OMG! I Don't Believe It!

Photo by yanger1997
I finally managed to take a breath since school started this year and I've just discovered six weeks have gone by. SIX weeks! Where? I had so many plans, so many ideas, so many goals. I started on Twitter and through that and my Web2.0 ning I've discovered blogging, Nings, Twitter, Jingproject, Promethean whiteboards, Literactive, Glogster, telescopic text, Audacity, Ted, Picnik, Voicethread, Wordle, Flickr. The list goes on and on and on and... you get the picture.
Each time I heard about a new web2.0 tool I immediately thought of so many ways to use that in my classroom. And now after six weeks what have I done?
I have a blog for my class which we add to about twice a week and I've used Wordle and Flickr. I've recorded my students reading with Audacity and have downloaded Jing.

Actually, now I've written it down it doesn't seem to bad. There is always going to be so many extra things that I could be doing.
The key is to decide what is best for the learning needs of the students and try 1 new project a term. That should be achievable.
I'll keep saving the rest to my delicious account and next time I come up for breath I will try something else.

What Web2.0 tools have you used? And how?

Flickr - Photo Sharing

The result of my play with Wordle.

Photo

Oops. I forgot to acknowledge photo. Photo by deanj

My Passion

I first read Marc Prensky's article 'Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants' just over two years ago when I took on the role of Learning Technology Support Teacher. The role became vacant six weeks before the end of the school year and in passing I said to my principal that I would be interested. My qualification was that 'I liked computers'. Well, I learnt a lot in the first six weeks. My head was in a constant spin as I came to terms with what the role actually meant.

Prensky's article hit a nerve and looking at the people around me - both professionally and personally - I could see so much truth in it. There are definitely immigrants who have very little accent and those that continue to hold onto the homeland for dear life.

Two years after suggesting that 'I like computers' I know I've found my passion. I was going to say that it is 'integrating technology in the classroom' but that shows my immigrancy. We need the use of technology to be as normal and as natural as opening a book and taking out a pencil to write. So, what's holding us back? Access to hardware is the biggest for me but it can't be used as an excuse. Otherwise we continue the trend of having our children power down for school and power up when they leave the gates in the afternoon.

A Day for Lounging

Lounging Around Doing 'Nothing'

Gotta love holidays! At the end of the day yesterday I looked back and thought I hadn't done anything. However, Slife would tell me otherwise. Slife analyses the time spent on the computer and automatically keeps track of what apps your time is spent on.

I downloaded the program because I thought it would be interesting to find out. So on a day where I did 'not much', I actually spent almost 6 hours on firefox and another 45 minutes on Elluminate Live! viewing a Classroom 2.0 live web meeting. Well, it was 40C outside and the tennis was on TV, no-one was home and I could spend my time how I wanted to!

I spent most of my time reading blogs - both class and teachers. I subscribed to many - see my blogroll - and it helped me understand what I would like to see both on my class blog and this one. I set up my class blog, although there are no entries yet - that has to wait for school to return; and reconfigured this blog.

Twitter and Tweetdeck

I downloaded tweetdeck to keep track of twitters. When I first heard about twitter at a leadership team meeting last year, the team all had a bit of a laugh and thought why would anyone do it? Well, I am now on twitter and am finding it a great professional tool for keeping up-to-date with what's going on. Once you are on twitter, you can start to follow people. So, how do you know who to follow? I found that many people whose blogs I enjoy reading are on twitter. I then searched for these people on twitter and now 'follow' them. Usually they start to follow you back and it makes you add a few tweets of your own.

Mnay of their 'tweets' contain links to great sites and this is the reason that twitter is so popular. It is a way of growing your Personal Learning Network (PLN). I would be interested to hear how others are growing their PLN's.

Mac

I had a tweet from mclobridge about the new Macbook that has no keyboard. Wow! As they say Apple are inventing stuff that we don't even know that we want.

And here is Phil Schiller's Macworld 2009 Keynote. It's a blog so read from the bottom up. I know it sounds silly but I only realised when I got to the end and thought it didn't really make sense that the welcome was at the end. Duh!

So, lounging around doing nothing is not really nothing after all!

New Blogger Blog

I have just changed from a different blog tool to blogger. The one I was on had a limit to its free content and with only 3 posts I was already at 11% usage. Today I created a blog for my Year 1 class. My plan is to have one professional blog - this one; and a class blog. Once I'd set up my class blog I have found lots of gadgets that I can add plus it is unlimited free.

As my blog was new I only had 3 posts and 2 comments. I manually transferred 2 of the posts (the third was about the blog tool I am no longer using) and don't know how to transfer the comments.

Thanks to Hans Feldmeier and raine22 for your comments.

Overwhelmed!

I’ve been spending some of my holidays looking online at what others are doing in the classroom in the way of technology. I thought I was doing OK. As the technology support teacher at my old school I had introduced laptops and SMART boards and had encouraged even the most technologically fearful teachers to use these tools.

But now, seeing what others are doing is a little mindblowing. I’m feeling overwhelmed by all that can be done. Usually when I see something new I want to try it. I think I need to decide on one thing to try and go with that and add in other things along the way.

I found Classroom 2.0 and joined. This is similar to the Web2.0 course I am doing. It seems like a supportive environment with lots of ideas and many people willing to help out.