really like to work on one for use with assistant principals that would give them a way to share their knowledge and experiences with each other.

One More Thing!

I love this "class." This has been the BEST staff development I've ever taken. I've learned more and enjoyed it more than any other. And it will stick for a couple of reasons. First, because the lessons start out with the blogging and RSSing and just continue using them, they've become second nature. I used to watch the news every morning before work. No more. Now I scan through my Google Reader every morning instead. I find that I'm much more selective about "news" and insist on personalizing the information that comes to me so that it is truly what I want to read and not what someone else wants me to read. The newspaper is often thrown away unread now....I've already read what I want to read of the news online.

Second, I've discovered that there is a tool for everything! And the tool is probably free! Wow. The Internet is sooooo full of interesting and clever tools for us to use. Now when I want to create something or organize something or survey something or whatever, I just search the Internet and find a tool. Amazing.

I would love to continue learning this way. If there is another discovery program like this or a follow up, sign me up. In the meantime, I plan on spending some quality time with the tools. I tried to thoroughly explore, but there often was just not enough time to spend the time I wanted and still keep up. I hope you'll keep the 23 Things listing around for a long time so that I can go back through some of them. Ning is one that I really could spend hours with; and I plan to keep up my Gather groups, at least for awhile.

A huge thank you to Mary and Debbie for putting this together and keeping us going.

Thing 23

I am completely overwhelmed by Ning. It's almost too big. There were lots and lots of samples and examples and suggestions and ways to bring technology to the classrooms. There were so many questions and answers and rants and arguments and ideas and thoughts. If I were a teacher, I'd probably spend all summer exploring and making plans for the next year.

However, Ning is so much like Facebook that I don't see how anyone could keep up with both. Some smart somebody needs to figure out how to put all of these social places in one place so that you just join one, keep up with one, and use one. It's too much the way it is now.

I also spent some time on Gather and joined a few book groups. I've already received some emails from my group about book recommendations and discussions. Pretty interesting.

I may not be social enough for all this social networking!

Thing 7a

Daniel Pink's blog had something very interesting recently. There's a magazine called MINE and you can sign up for a free issue. You personalize it by answering some questions including whether you want a digital copy or a paper copy. Then in five weeks, your personalized copy of MINE comes to you. I signed up! This is the way newspapers and magazines are going to have to change--creating very personal products for readers. There are too many tools available on the Internet that we can use to create our own "readers" for us to waste our time with magazines and newspapers containing information we don't care to read.

I've been following a new blog--a totally silly one. It's called Dispatches from the Island and it's by Jorge Garcia, Hurley on Lost. I love the Hurley character; he's so innocent. Jorge isn't Hurley but he's a lot like Hurley; he's just a big kid delighted with his lot in life. His blog is a hoot.

Another new feed for me is LeaderTalk, "by school leaders for school leaders...the voice of the administrator in this era of school reform." Sometimes the posts are a little wordy, but they are usually thought provoking.

Thing 22

Social networking is a very interesting phenomena. Some people definitely thrive in the social networking environment--posting pictures, commenting on friends' posts, exploring all the issues and fun quirks that places like Facebook have to offer.

It's important not just for educators to know how Facebook works; it's very important for parents to know how Facebook and MySpace work also. What happens on Facebook can easily spill over into school and home. Facebook can become a virtual world in itself and children need to be educated and instructed about how to protect themselves and how to behave in this virtual world.

It's interesting that people feel so free to converse and share their lives in the Facebook environment. "Friends" can be truly one's close friends or can be just acquaintances but both have equal access to you when you post. I'm not yet comfortable with being so open and "out there" for all my friends and others to see; so I rarely post or comment. However, that tends to make me feel a bit like a voyeur--just lurking about reading what other people say but not participating in the conversation.

Facebook has a lot of neat options. I really like the way you can limit what you see from some friends. It's also easy to post pictures and videos. The feature I like the least about Facebook is all the strange little extras like "What kind of shoe would you be" or "Which dog breed would you be" ???? Isn't that a bit strange?? I also think all the parts about causes and the special requests and poking can be a little annoying.

I find Facebook to be a bit more to my liking than MySpace, probably because MySpace just has a younger feel to it. Both are very "busy" places but MySpace seems to almost feel frantic. It also seems to be a bit messier too.

Perhaps I'm just not being open enough, but I don't really see an educational use for these sites. I can't think of anything they can do that other tools don't do better in the classroom. Maybe Facebook and MySpace just need to stay away from the classroom and be social sites for kids. And adults. Not everything needs to be educational.

BTW, click here for my Facebook profile.

Thing 21

Google is an amazing company that provides a wonderful set of tools to play around the Internet. Google Earth is really an amazing product. I loved looking at homes of friends and places of interest. The under sea feature is great too. If I were a geography teacher, Google Earth would be my best friend--what a way to get kids involved and excited.

Another great tool is the IGoogle home page. I've set up my home page with a quiet, peaceful scene (Misty Morning) and all sorts of great gadgets and news feeds. Some of my favorite gadgets are games like Hangman and Soduko and newsfeeds from the BBC and the New York Times. Another great gadget is World Web Cams. IGoogle is a great way to keep my favorite things right at my fingertips.

One Google tool that I found a bit annoying is the Alert feature. There is so much on the Internet about any subject that the alerts just seem to come at an alarming and annoying rate. I pretty quickly disabled the alerts that I'd set.

All in all, though, Google is amazing. I wish I'd bought stock in Google ten years ago!

Thing 20

Google Docs is a great tool that I've been slowly incorporating into work for a while. It's a wonderful tool for creating a collaborative agenda. Each month I start the staff meeting agenda for our instructional group and it's created by all during the month. It makes us all responsible for the agenda and allows us to flex the time we need based on the agenda items.

Another way that Google Docs is useful in our office is as a continuing "chat" about a subject. A document is posted about a topic or a task and all contribute to it as the tasks are completed or questions answered.

A third way we've used Google Docs is with planning. A spreadsheet can be shared between departments and completed as information is discovered or decisions made. People with different information can collaborate without taking the time to meet.

The biggest obstacle to using Google Docs is that not everyone is as committed to them as I'd like. I find that prompting is often needed to get collaborators to remember to contribute. As we use Google Docs consistently, however, that does seem to be getting better.