Thing 23...I made it!

What a fun, engaging adventure! I can't believe how many valuable tools and resources I have acquired over the course of a few weeks. I went into this thinking it would be a lot of review of things I already know. Boy, was I ever wrong.

With each Thing I found myself becoming more and more confident in my technological abilities. Now I know who to navigate around these sites instead of just knowing the sites by name. Playing around on Web 2.0 has peaked my interested and I hope to learn even more, which will in turn help my students learn more effectively.

I am so eager to try some of these new things in my class. My students are going to love online videos, playing around with pictures, and maybe even creating a classroom book via a wiki! I have already been sharing these resources with my cousin, a second grade teacher. I will be encouraging her, along with others, to use this easy to use technology in their rooms. What a wonderful way to engage and enhance students learning!

Thing 22

To be honest, I really don't have any experience with You Tube. Our internet connection at home is slow so I've never really bothered. However, I have used various video clips, from the web, in my classroom. My kindergarten class was doing a unit on weather so we watched various tornadoes, thunderstorms and blizzards. The students took it all in....it was a very engaging learning experience.

After digging around on TeacherTube I know I definitely will utilize this site. I liked the fact that the site contained more than just video clips, but documents and photos. I printed out a few of the documents that related to skip counting and other ways to teach math concepts. I plan to use those this fall. I also feel that using SchoolTube will be a more efficient way to find video clips for various science and history lessons. I love to incorporate a variety of learning styles into each lesson. I think that watching video clips really meets the needs of my visual and auditory learners when appropriate. If I am brave enough I might enough attempt posting a video of my own students learning to read (with parent permission). I guess I will need to find out if our school allows YouTube.

Thing 21

I'm not sure what I think about Twitter. Most of my friends are on Facebook these days. However, doing a few searches on Twitter today and watching the video has definitely peaked my interest. I like that I can see what my friends are doing on my personal page and the fact that it is quick and easy updates. On the other hand, I don't have a phone with internet and our internet at home is not high speed. Not sure how that would play into how much Twitter would be used. It seems that Twitter is something that would be most beneficial/interesting if you could check it frequently.

So, I've been brainstorming how Twitter might help at school. I can see myself posting something if I needed help with an activity, project or wanting a new lesson idea. Hopefully colleagues would be checking their "Tweets" and would be able to respond. I also see that I can type in a project title in the Twitter Search bar and get a variety of results. Some results were different websites....which I definately might add PLN.