ezclasssites.com

I decided to extend my mindtool search outside of the books recommended sites and found this great site called ezclasssites.com. It's definitely a web 2.0 tool and a mindtool (if you choose to use it that way). It has many features inside it that I was looking for to use with my class. Overall, it's place to create a class webpage. Inside it, you can provide a place for your students, with individual accounts, to have a discussion board, blog etc. Teachers have webmaster and overview priviledges and nobody can see it that's not invited. I'm excited to play around with it more and will share more of my findings as I go along.

Spreadsheet

I have never used a spreadsheet before today. I'm fairly comfortable with math and formulas so it wasn't difficult for me to figure out. I like the idea of being able to input data and then setting up the spreadsheet to manipulate it. I could see students using it to track data on projects. I'm also interested in being able to graph information so this could be a great find.

Flickr

The other day I uploaded images to my personal account. Now, I've taken the next step to upload my poverty images into the group page.

Snow day discovery

Today was a very rare thing in NYC - a snow day. I decided to stay in and check out some of the websites and programs that were mentioned in this weeks readings.

I first checked all the wikipedias. Overall the concept of wikipedia makes me uneasy since anyone can write anything that they want whether accurate or not. That being said, I found that they had interesting material.

Wikibooks had books on some interesting topics. I read a one on classroom management and notetaking. There are definitely interesting ideas there.

Next I looked at wikitravel. This one I could see referring back to in my personal life. The one problem that I found was that it had so many links that I ended up so far off from where I started. If I had no goal, this would be fine. But, I was looking to specifically find information about Hawaiian travel. Eventually I made it back there but it took a long time since there were many interesting things to read. Basically, the reader needs to keep very focused when reading this site.

World 66 was alright. I found that it had less information that wikitravel and it felt like it was trying to sell me something the entire time.

Wikijunior made me the most nervous out of all of them. These books are written for children who, for the most part, believe everything they read. I tried to open a page for editing hoping that it would ask me to sign up, screen me, or something. It did none of this. It just allowed me to begin editing. I could have written anything and some child somewhere could have read it. This is not a site that I would recommend for my 9 and 10 year old students.

I then looked at wikisource. This seems less like a wikipage than a website. It seems like there is limited revision allowed. I like the idea of that when it is supposed to be a copy of actual text.

Bob Sprankle's work was very interesting. I'd love to do some blogging work with my students. Maybe pair them up with an old student of mine that's in high school so they have someone that is reading it often. The one thing that may not allow me to do this is the amount of children in a typical NYC class. I typically have 28-32 children in my class. And it's only me. The computer work, in my mind, would be better if it was a smaller class with at least 2 adults. It looks like Bob has 13 children which seems like a more manageable number for this type of work. His children did produce beautiful work though.

Global Schoolnet Foundation was out of order. I'll have to check back with that one another time.

Next I looked at Tapped In. I love that it tracks you. This makes me feel that people that don't want to be tracked will stay away. This makes it feel safer to me for my students, as well as for me.

Poverty images

I searched online today for images of poverty. I started by typing in 'poverty'. This led me to 'poverty in America'. I was struck by some of the cartoon images and then decided to further search for those. Overall, the images that struck me as the most interesting were the cartoons and graphs. Some of the pictures of the children were interesing as well. I saved them on my desktop and then uploaded them into Flickr into a set called poverty and tagged them.

Google Docs

I have read and reread. Visited and revisited the Google Docs page. I read the sample Webquests. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it all. Finally, someone from the class wrote something on the page which I felt gave me a jumping off point. Now it looks like we are starting to share ideas.

Delicious

I was playing around on Delicious tonight and, from others suggestions on the class discussion board, I added others to my Network. This will make it a lot easier to keep track of others bookmarks. I also thought that, since there are so many of us, it would be a good idea for us to have a place on our wiki to organize everyone's usernames. It's nice to see that people are already using it. :)

Web connect

We just finished up our first web connect. Getting on the page was easy. Once we were all there, it was difficult to sort it out and organize. We finally settled it things ran smoothly for most of us. It was really nice to put some faces and names together and to share ideas. It's a shame that some people had difficulties and couldn't fully participate. Those of us that did participate had a nice introductory conversation. I'm not very familiar yet with WebQuests so it was good for me to hear what people had to say about them. Also, it was helpful to hear what professional backgrounds people came from. We practiced using proper web chat manners. At times it was easier to type what you wanted to say as opposed to speaking it. You didn't have to wait your turn or worry about forgetting your idea. Overall, I liked this format for communicating.

Following up on 'Technology and Problem Solving'

I just finished reading 'Technology and Problem Solving' by Howard Budin. There were many programs and much software that was referred to. I first looked up Decisions, Decisions: Immigration by Tom Snyder Productions. It seems that it may be a little too mature and expensive for my fourth grade students. This is a shame since I think that it looks interesting and valuable. I then went back to our class Webspiration page to play around with some of the features that I didn't realized existed until reading the article. It's very interesting the way that the program can take the web that have been created and reorganize it into an outline. That's something that would be very helpful to my students. I also like how you can use pictures inside the web to represent words and ideas. I spent a little bit of time looking up The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. This looks like a cute program that my students would like. It was also very reasonably priced. I'm definitely going to look for this to buy. Lastly, I tried to figure out a spreadsheet program. I tried Microsoft Works. What I learned was that I need someone to teach me how to use the program properly so I can teach my students how to use it.

Thoughts on the class discussion page

Over the last few days I've been trying to work my way through Dewey's writing. Whenever I take a class, I always do the reading. I find that knowing that I'm reading to learn and to share on the discussion page has given me an extra reason to push through it though. It's nice to know that I can work through it on my own time and reread in order to share rather than having pressure to recall on the spot in a face-to-face discussion.

Webspiration

I received my invite to sign into Webspiration today. I was immediately excited to see that many ideas were already on the class web. It motivated me to think about what I could contribute. I added some balloons and connected them with arrows. I changed their color and hyperlinked when possible. It piqued my interest so much that I started to talk to my coworkers about their ideas about poverty in America.

I'm not sure yet whether my students would be able to use something like this. Although it's not that difficult to use, it may be too complicated for elementary aged kids.

Using old ideas in a new way

In a computer class that I once took at Fordham (where this blog originated) I learned how to use a site called Bloglines. It's a site that you can gather all of the blogs that you read into one place. It notifies you when a new post has been completed and it gives you the ability to save posts that you want to read again. At the time it was taught to us but we didn't spend much time on it's many uses. Since then, I have used it to follow the multiple gossip sites that I read daily, some home improvement and cooking blogs, as well as to follow the Lost (tv show) blogs that I enjoy. Today I had the idea to add all my classmates blogs to my account. Now I can easily read and follow when everyone posts. Very exciting!

Using Blackboard

So far I really like using blackboard. Overall, it's fairly easy to use. I've been able to figure out all parts, thanks to the tutorial, and like that many parts of the class are in the same place. I especially like the discussion board feature. It's been great to read what others think and to see what they have learned. It is also great to share my ideas with the group without being 'on the spot' the way you are in a face to face conversation. I can write, read, revise and then post.

The one problem that I'm having is that I'm unable to post from my home computer on the discussion board. For some reason I don't get a text box to write in. All the other features of the page show up on the screen but not the text box. I can and do post from my school computer which shows the post page as it's supposed to be seen. So far my solution is to email myself what I would have posted at home and then post when I get to work. Any suggestions?

First thoughts

It's only been a week that I've been trying to become acquainted with the web 2.0 sites that the class will be using. At this point my head is spinning a little and I'm not quite sure what all the different sites do. That's not 100% true since I understand wiki pages. But that's about all I understand. I'm excited to get acquainted with new ones and a bit nervous that I won't be able to figure them out. I think that the excitement is outweighing the nerves.