Thing #10 Creative Commons

In all honesty I have never noticed the Creative Commons logo on a website. Personally I probably would have thought that the CC logo meant Closed Captioning. LOL I think CC should impact the way students learn and create projects, but I don't think students respect copyrights very much when working on school projects. I know my daughter used whatever resources she liked when she was developing a photo story for Aquatic Science. I use digital images and audio quite often in teaching to build background knowledge for my students, and I've never considered it to be a copyright violation since it was for educational purposes. As far as ownership of my own self-created teaching materials, I feel as though they are my property. Anything I have bought belongs to the person who created it. Potential negatives for CC might be confusion. Some users might not understand which materials and which are CC.

Thing #9 Sandbox!

Playing in the Sandbox was cool. I had already contributed to a wiki on that site before during my master's degree classwork. It was relatively simple. The only difficulty I encountered was the table of contents. On the set of instructions I had, toc was not double bracketed. As a result, my table of contents wouldn't set up properly. Once I read another set of instructions and it showed the double brackets, I was good to go!

My favorite part was embedding photos of my darling daughter, The Hog Princess.

If your interested in visiting my page in the MISD 23 Things wiki, here's the link:

Razorback Mom!

Thing #8 Stretch!

I explored Birthers on Wikipedia because there I watched a segment on the O'reilly Factor about them. I had know idea that people who dispute President O'bama's country of birth had an actual name. Well of course under the "discussion" there were several questions regarding the title of the article. The actual question was, "Isn't the use of the terms "conspiracy theories" and "fringe" in the article title and body a violation of Wikipedia's policy on neutrality?" Of course I expected to see controversy since this is a controversial subject. The history tab had over 500 revisions listed on it, with the latest occurring just yesterday.

Thing #8

The wikis were very interesting! I particular liked the Salute to Seuss wiki. It was not particularly user friendly on the home page. Although I should have seen that coming since there was an explanation of how to find student work under the link on The 23 Things page. Once I did start navigating around the sight, WOW! It was a collaboration of many different schools and the projects were fantastic! (Movies, Powerpoint games, etc!)

Schools in the Past was cute but not too fancy schmancy. Just a long running list of comments from interviews conducted by the 1st grade students.

Go West was the most user friendly, as far as being able to discern what the different links were for. It was a great example of using students' writing.

Thing #7 Commenting!

I have a personal blog other than the one I've created for The 23 Things and it has never had a comment posted on it. Which is probably for the best since so many people post such stupid mindless things sometimes. On my personal blog, I must approve your comment before it is published anyway. When I posted to one blog in particular, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, I noticed that the author has obviously done the same thing. My post did not publish immediately.

Thing #6 An Appropriate Feed for this Stage in My Life

I subscribed to the Cool Cat Teacher feed and didn't find educational insight, but insight into life itself. The article Look for the Happiness Drain and PLUG IT! was appropriate for the stage of my life that I'm going through. The author instructed readers to stay away from people who are never happy and suck the happiness from your life. The author puts some people in the unconditional column; children and spouses. She says that you must listen to their rantings. Others she says you should distance yourself from in order to avoid their poison.

Thing #5-RSS Feeds & Google Reader

I subscribed to the NY Times US Education feeder in Google Reader. While perusing the latest feeds, I came across an article about schools administering Swine Flu vaccines to students in the NYC School District. The article was entitled, City to Start Vaccinations for Swine Flu in Schools. I found it interesting that even though Texas has had more confirmed cases of swine flu that we are not implementing the same procedure here.

Thing #2 - Thoughts about Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has completely changed how we access the web. It's amazing how easily now written content can be displayed on the internet. You know longer have to memorize HTML codes and such. Just click, write, and publish!

Web 2.0 have revolutionized how students can access and complete assignments. This year I have decided to create a blog for classroom which will list daily assignments, contain pictures of classroom activities, and links to informational sites which will enrich the classroom curriculum.

Because students today are "digital natives", they feel at extremely comfortable with technology. using technology in the classroom is not the struggle it was in the beginning of my career, because students are now computer literate. As part of a novel unit, I would like for my class to create a wiki. I think students would truly enjoy contributing to it. I also think it would enhance the learning process and perhaps spark their interest a bit more.

As part of classes for my Master's Degree, I had to create and publish my own blog and wiki. The tools of Web 2.0 have already impacted and supported my own learning.

Thing #1 - Reflections on Lifelong Learning

I definitely think that Lifelong Learner describes me. Learning is a something I've strived to do all my life. For me, I get such a feeling of satisfaction when I've mastered a new skill. Lifelong Learning is a quality/attribute that I've tried to instill in my daughter also. Through out her childhood, I worked hard to present her varied learning experiences in order to show her that learning is not just a classroom experience, but takes place anywhere.

The habit that will be most difficult for me to employ as part of my Learning 2.0 experience would be Habit 7, taking the time to mentor or teach others. My job of course is to mentor and teach others, so I'm sure your wondering why I would choose this one? If the teaching and mentoring refers to adults, then I would fall short of the mark. At this point in my life, I am so overwhelmed with pursuing Administrator's Certification, planning lessons for my students, and traveling to watch my daughter play soccer for the University of Arkansas that I hardly have time to interact with adults in my workplace.

The Habit which is most easy for me would be Habit 4, to remain confident in myself as a competent, effective learner. Learning has never truly been a struggle for me, and I've always believed that given enough time and practice; I could master just about anything.

The Habit that will be the most important for me as I work through this course would be Habit 1: Begin with the End in Mind. Finding the time to complete each Thing has been a huge ordeal for me. I am currently taking an ILD class on-line and the amount of work in it has overwhelmed me. I spend most of my extra time posting on the Region XII site for that class and completed the at least 5 assignments that I have per week. Whew, I feel better after grumping about that!! lol

Thing #4 Response to SSR 2.0

When I read Mark Edtech's blog, I found myself in agreement with him about how my reading habits have also changed as a result of technology. I no longer read the newspaper. I read my news on-line. Although I have not given up books, reading books on-line seems to be the growing trend; think Kindle.

Mark stated that his students were extremely receptive to the idea of blogs. As a matter of fact he states that, "The classroom was the quietest and most focused I have seen in a long time during silent reading." This is definitely an idea that I would like to try with my students.