Thing 23

As many have already mentioned, Thing 22 answers many of the prompts listed here.
I will say that I have made this exploration much more stressful by enjoying my June and July so much that I made little progress on the 23 Things. I do far better with a pace set out before me...I'm pretty conscientious when I feel accountable on a weekly basis.
One challenge I set out in my evaluation is whether a general interest/general public 23 Things could be developed that would appeal to a broader audience? Only minor changes would be necessary to shift some of the explorations away from a strictly library focus. Otherwise the tools are the same!

My short conclusion...23 Things on a Stick is a mind-boggling exploration! Thanks.

Thing 22

I plan to keep up by USING the tools in my everyday classroom experience. I think many of the tools that were introduced will become more or less important as I attempt to use them. I will have to find out whether Stickie Notes are really helpful over the long term. Do I really need all of the RSS feeds that looked interesting in the summer? I'm sure that more committees will be attempting to use various collaborative tools such as wikis and googledocs.
I am looking forward to using some of the tools that have application in a primary classroom. The image generators seem to have some promise of fun and motivation. Some of the Flickr extras from Bighugelabs look really fun.
The best way for me to keep up is to give myself permission to take 10-15 minutes regularly to continue the exploration. The most powerful will be to reflect on the most useful things learned when I sit down NEXT SUMMER and think about the year just passed. Wow!

Thing 21

Up until now I have not been a big social networker...with a large family and young children I have plenty of other things to do. I am a member of 21st Century Teacher as well as a Scholastic Book network that was by invitation. I often feel I don't have enough time to keep up with even these two sites...social networking sites by definition are a place to spend time...and I don't have a lot extra. "Gather" looked like an interesting place for older adults...maybe I'll have the time next summer, or when I retire!

Thing 20

I have been a Facebook member for a few years, but it was for a utilitarian reason. My son was overseas in Australia, China, and Mongolia for nearly six months. He was posting photos of his experience on Facebook, so I joined in order to view them. It worked to an extent, but I would now probably recommend some other photo sharing sites such as Flickr as a better alternative.

I can see that young adults really enjoy Facebook, including my own older children. The different ways that you can develop your profile seems to be a real attraction. I will have to say that the template for Facebook is far superior and much more attractive than for MySpace.

Thing 19

Even though I appreciated what the podcast directories were trying to do, I had difficulty making everything work correctly.

When I tried to reach NPR through the local podcast directory for NPR, I could not stream the podcast without first searching for a player online to use, or saving it to my computer. Yet when I went to NPR through podcast.net I was able to stream it right from the website. The variety of formats as well as the different programs on the particular computer being used is still a thorn in the side of these directories working smoothly. I did listen to a broadcast of the Anniversary of the 35W bridge collapse.

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=93162524&m=93162506


My most common use of podcasts is when they are available on the news or sports websites that I enjoy following. I don't particularly feel the need to create a podcast myself.

Thing 18

You Tube is a reflection of the entire Internet...a mixture of useful and trite, appropriate and inappropriate, uplifting and discouraging, humorous and vulgar. Very few of the videos would be appropriate to show in my classroom. Personally I tend to enjoy the humorous, though I am finding that there is wonderful content on the site as well.

I chose this video about a male kindergarten teacher because it is a very positive news segment that really gets to heart of why men would choose to teach young children. I was so surprised that the teacher seemed so anonymous in the titling of the video...all teachers are heroes and deserve to be recognized by name.

Thing 17

I agree with many of the other posts that the ELM system is an amazing amount of resources available online. When I worked on my master's thesis in 1999 I felt really fortunate that online resources were becoming more available. I used Proquest quite frequently, but now I can see that ELM is like an explosion of similar research material easily available online.

The tools in ELM are much too academic for my primary student, but they have a lot to look forward to as their academic careers continue through high school and college.