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 The current model that we educators use is outdated, limits the inclusion of current technologies, and relies too heavily on the Industrial Age priorities.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!

Thing 16 - Teach Digital

I get it! I, the digital immigrant, am behind the learning curve of the digital natives I teach but I am trying to catch up (hopefully 23 things closer by the end of July!).

I hear the request to move beyond traditional instruction in order to embrace the technology that is so familiar to students both as a creative expression and as a communicative tool. I was fascinated by the university students who felt unprepared for the demands of the future when the mode of classroom instruction lacked the technology elements that they know to be integral to their lives and fundamental to their future jobs. I heard these students identify themselves as visual learners and beg for more than lectures, for diverse options to show their mastery, for collaboration with their instructors, and for relevant information grounded in technology. This is a great template for me to bring to my high school class.

Sir Ken Robinson stated that "education takes us into the future, a future that we don't know what it will be". This is thought-provoking. How does one prepare learners for an unknown future? I certainly wasn't prepared in college for the technology that I now encounter. Who could know that technology would be created so much faster than any period in our history? General skills of adaptability, risk-taking, interpersonal communication, problem-solving, creative perspectives, etc. take on new priorities when educating young people. He also said that creativity is as important as literacy. This took me a moment to take in but when he explained the history of education with its roots in preparing people to be skilled in the demands of the Industrial Age compared to the skills need to advance in our current society, I could see the value in his statement. Finally, I cheered when he talked about young children who are not afraid to be wrong. I tell my students that mistakes are not just tolerated but necessary in order to build second language skills. One has to use language, practice it, learn from it, in order to progress. I hope to avoid educating my students "out of their creativity" by including diverse means of instruction and application.

The last video was an enticing challenge to keep the instruction in my class relevant to where kids are going in the future. I too value moving to think, creating, sharing, and genuine communication skills with target language speakers. I agree that students cannot "create their future with the tools of my past" so I need to learn the tools that are here and taking them into the future. The 23 Things is serving a bridge for this transition.

Thing 15 - How to Use Podcasts in Schools

My first use of podcasts in the classroom would be podcasts made for students. The primary reason that I would initially seek to use podcasts in the classroom would be to expand the amount of authentic Spanish that my students hear. They become accustomed to my accent and pace and often need to have input from other sources, especially native speakers, in order to develop a better trained ear. An increase in the amount of authentic Spanish presented significantly enhances the students' listening skills. In my upper level classes the podcasts offer current events in Spanish. This synthesized audio content is real language that has not been reduced to the topic of a text chapter or the vocabulary of a specific story. Podcasts are current and not outdated as some of the textbook supplements may be. This unpredictable oral presentation triggers comprehension skills needed to understand native speakers in real life situations. Podcasts offer a tremendous boost to the development of listening skills in my Spanish language classroom.

Eventually, I would like to use podcasts made by my students. Currently, my students are required to present dialogs that accompany each chapter segment. These could be done in a podcast format. My upper level classes could make content review podcasts for my lower level students. Students could make podcasts about the artists, foods, cultures, countries, etc. that we study. I think the first podcast recording session that I would like to have would be autobiographical with the students describing themselves to me. It is hard to get to know all of the students in September. This could be one way to start to learn more about them. These autobiographical podcasts could be updated with the new vocabulary themes that we study.

I still need to learn quite a bit about how to have a class make and save podcasts but I work with some excellent staff members who are skilled in this technology at my school. I do not expect any pushback from my administration. Generally my administration values technology in the classroom. I found a few good resources (mentioned in Thing 14: www.coffeebreakspanish.com, www.NewsInSlowSpanish.com) but would need to search out more. Most of the Spanish sites on David Warlick's directory were not useful to me and some were not accessible. I anticipate that the highest interest would be students listening to other students that they know. Podcasts are a great match for listening and speaking skill development in a Spanish language classroom.

Thing 14 - Learn about Podcasting

Podcasting will be such a great asset to a Spanish language classroom. I found two great sites; one will work well for my upper level classes and the other will help my introductory level students.

The first site that I visited was recommended by a fellow teacher, www.coffeebreakspanish.com. This is a site of podcast lessons starting at the very beginning of conversation development and progressing through a variety of vocab themes and grammar topics. It is created in Scotland with Scottish speakers which confirms how important pronunciation is by any speaker of any dialect or language in order to be understood by native Spanish speakers. The preferred delivery of these podcasts is iTunes which I believe most of my students access for pleasure... and now for class! This seems like a great way to warm-up at the beginning of class, to supplement review at home, or to encourage advanced students to move ahead with audio guides of new content.

The second site that I visited was a gem although to fully access it would require a paid subscription. I think it would be worth the price to access all that they offer. As the title suggests,
www.NewsInSlowSpanish.com, offers current event news podcasts in a S-L-O-W(er) speaking format. This is a great idea as it provides authentic spoken Spanish delivered in a format that allows second language learners more time to process what they are hearing. The podcasts are presented by native speakers with authentic accents but with enough "think time" to aid comprehension. The site was an enhanced podcast that showed the scripts of what was said, offered grammar activities, flashcards of vocabulary used in the podcast, pronunciation practice, and cultural supplements. The demo only allowed access to a portion of each program but it was enough to entice me to consider the subscription. WOW! What a great idea and a great classroom teaching tool!

Thing 13 - Empressr slideshow

Thanks Ron! It worked!

Thing 13 - Sharing Your Vision

This is a YouTube video that provides an audio and visual interpretation of the poem that we read in Spanish 4, Oda al tomate by Pablo Neruda. I love this video; I hate that I can't access it from my school server because YouTube is blocked.

My real thrill with Thing 13 was how easy it was to embed the YouTube video using Slide. WOW! A simple copy of a wickedly long address and BAM! it was in my blog. YEAH! It worked like a dream and anything this easy and this useful surely has great potential in my classroom. The problem is that I still can't view this on my school site. UGHHH! I have found some gems on YouTube that would significantly enhance my classroom lessons but have so many limitations about accessing these during the school day. When I tried to view my blog through the school server, it said that I needed a plug-in to view my video clip and that I do not have permission to access the plug-in. Frustrating. On the upside, grandma who lives out of state will love accessing videos at one simple site.

I also made a slideshow using Empressr. I tried Empressr first because I was attracted to their self description as a storytelling tool and this seems like a perfect match for a Spanish language classroom. Making the slideshow was fairly simple even adding the photos right from their import options; I used Flickr. The master slide worked well but I didn't quite figure out how to make text be a part of the master formula. This is something to pursue. This was so much easier than what I have done in the past with PowerPoint which makes adding photos time consuming. I tried to add an audio clip but had no luck opening anything so this is another avenue to continue to practice. Overall, everything went very well with Empressr until I tried to embed it into this blog. I am working with 23 Things staff to resolve this hiccup. I look forward to using these in my classroom and these could be great visual prompts for students when they have to make their oral presentations. I have tried to eliminate "note cards" and instead require all visual prompts. This should be great especially if I fix my audio problem and they can record right onto their Empressr project. Hopefully, my Empressr slideshow will be up soon.

I liked what I saw on the Zoho site and noticed that many of the students in this class have used it. It offers more text, bubble, and clip art options than Empressr but I like the photo ease available with Empressr. Zoho looks like a useful tool and a definite step up from what I have done with PowerPoint. I did little with the 4th site Slideshare. The other 3 offered easier access to help/learn features and I found that Zoho, Empressr, and Slide met my needs for presentation programs.

Thing 12 - Productivity Anywhere

Like a moth to the flame I visited Remember the Milk faster than I could click the mouse. My house is filled with "to do" lists. Although I love the focus and organization a "to do" list offers, rarely do I finish everything. Left-over lists reside all over the place. I can't throw them away until I compile the tasks onto a new list. I can't always remember where I put my list. I do not always work from a computer list because the file isn't portable unless I print it (and then I probably leave it somewhere). It is an imprecise solution. Remember the Milk is a pretty handy way to organize, reference, and refer to a perpetual but single list. It has subcategories for different types of tasks: work, study, personal, etc. It has calendar and priority elements. It connects to my gmail account. I am happy to continue using this site as it seems to give me a central location for the things that I need to do. One more habit to pull into my routine that should be a shortcut from my current practices.

After playing with this for a while, it seemed to fill more of a personal need than a professional one. I visited all of the other blogs in our 23 Things class and liked what I read about bubbl.us so I created an account there as well. This has more immediate uses in my classroom and marries very well to the new textbook that we are adopting. I have used Inspiration software before for mind-mapping activities but it is definitely a single user piece of software and I've had difficulty formatting the printing to ensure a single page student document. I have had limited practice with Inspiration but find many of the features that I like are on the bubbl.us mapping tool. The sidebar that explains the symbols in each box is very helpful, the color coding is attractive, and the ease of organization is good. I liked that I could invite friends to collaborate. I have not tried printing yet but hope to see how that looks soon. As I stated this is a useful supplement to my new textbook. Each chapter's assessment speaking and writing activities encourage the students to start with a mind map in order to organize their ideas. This is a handy tool to assist in identifying that they have included all of the elements required by their rubric. I need to investigate more how easy it is to set up accounts for the students; my guess is as simple as it was for me. This could be a strong addition to the classroom for grammar summaries, creating thematic vocab units, and culture/country brainstorming images. If the export is manageable this could be a nice supplement to the wiki pages we create.

Questions:
1. On the bubbl.us site I clicked on the beta 2.0 version. What does beta mean?
2. It requested that I allow it to store 1 MB of content on my computer. Do users allow this? I have never seen that message before.

Thing 11 - Online Productivity Applications

Google Docs is yet another thing that I knew little about let alone that I had an account with Google Docs when I created my gmail account. The Google site is just loaded with all kinds of treasures. Thank you 23 Things for showing me so many great opportunities to improve my classroom!

Little did I know that I had already been using a Google Docs type of application when I saw that this feature includes the Google Calendar. My family did not buy a paper calendar for the first time ever this year because we all refer to the Google Calendar to be sure that we are all using the same updated version. It is a handy reference for multiple people. I imagine that I will find similar convenience and ease with the other Google Docs options. I see the word processing feature serving as a mini version of the wiki that I just created for the secondary level Spanish teachers in my district. Where the wiki will hold multiple resources edited by multiple users, this word processing option holds more singular content edited by multiple users. It eliminates the disorganized and sometimes hectic communications that occur with e-mails and attachments. There seems to be a strong opportunity to promote collaboration here yet protected enough for security because you can invite the collaborators who will work together. I frequently find that I have exceeded my allotted space on my district's share drive; this may be another option for sharing/collaborating with more access to memory space.

To date, I am very accustomed to MS Office and barely familiar with Google Docs so it is difficult to imagine MS Office being replaced. I do think that Google Docs will complete well with MS Office. I like the compatibility of working from different platforms. I like the collaboration right down to working together at the same time from remote sites. I like the accountability especially as it relates to students. It seems that if my students invite me to be a collaborator then all of the following are possible: I can give edit suggestions, I can view their work, we can avoid the delays that result from printers that didn't work or flash drives that get misplaced. Students can complete work at school even if they do not have a computer at home. Yet again... I am curious about another "thing" and anxious to play with it some more.

Thing 10 - Create Your Own Wiki

I did it!

This "thing" that took me so long to work through is now a valid and useful tool ready to go. It took much longer for me to learn about wikis, their uses, read examples, etc. than it took to make my own. It was very easy to make a wiki. I am not sure how much time it takes to manage a wiki but making one was not hard at all. My district is adopting a new Spanish 1 textbook in the fall. I created a wiki for all secondary Spanish language staff in my district based on the new textbook. I organized the wiki with a page for each chapter, personalized the appearance, and invited all of the Spanish language teachers from the three high schools in my district. I created a private wiki. Ideally, we will use this site as our main contact for collaboration instead of trying to send e-mails to the 17 teachers involved. If all of the teachers can work through the learning curve that I am processing this wiki will:

• Allow us to share our ideas for this new text
• Report on successes with its adoption
• Advise about any pitfalls we experience.
• Keep our best practices available to all Spanish teachers
• Eliminate isolation
• Ensure that the same education is available to all students in our district

I plan to start with a staff oriented wiki, learn how to manage it, and hopefully transfer these skills to wikis that I can use with my students.