Week Eight Thing Nineteen

I absolutely LOVE Google Earth. I have spent so much time playing with this tool. As a military brat, I have lived in many different places and many differet houses. It is very interesting plugging in the addresses of my old houses. It is amazing to see how neighborhoods and cities change over time.

I have also thought about how I could use this in the classroom. I have a globe in my classroom, but I now believe that this will be a better way to show my students where another country is located in relation to where we live.

I have also been amazed by all of the various ways that you can change the view of a location. Being able to see streets, landmarks, or geographic features is so detailed.

Week Eight Thing Eighteen

Slideshare seems like a great tool to use in the classroom. I can see how easy it would be to build my own Slideshare or even make one with my students. I was searching for a Slideshare that would be relevant to what I am currently teaching. I could not find any that I liked. I did, however, find one focused on Halloween Safety Tips. This Slideshare is geared towards parents, however, I think that sharing these ideas with students could still elicit great conversations with children.

Week Seven Thing Seventeen

My fiance listens to podcasts quite frequently and I have listened with him. I have never bothered to ask how he came about having these interesting recordings on his Ipod. I don't think I honestly cared. I enjoyed them when I happened to be in his car while he was listening to them. Now, however, I am excited because I now know how these come to be on his Ipod!

I went on the Learn Out Loud website and clicked around and found an educational podcast. When I clicked on "subscribe," I was taken to ITunes and realized that I can search for podcasts on ITunes and just subscribe to as many podcasts as I would like. I am currently listening to a This American Life broadcast about Health Care. I would love to listen to Educational podcasts, however I could not find one that seemed relevant to my situation. I will keep searching for one. I do think, however, that even listening to current podcasts focused on current events could be beneficial for anyone because I am, after all, expected to be a role model for my students. Shouldn't I know what is going on in the world? So, I have decided that listening to a news podcast while grading may be a better use of my time than perhaps watching the latest episode of Gray's Anatomy.

Week Seven Thing Sixteen

Youtube is a wonderful tool. I honestly mostly use it for laughs. "Charlie Bit my Finger" has been my favorite video for a year. For this assignment, I watched it again and started thinking about the life lesson that can be taken away from this video. I often do feel like someone is biting my finger. Hopefully never literally, but there are often painful things in my life. It is my choice to stick my finger back in or completely walk away. Sometimes it is easier to laugh at life when you just go with it and accept it for what it is.

Week Six Thing Fifteen

After speanding time making a video using Movie Maker, I had an idea of a video that I wanted to make with my kids. As an IB school, we are required to teach using inquiry based methods. Because of this philosophy, we also use this term while teaching. I thought that this activity would be a great way to show my students what they all believe "inquiry" is. The majority of them clearly do not know what it means. I had a feeling that would be the case. Therefore, my next project will be making a video with my students showing what Inquiry truly is. Hopefiully we will be done in time to show it at our school assembly at the end of the month. I would love to help my students become experts on Inquiry.

Week Six Thing Fourteen

This summer I had the chance to take a class on multimedia tools to use in the classroom. We spent quite a while looking at Voicethread and I loved this tool! I can remember my mind just reeling. I could was daydreaming of all of the ways I could use this in my classroom. 4 months later, I still have not used this. Now that I have spent more time on Voicethread today, I feel that it is a more attanaible goal. I can use this to showcase book reports and allow students to comment on what they have learned.

I have to admit that the task of leaving a comment on a Voicethread was quite scary. Yesterday I had to make an announcement using our PA system and I nearly paid someone else to make it for me. I hate leaving messages on machines or hearing my voice in any way on a recording.

I believe that this fear will subside the more I use Voicethread. So, the Voicethread below is the actual one I commented on. Look for the picture of my avatar to see my comments.

Week Five Thing Thirteen

I have been using G-Mail for over a year now. I, however, had no idea that IGoogle, Google Reader, or Google Documents existed. I have been sharing ideas with LaDale about using Google Documents with our teammates in order work on our IB planners. Every week that we meet to work on planners, we have to take turns getting on the server and opening the planner in order to have just one person on the document that can edit it. The rest of us are just looking at a "Read Only" copy. Using Google Documents would make a lot more sense because we could all be on the document and could edit it together.

I have to admit, however, that giving students the ability to edit Google Documents makes me nervous. I love the idea of being able to edit their documents. In a perfect world, I would assign a writing assignment to my students and then I would add comments to their documents. They would then use my comments to make a final draft. I would have them print their rough draft, peer edit, teacher edit, and final draft. Again, in a perfect world....with limited computer time...this would be difficult to do.