Thing 23

I think that going through 23 Things has helped me to refocus and reenergize my quest to incorporate more technology into my teaching and to use the technology so that I can get the most out of it. When I started with Thing 1, I was ready to learn more about these technologies. Now that I'm at Thing 23, I think that I have not only learned about the different technologies and resources, but I have also been challenged to use these technologies and try to incorporate them into my teaching and use them to improve my teaching.

I think that this program has really encouraged me to start expanding my view of education. I think that I have mostly experienced an education as a delivery service for papers and information. In my own teaching, I have tried to expand on that model to include technology, collaboration, research, etc... But, it is hard, time-consuming, and I didn't know a lot of different ways to do that. But I think that going through all the different Things has really opened my eyes to the different ways that I can easily incorporate technology into my teaching.

The big plan that I have for incorporating technology into my teaching is to have a Moodle site for my classes next year. I really liked the features of Moodle when I took a training course this past spring. But I hope to be able to use some of the 23 Things within that course. A few things that I plan on using:

1. Podcasting: I have found a number of podcasts that I can have students use both for projects that we do as a part of class and if they are interested in getting more information
2. RSS feeds: I will use this both for me to stay on top of the latest scientific news, but also have my students subscribe and revitalize my "Science in the News" projects. I have also found a number of feeds that interest me personally, and I am getting better at checking my reader more often.
3. Blogs: I'm not sure how much blogging I will do as a part of my class, but I have definitely embraced blogging on a personal level. I started a blog where I have been posting updates and pictures (mostly of my little girls) for my parents and in-laws to see as my in-laws live several hours away and my parents are out of the country until Christmas.
4. Flickr: I think that I might use this both personally as a way to share photos and in my teaching as a place to get images and have students share images. My students will be doing a "Plot Study" project again this fall, and a number of the assignments involve taking and sharing photos. This would be a great way to do that!
5. Online Video: This would be a great oppportunity for students to make videos (of lab activities, as a part of their "Plot Study," extra credit assignments, etc...
6. Delicious: I really like the idea of having my favorites accessible whereever I go. So I will continue to try to add sites and tags to make this a useful resource to use.
7. Wikis: I can think of several activities right away that wikis could be very useful. For example, there are several actitivites in the anatomy & physiology course I teach where students are given a "patient" and several options of conditions the patient may be suffering from. They need to research the condition, collaborate as a group, and decide what condition the "patient" has. I think wikis would be a great format for that. In addition, this might solve some of the problems I run into when students are absent on the day they are supposed to be sharing their information.

Overall, I think 23 Things has really encouraged me to embrace technology and has made me excited about learning more! Is there a 23 More Things?

Thing 22

My wiki can be found at: Honors Biology Wiki

I think ther are certain times and situations where using a wiki would be very helpful. But, I can also see times where using a blog would be more appropriate. I was a little frustrated with the formatting on the wiki. I really like to have things formatted in a certain way, and even things like changing font size, alignment, etc... were harder to do on the wiki. But it would be great for assignments were I want students to colaborate and share their work.

I think that I blog is a format like a buffet...you come, take what you want, and consume it when and where you want. If you like it, you might return for more. A wiki seems more like a potluck. You need to have multiple people participating (otherwise it is just a blog). And those people probably need to participate at particular times in order to finish a project or meet a deadline.

There are definitely times where one or the other is more appropriate. And it would be advantageous to learn when to use which ones so that you didn't repeat content in too many places (not necessarily a bad thing all the time, but would be very time consuming...).

Thing 21

I got a little overwhelmed when looking at the Wikis. It just seems like it would be a lot of work to try to develop a project where students could really use a wiki in a meaningful way. I guess I should start small. There are smaller projects where students collaborate and work together. If I start small, my students and I can learn together. I am not aware of other teachers at my school using wikis, so I'm sure that along with learning the content of the wiki, students would also need to learn how to use a wiki (and how to use it appropriately). I think that it is probably worth the fight. Often, issues regarding technology seem to be too large, but technology is going to keep advancing. So we should try to keep up!

Personally, I think that I will try to create a wiki for planning events with friends. And maybe also one for one of my cooking groups. I found a recipe page on the International Academy Wiki (http://iatoday.pbworks.com/) which I think was supposed to be part of staff development. But that idea would be a great way for my cooking group to share, save, and access recipes. The example of the camping wiki from the video is exactly what I thought of as a personal application for a wiki!! Some of our friends and us go camping every year, and it can become overwhelming to try to plan and then to keep track of all the e-mails. I am definitely going to set up a wiki for that next time! Other tools that could help us plan would be a calendar like 30 Blocks (to pick a date) or a program like Google Docs. There are so many options!

Thing 20

I know that I have subscribed to some podcasts at school before. But I'm not exactly sure where they are...Maybe they are on iTunes on my school computer? Maybe saved on my drive on the school server? I don't know. I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing when I subscribed to them last year. But now that I have a better idea, maybe I can figure out if I still have them saved on my computer. If not, I can figure out how to subscribe to other podcasts in the future. And now that I know how to use them and access them, I can use them in my classroom.

My favorite search tool was on iTunes. It was very easy to search for and subscribe to podcasts. I did try out PodCast Alley. I found the MayoClinic Medical Edge Radio podcast there, copied the URL, and figured out how to add that to my iTunes account. I also used The Education Podcast Network to find, download, and add to my iTunes account a show called, "Science on the Wild Side." Overall, iTunes was definitely my favorite. But I'm glad to know how to use the others in the future.

I subscribed to several podcasts from NPR using the iTunes directory: This American Life, Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, and A Prairie Home Companion's News from Lake Wobegon.
I also subscribed to NPR: Hummm...Krulwich on Science and NOVA ScienceNOW. I have used a number of the ScienceNOW episodes in my class in the past. I really like them, and love the idea of being able to access them easily and listen to them on the go (on my iPod). And Robert Krulwich used to host ScienceNOW, and I love listening to him on NPR now. So, I subscribed to that podcast as well.

Although it's not a podcast you can subscribe to (since it it too old), here is one of my most favorite This American Life stories: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=61 I couldn't download it for free, but here is a link. Act 1 of Fiasco! is just so funny!! My husband and I heard this originally as we were driving. We could hardly contain ourselves...we laughed for hours afterwards!

Thing 19

I really like the idea of podcasts and being able to find them, subscribe to them, and listen whenever you want.

I liked the links to the special interest podcasts. I discovered how to use podcasts with my classes last spring. During our unit on viruses & bacteria, I had an assignment where students needed to listen to a podcast from NPR's Science Friday about bacteria that live in your gut: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200811214 As a part of this assignment, students also had to visit several websites that talked about bacteria, watch a short video clip that I had saved for them on the school server (which I now know I could figure out how to post on a blog so they could complete the assignment away from school), and listen to some public service announcements about the E. coli and peanut butter issue. I really liked the assignment, and I'm excited to be able to create more of them. I think that it will be very helpful now that I know a little more about podcasts and putting other multimedia and technology resources on a blog or other digital platform. I think that I would like to subscribe to the Science Friday podcast since I often am not able to listen when it is broadcast, but I love listening. If I had them on my computer or iPod, I could listen whenever.

Another interesting podcast that I found was the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. Here is the link to today's word, dernier cri: dernier cri. Although I don't teach English, I think this might be an interesting podcast to subscribe to on a personal level. I like learning new vocabulary. Maybe I could figure out how to subscribe to the podcast, put them on my iPod, and play them in the car on the way to work. Humm...

Thing 18

I really liked Slideshare!

Here is a presentation that I think that students will really enjoy when we talk about genetics and cloning. I ALWAYS get questions like, "What will happen if we cross animal x with animal y?" So this will add a little humor to our discussion :)

Clone Animals In Next Century

View more presentations from Dinisha .

I also like the fact that students would be able to view this presentation without being able to open, access, and print it like they would if I just posted the PowerPoint file. I know that might not sound good, but I have too many students that want to print everything. And then some students who don't know how to adjust print settings, so they end up coming to class with a pile of papers where they have printed one slide per page. And it's a presentation that they did not need to print--they should have viewed the presentation and taken notes (or something in that format) on the main topics. I want them to learn how to take information from a presentation, not how to take the entire presentation with them :)

I also joined SlideShare and uploaded a presentation. Well, I think I uploaded a presentation. It didn't work on my first few attempts, although it said it was working on it for about 45 minutes. Then I went and created a 2-slide presentation and saved it on my desktop. It uploaded it right away and said that it is working on publishing it. I'm sure that I could figure it out with a little more "tinkering." I like the fact that you can change the privacy settings. I'm still, even after learning about all this technology, a little wary about just posting whatever out there on the internet. But overall, I really liked this site!

Thing 17

I used bubbl.us to try to make a concept map. I was not impressed with this site/tool. It lets you create "bubbles" and arrange them so that it looks like a concept map, but you can't add any words to the connecting lines. They way that I most frequently use concept mapping (and am starting to use it with my dissertation work this week) requires that there are connecting words, phrases, quotes, etc... on the connecting lines. Inspiration lets you use this. But, I guess if you just need a quick visual with some bubbles and connections, this isn't bad. And after a little fiddling, I figured out how to save it. (I tried to use embedded code, but Blogger said there was something wrong with it and wouldn't let me publish it.)

I also spent time with 30 Boxes. This might also be a great way to organize!! I tried to embed it here, but had some problems. I did figure out how to embed it on the side bar, but it was too wide to fit. (I did try to adjust the width, but then only several letters would show up in each box.) So I ended up adding it to my links on the side which I probably like better anyways since it doesn't clutter the blog.

I also tried Knowtes. I didn't like the fact that I needed to request an invitation. It just seemed like I was putting my e-mail out there for anyone to see and send stuff to. But, I did request an invitation, and hopefully I will get a response...

Thing 16

I love Google Docs! I can see all kinds of uses for it, both in my personal and professonal life.

Personally, this would be a great way to share a common calendar with friends and family when we are trying to pick dates for trips and events. This way, a lot of the e-mail clutter would be eliminated, and we would never have to worry about having the wrong or old version of an e-mail.

Professionally, there are great possibilities. There are three or four people in my department that all teach the same (or similar) biology classes. Therefore, there are a number of assignments that we have in common. This would be a great way for us to all take a look at an assignment (on our own time), be able to comment, make changes, and see feedback.

I also think this would be a great way for students to collaborate. Currently, we have no common space on our server at school for students to share files. This would be a great way for them to work collaboratively, and even to hand in work (they could share it with me). I can think of one project where students create PowerPoint presentations on various genetic conditions. Then they need to look at and evaluate several other presentations. This would be a much better way than me walking around the room, getting all the presentations saved on my flash drive, and saving them all to a drive that they can access!

I can see issues with logging in for students. I know that school has some e-mail sites blocked for students during the day (I don't know if they would be able to log into their Google accounts). Although most students do have e-mail, that is also an issue. And I'm sure that it would again bring up issues of students "sharing" work when they are supposed to be completing work on their own. But there are lots of other ways that students can do this if they want, so Google Docs would not be their only option.

Overall, I think that the potential for Google Docs outweighs any negative aspects. But, I guess as I try to use it more (which I definitely will!), I can then make a more informed assessment.

Thing 15

I think that RSS is becoming easier for me to understand. I can see great benefits of using this tool, both in my classroom and in my personal life. I subscribed to the science feed from US News & World Report, and I had previously subscribed to a feed from Scientific American. I think that if I try to make it a habit to check my Bloglines (or Google Reader since I haven't decided which one I like best yet) account on a regular basis, this would be a great way to bring in current events into my biology classes. Personally, I was able to subscribe to the blogs of several friends and their families which will make it easy to stay informed and see their photos.

I didn't really see a great advantage to subscribing to a Delicious tag feed. I think that just went too far for me right now. Maybe as I adjust to some of this new technology and start to use it more comfortably, I will find some benefits to it. I was also having trouble using Delicious because when I click on the Delicious toolbar icon that I installed, my computer has trouble letting me add things. But, I'll keep working on it. I guess this is a place where a few growing pains might come in :)

Thing 14

I think that social bookmarking could be very useful in my teaching. I searched on Delicious for biology lesson plans, and I was almost overwhelmed with the number of responses. However, it is nice to know that other people had already looked at these sites and determined that they were "good enough" to want to bookmark. That will cut down on the time that I spend "Googling" for useful lesson plans.

I could see this as also being a very useful way for students to look for helpful websites. Too often I find that students spend so much time trying to sift through their Google search results and often end up picking sites that aren't really all that useful. It seems that Delicious would be a good way to help them refine their searches.

I also think it would be a great way for students to share resources with each other and for me to point them to particular resources. One project that students complete in my biology class is a newsletter/wanted poster/research project on a virus or bacteria. I just quickly searched for a site on botulism and bookmarked it with one of the tags being hbiokits. Then when I searched for that tag in Delicious, the site about botulism came up. This would be a great way to help students narrow their searches to sites that I have already previewed and to let them add to those sites (rather than going through the process of bookmarking sites on our school's media center page).

My Delicious username is kkits.

Thing 13

I really like the idea of tagging and using Social Bookmarking. I feel like I have bookmarks all over the place that I can't located when I want them. I have bookmarks on my home computer and bookmarks on my school computer. But then my school computer gets re-imaged every year, so I have to save my bookmarks and then try to remember to add them back to my computer in the fall. And then I have bookmarks on Explorer and on FireFox. It is just not organized!! This seems to be an answer to my problems! Plus, I can see where it would be a great way for other teachers in my department to share great websites without having to cut, paste, and e-mail them to each other.

I can see one disadvantage being that this is yet another thing that I will spend time on and need to manage. But maybe if I get good at using these new tech resources, I will not spend as much time because they are making my life easier...we will see :)

I also think that it is very important to carefully assign tags to things. I want tags to be meaningful and easy to use. I know that in the "pen and paper world," I have found myself reorganizing things numerous times as I use them more. I really like the idea that it would be easy to alter tags and reorganize things as you discover how you are using them.

Thing 12

The widget I selected was too wide to fit in my regular blog posting "column," so I included it on the bottom of the page. I did have a lot of fun playing the game! It would be fun (and probably time consuming) to search and find more fun widgets to add. I can see where informal polls would be nice to add to a classroom blog. It would give students a chance to give some feedback on how they think things are going or what topics they really enjoyed.

I am getting comfortable embedding code. I learned a little bit about code when I had a Blackboard site a few years ago, so I wasn't totally frightened of it when I started...because it can look scary!

I do not really belong to any other online communities. I just really don't have time to invest in that right now. And I don't think that most relationships formed online are as meaningful as face-to-face relationships. I think that they often require less effort (even though it make take up a lot of time), less personal commitment, less "risk," and they tend to be more "disposable." It's much easier to just stop checking a blog or delete an e-mail than it is to avoid talking to or seeing someone in person. Unfortunately, I think that this is one of the reasons that MySpace and other social networking sites are so popular. They are "easier." I do think that they are great venues for people to share information and to "get to know" a lot of people (for good or bad), but I don't think that it is often used effectively to make and forge good, strong, and meaningful relationships.

Thing 11

I must say that I don't really like leaving comments. I was always the student who didn't participate all that much in class...I was paying attention but definitely not the first one to raise my hand. I would much rather give "personal" comments via e-mail or something instead of publishing something so public. But, I can see where publishing public comments could be a good thing. I guess it's more of a personal preference because I do think that there is a time and place for comments. Maybe as I get more into blogging and using more Web 2.0 tools, I will become more comfortable with joining the virtual conversation.

I can see where commenting would be a great tool for students to use as they share their writing and learn to be both good writers and critical readers. I can imaging having students publish lab reports following in-class activities and having other students read through those reports for a peer review activity. It would also be a good tool for students to use if they share "Science in the News" articles. Students find current news articles that talk about science and summarize the articles. Having students publish their summaries and comment on other ones would let them share in an entirely different way (rather than just seeing the summaries as something they are writing for me).

Thing 10

Here is a nice video clip about cell division:



I added this video clip because we talk about cell division in the biology classes that I teach. I can see how finding little clips like this and being able to put them right into a blog (or site like Moodle) would be very helpful for students! I am a visual learner myself, and I can only imagine how much this might help students.

I had a little trouble downloading videos with the first two sites (KeepVid & PwnYouTube), but the Zamzar seemed to work well. All this video downloading makes me a little nervous. First, if I embed a YouTube video in my blog and students access it at school, I'm assuming that they will be using bandwidth just as they would if they accessed the video right from YouTube. Second, what are all the copyright restrictions with downloading videos? I seem to be more comfortable embedding it because it still has that little "YouTube" icon in the corner. But, I'm not sure of the copyright restrictions. I would definitely not want to encourage my students to start breaking copyright rules since I already have a hard time convincing them that plagerism is wrong!

Thing 9

I like that YouTube is a great place to find fun videos. I have mainly used it in the past to find fun videos (mostly ones that students suggest). And some of these videos have even been related to biology :)

I dislike that there is no "filter" on YouTube. I guess there are some restrictions on what can be posted, but I wish there were more restrictions. I also dislike the fact that I could spend so much time watching some of these videos! Some of them are so funny, and then you can click on the related ones on the side, and watch more, and it goes on and on...

I have found videos on YouTube in the past that have been helpful for teaching. But what I really liked is asking students to post on YouTube. Some students in my physiology class last year made an extra credit video and posted it on YouTube as a way to turn it in. It was great! I did need to have a talk with them about not using their real names and such... But that is the video that I went back and commented on.

YouTube is not restricted in my building; however, we are given some strict guidlines for using it. Not so much guidelines for content (which is just expected), but guidelines about streaming and using bandwidth. There have been times when some classes in the building were searching for videos on YouTube while I was trying to stream a video from another site to show in one of my classes. The YouTube searching took up too much of the bandwidth and caused major problems with my video. This issue with bandwidth is one that my school is constantly struggling with. Hopefully, we can resolve some of the issues in the near future...

Thing 8

I really enjoyed completing Thing 8. I had a lot of fun with Spell with Flickr. I couldn't find Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Microsoft Image Composer (I have Vista, maybe that's the problem?). And I couldn't get the images to copy and paste into any of the other photo editing softward I have. So, I ended up doing "Print Screen" into Paint, selecting just the letter portion, and pasting that into a new Paint screen. It actually worked really well. I can see how this would be a lot of fun for students to use to add to different projects and assignments. I can also see how it might become a way for me to spend a LOT of time :)

I can also see how it would be great fun for students to use the options in Big Huge Lab (like the magazine cover for the "newsletters" they write about viruses or the "Wanted" poster they make for bacteria. There were so many options, it was hard for me to choose! My oldest daughter was super excited about playing and going through the sprinkler yesterday afternoon, so she got to become a motivational image :)

I had troubles uploading photos to ImageGenerator.org--it said that my images were too big. I can see that this might become a problem if students are using photos of their own (taken with nicer cameras). But I'm sure we could work to get them saved at lower quality/smaller size. I did notice that it had an option for taking photos with your webcam and using them. Our school will most likely be getting laptops for every student, and these will definitely have webcams. Students could "pose" with their experiments and make a poster or magazine cover of themselves as researchers.

Thing 7

I can think of a number of ways to use Flickr in my classroom:

One great way would be for the "Plot Study" project that students complete in the fall. As a part of this project, students are asked to take photos for "collections" of leaves, flowers, weeds, fungus, etc... They are also asked to document seasonal changes, and get pictures of themselves enjoynig the great outdoors on their plot. Flickr would be an excellent way for students to chare these photos not only with me but with their fellow classmates as well.

Another good use of Flickr in my classroom would be for student experiments and projects. Flickr could be the place that the upload photos to in order to share photos to complete the project and to also share them with me.

I can also imagine students using Flickr to find images when they are doing resesarch on various topics (animals, ecology, bacteria, ect...).

I think that one of the biggest issues that I will face will be copyright and plagerism issues. Since it is so easy to just "cut and paste," students often forget that copyright issues even exist. I can also forsee running into problems with inappropriate images since I'm not sure how our internet filter would or would not block images.

Thing 6

This is a great picture of E. coli. I chose it because I seem to constantly be looking online for good images to use to supplement my teaching--and I am so excited to find Flickr and to find the Creative Commons section where there are images that I can use legally and demonstrate to students how follow guidelines for fair use etc... (of course, I still cite my images in my presentations). I wonder what the guidelines are for citing images on blogs...

This is a very nice image that illustrates the shape of the bacteria (bacillus) and the nice cilia on it.

Thing 5

I really like the idea of RSS--having just one place to go to get information from lots of different places.

I had a few difficulties with subscribing to RSS feeds. The weblogg-ed site did not have the RSS button that the tutorial video showed. I went back to the site after I figured out how to do the bookmarklets and tried to subscribe again. It seems like my computer wanted to add it to the Favorites (bookmarks). It didn't ask me for my Bloglines account or anything. And the same thing happened when I tried to subscribe to the second blog (Warlick). I was using Explorer when these problems happened, and so I switched to Mozilla. Mozilla appeared to work like it was "supposed to" and asked me for my Bloglines account and I put it in the correct folder, etc...

I guess I still have a few questions about reading the subscriptions. When I looked at the weblogg-ed feeds in Bloglines, it wasn't the same stuff that was on the weblogg-ed page (it appeared to be older material). And it seems that once I click on the folder and read some of the posts/articles, I must read all the ones in that folder. Because when I click on another folder/subscription, all the posts/articles in the earlier folder/subscription I was in disappear.

And I have a few questions about the terminology that used: posts, articles, subscriptions, feeds, etc...

I will definitely be using RSS in both my personal and professional life. I can easily keep track of new blog posts from friends and family, get updates of news in my field, and even start to expand the field of things that I keep updated on since this seems to be a simple and organized way to stay up-to-date.

Thing 4

I am really looking forward to RSS. (And after reading the posts of several others on the 23 Things blog, I think that I will probably switch to Google Reader eventually...) The way I handled information overload in the past was to simply avoid getting information. I just felt that I didn't have time to go to ech website or blog and find the new information. I am really excited to see what kind of information I can get, and how easily I can access it. I am also curious to see just how many different places I can get RSS feeds/subscriptions from. I'm thinking of things like personal interests, graduate school work, professional organizations, etc... Iam very excite to add this to the list of web tools that I understand and know how to use!

Thing 3

I can really see a blog being very useful in my classroom. I think that I would use a blog in various ways:

1. Posting assignments and due dates. It would be a great place to lay out the schedule and work that we are going in class. That way, students (especially students who were absent) can go there to see what's going on in class and what is coming up. In addition, parents can take a look to see what kinds of things they should maybe be seeing their kids working on at home.

2. Question and answer forum. It would be a great place to have kids post questions and answer questions about both course structure and course formate

3. Activities. One of the blogs I visited suggested having students post hypotheses prior to completing experiments in class. And students could also post results of experiments (including graphs, tables, images...). Since I teach science, this would be a great way for students to really "do science."

One concern I have is time. I can see all the great possibilities that blogging might provide. But I can also imagine spending enormous amounts of time to set up, monitor, and respond to blog items. And that is just my time. I think it might also be easy for students to "waste" time on blogs. I have often found myself following links all over the web--it has been very interesting, but took valuable time away from the things I was supposed to be doing.

Thing 1 & Thing 2

I am participating in 23 Things because I would like to integrate more technology into my teaching. I've always considered myself fairly tech savvy, but I realize that I have a lot to learn. My district is heading in the direction where every high school student will have a laptop in several years, and I would like to be able to use those laptops and the technology available with them effectively. I took a "mini course" at the end of the school year to get a Moodle account with our ISD. While taking the course, I realized that there were all kinds of things out there that I had heard about (wikis, twitter, delicious, rss, etc...), but didn't really know what they were...not to mention how to use them. So, I am hoping to learn that this summer with 23 Things.

It makes me a little nervous to be publishing things on the Internet--especially writing. I've had several different "websites" for my classes in the past. One was an "open" website (hosted by my school), but mostly just had good links for students and copies of course documents in case they found themselves at home without their binder. The other site I had was a Blackboard site which I liked better since students needed a password to access. I knew then that only my students could access the site. "Open" blogging makes me a little more nervous. Some of that nervousness may come from imagining that I have a blog for my class, running out of time to post regularly, and having students and parents who are upset about my lack of posting. But I think that once I got into a routine about when and what to post, I could manage it.

Not only am I excited to learn some of these technologies for my teaching, I'm also looking forward to being able to use some of these in the upcoming year. My in-laws live several hours away, and my parents will be out of the country for the fall semester. So I think that some of these technologies may be helpful for keeping them informed of the exciting things that their little grandchildren are doing :)