Many Favorite Things...United Streaming!

As I reflect back at everything I have learned so far, I have enjoyed so much learning and growing from this MILP project- I will be sad that it will not continue but I am glad teachers can still participate in another technology event- I use United Streaming so much that my final blog post needs to address how wonderful it has been for me to teach with it- If I can get my act together- I believe that I will use more of the information taught to us! But I am using United Streaming to find video clips to use in class and these videos have generated great class discussions! Thanks for everything! MILP has taught me so much!

Thing #20 Podcasting

How interesting it has been using a few podcasting lectures in my classes- I haven't done it live but I have recorded myself through the phone with a few of my lectures. I have a student who is on medical leave quite a lot and for his assignment I had him listen to the lecture notes and answer questions. I saw him again today (Monday) and he stated that the lecture helps more than just copying my notes down. I'm glad it does for him! Now I just have to do more of it since it has helped him. Can I saw "wow" again!

Thing #23 Del.icio.us!

Can I cay Wow! Perhaps one of the best part of this project is using Del.icio.us! I'm done with bookmarks! I created my Del.icio.us site with information for all my classes- I can actually organize it and use it more effectively than my bookmarks! I have students coming in this week to work on make-up work and I'm hoping to show them some of the sites on my Del.icio.us site to help them. I believe this is by far the most organized I have been with my websites!

Thing #16 MnLINK

Thanks for the great session on MnLink- I was happy and overwhelmed as I looked though additional resources for teachers. I've decided to create a website of MnLINK dedicated to giving students historical reading about the Harlem Renaissance and the Roaring 20s. From these collected work students will explore specific social, political and cultural pieces of society- we will spend 3 days in the lab with this activity next week and I will blog about how they use resources from MnLINK.

Thing#18: One Student Thing

I am truly amazed at what our students can do with technology! I was helping Nancy Plagens out with the history day project as a judge and I saw two fascinating pieces of documentary created by students using iMovie-can I saw WOW! I am so proud of what great work students have done with technology-I don't know how to use iMovie but I would love to know if anyone knows how and can show me.

Thing #36 Social Networking

I finally asked my niece to show me her myspace personal site and I have to say that I am very uncomfortable with using it as my social networking site. I don't want to expose anypart of myself in myspace, although my niece said that you can block and allow people on your site. What do other people think of myspace? After looking at niece's myspace site I didn't even want to explore Facebook!
I talked to my husband and found out that he uses a social network called "Linkedin" to network with his graduate classmates. They often shared ideas from academic readings, shared job announcements, and worked through projects together. This sounded much more like the networking I am interested in-
Am I just "out" of the social networking happening today?

Thing #28: Photos and Images

My husband is a professional photographer and I have posted some of our travel pictures on my blog. He uses a site called pbase.com to host and share photos with people around the world. This is a nice site for people to look at photography and learn from each other- of course I am not a photographer, I often cut legs and arms off people I take pictures of so it was refreshing to see such professional work on a website!
I find that I like flickr- it is a nice site with so much- When I was teaching about Afghanistan, I uploaed a map from flickr and used it as well as other photos of everyday people in Afghanistan. Pictures make such a great difference in teaching!

Thing #12: Other Search Engines

I remember my college days of learning about the internet and how often I used Alta Vista and Web Crawler as search engines before Google. Now with Google I seldom use Alta Vista or Web Crawler. I decided to use these two search engines to find information about development in third world countries, and I did find good information from both search engines. I realized that Lycos and Yahoo are similiar in what it has on the homepage: lastest news, search bar, pictures, Hollywood happenings,most popular searches, and advertisement butI find that Yahoo's hits are similar to Google. Alta Vista, WebCrawler and Google are similar with just a quick search bar, but it seems that different hits came up for third world development. Perhaps the great thing about having search engines is that students can have more options.

Thing #24: Online Gaming

As students and I wrap up our unit on Global Issues, I was very surprise and excited that some of my student have learned or heard about the Darfur genocide. It is amazing how good discussion can happen if students have background knowledge about certain topics-perhaps you're thinking what does this have to do with "online gaming"- well most of the students have played an online game called " Darfur". I was surprised that there was such a game and wonder what it was all about-

I searched Google for online games and found the game called 'Darfur". It gives the player 7 characters to select, varying in age, gender- the task is to forge for water without being captured by the rebel soldiers. It was quite a tough game and I believe that every character I played was captured and taken to a government camp- I'm not sure how students did with this game but I am definitely not a gamer!

Thing # 8 Dribbling Lessons

I don't really have students reflect on their projects, so I have incorporated the dribbling lesson of self-evaluation and peer evaluation in their project. For the freshmen class we talked about self- evaluation and what they would to to help improve their global issue project. I also included questions in their final presentation where they will reflect on their projects.

My juniors and I will go over the peer evaluation component of the lesson on Thursday as we have students present their work on Minnesota' s history. I took the worksheet sample from Leslie Preddy and I will adjust a few item on the worksheet- then I will make copies for students as they evaluate each other during their presentations. Also, each student will have to complete their own self-evaluation worksheet that I also took from Leslie Preddy.

I'm so glad that there's so much great lessons and worksheets for us to use to help with the research process.

Thing #21 YouTube and More

I posted a blog about Youtube before but as I am using it more, I have to say that students have so much to say about teachers and Youtube:

-I thought we couldn't use it in school
-can we listen to a music video after this video?
-you have to pause the video and let it load for a few minutes before uploading it for us to watch
-I can't believe that my teacher is using Youtube!

I really feel uncomfortable using the Youtube website, because I'm never sure what will pop out as the most watched video- so what I did was create a blog for my class and upload the Youtube video form there- as Linda suggested to me, always do the prep work before you show Youtube- I'm not able to upload Youtube videos to my urban planet website- if anyone knows how to do it, please let me know!

I'm not sure if anyone has used TeacherTube, I find it more difficult finding video clips- I was looking for a video clip of Darfur but I couldn't find anything that I could use in class, I went back to Youtube and found a good clip which I posted here on the site. Perhaps TeacherTube is still fairly new and has less materials? I'm not sure!

Thing #7 Students Using the Research Calculator

Students are finding that the day to day reminders are helpful and they like the categorizing of steps- of course they fell overwhelm because they have to answer questions for the research calculator and my questions as well. I was wondering if there is a way for teachers to put the calculator on our website and add our own criteria on the calculator? Or is it only available through sponsored sites?

I would like to have students try to use it more often if I can add more information and requirements and adjust the schedule. I know one of our colleague did a great job adjusting their schedule, so I used what he did and created my own guidelines, but it would be great to have it online.

Thing #6 Research Project Calculator

I find it helpful using the research project calculator. I'm doing a project on Minnesota's History in the 11th grade US History class and I used the calculator as a guideline to help figure out where to start. I like many of the probing questions and I appreciate the rubrics.

I'm having problems adjusting the research calculator to fit what I want to have done- it seems too general and I'm not sure if I would have enough time to complete what I need. I'm wondering if teachers feel the same way. I decided to use some of the reflection questions and a few of the probing questions. But then I went back to allowing students to pick topics instead of asking questions. I also wrote my own questions because I wanted students to have more specific guidelines.

The project is due today this week and I will share student's experience and project on one of my next blogs.

Thing #15 : Collaboration

I am thankful for our PLC's collaboration with Linda. I feel that through this collaboration effort I have support and new ideas to share with my students. I will share a few things from my classes:
- students now use our reliable online resource website more often than before
-my students are now aware of Google and more reliable sources
-the cached button has proved very helpful for all, a lot of my SPED students use it as well
-research seems more like a part of our class now, before it was more of a problem
-students are finally remembering that they have to cite their sources.

In a small period of time, we have accomplished so much, thanks to Linda and our collaboration effort!