Thing 23 - You Made It!

As I look back on the 23 Things, the biggest change in my thinking is how I view the classroom. The current model that we educators use is outdated, limits the inclusion of current technologies, and relies too heavily on the Industrial Age priorities. As I watched the video, 2 speakers gave me a great set of guidelines for the classroom. First I was truly inspired by one speaker's summary of 21st Century set of literacies:

• Do students know how to find information?
• Do students know how to validate it?
• Do students know how to synthesize it?
• Do students know how to leverage it?
• Do students know how to communicate it?
• Do students know how to collaborate with it?
• Do students know how to problem solve with it?

I also was struck by another speaker's summary of necessary skills for the future workplace. He stated that students "will being doing work that calls on their:

• artisitc abilities
• abilities of synthesis
• abilities of understanding context
• abilities of working in teams
• abilities to be multidisciplinary and multilingual and multicultural."

These guidelines rely upon Web 2.0 skills which are innate skills for my students but skills that I have to continue to learn, practice, and apply to my instruction and my students' learning. It is comforting to remove the mystery of the Web 2.0 and actually dig in to find useful applications in the classroom. Some of the most useful "things" for my Spanish language classroom include the use of podcasts for authentic language exposure and the social bookmarking as means to make all of my useful Internet tools available to my students. I also see potential in creating a blog about our classroom. Professional development with my peers will start with the Wiki I made for our textbook adoption, my del.icio.us bookmarks, and eventually our PLN. My challenge will be to find avenues to continue to discover the new tools as they develop in the digital world. I had no idea that some of the sites and resources introduced in this class existed. I am not sure how I continue to find out about all that is developing but hopefully my RSS feeds to the education technology sites will be a starting point. As I approach the halfway point in my teaching career, I am very invigorated to have so many new tools to keep me current, inspired, and relevant to my students.

Thing 22 - Online Video

In the past I have searched for videos for my Spanish language classes on YouTube, on TeacherTube, and on StudentTube. By far YouTube has had the most useful videos to use in the Spanish language classroom but it is blocked by a firewall at my school. I have tried to find ways to save these in another format to use in the classroom with little success. Now our district has a new video policy that requires that all videos shown in the classroom (that are not currently approved as a part of the curriculum) must have school board approval in order to be shown in the classroom. The short story is that it is very difficult to be spontaneous, current, and authentic with online videos in the classroom even though my YouTube searches have produced authentic native speaker videos. The TeacherTube and StudentTube sites usually have English-speaking student projects that offer some good ideas but do not have the authentic pronunciation that I am trying to use with video supplements. I liked the YouTube videos that I had found although the use of these required solid preparation and previewing. Despite the value that these offered, YouTube is banned in my building and it is very time consuming to appeal to the Board of Education to show videos in the classroom. For now I am using podcasts and the text approved materials.

Thing 21 - Twitter

Thank you Ron for the summary of Twitter. Your presentation was more thorough than the CommonCraft video and gave me more insight into microblogging.

All in all, I am not ready to use Twitter yet. Most of the tweets that I read seemed very mundane and too insignificant to dedicate much time to these updates. Twitter seems to remove all of the filters that eliminate useless information from my perception. There are just not enough hours in the day to give to these updates.

What I saw when I did my Twitter searches was the equivalent of an overload of reality television, too much of nothing worthwhile to me. The Google Reader that I have delivers updated headlines so it seems redundant to have Twitter updates of the news. Very little at work happens with such urgency that our current e-mail contact, my newly created wiki or phone calls don't address. I cannot abandon my love of privacy enough to use Twitter to post updates of my day-to-day activities. The only real opportunity that I see for using Twitter in the immediate future would be with my PLN but this is a new group who has yet to pursue Twitter as a primary means of communication. To date, my heart is not quite a Twitter with this Thing 21. It is good for me to know what it is and how it works but at this time I will be developing my use of some of the other 23 Things as a primary communicative tool.

Thing 20 - Bookmarking with del.icio.us

del.icio.us/mmorley127

This is a great idea but I could not set this up without a yahoo account and password. I did not see any mention of this in the tutorial videos but yahoo does own del.icio.us so that is probably why I need one more account. UGHH! I am closing in on maximum capacity for user names and passwords. But... it may be worth it as I see how easily I can save links on a single site. It was also helpful that del.icio.us provides default tags for each site that I opened reducing how much I had to analyze useful tags and how much I had to type.

All of my great Spanish sites for teachers and for students are now on my del.icio.us account. This is a convenient option. It is helpful that I do not have to set bookmarks at school and at home. It is convenient that I don't have to set up bookmarks for each browser that I use. It should be easy for my students to see all of these options and share useful sites with me as well. I still struggle with the privacy issues. I am learning how to separate personal bookmarks from my professional ones. I am trying to take advantage of sites others have shared. The greatest asset that this offers to my students and colleagues is quick access to useful sites to practice grammar, vocabulary, listening for a variety of levels and teaching resources for our professional development. This does seem like a site that will enhance my productivity because it reduces all of the places that I used to save significant sites into one saving zone. I am surprised that some sites that I value have so few people that have tagged the sites; perhaps I am in at the beginning of a new technology. YEAH! In the end this is probably one of the 23 Things I see myself using the most and again I am grateful for another gem in my toolbox.

Thing 19 - Introduction to Social Bookmarking

Just when I started feeling overwhelmed with how to organize all that I am learning, along comes Thing 19 to put me back on top of my technology heap! My computer bookmarks are cumbersome (especially since there are multiple users on my home computer who lack an inclination toward organizing bookmarks) and my school computer bookmarks are eliminated each summer when the computers are ghosted. So just when I can't figure out where to put all of the sites that I want to return to, practice more, and keep for something I will need later...social networking sets up a practical solution for sorting it all out and accessing it at anytime from any computer.

Tagging seems like the missing element from my current single focus folder system of organization. Tagging lets overlaps occur for sites that serve more than one purpose for me, finds connections with other users' valued sites, and allows for quick access based on a content word. All of these are advantages over scanning my long list of bookmarks on my computer. It is important to think of the most succinct and complete words that describe my preferred sites in order to assign it a good tag. Noticing the tags of other users will probably help me to recognize useful and prevalent tags. Some disadvantages of tagging were made clear in the article stating 13 guidelines. Knowing the proper formatting is important and not innate for me. It looks like it will take some time investigating others tags to have a strong sense of how to tag sites. Working with a larger community also means that it is likely that I will encounter false leads when my sense of a tag's definition may not match another's definition. Finally, being a creature comfortable in privacy it is again a stretch to become part of a larger community but I am curious what others will find related to my "keeper" sites and I value the shortcut available by being connected to someone else's sites related to my tags. All in all this is probably going to be a great asset but it looks like I need Thing 20 in order to become more familiar with all that social bookmarking has to offer.

Thing 18 - Building Your Personal Learning Network

Looking through Ning, MACUL, and ISTE these professional learning networks seem like a good idea but too advanced for me right now. It is challenging to manage these new opportunities and right now a smaller contact domain seems more likely to serve my needs. When I set up my wiki I created a contact point for the Spanish secondary teachers in my district. My first focus will be to use this as a meaningful meeting point to blend our experiences adopting our new textbook. After I become more adept at this starting point for professional collaboration it seems more likely that I will be more adventurous to pursue a broader range of topics to enhance my professional development. Good idea; back burner for now until I become more adept at my current new technology lessons.

That being said, I did find a Ning resource that has piqued my curiosity. When I was searching sites I found www.nos-ayudamos.com ("Let's help each other") which is a question/answer site for those learning English and Spanish. I spent quite a bit of time reading through the questions and the contributed answers. I myself often am asking my colleagues for content help and this site significantly broadens the number of "colleagues" that can help answer my questions. I knew that sites like this probably existed and I am excited to continue to find similar resources.

Finally, this class has been a wonderful and eye-opening experience showing me many benefits available from these constantly changing and advancing technologies. This has a been a valued hands-on introduction not only to new technologies but to new ways to share and to create content that I can use to interact with peers, students, and even the world at large. This course has made me aware that I need to continue to find the new advances that are coming in the Web 2.0 world. There is so much here in these 23 Things that I knew little to nothing about and now I have a google e-mail account complete with a blog, I am using Picassa for my photos, I started a wiki, I am receiving daily RSS feeds, and I have visited more valuable sites than I can currently comprehend. What a month! As I continue on this learning curve, I am now aware that there is so much out there in cyber world that will be of great use to me. I need to learn how to access it and eventually I imagine that these PLNs will be my means to learning more, to having skilled users share new technologies of use to my instruction and to my classes. It is comforting to know that this is potential is waiting for me.

Thing 17 - More Web 2.0 Winners

The first time that I spoke to Ron about the 23 Things class I had no idea what Web 2.0 meant. He explained that instead of simply reading content an Internet viewer could also write and create content, interact with others on the Internet, become a part of a digital interplay. Now I look at the shortlist of Web 2.0 Winners (which is not so short) and am overwhelmed by the many ways in which people can interact with content and with others on the Internet. There are so many specialized areas that have these incredibly well developed, dense sites completely catering to people who want to create and share content in some certain way or around some specific topic. The Web 2.0 format truly empowers users to create and share. Now it is my time to determine how I can bring these offerings and skills into my classroom and how I can encourage students to continue to show mastery of content in such a rich and diverse format as the Web 2.0 arena. As if I haven't said and thought this enough in this course...WOW!

From the short list, I first checked out the education winners. The #2, #3, and honorable mention winners were all language acquisition sites. Woohoo! The sites include: Mango Languages, SpanishPod, and Livemocha. Being drawn to language learning I was very curious about each one. They offer instruction, audio segments, and even live people to help critique your Spanish but all are fee sites. These offer a variety of languages to so many that they have tremendous potential to assist those seeking to learn languages. The downside though is that the fee would not be cost effective to use these in the classroom unless you could transfer the cost of texts to the cost of the sites. It is an interesting concept. I just went through a new textbook adoption and am curious what will happen in 10-12 years when we look to adopt again. Will texts still be the primary delivery system within a classroom or will we be evaluating online programs? Exciting!