Thing #11.5 Evaluation

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I REALLY enjoyed Bookr and Glogster. I've become almost addicted to Facebook. Slideshare will also be useful!

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

11.5 things has forced me to look at new web apps that are available, many of them interesting, some useful, and a few that are too cumbersome to use, or not what I want to spend time working on. But, the new cool stuff is waaay cool, and I want to show students and teachers some of the great and awesome things they can do with these applications.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Slideshare, Glogster, and Bookr were some things that I had not heard of. I also enjoyed exploring the videos. I think that the students will really like Glogster and Bookr. I think that the teachers will like Slideshare and Bookr.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I think that you all did a great job of getting this going and encouraging so many educators to become more aware of "bleeding edge" technology and applications. Thanks for all of your hard work!!!

Thing #11 Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship is something that all students need to learn. However, students need to learn this in incremental stages apropriate for their development - especially in elementary settings.

I liked the post: Digital literacy and the classroom. I especially like the thoughts expressed in this graphic:

For the student, all 4 areas of literacy, safety, learning strategies and etiquette are balanced and important.

I thought that I-Safe Factsheet was helpful in describing what would be appropriate to teach diferent ages of students about safety.

I found this .pdf file about "Cyber-Savvy Teens: Making responsible choices online." I thought that the information presented gave a good overview of what might go into each lesson.

One of the ideas stated on the Kenton, KY school website was that September was the month they focused on digital citizenship and internet safety. I think that we in SBISD would be wise to consider this also as we prepare for the upcoming year.

Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship - from the Digital Citizenship website.

1. Digital Etiquette - electronic standards of conduct or procedure

2. Digital Communication - electronic exchange of information

3. Digital Literacy - process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology

4. Digital Access - full electronic participation in society

5. Digital Commerce - electronic buying and selling of goods

6. Digital Law - electronic responsibility for actions and deeds

7. Digital Rights & Responsibilities - those freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world

8. Digital Health & Wellness - physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world

9. Digital Security (self-protection) - electronic precautions to guarantee safety.

I'm not sure where this actually originated, but I found it at the Kenton, KY website:
Understanding Digital Citizenship
"A citizen both works for and benefits from a larger society."

It is vital that our students understand that they are part of a bigger picture, and if they do not value and use their digital rights, then they will be relegated to a lower class, with fewer options in multiple areas of their life, than those who are able to use the power of technology to their advantage.

Thing #10 Virtual Worlds

Hello, I'm Sherri Madrigal in Second Life. I found this to be quite frustrating and not quite sure how this has an educational application. Yes, I know that it's good to know what students & others are doing.....

Although... A discussion about copyright regarding Frank Lloyd Wright and a museum that was created was interesting.

So.... I've been reading other beach combers & certified diver's blogs. I read I "Heart" Bibliophiles sbl blog about this thing, and realized that what I probably need is someone to sit with me and help guide me along in this part of the adventure and I'll do a lot better. I've read other's blogs that say similar things. The Tsunami and Hurricane adventures in SL sound interesting and would be very educational. So... I guess I've learned something more about what SL has to offer. Now, I just need to keep exploring it and learning more about it......

Thing #9 Slideshare

How Cool is this??? Being able to share your powerpoints?? Both Slideshare and Authorstream seem realy cool. I like that Authorstream has the ability to be downloaded as a video.

I can see how this could be easily used by grade level teachers to share what they have created so that others don't have to "reinvent the wheel."

I was looking at slideshare and wanted to search to see if anything was already uploaded that would be educationally useful. Just typed in "dinosaur" and came across a cute set of dinosaur printables that my Kinder teachers could use with their kids during this unit.

I can see teachers and students using this in so many ways. I am eager to explore this!!!

Thing #8 - Screen Capture

As I started learning about Screen Capture, I thought of lots of ways to use this. And, when I told my husband about this and explained it to him a little, he was also intrigued. [I suggested that he make a screen capture video explaining how to do a very technical part of his job.]

After reading comments, I tried downloading Jing on my home computer. That was a somewhat cumbersome process that may have had more to do with home issues than with Jing issues.

I frequently advise teachers "How to clean-up their computers" so that they will run faster. So, I attempted to make a screen-cast of how to do this using Jing and upload it to screencast.com. I was successful at the video part, but the sound on my home computer's microphone wasn't working, but I think that if you watch it, you can still figure out what to do.
Here it is:



I can see lots of possibilities with this!!!

Thing #7 Video Resources

The fair use video & FAQs were helpful, but it took me a little while to digest this. (Could be that I'm not back in my librarian brain after being on vacation & away for quite a while,) I think that teachers and students may be confused somewhat about how this works legally, but I will use these resources to try to explain it to them, though it might be helpful to have a book...

I've looked at Ms. Frazzled blog on this topic, and enjoyed the interview videos she posted about Tomie DePaola and Mo Willems. (I couldn't embed the videos either...) I want to share these with students & I think they will really like them! What a cool way to be able to bring in a author!

In Hulu, I found the Biography channel, and upon exploring it, found a video about Amelia Earhart. I think that when 2nd grade is learning about various heroes, including Earhart, that this would be fun to show them so that they can see her as a "live" person, not just someone who is another dead person they have to learn about.
http://www.biography.com/video.do?name=historicalfigures&bcpid=1740031454&bclid=1745181015&bctid=1718499309
(I tried to embed this and couldn't remember how. Hmmmm, I'll try to work on remembering this.... LATER: I watched the YouTube video on embedding videos, and biography.com does not seem to permit this. You can link to it, but not embed it, so... here it is.)

I really liked Joy Valenza's list of video sources, especially NeoK12 with it's categories of videos that have been screened to be appropriate for school settings.
One of the videos that caught my eye was one on the water cycle. I know that several teachers will enjoy using this. (I'm trying to remember which grade level works with this, and I think that it's 3rd grade.)




I explored DotSub a little. I will let our Spanish langauge teachers know about it's existence, but it didn't seem to have very many educational videos. (Maybe I'm not looking in the right place....)

Totol was interesting - seemed appropriate for PK - 1st grade. When my son was much younger he would have enjoyed all of the train videos.....

At TeacherTube, after some searching, I found a video that would be appropriate for upper elementary grades studying magnets.



All in all, this was a fun way to spend the day, and I look forward to doing more of this!!!!

Thing #6 iTouch Apps

Since my husband is addicted to his I-Phone, I am fairly familiar with what an I-Phone can do with the various apps he he frequently showing me.
What I've learned over the last week or so of playing around with this project is some of the things that other educators are doing with I-phones/I-touches. I still think that the management of these will be somewhat challenging, but I am less skeptical about their use in the education setting.

One of the most useful websites I discovered was the appism webstore so that you can search for I-touch apps on an actual computer. Just for fun I downloaded pictaslide since I always enjoyed sliding the little boxes around to complete a picture. On John's I-Phone is several ed apps that our kids already use, like the math flash cards that my daughter loves to use to "play" at learning addition/subtraction facts, and my son will use to work on multiplication facts.

Since my son is enrolled at Cornerstone this year and his teacher is one that is getting new I-touches for their class (among other things), it will be interesting to see what/how his class is using and managing them.

I've read several of the articles and watched the I-School video that was really exciting. I really liked the articles, 100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better, and the ACU ConnectED Summit 2009, as well as Chris Webb'space article Why an iPod Touch in education? I'm looking forward to using these cool devices in helping students learn.