Final Wrap Up

I am amazed out the plethora of information we have covered! I have learned so much more that I imagined and I was the facilitator! The course was extremely organized through the wiki, it was easy to follow and we we have the ability to revisit any information we were not able to spend as much time on. A special thanks to our fearless leader who lead us on the incredible journey of discovering so many ways to integrate web 2.0 tools in our educational setting and who dealt with the technology issues with fortitude, grace and patience.

Wikis and Widgets

I was introduced to wikis back in January through my master's course. I came on board with Klein's pilot program soon after that and immediately implemented it in my classroom. The kids loved it! (They are eighth graders - they love anything new that they can do on a computer.) We culminated several assignments using the wiki for posting reflections and responding to peer's posts. In this workshop I learned about the intricacies of managing the wiki. I learned how to customize the navigation panel in which I quickly became very insecure when I discovered it to be a very "manual" process. I somehow lost one of my pages, but it really was not all that hard to find. Annet helped me by just going to Pages in Manage Wiki. I am excited about using wikis for in a more constructive way with the students! The wiki automatically orders the pages alphabetically. I want to be able to order in any order I choose. We also learned how to embed "legal" videos. There was much discourse about using Wikis in Plain English by linking to their site. These videos are short, fun to watch, and very informative. I had no idea my link to CommonCraft was a violation of copyright law. We have to be so careful - especially since we are role models for our students!

Online Photo Sharing

Once we worried about fires robbing us of our precious memories, now we worry about those memories being lost to computer failure. Thanks,to sites like Flickr, we have access to online storage of our photos. Not only are photos stored safely, BUT you can organize them for quick access - no more shoe boxes and envelopes! Another benefit of online storage - you can share your photos with the world. Unfortunately Flickr is blocked from our students. Flickr Storm is a place where pictures can be stored in a tray for student access. There is a great tutorial for learning how to use FlickrStorm.

Image Generators is a great site for making cool images for your blog or websites. The sticky note is an example of an image I made.

RSS Feeds

Real Simple Syndication! Wow, what a way to keep us with what's new. Now you can have news and updates to your favorite sites come to you! The warning is too many can be overwhelming - choose selectively. This is a great tool for teachers to keep up with those favorite teaching resources. Here is a site that I found that has 21 must read feeds.

Social Bookmarking

I had already began to using social bookmarking last year. I initially began with delicious.com, however my students are not able to access the website. I would like to teach my students to use social bookmarking so I have been testing Bookmark Tracker.com. I really like this site. It is not as visually appealing as Delicious but it has many benefits.

Major Features/Benefits include:
Keep your bookmarks secure in your own private password-protected account.
- No banner ads, popup ads or email spam messages.
- Synchronize your bookmarks securely between multiple computers and/or browsers.
- Share your bookmarks anonymously with others.
- Completely web-based. No additional software to install.
- Store an unlimited number of bookmarks.
- Automatic folders (My New Bookmarks, My Top Rated Bookmarks, Recently Visited, Most Visited)
- Fast and FREE!
- Works with Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and Internet Explorer
- Public and private RSS feeds available.

I worked with Delicious again yesterday and today but I have to say I still prefer Bookmark Tracker!

Blogging

I was introduced to blogs through my master's course. In one of my courses, Concepts of Educational Technology, we had to create a blog. We continue to update our blogs throughout the program. One of the things taught to the students today was to create a pretty link. Some teachers will still use the URL string placed within their text not knowing how to create a hyperlink. Our teacher webpages, up until now, did not have a way to create hyperlinks so unless you knew HTML the ugly links were used. Here is an example of a pretty link. This is one of my favorite blogs. Pamela is a friend of mine who I met through Lamar University. We collaborate together on our assignments. Her blog is so peacefull and uplifting; I like to visit it when I am stressed and need a break.

Web 2.0 First Day

I am facilitating a Web 2.0 Workshop with Annet Riley to earn internship hours for my master's degree in Educational Technology Leadership. I originally wanted to take this three day workshop to pick up more information. I was hesitant not knowing if the three days would be well spent since I am currently working on my course assignments which require a great deal of time. When I realized it could be used for my internship I jumped on it. I will not be earning professional development hours however that is fine. I usually have more professional development hours than needed. As it turns out I am learning so much more than I imagined. I am up and down helping others as well as following the class and trying to fulfill requirements in building this blog. I am so glad to be here!