Thing 16

I watched the videos and agree that there need to be some changes in the way things are done in education. I am trying to become a more flexible teacher in that I am little by little giving my students options for alternative assessment. Next week I am moving out of my textbook and teaching the concepts from the chapter on collecting, displaying and analyzing data in the computer lab. My students will be collecting data in the next few days and will be utilizing spreadsheets to create various charts and graphs. They will be doing some internet research and for the first time in my 10 years of teaching I will be having my students turning in a paperless assignment. I did basically the same project last year in that the students made their graphs on the computer but then they glued them to posterboard and made mediocre visual displays with colored pencils and markers. Because we don't have the resources for all of the kids to print in color all their work was in black and white. I am hoping that by moving the final project from posterboard to powerpoint the students will get more out of it in the long run. I think the full implementation of Web 2.o in my school is something that will take some time but I see it in the not so distant future.

Thing 15

Podcasts in the classroom? I can see their merit and I can see using them in my room I just need to get it figured out logistically. Some kids have ipods or other MP3 players but I'm not sure they would go home and download math podcasts. I only have one computer in my classroom and it is my teacher workstation. I think one option would be go get a handful (or maybe a class set) of the little thumb drive/MP3 player combos that are out there relatively cheap and to load them with a bunch of good math podcast stuff. This would only work for audio podcasts though and there are a ton of excellent video podcasts out there as well. Math is a very visual subject so idealy video ipods would be the best plan. That would cost a lot of money though which is not readily availlable. I might just need to write a grant next year to see if I can't get some equipment to pull this off. As far as getting puchback from administration goes, I don't see it being too much of a problem at this point. Especialy since they brought Ron Houtman it as our last PD presenter to talk about the importance of the use of technology in the classroom. I think the administration is ready for the shift in technology I think they just don't know how to make it happen yet.
So, yeah I can see podcasts playing a role in my classroom. I just don't know exactly how just yet.

Thing 14

I found a podcast (which I will not list here by name to protect those who created it.) It sortof reminded me or the car talk guys on NPR but they were talking about teacher technology stuff. Podcasts were long and sound quality were bad. It really took a very long time to actually get to the technology I'm also fairly certain that the f-bomb was dropped under the breath of one of the podcasters. This one was listed as a professional development podcast for educators.

I was much happier once I found the NPR education podcast site. http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1013 I enjoy listening to NPR but have very little time in the car since I have a short communte in the morning and NPR is not always the best content for my kids, ages 4 and 6.

I found one called Math Dude and I have to say to I just love it! Great video podcasts teaching a wide range of math concepts. Very well done! I will definitly be passing this one on to the rest of the math staff in my building as well as our high school.
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/itv/MathDude/index.shtm

Found another great math site with podcasts http://mathfactor.uark.edu/ It is a brief, weekly conversation and puzzle, airing on KUAF 91.3 FM, Fayetteville Arkansas. You can send anwers, qeustion , puzzles, or cash to mathfactor@uark.edu

This site is not a podcast site but one that was mentioned in a math factor podcast I listened to. The site is http://coolnumbers.com/ At this site you enter a number and it calculates how "cool" the number is. You'll have to check it out to see for yourself. No real educational value but it is fun.

I can see using some of these podcasts in my class in the future. The audio podcasts may be harder to use since the kids may not want to sit and listen as they are mostly visual learners but I did like many of the video podcasts.

Thing 13

For this task I decided to kill two birds with one stone and work on something that I will be using with my 7th grade math classes next week. I created a powerpoint presentation that gives the requirements for a presentation the students will be creating. It's nothing fancy. No clip art or anything just a slide by slide outline for the kids to follow. I'l planning on putting it in a "pick up" folder on our school file server that all the kids can get to. The game plan is that they will then hand it in to a "turn in" folder where I can get them and grade them. The slide share version of this presentation will prove useful for students who are absent. I can post this on my class blog and will also be able to email it to parents and students if necessary.

Chapter 7 Project

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Thing 12

I spent some time today looking at the tools listed on the "Thing 12" list. I will be reviewing the ones I spent a little more time on.

• bubbl.us brainstorm online with this free, concept mapping tool
  This looked like the graphic organizer program Inspiration that we have at our school. I can see where it could be useful to ELA teachers since they could use it to diagram stories and plot lines. I can see where it could be useful to compare and contrast int Social Studies or again ELA. In math we don't do a lot of comparing or contrasting. Mostly we do stuff on paper with pencils and erasers because that is how math is. Math is hard to type. It takes a lot longer to type math than it does to write it so I don't see myself using this one much in my own professional or personal life.
  
• Zoho Show create, edit and share your presentations online
  I signed up for an account and found that is was almost identical to Google Docs. I think it would be redundent to use Zoho and Google Docs. I noticed that Zoho had a built in wiki which is a nice feature. Seems again like something I don't nee though at this point since I already have my pbwikis set up.
  
• Slideshare create, edit and share your presentations anywhere
  I signed up for an account and did some looking around. Seemed a lot like YouTube but with PowerPoint type presentations instead of video. I found a few presentations that looked like they had been created by teachers to use in a math class. I didn't find much that would be able to be used without quite a bit of modification but did find some good things.
  
• Remember the Milk create task list, share it, get reminders
  Seemed like one more thing I don't need in my life. As it is I have too much technology that doesn't all synch so one more internet organization site would probably just make things worse for my life.
  
• 30 Boxes online calendar
  Looked like something that would be a lot like a Google Calendar but once I reached a certain point in the set up my school's firewall blocked me so I was shut down on this one until I could make it home.
  
• LibraryThing personal online bookshelf
  Signed up for this one too. Looked cool but I decided not to do too much with it since I already had a virtual bookself from http://www.shelfari.com/ I like the idea of the virtual bookshelf since it gives me a way to share with others what I can currently reading. I just wish it had psychic powers and could know what I have read so I don't have to remember to put something in. I think the hardest part about setting up this kind of account is trying to remember every book you have read in your adult life to get started.
  
• Trailfire create a "trail"of annotated web pages on any subject
  I looked here for a while but couldn't actually follow any trails because of the firewall at my school. I hope to put a little more time in on this one once I get home.
  
• Knowtes create a deck of virtual flashcards for study
  Looked like something I might look into but again, with math, most of my time is spent doing stuff. I don't give my kids vocabulary quizes so wouldn't need to post vocabulary flashcards and it's hard to make flashcards in math since they would ususally turn out to be a problem on the front and the card and an answer on the back.

In conclusion, I found that there are many useful tools that are intended to give us "Productivity Anywhere You Have a Browser" but that seems to be a problem at my school. My situation seems to be that these tools would give me productivity almost anywhere I have a browser since so many things are blocked by the LAS firewall.

Thing 11

I have heard of Google Docs in the past but had not looked into the much until now. The Google Docs site worked much in the same way that MS Office would. The only thing that I did notice was a little bit of wait time because it is web based and things are sometimes slow here at my school. The wait time was very short though so nothing that would make me not want to try to use Google Docs in the future.

I think it could very well replace my copies of MS Office and I think that Microsoft should be very nervous. I can't see spending money in the future to upgrade and old version of Office when I can use Google Docs for free. I can also see that in the future, when I get a new computer I would opt out of MS Office to save some money.

I like the idea of students being able to access their files from anywhere - home, school, library etc. This makes the internet more readily available to almost everyone. This would be a big help when kids are absent on a day that I had computer lab time. They would have the option of working at home to complete what they missed. In the past if a student missed a computer lab activity I would have not other choice but to omit the assignment for that student.

Definitly looks loke something I will use in the future.

Thing 10

I created a new wiki http://exit52.pbwiki.com/ Exit 52 is the name of our High School Winter Guard which I am the director of. I have been trying to find a way to manage all the car pools for our various competitions and have also been trying to find a good way to help the kids keep track of which businesses in town have already bought ad space in the program we are making for the competition we host in February. A wiki was definitly the answer! It was really easy to set up and should make my life a little easier in the near future.
So I posted our competition dates and left space for parents to sign up to drive. I then made a page for kids to jot down ads that have already been sold. Now I just need to get the parents on board. I think I'm probably going to have to make an instructional handout to give to the parents so they can be plugged in to our new Exit 52 blog (http://exit52.blogspot.com/) and the new wiki.
I'm now sure how I will use this in my math class yet but it is just a matter of time I suppose.

When I go to the "Comment on another one of the participant's blogs about anything you think is interesting about their learning and how it relates to yours." part of this assignment I was happy to see that another Math teacher in my building has joined the 23 things group so I visited his blog and left him a note. Make this even more fun knowing that I am not alone in my building on this adventure.