Thing 23

All I can say is "WOW". I thought I knew quite a bit about computers and the Internet, but 23 Things taught me so much. I wish I had know about some of the tools a LONG time ago! Between things 1 and 23, I feel like I tasted the future - and it could be a little scary. As the video mentioned, a lot of things need to be rethought. But I feel the good of the Internet could certainly outweigh the bad. A global community could be created, is being created for the new generations. Students can write to audiences, have their voice be heard and maybe make more constructive choices in the future. A whole new set of appropriate conduct rules will have to be taught to them as Web 2.0 evolves.

As for teachers, I wish that every one not only know about the potential, but acted upon it. Sometimes I feel like I am reinventing the wheel as I try to adapt to the needs of my students. I know there are better ways out there already, and with blogs, tagging and wikis, maybe I can find them now more easily instead of wading through pages and pages of non-useful Internet content.

As for what I will use in and out of the classroom, let me look back.

I'm not too sure about blogs yet. I love the information out there, but simply don't have the time to keep up with it, even with Bloglines. I need to find more content specific ones, and I think I could possibly become obsessed with it.

Love FlickR for my home life. I have taken so many digital pictures and they are stored mishmash EVERYWHERE, many times multiple times. I can't wait to start downloading them, organizing them and sharing them with family. I also loved the online image generators. I will will use that for sure to create personalized gifts. I will have to further explore the use of FlickR in the classroom. I'm pretty comfortable using Google Images at this point and haven't bought into the differences between it yet.

Also loved YouTube. I had already spent way too much time on it! For the classroom, I like the idea of TeacherTube and SchoolTube, but find the content a little lacking. Videostreaming seemed to have more content-specific topics and tagged well, but if our school's subscription is not renewed, I know where to go for videos. It also might be a good idea to have a "Help Page" with videos on my website, to assist parents at home with helping their children on specific topics.

Delicious is wonderful. Not only to put the huge amount of bookmarks I make in one spot to be accessed on any computer, but also the tagging aspect of it. Not only can I find what I thought was valuable, I can see what others thought was good. That will be a huge time-saver.

I may or may not use Google Docs. I can see the value of it, but would love it so much more if other formats were accepted, like Publisher.

And just when I thought I was overwhelmed enough with information, along came podcasts. I am looking forward to using them to get more ideas on teaching. I think I could also use it in the classroom for students to learn about a topic and get exposure to another kind of technology. As I get more comfortable with that, I can see myself teaching students how to do one.

Wikis are interesting, and I will explore them more for my own use. I think there is a huge potential for collaboration with other teachers with my same interests/needs, but not sure yet if wikis are a common practice with teachers. My students are pretty young, so not sure if they would be able to use them, due to logins. It might be neat to have a student-only wiki website, where students could use it to enter what they learned about a topic.

There was so much in this course. I need to make it a point to continue to practice, practice, practice and explore, explore, explore. Like many inservices, my fear is that what I have learned stays in the corner of my brain and I don't make a point to use/practice it. Or, when I want to use/apply it, I don't remember how. I am so glad I have a new computer I love to fiddle around on - this will be fun!

My big "take-aways" from this experience would be FlickR and delicious. I know I will be using that, due to a need that already existed and a level of comfort with it. As for the other 18-19 things, I look forward to creating a level of comfort there. I owe that to my students and myself.

Thanks for the great learning experience!