It's all Greek to me!

From Kicking and Screaming, Whining and Moaning to Smiling and Burbling On About Web 2.0 – - Well, that at least occasionally describes my new approach to the Web 2.0. . .

This summer I have learned an enormous amount, and forgotten an enormous amount. In some ways, for the kind of learner I am, I would have been fine with learning fewer tools and doing more activities on each one. However, I own that the reason I am still shaky on some tools is because I limited myself – time to move on, lots to do – rather than anything to do with the “structure” of the course. . . so, since I am responsible for my own learning, I am also responsible for going back to things I still feel shaky about. That’s how it should be!

I have made one additional google document, beyond what the course required, and learned a lot from making it. One thing I think I learned is that I probably should have made a wiki instead. So I have been trying to create a wiki. I am running into some problems on my wiki because what I want in formatting is beyond my ability level – and that is very frustrating. But, I am not giving up on the tools. I will keep struggling on with them because I really want to be ready to use them with my class this fall.I am surely going to make a wiki with the class so that each child can make a page about the Greek god they learned about over the summer, and I am going to try to use google documents for my class newsletters and literary magazines.

I would also like to use Voicethread with my class, to discuss a piece of Greek artwork or something like that. I’m not burbling on about it because today when I tried to do my Voicethread homework, my microphone wouldn’t work. But, it worked the other times we needed to use it, so I’m willing to try it again at school with a real microphone. (Mine is a little bump on my headphones wire – maybe there are real ones at school?)

I am aware that not every student in my class, much less in the country or world, has access to a computer or to a computer that goes on line reliably. All of this web stuff does depend on access.  So, progress is more available to some folks than others.  What an age old, unfair story!

I am especially glad to have had to do things that were really scary for me – and to have sometimes succeeded. I now can stick in links and sometimes even embed movies and put in pictures! Each step that in June or July was causing heart palpitations is much more manageable now – even when my document won’t format the way I want or the share button lies about who is able to edit that document. I’m glad to know about the “safety” button on Youtube – now I see that will be a valuable teaching tool as well.

I’m glad I took this class! It was a big time commitment and I’m especially glad I took it in the summer – if I had needed to juggle this course with school life, that would have done me in! Thanks, Shelley and thanks to Poughkeepsie Day School for signing me up!

Here I am at the last big task, the last two pieces of scary technology to confront, and I (again) had to beat down all kinds of prejudices and fears before I could click the button and visit School 2.0.  Most of my knowledge about the social networking comes from my teens’ absorption in Facebook. That Facebook thing completely overwhelms me and makes me want to avoid anything called “social networking”.

Steve Hargadon’s video intro was very helpful in focusing me on some things I had buzzed by in my own exploration, so I feel better about possibly joining that network. It certainly looked more approachable than the NING my school had opened up, which ended up being filled with Facebook type nonsensical comments and I couldn’t get onto the discussions I was supposed to get onto.

What I found myself wondering about, since I will be making a wiki with my class in the fall, was how to get each type of thing in its own box on the page.  The structure reminded me of the things I liked on Pageflakes, but the creator, Steve Hargadon, had complete control of each element on the Classroom 2.0. Are those boxes available on a wiki?

I stumbled across some discussions and groups that I could imagine joining, and I followed a few threads, watched some videos, read some blogs, kind of skated around, looking, as usual, for things related to the ancient Greeks as well as general discussions of things that could help me as a classroom teacher.

What I don’t want to do is spend more hours on more sites randomly stabbing – - as I said on a previous blog, you might spear some minnows that way, but it’s definitely not as effective as casting a net.  For me, my first visit to the Classroom 2.0 site was more stabbing. Perhaps when I have a burning issue, and plenty of time, I’ll revisit it.

By the way, if you’ve read the Wee Free Men books by Terry Pratchett, you’ll have met the word PLN in a cleverly humorous context. Anyone out there know what I’m talking about?

Twitter: Sorry, my negativity is shining through. Prejudice: I started my search knowing that I don’t want to use twitter, not in the classroom, not in any part of my life; it’s a ridiculous concept unless we’re doing haiku. And even then. . .  140 characters a bit reminiscent of the three minute novels and texted novels. . .

Discovery phase: What’s the point? Certainly not depth! If I want to create a relationship with teachers at other schools and explore issues of education with them, why would I want to do it in 140 character bites?

Analysis: I think as Americans cut back on everything except portion sizes, we get what we deserve. Tweet.

Conclusion: Sorry – saw many ideas for using twitter, other tools would work even better. . . Not convinced.

It’s always easy for me to rant about disturbing things I read or to mention just how many things are coming into the RSS reader every day and how overwhelming it is.  However, just in case my perpetual complaints are giving anyone a headache on this gorgeous summer day, I’m just going to address a couple of jewels.

I came across another site with many good games, called Smart Kit. Once there, I looked at some logic puzzles and enjoyed spending time on this classic Nine Brothers puzzle.

Just for fun, I came across two games that I can download onto my Kindle for free, called Every Word and Shuffled Row. I don’t even know what they are, but I loved hearing that there are free games for the Kindle!

I also saw a great slideshow on visual thinking, which got me thinking about how helpful it is for many students at any grade level to draw what they understand about whatever it is we’re blabbing on about. . .

I also read some blogs by Will Richardson, I think, after looking at his pageflakes example. Then I tried desperately to figure out where to subscribe to the blog, Webblogg-ed but couldn’t. . . still, his blog is a jewel – and I won’t dwell on not being able to subscribe.

That’s it for now.

Unexpectedly, I had a blast with my Page Flakes. When I saw that this task was optional, I certainly considered moving right on. However, the name was intriguing, the examples quite varied, and I was drawn in – for a couple more hours lost to the great beyond.  I don’t know that I set my settings correctly for anyone else to see my pageflake, but if you try, you can let me know whether or not it was accessible.

The site was fairly intuitive to use, however, because this is technology, I encountered a couple of frustrations. There were some flakes in people’s examples which I couldn’t find in the current list of available flakes. For example, on Miss Tyler’s Third Grade flake, she has a flake called a StoryNory. I couldn’t find any way to download it or insert it into my page, nor were any current story options as cute as that one. I had trouble setting the cities on the weather channel, but eventually succeeded. I couldn’t find a way to make sure everything that came in would be child appropriate, so I deleted quite a few of the flakes that looked iffy. Finally, I would have liked control over the pictures from FlickR – it seems to decide how/where to display the pictures instead of me deciding. . . and in FlickR, I also couldn’t remember/manage to set things on a “child safe” setting.

And yes, the mandatory ad in the prime real estate of the upper left hand column is annoying.

Would I use it as a homepage? It’s something to think about.

I would want a lot more control over the content before I would feel comfortable using it as a homepage for the class. However, the general idea is brilliant – it could be a mini newsletter – quick to update, fun to look at, for parents to keep in touch with what we’re working on and the pictures could be the kids working in class – - is there a way to set that up????

The help/support page was unavailable.

Frustrations aside, I KNOW Google Docs will be enormously useful! I’ve just had a fairly involved couple of days with google docs, and the odyssey is not yet done. From things people have told me and things I learned in this Thing, I am sure there are many ways for us to use this in connection with school.

Fortunately, I had a document that I need to work on collaboratively with other teachers on my team.  I uploaded it, edited it, played with the formatting, added a picture, added a link to a YouTube video and tried to share it.

That’s when I ran into interesting troubles which still aren’t quite resolved.

With many thanks to Shelley, our dedicated teacher, who tried several ways to help me and then popped up on my screen in a CHAT (which I’ve never been part of before, so three cheers for yet another new, technological experience), I understand a little more about why I haven’t been able to share my document with my team yet. Most importantly,  it may be tricky to share with people whose addresses are at my school, Poughkeepsie Day School. And, it turns out, only people with a google account can open a google doc. It IS possible to share with someone with a yahoo e-mail address or, of course, with a gmail address, so the problem may somehow reside within Poughkeepsie Day email accounts. But, they have to have a google account.

I plan to use google docs for my class newsletters and literary magazines. Those are not things I would like to make “public” but I would like my fourth and fifth graders to come on to read and edit their pieces. In order to do that, I now know they will need google accounts. I don’t anticipate that being a problem, but it is good to know it ahead of time. When we publish the magazine or newsletter, I also would not like it to be public – I would rather invite all the parents (and aunts and uncles if need be) than make it public, just to protect the identities of the 9 and 10 year olds.

Other ways I would like to use google docs might be for book group responses and to write a short biography of each of the major gods they will have learned about when we get back to school and discuss their summer reading of Greek mythology. That might be something we can turn into a presentation, as many of the kids may draw a picture of a god or may enjoy searching for statues or paintings featuring that god which we could include with the biography. And, of course, I hope to collaborate with the other teachers on my team on the document I created for this homework assignment and others down the road. We frequently run into the problem of having many different versions saved in different places, and occasionally, even having computers die with all our work inside, so google docs is surely going to be a lifesaver, worksaver, sanity saver – - -that is, when it stops driving me insane by not actually allowing me to share!@!!#$#$

I’m confused now about when we would want a wiki and when we would want a google doc? If anyone reads this, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I had a great time (and spent more hours than I expected) watching videos in YouTube that came up with the initial search words “ancient Greece”. The searches and the suggestions that came up were very helpful and I only ended up selecting a few less-than-worthwhile videos. I was able to bookmark quite a few onto my delicious site and there are several I will definitely show my class. Unlike so many of my searches at other places we have explored in this course, my YouTube search was fruitful and worthwhile!

It is great to know about the “safety on” mode. I wonder if we’re now just supposed to be ignoring copyright concerns. . . ? A few of the movies I watched had little ads about buying the song from itunes, which was a little intrusive, but not too bad. Some others had short commercials preceding them. Is there a way to cut those out before showing the video to the class? Likewise, one video was great for my class except a ten second inappropriate reference  – is there a way to edit it out?

The first video I chose to embed is a ten minute overview of Ancient Greece, starting from the very earliest hominids to the classical era.

If you’re feeling lighter hearted, here’s a funny song from Tom Lehrer, written in 1965 but still quite relevant and found on TeacherTube.

I DID IT! I successfully recorded my two minute podcast, following all the wonderfully step by step instructions. Thanks Shelley! And just in case I can never find it again, here’s the link for all of our podcasts at Podbean – - of course, I’ll have to remember where to find my login information, and I’m guessing I can’t write it down here. . .

But, it’s possible that I am correctly providing the link to it:  jan’s podcast trial . The question is that I found something about imbedding a player, but I don’t know where/how to do that, so I have to hope this works for other people. It does work on my computer. The only technical problem I had and can’t solve is that the volume records VERY quietly with my little microphone. Hearing my voice without headphones is just about impossible. (Which is okay because I’m not saying anything significant – just fooling around with the technology!)

I’m still thinking about how we’ll use podcasts in the classroom. Could be a fun way for the class to do their book shares one time – I wouldn’t see it as a replacement for regular face to face book sharing – or a different way to leave a message for their parents when they come to Curriculum Night in October. . . However, that might require more than the two or three computers I can count on in my room. . . anyway, more thought to follow!

I am an audio-addict. I listen to books and podcasts in every available minute of washing dishes, sweeping the floor, folding the laundry, driving the car and taking walks with the dogs. I have been using itunes as my podcatcher (without knowing that term) for a couple of years now. I mostly subscribe to NPR shows, such as Wait, Wait, Prairie Home Companion, This American Life and American Shorts. I also subscribe to TED talks. I can’t keep up with all the podcasts all the time, but I set itunes to keep only the most recent five. I charge my ipod by plugging it into my computer, so it synchronizes with my itunes account at the same time. My ipod has almost no music on it – just books and podcasts. Although it can handle video podcasts, I never watch anything there – I just listen. Audio-addict.

I have looked around for some podcasts that would be helpful in my professional life, and have found quite a few that may educate me, but I have so far found it difficult to find things I would share with my students.  There are many science shows on NPR, but for the foreseeable future, I’m focusing on language arts and social studies, not science.

My searches thus far through the educational podcast sites recommended in this Thing have been random stabs in the dark – which yield a minnow here and there, but feels inefficient. One find, related to my own research about Ancient Greece, was a story about a 6th grade teacher traveling in Greece, Greek Culture, Geology, and History. It was in an educational podcast site called Podcasts for Educators, Schools and Colleges which is set up to search podcasts in certain categories, such as podcasts from schools, podcasts from colleges and universities, and then some different subject areas. I couldn’t find a way to search all the podcasts in one easy swoop, so had to go through one category at a time.

At Learn Out Loud, I found a page of podcasts that came up under the search words Ancient Greece.

While I love audio podcasts, I suspect that the ones with clever, simple cartoonish illustrations, the type we watch for our work in this course, might be more effective with children. I listened to three or four of the grammar girl podcasts and thought they were interesting, but not too well aimed for fourth and fifth graders.

I’d love to work on making a podcast with my class, but am not sure yet what makes sense as a topic. I saw that we have to make our own podcast for this class. In the next Thing.  That’s a scary thought! Maybe I’ll just stay on Thing 17 for a while longer!

I admire the idea of the Library Thing, but most likely won’t be using it too often personally or professionally. For people who love  “social networks” on computers, it seems like a good fit, but for me, I didn’t find the comments there more helpful than at Amazon or less confusing than on Facebook.  I appreciated the opportunity to explore it, but think I ‘ll leave it there.

Exploring Delicious

I have found the exploration of Delicious to be arduous but worthwhile. The arduous part comes from the fact that it’s over 90 degrees in my house, my summer is ticking away, and I am overwhelmed by learning about yet another great tool. I think I have reached a point where I would like to focus on exploring the web 2.0 tools I’ve been introduced to already, rather than keep acquiring more and more tools with which I feel insufficiently comfortable or proficient.

That said,  (whined) I think the idea of Delicious is great! I was able to find several sites which will help me professionally, although organizing them and tagging them is still confusing to me. I was delighted to find so many sites with “ancient greece” in the tags, as that is the new curriculum I must develop for this coming school year.

I mentioned Delicious to my MUCH more tech-savvy spouse, and he already uses it (of course). He said he sometimes finds helpful sites by looking at other sites tagged by the person who tagged a particular site he liked, but when I looked for sites that way, it was more like looking for a needle in a haystack. From what I saw, someone who tagged an “ancient greece” site might have (literally) 7,000 other tags, including one on martial arts, one on fly fishing and one one growing basil in a windowbox. All interesting sites, for sure, but only helpful in a randomly interesting way.

One thing that made Delicious confusing to me was that when I tried to sign up, my yahoo account came up.  Did that happen to everyone else? Then, today, when I happened to be signed in to a different yahoo account, that one came up and I wasn’t signed in through there, so I was invited to create an account. There seemed to be something about linking them, but I’m too hot and tired to figure that out. Instead, I signed out of that yahoo account, signed into my other one and clicked the delicious tab on my tool bar. Why does it have to be linked to any email account? I thought I could access it from anywhere with ease. . .

I will definitely use Delicious again – and maybe it’ll be less than 90 degrees in here by then. . .

(Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken such a strong stand against air-conditioning!)