Week 9: Thing #23

OH MY GOSH!!! Where do I begin? This has been a wonderful experience for me, although more time consuming than I had originally anticipated. I started this experience as a test to see if it was possible for me to go back to school to start working on my doctorate. After a few weeks into the program, my answer was a definite "NO!" I started out clipping right along, but then I really started running into a lot of new things, which was very time consuming. With teaching full time, being a married single parent, chasing after a one-year-old and helping an eight-year-old get through 2nd grade, I got very behind. Luckily, once summer came around I was able to get back on track.

I know there were so many things that I wanted to and needed to spend more time on, but I plan to go back and revisit several of the things I learned. One of my first goals is to create a family blog. Most of our family lives out of state, so this would be a wonderful way to keep in touch.

I would also really like to tackle the next Web 2.1, but right now my brain is feeling really tired and needs a little break.

This was an awesome experience, and I have already encouraged many others to do it. I learned so much. Just when you think you know a lot, you take a class like this, and realize how much more is out there. And, I know this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Signing off for now!

Week 9: Thing #22

Audio Books and E-books

I enjoyed looking at these, but it seemed like all the titles I wanted weren't free. Oh well, I found some good sites to order audio books from. I like to use audio books in my classroom for certain learners. I'm becoming more familiar with e-books.

Week 9: Thing 21

I have added my Bloglines, to which I added the Teacher Created Materials podcasts. I have been receiving these in my e-mail, but I thought it would be easier to add it to my bloglines.

Week 9: Thing #20

I'm a little embarassed to say that it has only been in the last few months that I have really even examined YouTube. I have found some humorous TAKS videos of teacher skits and such. I checked out Teacher Tube and signed up, but I wasn't all that impressed with the few videos I checked out. Several of the videos kept stopping due to buffering, and it got really frustrating.

Week 8: Thing #19

Here are the books I added to my library.

Week 8: Thing #18

I checked out Zoho Writer and found it to be very useful. I think I would use this as a collaboration tool with other teachers. Often, I will start a document to use with our kids, and it would be nice to send it to the other 5th grade teachers to have them add/change/delete items. Right now we have to e-mail, re-save it, and re-email it. Plus, this would be great for students who are working on a report at school but who need to finish it up at home.

Week 7: Thing #17

Okay, I finally posted something to the Curriculum Sandbox. It is a listing of a few of my favorite websites for teaching language arts. I was a little confused here, but it was much easier than I thought. Kinda scary, though, how easily you can edit the page. If I used something like this in my classroom, you would definitely have to monitor it very closely!

Well, I need to keep movin'. Only a couple more weeks to go of my Web 2.0 journey!