Final thoughts and reflections- Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0

I've got to be honest with you... before taking this course I thought I was doing pretty good with incorporating technology into my lessons.  Rude awakening!  I was wrong.  It wasn't that I wasn't aware of all of these technologies, I just wasn't confident in using them in away that would be beneficial to my students.  I was merely using them as a way to spruce up a lesson, not create something that is meaningful and engaging. I am beyond grateful for the new discoveries I have made in the world of Web 2.0.  I feel much more confident in integrating these tools into daily lessons and have actually already began to do so.  I have been using Twitter, diigo and Youtube regularly since my in class adventures.

I'm excited and eager to share all of these things with my campus.  I'm discussing a formal plan with my administration to create a "tech" team to help me roll out training's for our entire staff and help me discover new Web 2.0 tools and fun effective way to integrate them.

My only concern when it comes to Web 2.0 tools is that we are not a 1:1 campus.  We are actually pretty far from that. So while these Web 2.0 tools are amazing for creating meaningful instruction, it's hard for teachers to get excited about tools that may or may not be able to be accessed when they need it.
Overall, I'm loving the newly discovered resources and hope to continue to discover more tools to integrate into everyday learning.  I've signed up for a summer technology conference and will continue to be an advocate for getting more technology for my campus so that we can use these amazing tools throughout our campus.

Vanity Search Repeat

After seven weeks in my technology class I'm doing another vanity search to see if my digital foot print has changed after becoming more active online through Twitter, Diigo, YouTube, Blogging and several other Web 2.0 sites.  After "googling" my name, in numerous formats, I found that my digital footprint has increased and in a very positive and relevant way.  It truly amazes me that even the smallest changes can change how I'm seen in the internet/digital world.  I'm fortunate that my career and technical advances are being reflected in a way that truly showcase my learning goals and objectives.   I feel that this search is a good way to reveal to our students that EVERYTHING that you put on the internet can be seen.    

I'm attaching this image that I found to show the importance of talking about digital safety and our digital footprint with our students.

Just Keep Learning!

The topic for discussion this week is... after this course how do I plan to keep up with all the continued advances in Web 2.0, technology, teaching and learning.  It's simple really, or at least the concept is simple, the act of doing so is not always the case, but it's like we tell our students become a life long learner.


That's my plan.  I will continue to attend conferences, do my own research and work collaboratively with peers in order to keep myself and my colleagues as up to date as possible with all the new advances.  I will use the tools from this course, such as Twitter, to keep me in the loop about the latest and greatest. I will go to YouTube when I can't quite figure out how to use the newest technology or teaching strategy.  I will plain and simple just continue to be a life long learner!

Diigo - Social Bookmarking

Between last weeks assignment and this weeks, I feel like maybe I've been under a large rock from a technology stand point.  I've always felt like I knew a decent amount about what the web had to offer but come to find out... I'm clueless overall.  Thank goodness I'm being pulled from under my rock and am finally seeing all the greatness available to me.

Social Bookmarking is simply awesome!  I've always struggled with trying to remember things I've bookmarked on my home computer while at work and visa-versa.  This site will be insanely helpful in keeping all my bookmarks in one convenient and easy to access (computer or phone) spot.  No more emailing my self links to remember helpful sites. Ha! And yes, I'm embarrassed to say that is actually what I did because I had no idea tools like this actually existed.  This site has tons of features that I find helpful beyond just not having to email myself.  I find the "tags" useful in categorizing my bookmarks.  While I've always placed my bookmarks it folders to categorize them, I often forget what I put them there for, so the "tags" will help with that.  I also think it's very convenient that you can create groups.  This will be great for teams of teachers, colleagues working together across a district and even classes of students to put all of their finds in one location.  It's honestly another way to collaborate ideas in a simplified way.  It's especially useful having the option to highlight and annotate directly within the page you are viewing.  I found a great article on transforming my library space, which is my current project I'm tackling at work.  I was able to highlight everything that I felt represented my current needs and tell why, thanks to the useful tools.  Now, when I go back to this page I won't have to re-read everything and can easily share this with my administrators effectively.   

All in all I'm sure you can tell that this will be a great addition to all of my new found web tools that are making my life much easier.  I will be sharing this tool at our next staff meeting on Monday in my featured technology piece.    

Aggregating Page Adventure

Ok so what in the world are Aggregating Pages??  Honestly, this was a web tool I had never heard of. I saw that everyone in my course seemed to be going the Protopage route so I decided to be different and try the Netvibes site.  The Netvibes site has a very simple and sleek homepage while Protopage seemed a little cluttered.  Well, after about 20 minutes of playing around on Netvibes, and thinking that I was getting nowhere fast, I decide to conform and join many others over on the Protopage site.  (roaring cheers) 

There was no real step by step guide but after playing around with it I finally started to make some headway.  I used some of the knowledge I gained last week over on the YouTube Adventures.  I put my new YouTube searching skills (when I say new skills I mean searching for something other than hair and make-up tutorials, ha!) to the test and found some helpful Protopage tutorials to help my page look more put together and allow videos to be embedded.

Overall, I don't know what I'll use this page for.  I think it's nice that it houses all my sites that I frequent.  I think I'll give it some more time to see if it grows on me.  Here is the link to my site as well as three screen shots. 

Home Page                   ETEC Page            YouTube Playlists

 

YouTube Adventures!

It's time for a YouTube ADVENTURE!  I've used YouTube before but mostly for random things like how to fold a fitted sheet (I still cannot),  to view reviews on products, beauty tips and occasionally for school.  I honestly didn't realize how many resourceful education videos were out there.

Since I already had a YouTube account my first task was to create a playlist, lets just say I should
have found a YouTube video to assist me.  After playing around with with for a few (maybe 10 or so) minutes I figured it out.  My playlist includes videos about Twitter and Twitter tools, Wikis and Wiki-spaces, using Web 2.0 tools for learning, Maker-spaces and Technology in the Library.  I found it fairly easy to find some very informational videos.  I like how YouTube suggests other videos pertaining to the same subject area.  I found myself drowning in more videos than I knew what to do with.  I typically went with the newer videos thinking that they would be more relevant since these days technology changes in the blink of an eye.  I'm excited to make more playlists and to continue to add to the ones I've made.   

At a conference I recently the attended the speaker talked briefly about YouTube and using it as an educational tool.  He explained that his younger brother, when playing video games, instantly goes to YouTube when he can't clear a level however when it come to his calculus homework he just gives up

with out even trying to find help.  He went on to say that if his brother only used the same tool to help him in his education that he does for his hobby he'd have much better grades.  It's true though.  We often think of YouTube as having fun hobby type videos rather than for education, but there are tons of helpful educational channels to dive into. 

Switching gears, I continued "Tweeting" this week.  Mostly through my library Twitter account.  I do like the options that HootSuite ad Tweetdeck allow for, such as having both accounts linked, but I don't find myself Tweeting much for personal things, but mostly for my library.

Also, I had fun discovering more about Web 2.0 tools.  I was originally going to dig a little deeper into Augmented Reality but with that being such a broad area I decided to narrow in on a presentation tool called BiteSlide.  Biteslide is an online, kid friendly, presentation tool. While it isn’t free, which is a big deal to me, it does offer a 30 day free trial.  It’s also something that I could buy for the whole school to use at the beginning of the year if I feel like our teachers would use it.  Biteslide is VERY user friendly.  Once you create an account the program walks you through the first few step to help you get set up.  

Twitter Adventure

Well I happily completed my Twitter adventure and posted about it in the discussion forums but somehow completely missed the memo about putting my finding here on my blog.  Opps! All that Twitter/ tech fun has gone to my head.

So, Twitter is fairly new to me.  I created an account once I got my library position because I was told by other librarians that they had feeds.  Awesome, right?! Well after spending a little while getting it set up and "following" everyone I was supposed to follow, I just sort of stared at the screen... now what?  Slow but surely I began to use hashtags and figure out how to use this crazy social network to my advantage.  I met an amazing librarian at a conference and was able to connect with her via Twitter.  Through her I was able to connect with other schools, librarians and authors around the country and eventually the world.  Other librarians have been able to use this to connect to authors via Skpye, make connections with other classrooms and get recognized by major corporations simply by putting a tweet out into the universe.  So while I am still new to the whole Twitter world I do feel like I'm getting the hang of it and learning how this can truly benefit my school and program.  #twitteradventure #etec527

I took a look at Hootsuite and Tweetdeck which both seem to really be helpful in organizing all the madness that is twitter.  I've linked my 2 Twitter accounts and think it's so much more user friendly having it all in one spot.  I'm looking forward to seeing how my tweeting improves over the length of this course!