Thing #23: Yeah! I finally made it!

I liked just about everything! Some of it was really, really time consuming and I got a little frustrated, but it turned out alright. It was fun to set up my blog and avatar...adding pretty colors and cutsie stuff and fun names. I really enjoyed playing with mashups, Flickr color pickr, Picasa, Google tools, Mosaic maker, ya know the fun stuff.

I have finally learned some new technology that I'll be able to use personally and professionally. It'll be nice to incorporate it into my lessons and I think students will be impressed and interested. The learning doesn't end with Thing 23. I'm sticking with this and I'll keep practicing and playing with all of the Things.

Some of the Things were kind of hard to get through, but it could be due to my lack of knowledge. I found that if I took frequent breaks I was more successful.

The Common Craft videos were awesome. I would have been lost without those. I'll definitely refer to their site for future reference. Bruce's video was also excellent.

I would totally participate in another program. I feel much more computer savvy and look forward to improving upon it.

This journey through Library2play inspired Bird Girl to stretch her wings and fly confidently through the techno-universe.

Many thanks to everyone involved in this project! The entire time I was thinking to myself, "I can't believe how much work and time went into this!" and "I can't believe how they even comment on how we're doing. They must not have any time off this summer!" And I have a whole new appreciation for frogs!!! I look forward to keeping up with the goings-on at Lily Pad Playground. Thanks VWB!!!

Thing #22: Nings

Cool! I just wish I had more time to be an active member of Teacher Ning. The fact that it was categorized by grade level really cuts down on search time. When I searched tags for reluctant readers, dyslexia, and learning disabilities many choices popped up. Seems like I'll be able to obtain some useful information and possibly some new strategies to use with my students. My Space for teachers! :0)

Thing #21: Podcasts and Audiobooks...

Here's my Photostory of Washington D.C. during the Christmas Holidays. It could use some improvement, but I think I did alright for my first time.

Thing #20: YouTube, TeacherTube, & Zamzar

I found some videos about dyslexia on YouTube and TeacherTube. The first is a montage of famous dyslexics and what their teachers said about them. The video second is about reluctant readers in high school and how to find material for them. I think their mostly trying to sell a program, but the lady in the video gives some great ideas for helping struggling readers.

Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards

I wish I had more time to explore all of these sites. I’ll come back for a deeper look later, but for now I found Lulu to probably be the most useful for my students. How fun would it be to publish some of your writings? As we all know, it’s hard to motivate struggling writers so I think they might respond to being able to publish their work, even if only for themselves, especially if they can do it on the computer. Google maps and live maps would be cool for world geography. I played around with some of the others just for fun. Hair Mixer was fun! Picnik and Splashup to store and edit photos. I liked Picnik almost better than Picasa. Last for music and videos was fun to browse around in too.

Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

I think I prefer Google docs because I can get to it from any computer. Students can use it to work on resumes or do a group edit of a document or many other things. I’m going to spend some time playing around in Google docs some more. I like that others can editing, like a Wiki. I am looking forward to using it more this coming school year.

Thing #17: Rollyo

I'm having fun with this Thing! I decided to create a Rollyo for bird research. It is very necessary to have a Rollyo for this subject because I've found that if you just "Google it" you can come up with thousands and sometimes millions of sites that are totally unrelated to what you want your students to read. For example, if we're researching birds and a student types in Blue Jays, Orioles, or Cardinals, Google will bring up baseball and/or football teams. Then you must weed out thousands of sites to find the "bird". Here is a link to the Rollyo that I created.

http://rollyo.com/sealion84/rileybirds/

I owe this ease of this Thing to Bruce Goodner's video. Thanks Bruce! You always know how to break it down for us!