Thing 12

Thing 12 only means one thing: halfway done with this blog!  I cannot wait to finish all 24 things. 

I chose to explore the Google Translate function of Google.  I picked this because I majored in Spanish and I wanted to see how accurate this translation service would be.  When I first started learning Spanish over 10 years ago in 7th grade, the teachers told us to never use these types of translation services because they would be able to tell.  And, if we did, we might fail the class.  I have always been hesitant to use these.  I have used different websites to translate a word here and there, but never more than that at once.  There were some obvious errors in the translation as some things translate too literally.  However, I think Google Translate is a good resource to use for translating a word or two.  There is also a voice function that will read the translated information.  This could be very helpful as pronunciations in a foreign language can be difficult.  This is a great tool for getting a point across.  Everything may not be correct, but this is a way to quickly provide something to someone who may not speak any English.  I could see this being useful when I start teaching because today's classrooms are getting more and more diverse.  The school where I work now as a teacher assistant has a full-time Spanish translator.  She is spread so thin that I am occasionally called upon to help out.  I work mostly with third grade and those teachers often ask me to translate letters they send home to parents because I do not require the notice that the translator requires to translate things.  Granted, my translations, I'm sure, are not as accurate as hers, but they are better than nothing for parents who may speak no English.  Google Translate doesn't take the place of speaking a foreign language, but, in a pinch, it can be a useful tool for getting the general idea/point across to someone with limited or no English. 

I also chose to use Google Calendar .  I am forever using the calendar function in my phone to make sure I don't forget anything and to remind myself of things I need to get done.  I like making lists and calendars put my lists into a format so that I know what I need to do each day.  I liked that you can share the calendar you create.  This could be useful when I am a teacher.  I could create a monthly classroom calendar and share it with parents to keep them informed of upcoming tests, projects, field trips, etc.  This would help ensure that their children would come to school as prepared as possible for whatever they would encounter that day.  There is also an option to send out invitations.  This could be used in the classroom to invite parents to serve as chaperones on field trips or to invite them to school assemblies or other school events they may want to attend.  You can also print the calendar which would be useful.  I like to mark things off as I complete them, so this would be great for me.  I tried to share my calendar and make it public, but I'm not sure if it actually worked.  My calendar is pretty boring and I only did it for the next 3 weeks.  I also like the option to sync the calendar with my phone.  This would be useful and make me only have to create one calendar.  Also, if it was on my phone, I could always have it with me, and I could change it at any time if necessary. 

Thing 11

Since creating this blog for class is my only experience with blogging, I'm pretty much just learning as I go and winging it.  So far, it has been pretty easy and straight forward.  I'll admit that I am still not regularly looking at any blogs of any sort besides my own as I try not to fall too far behind and drown in the never-ending sea of schoolwork that seems ever-present.  When I read http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/, I felt like the blogger articulated my reasons for never having had any interest in blogs or blogging.  I am not interested in reading someone's soapbox rants, or as she calls them egotists.  I also don't want to read things people are writing just for the sake of writing.  I want to read things of substance and things that I can trust.  The internet has created a population of people, who regardless of knowledge level, proclaim themselves experts and preach their "knowledge" to anyone who will listen.  Anyone can post anything, so you have to be somewhat skeptical of things you may encounter. 
First, I tried the Google blog search tool.  One thing I thought was odd, was that when I typed in education, the links I was presented with were not what I have previously thought of as being blogs.  I typed in "education".  The first "hit" on the search page was for the U.S. Department of Education.  As I scrolled down the page, I found more links to other state departments of education (Virginia and California).  I was expecting to find links to blogs like http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/. 
The Technorati  site was a little too busy for my liking.  There were a lot of different things going on.  Pop ups kept appearing.  I exited this site as quickly as possible after searching "education".  The results that appeared here were more what I was expecting, unlike the Google search.  I also tried Blogsearchengine.org.  I liked this one as well.  It worked similar to the Google one.  It was very straightforward and took me to a list of results that looked like actual blogs after I searched "education".  After looking at these three ways to search blogs, I think the easiest is Blogsearchengine.org and my least favorite is Technorati.  Using these types of sites introduced me to a whole new world of information that I never even knew existed.  Now that I know how much is out there, I will be able to better take advantage of what the internet has to offer.  This exercise also showed me that my preconceived notion of blogs may have been too narrow.  Blogs, apparently, can encompass a much broader scope of information than I previously thought.  The  results from the Google blog search showed me many different types of websites that I had never considered to be actual blogs. 

Thing 10

RSS feeds are something that I knew absolutely nothing about prior to doing the activities for thing 10.  I'll admit that I was a bit intimidated when I first started reading about it because it seemed like things were written in another language, but once I watched the YouTube video, I felt like I understood it more.  Then, when I used Feedly, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use.  Now that I sort of understand it, I can see how useful it would be.  All the information comes to one place.  No longer do you have to check each individual site or blog for updates, instead, updates all come to one centralized location.  I like the idea of the time this could save.  I could get updates faster and not waste time exploring each individual site (which could lead me down a rabbit hole of distractions- wasting even more time and not doing what I need to do).
I could see how this would be useful for a teacher.  There are so many educational blogs out there, and if I found one I particularly liked, I could follow it and receive regular updates.  I wouldn't have to worry about remembering which site I liked and try to return to those websites regularly, instead, all updates from multiple places would be sent to one centralized place, allowing me to be updated on multiple things at once.  When I become a teacher, hopefully I will remember to use this and keep up with the educational blogs I have found while completing the things for this blog.  Blogs are full of great ideas and tips for things to do in the classroom.  Getting regular updates could bring great things to my classroom.  I probably don't see me using this in other areas of my life.  It seems useful and easy enough to use, but I probably won't simply because I waste enough time online and do not need to waste more. 

Thing 9

I chose to use ImageChef for this posting.  I chose to use a picture of my dog for this one.  Since she is a husky, when I saw the "snow" picture, I immediately chose it.  We don't get much snow, but when we do, she is in heaven!

For this photo, I also used ImageChef with another picture of my dog.  This time, I included text, her name, Minka.

I was pleasantly surprised with how easy this website was to use.  All I had to do was upload a picture from my computer, put it in the image template, email it to myself, and save it before uploading it to my blog.  The one thing I didn't like was that I had to create an account.  The only problem that I have with this is that I have too many accounts with various usernames and passwords and it becomes difficult to remember what username/password goes with which account.  

As for future use with this website (and others like it), I could see using this to put images of my students on and printing it out for them to use in projects.  The website with the fake magazine covers would be a fun addition to a writing exercise in which students write a newspaper article.  Their picture could go on the cover of their magazine and they could put it all together like a real magazine.  Creating these types of images would be fun things to incorporate into the classroom, and they could possibly make students more excited about learning.  With the fake magazines, students could create an imaginary travel journal and compile their entries for a travel magazine, complete with researched information about a given geographic location.  The cover of the magazine could include a picture or pictures of the places discussed in their imagined travels.  This type of visual might make the students' creations feel more personal.  This website was so easy to use that I'm sure I'll use it again.

Thing 8

I chose to use the puzzle mashup because this was one of the easiest ways I could see incorporating one of these apps into the classroom.  Actual puzzles can be ordered from the website.  The pictures on the puzzles could relate to what is currently being studied or have a picture of students from the class (if permission was given for minors to be in the pictures).  These puzzles could be part of different work stations- in lower elementary grades (K-1), this could help students develop fine motor skills.  In upper elementary grades (2-4), these could be used at indoor recess or for group activities.  What kid wouldn't like to see their face on a puzzle?  This could be used as an incentive to get students to try harder or progress through levels or something like that.  Students could be more motivated to work for this type of reward.  Teachers could also share this website with parents, who may want to purchase puzzles with pictures from school on them for home or the classroom.  This would give the parents another way to know about what is going on in the classroom.  The pictures on the puzzles could be specifically chosen to relate to the curriculum, which would provide students with a more hands-on and fun way to get involved in what they are learning.  If students are learning about the Great Wall of China, for example, they could complete a puzzle with an actual picture of it.

http://bighugelabs.com/jigsaw.php

This is a personal picture that I chose from Portugal.  I picked it because it was one of the most surprising places I went.  This city was chosen at the last minute.  My friend and I found a bus, rode a few hours, and spent the day here.  A picture like this could be used in science or social studies when talking about geography, climate, maps, etc.  

I feel like, as with most things on the internet, sharing pictures has its time and place and should be done in moderation.  One thing to keep in mind when sharing photos is that once a photo is online, it is there forever.  People are too quick (in my opinion) to publish their every waking thought and picture.  Some things should remain private.  If you wouldn't want your grandmother to see it, you probably shouldn't post it.  However, I think sharing photos can be a wonderful tool.  They can be used to show students actual places being studied without the financial and logistical crises involved in taking students on field trips.  With the click of a mouse, students can be transported to nearly any time and place in the world.  Students can see what they are learning about, which makes things more relevant to their lives and may make them more interested and motivated to learn.  Personally, when I was abroad, sharing photos was a great way for me to stay in touch with family and friends at home.  I posted all of my photos on Facebook.  My parents were appreciative of this because it kept them updated of my whereabouts since I couldn't call home very often.  Photos I have seen online shared by others have often inspired me to want to visit faraway places and explore new cultures and places. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to sharing photos as a teacher is that you have to remain professional and make your settings more private so as not to have your personal life on display for all to see.  Also, posting photos of students may violate privacy laws, so permission would need to be granted to ensure that it was indeed okay for photos with students who were minors to be posted.  

Thing 7

I have no prior experience with Flikr.  I have heard of it, but I have never used it.  I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to navigate.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to look for as far as a picture to write about in this post.  I typed in “Spain”.  I was immediately taken back to my year there through a barrage of wonderful images.  The one I chose was from the city where I studied abroad in during college.  Santander is located on Spain’s northern coast, and it is a beautiful city.  I immediately recognized the place in the photo, along the bay, in the heart of the city.  My roommate and I spent a great deal of time in this downtown area of the city because it was so close to our host family's apartment.  I had a bit of trouble uploading the photo.  It took a few tries to finally get it on my blog.  

Sergio Toribio

I picked this photo because it brought back so many wonderful memories of my time abroad.  I think the possibilities that photo sharing websites offer in the field of education are endless.  Imagine learning about a place and getting to see actual pictures from there.  Children may have a difficult time conceptualizing the idea that our country could be so similar to another country.  However, pictures like these show students how similar places around the world actually are.  Providing students with these types of photos can make learning more meaningful.  Perhaps seeing photos of other places and cultures will inspire young children to learn new languages and dream of traveling to those faraway places one day. 

Using this type of website could be useful in the classroom to show parents what their students are doing in the classroom, on field trips, etc.  However, this would have to be approved by the district or school since the posts would involve pictures of minors  Sharing classroom happenings with parents may give them the feeling that they are more involved and aware of what their children are learning, in turn, making them be more hands-on with their children’s learning at home. 

Thing 6

I was overwhelmed at first when I started searching for a website to explore for this post.  When I went on go2web20.net, I was surprised to find so many options.  There were so many tags and I had never heard of most of them.  I was relieved to find that there was a search option.  Since I want to teach elementary school, I searched kids which led me to www.gameclassroom.com.

This website provides students with interactive games to practice various skills in math and language arts.  The skills and activities are divided into grade levels k-6.  Each grade level has interactive games to practice level-appropriate skills.  This website was created by educators and teachers, so the activities found and presented on this website have been approved by educators.  I explored the third grade math section.  I looked specifically at multiplication facts.  In this section, there was an explanation, links to other websites students could explore to gain more practice, and practice problems for students to complete.  This website touts itself as being a tool for students to use in homework help.  This website seems easy to use and appears to have a great deal of resources.  

The one thing I do not like about this website is that it links you to other websites for the actual games.  When I first found this website, I thought that the games were actually on this website, but this website is merely a platform from which to launch onto other websites for the interactive games.  There are, however, worksheets and explanations available on this website which may be great tools for parents and students alike.  The explanations provided may explain things to students in a way that is different than how the teacher presented information, which may help a student understand something that was previously confusing.  I also like the availability of practice problems for math.  The more you practice a skill, like multiplication, the better you will be at that skill. 

As for classroom use, I could see using this in a classroom to provide students with the opportunity to practice more with new skills.  A teacher could also assign activities from this website for students to complete at home for extra practice.  Students could print out the activities they complete to turn in for a grade, which would allow the teacher to monitor their progress in certain skills. 

 

Thing 5

To me, school 2.0 is a sign of the quickly changing times.  Technology, now more than ever, dominates every facet of our lives.  Some may say it is to the detriment of our society, but I tend to think that technology has done more to help us than to hurt us.  But, like anything, technology should be used in moderation.  School 2.0 is the idea that schools are incorporating technology.  There is no escaping technology.  It is everywhere.  Technology has so much to offer students.  Gone are the days of researching topics in the library.  Any and all information students need about nearly every topic imaginable is at the tip of our fingers.  And, to top it off, most information out there is free.  School 2.0 will hopefully prepare the next generation of students to be better consumers of information.  There is so much information out there (some good, some bad) and students should know what to believe and what to dismiss.

I’m working as a teacher assistant with special education.  Some of the kids I work with can hardly read, but if you hand them an iPad, they can navigate and find anything they want.  Kids today know way more about technology than I did at their age.  Next week, 3^rd grade has some required assessment in which they have to type 2 essays on a computer.  These are 3^rd graders.  I definitely couldn’t type in 3^rd grade.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t analyzing any passages and writing about them until I was well into high school.  I definitely wasn’t typing my work in elementary school.  This is a sign of the changes of school 2.0.  The face of school today is drastically different than it was even 10 years ago.  Another thing that stuck out to me was the idea that commenting and posting is a give and take and connects people from all over the world.  It is amazing that with the click of a button, you can email someone thousands of miles away and they will receive it almost instantaneously.  School 2.0, to me, is the idea that schools keep up with (and try to stay ahead of) the ever-changing technological landscape of today and incorporate these changes into the classroom. 

I think, in the future, technology will only have an increasing presence in our lives.  Classrooms ten years from now will probably be unrecognizable.  Technology is changing and if schools are to prepare students for future success, they will have to keep up with the times and incorporate these changes into their classrooms.  When I was reading about the open classes at MIT, it made me think that today’s face-to-face classes at universities may soon be a thing of the past.  With technology, higher education may soon become widely available and affordable to more people.  One point that stuck out to me in the posts I read was that the only way to control the amount of information out there is to contribute more.  This seems like an ironic statement.  I think it means that the more you contribute, the more educated you become.  If you are more educated on a subject, you will be a better consumer of information and may be able to help others know what information is false and what is to be trusted.  I think that today’s children are using technology more than any other generation.  School 2.0 can help ensure that they get the most out of what they are doing and ensure that they know what they are doing. 

Thing 4

Commenting is important in the blogging world, or so I learned in reading the suggested posts about why it is important.  I have never been a blogger or blog reader.  The few times I have read blogs, it has never really even occurred to me to comment.  I’m not much of a commenter in general.  I keep my thoughts to myself.  After reading the postings about why commenting is important I can now see why I should consider leaving comments in the future.  I think I have always been turned off of commenting because of “Darth Vader” commenters.  There are always overly negative and critical people who never think twice about leaving a rude word.  When I lived in Europe and would search for hostels to stay in while traveling, I would look at comments to help me decide if the places I was looking at would be good or not.  The comments were terrible to read.  People would rate places badly because it rained when they were there or because they had noisy neighbors or other reasons that had nothing to do with the actual hostel.  If you’re paying $10 a night to stay somewhere, chances are, you need to lower your expectations- you’re not going to get Four Seasons accommodations at that price.  You get what you pay for, so keep your unnecessarily rude comments to yourself. 

That said, I can see how commenting creates a sense of community.  And, if comments are good, who doesn’t like praise?  Everyone likes to hear something good about something they have done.  If commenters have a positive word to share, it may encourage the writer to continue. 

Another thing I found important was the idea of bloggers responding to comments they receive.  By acknowledging comments received, a blogger is acknowledging and recognizing his/her readers.  If a commenter receives a response, it may serve as incentive for him/her to continue reading said blog.  It is like getting good customer service somewhere.  If I go somewhere and the customer service is good, chances are, I’ll return.  On the other hand, if customer service is bad, I’m probably never going back. 

Something else that stood out to me was the idea that comments should be meaningful and relevant.  A “good job” or “nice,” while they may boost the writer’s ego, do little else.  Comments like that provide no substance and contribute nothing to the conversation.  Comments don’t need to be dissertations, but they should have a purpose.  Tell the writer what they did well, specifically.  This is the same thing we have been taught in our education classes about how to provide feedback to students.  I remember teachers who would give bad grades (and good ones) with no explanation.  Those grades were meaningless and may as well have been arbitrarily assigned to students because there were no comments about what to change or continue doing.    

I chose to comment on the following blogs from our class:

 

 

Esther:

I commented on Esther because we had things in common: weak in technology, taught English abroad.  She taught English in Korea and my grandmother is Korean. 

Candice: I commented on Candice because she commented on mine and mentioned that she wanted to teach 3^rd grade as well, so I would like to see how she uses this blog to possibly get ideas for what I can do in my future classroom.  Also, her facebook comment in thing 1 made me laugh.

Joshua: I liked how he started his post on thing 1.  He wrote like he was resigned to the fact that he had no choice about blogging and had just accepted that it had to be done.  I like how he ends each entry by "checking" it off and moving on to the next one.

Delma: She had commented on my blog and mentioned that we had a great deal in common.  When I read her thing 1, it was interesting to see our similarities.  It was nice to read about someone else who didn't set out to teach, but ended up here just like me. 

Riley: Riley commented on my blog and mentioned our similar struggles with technology.  I was interested to see how someone from a field with which I have no experience, theater, would approach various topics.  I thought that following this blog might help with my lacking creativity.

 

I chose to comment on a blog entitled “Plain Chicken”.  This is a blog I have seen on Pinterest before and gotten recipes from and they turned out well.  I’m a very picky eater and so is the blogger.  She posts recipes that appeal to me and she always includes pictures.  Every Monday, she does “Meow Monday” and posts funny pictures of her cats.  She has one that looks a lot like my own cat.  They always look disinterested and unamused in the pictures posted, which is so characteristic of cats in general.  Mine looks the same in pictures.   I posted on a recipe for something that sounded good to me.  I wrote that it was a great recipe and something I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.  It combined sweet and savory which I enjoy.  I also posted on “Eric Kim Street Photography”.  He had a post about “25 Things I Have Learned While Backpacking in Europe”.  I chose to read this because I traveled around Europe quite a bit during the year I lived in Spain.  The traveling was unbelievably cheap.  I miss it so much.  I loved reading his 25 things because they took me right back to my travels.  I commented about how cheap air travel was and about how surprisingly kind locals were regardless of language barriers.  My friend and I went to Prague and took a bus to a nearby smaller city to see a hockey game.  We got off the bus and didn’t have a map or any clue where the arena was.  We walked for a while, but it started getting dark.  We went into a little shop and asked in English where the arena was.  After some miming and laughing, the woman working in the store came outside with us pointing and gesturing in the direction we needed to go.  I think she even drew us a little map to get us there.  I was met by unbelievably kind people like this woman almost everywhere I went.