Linda's blog

I have learned so much about so many things in this online course; the first of which is I really need to work on time management and being able to focus on the task at hand! I found that once I got going, I did fine, but I was not very good at pacing myself, especially once we got into the holiday season with so many special activities. I’m glad the class didn’t start in November! One of our class members suggested that people sign up for the class in teams. I think that is a wonderful idea to help people keep a focus and share ideas with one another.

More than the time management and focus issues though, I have been introduced to so many valuable tools. I have started wikis for the elementary teachers to share books they have used in the Writers’ Workshop. I’ve encouraged our computer lab supervisors to work with the teachers to develop pageflakes to use on the lab computers. I have found subject-matter websites to suggest to teachers with those special interests. I’ve shared bits and pieces with teachers all along, but I just can’t wait to figure out how to get to the largest group of teachers to reach the largest number of students. I would love to have my own classroom again just to use all of these new ways of learning and sharing! I’m so lucky that my grandsons will be exposed to these tools to help them as they get further in school.

I’m sure this has been a real learning experience for us all. I always found that the more my students learned, the more I learned. So, Jerrie, you must have really learned a lot! I appreciate so much the patience and the knowledge that Jerrie had to use to make this such an enlightening experience for me!

I am not so sure that I am very comfortable with the use of social networking as a tool in my work. I don’t really know why; perhaps I have a need for control that I have not recognized before. It would have to be used with a group in which I had a lot of trust! The groups that I read often had very negative comments on them, and quite a few responses that seemed to go beyond being helpful and into the realm of hateful. Maybe I just picked the wrong groups to follow.

I can see the possibilities of using the networks for groups of teachers, such as second grade teachers, or media specialists, or teachers working with kids with ASD. Maybe if the group was limited in that way to begin with, I would feel more comfortable suggesting this way of communicating. I just have to remember that just because this kind of communication makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean it can’t work with others with different needs. (How much all teachers need to realize that!)

I want to explore this topic more thoroughly, figure out what bothers me about it, and figure out a way to help others use it to their advantage.

It seems that every new thing we do I decide it is the one thing that will make the teachers’ job so much more efficient. Many of our teachers use the computer for little else than creating a newsletter, keeping grades and attendance, and using our Successmaker program. Google Docs, though, should change that! I can see so many possibilities with this tool. In October, we had a SACS visit and I worked with Susan Reeves in our county office to develop an introductory PowerPoint for our superintendent to use with the visiting team. Both Susan and I are part-time employees and getting us together in the same place at the same time was quite a chore. I ended up sending her updates while she was revising what I had just sent, etc. Having the presentation on google docs would have made that chore so much more efficient!

We have several grade level groups of teachers who write newsletters together. Now, one teacher is responsible for putting everyone else’s contribution together. I have already sent these groups information about using google docs to make this job easier.

I will be using google docs with each schools’ instructional technology teams as we work on developing plans for the next school year. This is a great example of “working on it anytime anywhere.” With teachers so overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork required of them these days, this will have to be a welcome change from years past.

Again, I am so impressed with this possibility. I am also using it for personal tasks. It would have been great to use in coordinating Christmas gifts with my family in Tennessee, or in coordinating a family get-together (who will be bringing what). My daughter and I are now using it to share thoughts with one another about educational and behavioral plans for her two sons on the autism spectrum. What a tool!

I am really enjoying my RSS feeds. I find something interesting every day! I have especially enjoyed the constant stream of information about Asperger’s Syndrome. I am finding a lot of irrelevant material on that feed, but I just roll on down to find something more interesting.

For professional purposes, I am finding so many great sites for students through recommendations on the blogs I am following. One particularly good one was on the first Thanksgiving. Lots of good and relevant material on the conditions the first Europeans settlers endured, and the help of the Wampanoag. Another good one was a listing of vocabulary and spelling games for young students.

The two links posted above came from a single blog post on the Successful Teaching blog, Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom. This blogger posts recommended sites under this post title every week. I certainly look forward to other recommendations from this blog.

Wow! Teachers could customize the homepage for whatever task they have assigned their students. As a primary grade teacher, I did a unit on Japan. As I looked through the available flakes, I kept thinking about how much fun this would have been while we studied Japan. We could have had a webcam of Mt. Fuji, a video of making a paper crane, an audio podcast of simple songs in Japanese, so many things!

I also see how the people who supervise the computer lab could use this, setting up a different homepage for different grade levels, or for different purposes. If students are going to do research, they will need different links than if they are to take a test on OAS, for instance. Having the pagecast up would focus the students on the programs they need, and keep them from being distracted by programs they don’t need.

Playing with the various flakes was really fun for me; I have one set up and plan to keep working on it. I think this would be lots of fun -while learning -for students. As a teacher, I think I would especially appreciate the ability to customize pages for different groups and for different purposes. Once again, another powerful tool for teachers. How do you choose on which ones to spend your time?

I can see even young students loving to help design a page for a certain topic. Of course, much supervision would be needed with younger children, but older students would be comfortable doing it with minimal help.

I really had fun with this. I have looked at YouTube before when someone suggested a certain video. I often click on one listed on my yahoo page as a funny pet video. Also, my grandsons watch their favorite things on YouTube under the watchful eyes of their dad, Aidian watching tornadoes, and Dylan watching videos using Bionicles. I had no idea there were so many useful videos!

I love the common craft videos introducing the Web 2.0 tools. The one on blogs gives very useful information. Their other videos are also very easy to understand and are full of good information.

An interesting video on using wikipedia could also be very useful. This video gives students hints on using wikipedia to aid students in a research project.

Another interesting video was one submitted by Mr. Numbers. His video gives some interesting little hints in helping students remember multiplication facts that I had never heard before. My third grade grandson enjoyed this one.

The video that I enjoyed watching most of all was one produced by a teacher at my grandsons’ school. Dylan had Ms. Hefner in first grade and I certainly appreciated her use of technology while teaching him. Her class’s Thanksgiving video was highlighted the week before Thansgiving on TeacherTube. The first graderslisted the things for which they were thankful.We Are Thankful