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 #5 Microblogging

Easy enough to sign into Twitter. I can see how this could get addictive - reading losts of different posts. It was interesting to look at some of my favorites - Astros, President Obama, etc. But, I think that it would also be fun to follow other friends and colleagues. So, school use? Not sure how that would work exactly. Although, there could be uses for this - current events, etc. As I was wondering about this, I went back to the SBISD webpage describing the assignment and noticed
Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter. I find that I can agree with many of the ideas presented there. So, it can be a great way to expand your knowledge base and keep up with friends.

I experienced using back-channeling using Today's Meet at a GT workshop in early June. It was an awesome way to communicate without disrupting the session. I can see many ways that this would be helpful for students to post questions without fearing that they would be embarassed by expressing their ignorance about a topic.

Next, I'll look at Facebook. I've wanted to join, now I have a reason!

Added to this post: 7/31/09
I've been able to setup my Facebook account and requested quite a few friends. This was fairly easy because my husband is friends with sooooo many people, so I just looked over his friends list. Plus, I do have other friends as well and they were easy to locate and add. I'm looking forward to being part of this. Looks fun! The idea about using the book club app with older students for reading groups sounds interesting. I'll need to investigate more, but I'm doubtful that this will appropriate for elementary, mainly because of the age requirements.

Ta, Ta for now!