Thing 9

Times are changing. The way we instruct and the way we learn is changing too. Web 2.0 is proof. There are so many opportunities to share information and communicate with each other in ways we had once never imagined. When we all finally catch up (if that's possible) to today's technology and become educated in the many possibilities (or at least a lot of them- 23 Things is a great start!), we will be on our way to being some of the most effective teachers the educational system has ever seen! I truly believe this.

What amazing ways to reach EVERY student, EVERY day, and make those special connections you don't always have time for in a 40 minute period or a 22 day cycle. How incredible it would be to have access to the thoughts of all our students, or all of our colleagues, and provide them with ours as well. How fabulous it would be to share our ideas and creations and collaborate to make a greater end product with our neighbor in the next seat and a student half a world away at the same time! It is all just too exciting.

And while the excitement is overwhelming, we must remember that all this great technology comes with responsibility as well. We have the responsibility to act ethically when using such technology, and when viewing and downloading other creations on the web. This is tough, since so few people out there even understand what the laws and procedures are. Teachers need professional development on this topic. Students need to see consistency across the board in EVERY subject. They need to be held accountible to act responsibly with technology.

I was intrigued by the Creative Commons website. I wasn't expecting that to be what it was all about. I guess I am always thinking about being the "borrower" as opposed to the one who is being borrowed from! But that is a very important piece to teach our students. I like the idea of being about to build on your ideas/creations by allowing some rights to others who would like to use your work. Cool stuff!

Thing 8

Ah! At last! A segment I am quite familiar with. I work a lot with video on my own, mostly video editing, but this year we incorporated it into our 7th grade curriculum as well. One of the big issues we encountered was trying to download video to use as segments in our student created videos. I like the two websites suggested here: Keepvid and PWNYYouTube. We would also need a file converter program, I believe, that would convert .flv files to usable video files for Adobe Premiere Elements.

Anyway, I found an inspirational video that I could play as an icebreaker/motivator at the start of my 7th grade cycles. Students are very apprehensive about using video editing, microphones for voice overs, cameras, etc. for class projects. I like this idea of no success without failure, especially when they see familiar and famous names behind those failures.

Thing 7

As someone who is very into video-editing and sharing, I enjoyed exploring YouTube. I haven't gotten on YouTube alot, except to check out a silly video here or there that a friend forwards to me, but I truly found some very useful videos while exploring tonight.

Of course I dislike the fact that any type of "junk" can be posted here, but that is the same when you search for images on the Internet as well. I can certainly see my students benefitting very much from many videos here. I found some great video tutorials on using our new video editing software Adobe Premiere Elements. It would be great for students to have access to these (they currently do not, nor do I, in our building). I also found some great videos on current events, college videos that show what the colleges have to offer, sports highlights, and historical videos. I see more benefits to having access to this.

Thing 6

Exploring Flickr was a lot of fun for me. When I have the time, I will certainly spend endless hours on there. I love how it is connected to Picnik so you don't have to upload photos separately to Picnik to edit them. I just learned about Picnik this year...from my students! I can definitely see many uses for Flickr in my classroom. As long my students are granted access to the website through our IT department, I see us using it all the time to upload and share our photos during our 6th grade digital photography segment. I love that we could tag them with our cycle identifier and then the students could all see their classmates' work easily. The only thing I wonder is if I will need to have parents sign releases if students are taking photos and upload pictures of themselves to this public sharesite.

I am a huge fan of photosharing sites. I currently use Shutterfly all the time and really enjoy creating photobooks, cards, and sharesites for my family photos and videos. I would love to teach my students about all these possibilities for good creative uses of technology.