Thing 23

My 23 Things journey has had a very steep learning curve. I have always been considered one ot the techies in my building. When I started teaching at Lowell Middle School ten years ago it was unheard of for a teacher to have a laptop. We had one computer lab in our building and we were still taking attendance on paper and sending it down to the office with a student each hour. I have always tried to stay on top of things as far as technology goes. I will admit though that in the last couple of years I have started to fall behind. I didn't have a google account, I didn't know that RSS feeds were, I knew what a wiki was but never thought I'd be creating and using one myself. I set up a blog once, over three years ago. I posted two updates about my kids then forgot about it. No one else ever noticed which means that no one was wathing it anyway.

I have been intergrating computers into my teaching when I can but I see it as more of a necessity now. I used to view it as more of a luxury. I used to figure that if my students got some computer time it was almost like a bonus. Although there will always be a place for pencil and paper math I need to integrate the use of technology more regularly. I am working on ways to let my students demonstrate their understanding through alternative assessments. There is not reason that the kids couldn't show they know a set on concepts through a powerpoint or a movie. The biggest limitions I see here are time and money. I can't give kids a week of lab time to creat a presentation or movie at this point. And not all kids have access due to their family financial situation. The only way I see it working right now it that if a student wanted to opt out of a test they could prepare an alternative assessment piece of out school. Hardly seems fair though that they have homework just because they are choosing to live in the present and the future. This will be something that I will need to work out over the summer in order to implement in the fall as I move into middle school teaching in the world of web 2.0.

My big take away from this is that being a life long learner is not just something to say to indicate that I read the occasional teaching article. It means that I must continue to be an active participant in the world of technology that is unfolding before us. I will do the best that I can to teach my students not just math skills but also additional technology skills that will make them more prepared for their high schoool years.

I will continue to explore google docs and some of the other web utilities. The RSS reader has changed the way I view the internet. It saves a great deal of time and I will do what I can to teach my students how to use it in their own lives. Something else I have taken from this is the importance of my job as a role model for my students in the digital world. I am "facebook friends" with a lot of former students and even a few current students. I live my life online the same way I do in the real world. I feel that as an educator I can never tell my students enough that once something in on the internet it is potentially there forever. Once you do or say something it cann't be undone. It is my job to make them responsible young adults in my classroom, in the hallways and also in cyberspace.

I have enjoyed the 23 Things and will recommend it to everyone who will listen. It would be a great benefit to our district if all of the teachers were required to complete this program. Thank you to the KISD for making this available to me and to the other participants.

Thing 22

This year our IT department lifted a few of the restrictions that are placed on staff members while on the internet. We are now allowed to access non-school email and we are now also allowed to access YouTube. This was a big change since these things have been completly blocked for years in my district.

I like YouTube and have found many useful videos for my 7th grade math class. Here are just a few that I have used this year or plan to use later in the year.

Pilot Math Linear Functions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9179DB2yG8

The Circle Song 2 - Teaches the Formulas for Area and Circumference of Circles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWDha0wqbcI

Mr. Math does percentages
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzoc1SafT94

I don't think I'm ready to put myself out there on YouTube yet but I can see that in order to keep the kids interested it might be worth it to make short movies of things that I teach the same way every year. I would like to spend some time this summer making common craft style videos of various math concepts. If i pull it off I promise I'll share with the rest of the world.

Thing 21

Here's my Twitter experience in a nutshell.

1. Signed up a few months ago.
2. Didn't see the point in it since it is the same as a facebook update. Since I have a ton of friends on facebook and only had 1 person to follow on Twitter I decided it wasn't worth the time or effort.
3. Deleted my account.
4. Found out I was going to need to learn more about Twitter for the 23 things.
5. Reactiviated my account.
6. Signed up to follow a bunch of really important techie teacher types.
7. I still don't use it. I think I have updated my tweet 3 times total.
8. Almost fell for a phishing scam for the first time in my life thanks to a fake direct message in twitter.
9. Saw lots of great links on twitter updates and actually followed some of them. Even found a couple of neat things.
10. Not sure if I want to keep the account or delete it. I only have so many hours in my day and I don't see this taking priority over the many other things I need to do everyday.

I see the value in some of the links that are posted by some of the people on twitter but when I did a twittersearch for "math" I got dozens of posts from kids (I'm assuming high school and college) complaining about how stupid their math teachers were and how much they hate math etc. Not something I need to spend any time on. I also wonder who has the time to be posting links to so may different things throughout the whole day. I found a list of 10 educators to follow on twitter and added them all. It looks like this is all they do with their time. I wonder when they are actually teaching. Maybe they are all technology teachers and get to spend their days in a computer lab with thier students actively engaged in idependent work. Not sure but there is no way I would be posting new and inovative links every 15 mintues to my online personal learning community. As far as use with students goes, it's not going to be an option in my district any time soons since I assume it will continue to be blocked for years to come. If the kids can't access it there is no reason for me to try to work it into my teaching.

Thing 20

I'm all set up on del.icio.us now. My user name is smacdermaid. I imported all of the bookmarks from my laptop into delicious and it took me a very long time to sort through all of them. I spent a few hours looking at the sites I already had bookmarked and added tags. I am sure that my tags are not as detailed now as they will be in the future once I get used to the whole process but i have to start somewhere. I will be using this to share web sites with my winter guard staff as well as with fellow teachers. I can see this being a valuable tool to share information within the math department as well as within my building and also the district. I found a few really good sites that other 23 Things participants had bookmarked in Delicious so this has already been a good thing for me. I can see it making me more productive in the long run since I won't have to email links to myself at school from home and vice versa.

Thing 19

Tagging seems like a great way to sort through a lot of stuff. The more time I spend on the internet and especially since I started working through the 23 things I have found that the number of bookmarks on the computer is getting out of hand. I imported all of my laptops internet explorer bookmarks into my google account but the only real benefit to me is that I can access them both at home and at work. I still have more than 20 folders and I waste too much time digging around trying to remember where I left certain sites.
I think the obvious disadvantage of tagging is the time and effort needed to do it. The advantage is that once the time is put in up front to tag the sites it should pay off later when I don't have to search for things in all of my 20+ folders. As far as things to think about before assigning tags goes if I am going to try to use this as a way to share information with other teachers it will be important to tag things using the same terms that are already being used. I'm going to move on to Thing 20 now and get my del.icio.us account set up so I can move to the Web 2.0 way of bookmarking.

Thing 18

I took some time to look at Ning and also Ning in Education last night and a little after school today. I think that it has potential to be a place for teachers to collaborate but at this point Ning in Education looks pretty small to me. I joined the math group and with me it now has 6 members. I also joined the middle school group and it now has 57 groups. The middle school group has not had any activity since December so it doesn't look like there is much going on there. I have gotten more out of watching other teacher's blogs in the past few weeks that I think I would get out of being on Ning. It's like anything else of this nature though - if people use it, it becomes useful but if there are no people there it isn't. I think a school wiki would be more useful that a School specific Ning in Education. A potential problem is that it could become a place to chat or just flat our complain. Not my favorite thing to this point.

Thing 17

I spent some time with three web 2.0 winners for this task. Here are my thoughts on each of them:
Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/)
I've touched on this in an earlier post. I think google docs has great potential as a means for students to collaborate. I used it for the first time a few days ago. It was nice to be able to create a document at home and then have access at school without having to remember my thumb drive. It was also nice that the file was automatically converted to a .pdf file when I printed it. I wasn't able to find a print preview button which was a little irritating but overall I see this being something that I will be using more and more in the very near future.

Pbwiki http://pbwiki.com/
I am the director of color guards at Lowell Area Schools. During the winter season I have two competitive Winter Guards that travel all over the state to compete. I recently set up a wiki to organize our car pooling efforts. (http://exit52.pbwiki.com/) It's an easy way for the parents to sign up to drive without me having to sort through a whole in box full of emails. The parents are one by one starting to get on board with the new web 2.0 way of signing up to help. I also set up a page within the wiki to coordinate our volunteers for the show we are hosting in February. This event will have somewhere around 800-1000 spectators so take a lot of people to run smoothly. Wikis are already changing the way I do business in my role as Guard Director. I can see putting together research projects for my students in which they will add their thoughts to a wiki to come up with one end result.

My Heritage http://www.myheritage.com/
The last tool that I looked into was My Heritage. It's basically a web based version of Family Tree Maker. I started building a family tree with Family Tree maker last year but found it quite complicated and there were many search elements that were only available if you paid a fee. I didn't get into My Heritage in great depth but it looks neat because I can put in email addresses of the family members that I add and then they get an invitiation to add to the family tree. It looks like it is more or less Family Tree Make meets a Wiki. I'm not sure if I can link a family tree to any of my 7th grade math grade level content expectations or not but it might be something fun for the kids to do on their own.

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.

Thing 9

Wiki #1 – “Mathematics Wikia”
http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Description:
Welcome to the Mathematics Wikia.
We are currently working on 323 articles in English. There are also companion wikis in other languages under development. Please support this project by adding content in whichever language you feel most comfortable.

My Thoughts on this site:
Site was mostly definitions and examples. Looks like it could be a good resource and possibly a way to connect to other teachers who are trying to teach math with technology.
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Wiki #2 – “PlanetMath”
http://planetmath.org/
Description:
PlanetMath is a virtual community which aims to help make mathematical knowledge more accessible. PlanetMath's content is created collaboratively: the main feature is the mathematics encyclopedia with entries written and reviewed by members. The entries are contributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) in order to preserve the rights of both the authors and readers in a sensible way.

My Thoughts on this site:
The level of math being explored here is way beyond the middle school level. It did show that wikis are being used in higher level math to communicate mathematical proofs from one mathematician to another. Showed a very high level of collaboration which is a good thing for the world of math.
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Wiki #3 – “Math & Art Wiki”
http://mathforum.org/mathandart/index.php/Main_Page
Welcome to the Math & Art Wiki
Description:
We hope this will become a center for people exploring the connections between art and mathematics. Please add more material, edit what's here, and show and tell us what you are doing! To get started go to the New User Guide (bottom left) for information as to how to create an account; please add information about yourself on your user page. You can see who's here at this list of Math & Art People.

My Thoughts on this site:
Looks like something that I could also use as resource but I am having a hard time seeing how I could use it to actually teach math to my students.
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Best Description by far of what a wiki is and why someone would want to use it is found at commoncraft.com http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english After watching this short video I know that I will definitly use a wiki next year when planning all of my family gatherings (Grandma's 93rd b-day party, Thanksgiving, Christmas etc.) I might even start using one for my volunteer sign ups for an upcoming school event that I am running.

As far as I can tell Wikis are cool and they are great toold for organizing events, like the camping trip example in the common craft video. I see how they can be useful in subject areas like literature and social studies and other areas that require lots of research. But as far as 7th grade math goes. . . I'm not so sure I would have much use for it. Maybe if I were going to have the kids do a research project on a famous mathematician or if I decide to have them put together a project on real world math. This would be a great thing to do but I have to make sure that all those kiddos get through all of the math stuff that they are required to know by the end of the year before I can go jumping into anything like that. I would also worry that the kids would need to have email addresses to sign up for wikis. If that is the case then I can't use them with the kids at school since many of our kids don't have email addresses and they are not currently allowed to access or set up gmail at school. The firewall has it blocked for kids at all times. Boooo! I like the idea of a wiki but some of the them are pretty difficult to navigate and I am not sure that I would have the patience to teach 30 kids how to use one in a math class setting. It would probably be something that would take a minimum of 5 days of classtime which is not something that I have to give up at this point.

On an additional note. . .I set up a wiki a couple of months ago at a PD day where Ron was the presentor. It was easy but I have not used if for anything. Now I just need to go track it down for thing 10.

Thing 8

So. . . RSS feeds part 2. I’m doing this thing at school so really none of the search tools were easy to use since they were all blocked. Not cool but oh well. Not much I can do about it. Since I had some firewall issues my primary mode of adding feeds was just to see which sites that already use had feeds and to do google searches for additional site that might be of interest. I have added lots of 23 things participants to my reader list which has been fun since I am easily see how the things are going for lots of other people. As I was reading the other 23 thing participants feeds I visited some of the sites that were being mentioned. I added these to my list.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ - Free Technology for Teachers
http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/ - The Edublogger
http://www.techsavvyed.net/ - The Tech Savy Educator
http://www.eaa.org/ - Experimental Aircraft Association (Everything that I love about the world of aviation!)
http://nmsa.org/ - The National Middle School Association

I have not found many that focus on math education yet but I am still looking. I love the RSS reader and can definitely see it being part of my new way of doing business.

Thing 7

I loved the RSS in Plain English but I have been a huge fan of commoncraft.com since I learned of the site this past November. It explained what an RSS is faster and more clearly than anyone else I have ever seen try to explain it. Until now I kindof knew what RSS was but never really tried to use it. I have to day that I found setting up subscriptions to be easy and using the google reader also quite simple. I am following 13 of the 23 things participants as well as several education blogs. I can see this being very useful in a social studies classroom for current events and for myself personally to keep up on news and education. I can see this being useful to my students since if they subscribe to follow my blog they will know when I have posted updates without having to check. Saves time and energy and would especially useful to the kids who have slower internet services.
I'm already pretty hooked on the reader setup and I'm looking forward to thing 8 where I will find more feeds that interest me. :)

Thing 6

I have been having a good time working through the first 5 things and I like the idea of having my students using computers to handle photos. However, with that said, I am finding that something that could present a problem is the number of online accounts the kids would have to have to access the online tools. At this time the students at my school don't generally have a gmail account unless they have had computer class as an exploratory. Recently one of the Science teachers down the hall from me took all of her classes to the computer lab to sign them up to use Quizlet (http://quizlet.com/). This was presented to us by one of our techies at the start of the year as a good tool for our students. It was ok until she found out that the kids had to have an email address AND had to be 13 years old to sign up. About half of the kids in 7th grade are not yet 13 years old so this presented a problem. She found a creative way around it but it was an unexpected problem that made it necessary for her to take a 2nd day in the lab to finish getting all the kids signed up. The good news is that many of her kids are now using quizlet and that means that if I set up a study quide on that site that half of my students will already have access. I worry about what it would take to get kids signed up on flicker at school. I don't see that there is an age requirement but I'm pretty sure it requires an email address. Many of these online services require an email address and then a send a confirmation email. Most email services are blocked by our IT department so the kids cannot access the confirmation emails. Additionally, middle school students have a hard enough time just remembering the user id and password needed to login to the server when they turn the computers on. I can see it becoming everwhelming for some students to keep track of all the necessary login information. It would be helpful if I had a computer lab for a classroom everyday but I don't. It would be great if I could have even 2 or 3 student computers in my classroom, because then some of these things could be done at the same time as my non-techie teaching, but again - no student computers in my room. :(
I love the idea of technology but I feel very limited in what I can do in my teaching just because of the limited resources in my building. I think that something I might do when I get back to school is give my students a technology survey or inventory to find out who has what at home.
So. . . I'm trying to keep an open mind through my 23 things journey. I think that at this point technology in my teaching is more available to me than it is to my students. I hope that in the next few years that changes.
Those are my thoughts for thing 6. Thanks for reading. :)