Final Thoughts

This has been an informative course that has exposed me to many resources that I never knew existed. There are many things that I will definitely incorporate into my classroom. The ones that I don't find useful, i can see where other people would find them a great resource. My main problem with the class was that I spent most of the summer in a secluded lake house with spotty internet at best. I would love to have this information in some sort of notebook so that I can quickly access how to do some of these things later. With my brain, it is use it or lose it. I know that an online binder has been mentioned in the past to handle a teacher's resource book at Heath, it might be a good idea to add some of this to that. I also think that one needs a moderate amount of websavy to be able to do this. I can see how someone with limited knowledge might find it frustrating. I'm not completely prepared for Web 2.0, but I am certainly a great deal closer!

Thing #23

Well, it certainly seems that I have not been giving credit when credit is due! This is definitely something that I will change in the future! I found creative commons credits literally all over this program. I also found them several places on the internet including quite a few news websites that I visit often. I found on cnn a notation where the author had used a piece from the AP and credited it using a creative commons credit.

Thing #22

Hmmm....It took me a long time to do myspace and even longer to hop into facebook. Sometimes I feel like I have far too many social networking things going on already. I find nings interesting, but I don't see the application for my classroom. We already have wikis and about a million other ways to communicate with our students. These kids are thoroughly entrenched in facebook and myspace and I do not see them reaching out for another kind of social networking site. I don't think that I would use this in my room.

With Nings now "costing" I wonder if it will hurt the proliferation of if...

Thing #21

I like Podcasts, although I find the use in a math classroom may be rather limited. I would be much more likely to use youtube or teachertube to find something new and interesting to put into a class than a podcast. I have used podcasts in the past in my advisory classroom.

I had never gone to the Educational Podcast Network and was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few that had to deal with mathematical topics. I was especially interested in the section on statistics. Statistics is such an ambiguous concept to many people and there were quite a few on there that helped solidify some ideas. I am going to go through my first few weeks of lessons for statistics and see if there are any that I can use!

Thing #20

I love looking for little videos for my students to watch that connects what they are learning to what is actually happening. One of my biggest pet peeves is the 70% is good enough attitude that my students have. I found this one a few years ago and have used it during advisory a few times. It gets them talking and debating. It is interesting to hear what they have to say about it!



Seriously, check it out!

I also have used this one in the past. It was made by a student to describe exactly HOW to classify conics. I show this to them right before they do the conics project!



Of course, it goes without saying that we should be careful what we show!

Thing #19

This is a really neat site. I love to read and spend a great deal of time reading. I hate going to the bookstore and wandering around looking for a book. Sites like this allow me to get suggestions based on the books that I like. It kind of reminds me of the Netflix website and how it recommends movies to me based on what I like. This would be a great place to find like-minded individuals. I do not have a classroom library. Although I can definitely see how a teacher that had one would find this useful. I question how small libraries can use it to keep track of books. I thought that libraries were not allowed to keep a record of the books that a person checked out. I would be curious to see how they use this is they are not keeping a record...

Thing #18

I can't seem to get the Sandbox thing working...Oh well.

I set up my wiki through the district and it has pretty much sat like that all year. It seems that last school year we kept getting new and even more innovative ways to "make" our kids learn. At this point, my students find the use of Wikis and other such sites neat, but ultimately a waste of time. I tried to get mine to access my wiki outside of school and the result was not positive. The fact that just about anyone can "change" it, allowed random stuff to be posted. I had all of these hopes to use it well, but like many other teachers I gave up and went back to more traditional methods of communicating with my students. Students seem to still appreciate a direct teaching approach. I will not be attempting to incorporate it next year.

Thing #17

Okay...I am now going to climb up onto my soapbox. I without a doubt feel that the pace at which society has integrated technology is without a doubt causing people to read less and to some degree get "stupider." With knowledge, I feel that we have become a society of immediate gratification. Students do not want to "work" to find and integrate information. Instead, they surf the internet and get little bits and pieces from many different sites and carefully cut and paste it together to come up with a conclusion that is far too often someone else's! I am not sure that they would know how to go to a library and pour over a stack of books looking for useful information and then carefully take notes from it! Patience is no longer an option. Our students' brains are going a million miles an hour and keeping their attention while the phone is buzzing in their pockets is frustrating at best. I would love to see what would happen if we took students to the library and told them to go find information in the traditional sense. Or how about sit here and read this book in quiet for an hour with no external stimuli. I feel that they are lacking imagination. If they want to know what Meg from A Wrinkle in Time looks like, they don't see a mousy slightly plain girl in their head, they look it up on the internet!

Thing #16

I already use the IGoogle start page on my home computer. It is set as my home page and what pops up every time I log on. I like how easy it is to add and remove information as well as move it around. I do not have it set as my home page on my school computer. The majority of what I do on my Mac is school related and that is what I want to come up when I log onto that computer.

I will not use the online calendar, I already use the one on my Mac. If I get too many calendars going, I will lose information from one to the other! I do like some of the features on the online ones, but the one on my Mac is right in front of me all the time!

I do not really use to-do lists. I usually lose them. I think that this is something that I definitely could get into using! I am constantly stopping and going, okay WHAT NOW!

As far as class uses, I don't see where any of these things are super applicable. I already use the calendar in StudyWiz to keep my kids informed as well as on my Wiki.

Thing #15

Wow, I really like these resources. The gliffy and flowchart.com sites would be particularly useful in a math class. I love to use flow charts so that my students can see the connections between different concepts. In a Geometry classroom, the students could go to one of these sites and make a flow chart proof relatively quickly and easily. Also students that are struggling with equation solving can use a flow chart to follow the steps in solving an equation. I like that you can also make a Venn diagram. These are essential in many math classes. Students often make them by hand, but having a computer in front of them seems to help keep their attention better.

I will definitely be incorporating these in my class! This is a great resource that I didn't even know existed!

Thing #14

I have been using Google as my primary search engine and web tool for many years. Before my MacBook, I used Google Calendar to keep track of my overly hectic schedule and kept it up on my desktop pretty much all the time. I no longer use it as I have the iCalendar on my MacBook which does pretty much the same thing. I also use Google Alerts for news and it is a quick way to get "breaking" news. However, there are now more useful ways to get the news alerts now that I have set up RSS feeds, I have not really been using Google Alerts.

I am not really sure how these various Google tools will be applicable to my math class. I do think that it would be useful for students to learn how to use these tools in a basic computer class. Our MacBooks are so powerful, that we often forget that most students continue to use PCs at home and the web albums are something that most computers don't come pre loaded with...

Thing #13

This is probably one of the coolest things that I've learned so far. I have about 5 million things bookmarked and often have NO IDEA what any of it is after a couple of week. I have "cussed" my computer a few times about all of the random stuff that I have and usually have to click on the links about a million times to find the one that I am looking for. What a very useful tool! It never occurred to me that a tool like this existed. Hmmmm, perhaps I should have thought of this myself a while ago! Now I just need to go into all of my 5 million bookmarks and get them tagged!

Diigo's highlighting and sticky notes are GREAT. When I research things, I find myself taking screen shots of them and then having to figure out a way to use what I found and not only that, but figuring out where I accidentally put it on my computer. Now, I have a way of organizing what I find and having it quite literally right at my fingertips.

Thing #12

I like Rollyo, however I am not sure how I would incorporate it into my math class. I am teaching statistics next year and there will be times that my students need to search the web for "useful" information. I plan to work on this tool more and create a search roll to help them narrow down their results. Many times they don't know where to start to find the correct and useful information. Certainly it could be used to help make the process faster and their searching more efficient. This step alone can take up more class time than I want it too! However, I teach seniors and I do feel that it is important that they learn how to find the best information and what is and is not useful. I don't want to "baby" them too much so that they don't have the ability to do this on their own....

Thing #11

I commented on Jane's, Chandler's, Kathleens, and Mr, T's blog. Like Kathleen, I tend to be a "lurker." I belong to a few different sites and often enjoy reading the blogs and the comments. I find that many times people seem to comment just for the sake of commenting. Or they are just trying to be annoying and start problems. This is frustrating as a reader. However, it can be very interesting when a comment takes a blog into an entirely new, unexpected direction.

It can be disappointing when I post a blog on my personal (not school) blog and it is about something that I find fascinating, but no one else seems to!

Thing #10

I love putting stuff like this on my tests. It will be useful to see if I can find an image generator to post images of different math things that are common in the "real world!" I really like to use images of common thing during the conics unit so that my students can see how conics are all over the place. I would definitely use this to help my students generate images that they can use to calculate the equations of the conics using the math software available to us. Yet another way to use the cows to engage my students in "real world" applications of math.

Thing #9

I went through several of the different blog search sites and found that there is a big difference in quality and quantity of information that was available. The speed that was available from various sites was an issue for me. I am at my family's lake house and have to use a dial-up server and Feedster does not like the slow speed of dial up at all and times out repeatedly. Technorati was okay but the results were very narrow and limited in number. By far my favorite site to use was Google Blog Search, although I often got hits that seemed to have nothing to do with what I was searching.

I searched Advanced Algebra and came up with a huge network of teachers that are having some of the same issues in their classrooms that I am having and it was interesting to see some of the different solutions that they have come up with to keep seniors motivated and moving forward in a college level math class. In the future, I will probably limit my searching to Google Blog, it is more intuitive than the others that I tried out.

Thing #8

I think that the rss feed idea is excellent. I am constantly typing in addresses and going from site to site trying to get my new information. Then, I waste time going to the site just to find out that nothing has changed at all and that there is nothing new going on. This will definitely stream-line the things that I do on the internet on a regular basis and save me time. I can be more aware of things going on in a quick and efficient fashion. I am wondering if I can put an RSS feed on my teacher wiki so that I know when a student or someone else has posted something immediately. This would be nice. I would not have to go check constantly.