Final Evaluation

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I absolutely loved the discovery exercise concerning Netvibes and I wish I had done Thing #16 earlier than I did. I am pretty sure PhotoPeach would have made a lot of my friends' lives easier over the past few months (as far as constructing slideshows for weddings).

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

Thanks to this course (and Netvibes) I am now able to access technology articles, diagnostics articles, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest in one sitting. I can no longer complain that I don't have time to keep up with everything that is happening around me.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I came into this program thinking I knew nothing about the combination of education and technology. I am leaving this part of the course realizing I actually knew a lot about technology and am now able to  use it my classroom.

4. What could I do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

The only thing I would suggest is making sure all of the example links and resources are up to date. There were several exercises in which I could not access the resources or tutorial videos.

I hope this is not the end of our learning journey together but the start of something amazing …Think about your next steps...you can continue this journey by...

Thing #16: PhotoPeach

"Without change there would be no butterflies." -Anonymous (12 months of change) on PhotoPeach

I would use this at the end of the year with my students. They love taking pictures and videos of each other. This would be the best way for them to remember their lives in my class. I can't wait to do this with them!

Thing 15.5: Twitter

This was the easiest exercise for me to complete because I already use Twitter and LinkedIn. During class I attached the Twitter widget to my blog so I should be easy to follow. Until now I Twitter served my personal needs. I didn't spend much time playing around with it since I am such an avid Facebook user (yes, I know it's silly, but it's easy to keep up with people on FB). Now that Twitter is linked to my Netvibes page I am spending time catching up on tweets from educational and religious sources, as well as friends, celebrities, and news affiliates. I need to spend more time reading articles on my Scoop.it page (and app) so that my tweets will be professional and useful. Several friends and family members have their Twitter and Facebook accounts linked, but I am keeping them separate to prevent clogging anyone's feeds with repetitive information.

LinkedIn is difficult for me to get invested in at this time. I am not looking to move jobs and even though I should be connecting with professionals in my field I am waiting until I get closer to graduating with my Master's to pursue these connections. This is shameful to admit but I was so annoyed by LinkedIn at first that my friend (who at the time worked in HR at UT's Medical School-Houston) offered to fix up my account for me. Let me tell you, I have never jumped on an offer so quickly. I do however have my LinkedIn account attached to my personal website, which I created this summer, in hopes that future employers will look at both!

Thing #15: Things like Skype

Skype would be amazing as an educational tool in a classroom! I would use it to communicate with students in other countries from other cultures, let the students have "conference calls" with authors of books we are reading, or interview professionals (scientists, police men, firemen, etc). Talking with students from other cultures would educate my students on manners around the world, the customs, and simply broaden their horizons; the more they know about the world outside Houston, Tx the more chances they will have to be successful as they grow into adults. It would also be useful in foreign language classes, you could create a pen pal type relationship with a student fluent in Spanish and both students could spend time speaking to each other in their native languages.

I have used Skype many times in my personal life. My mother, sister, and I used it last summer while we were in Italy to talk to my dad and other sister who were in Houston. I also used it to do a face to face appointment with my therapist since I didn't have time to make an in office appointment; talk about convenient. I would imagine that Skype and apps like Face Time (for the iPhone) have really helped out couples in the Army. I know my parents would have enjoyed using Skype when my sisters and I were younger since my dad traveled all the time. Then my mom could have called him to reprimand us when we were being awful!

Thing #14: Podcasting and Bookmarking

I discovered iTunesU this summer and really enjoyed the "Keep Texas Wild" podcasts provided by the TEA. I watched several podcasts from Children's Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. These podcasts are focused on phonemic awareness instructions, the research behind it, and the strategies that promote it. CLI not only provides access to lectures, they also include the print outs needed to follow along with the presenters. I think iTunesU could be a great, free  resource as far as continuing education for me. I also like that they have college readiness programs and podcasts on algebra and geometry, these may come in handy for secondary teachers. I know I would have benefited from podcasts on math instruction when I was in high school.

I have been on Pinterest for a while now, I get sucked into the humor, education, animals (who doesn't love pictures of puppies and kittens???), and fashion sections when I'm watching TV and waiting in line. I try really hard to stay away from Pinterest at all other times, if I don't my pretend life might become more amazing than my real life.

On Monday, I found a post in the education section on Pinterest that showed me a new way to make pumpkins for our Halloween/Fall unit. I had never thought of dying pumpkin seeds before and I think this is the best way to spice up a tired art project the kids do every year. For my class we are taking the idea a step farther and doing an experiment to find out whether food coloring or this special water color temper paint will dye the seeds better. Thanks to this picture of a pumpkin seed pumpkin on Pinterest my students get to experience a new science and art project! 

Community Helpers Digital Story TC

Mr. Taylor's Community Helpers - 2011

Community Helpers-HBU

Thing #12 and #13: Discovering and Using YouTube

I personally find YouTube to be one of the most entertaining sites and I know I am not alone in this. Where else can you watch endless videos of cats,  Korea's version of Ricky Martin, line dances like the Wobble, Sesame Street, and Dora? For this exercise, I used Youtube to find videos on Community Helpers for my upcoming classroom unit. I found several that will come in handy, including one that I believe was created by a former graduate student in the technology program at HBU!

You can watch the videos here (Community Helpers- HBU, Ms. Taylor's Community Helpers- 2011, and Community Helpers Digital Story TC) or find them embedded in a separate post.

I included videos made by students and teachers. I believe both are beneficial. Some lessons need to identify more with students and others need teacher created structure. I am a student and a teacher. As a student, I was thrilled to find a video created by a peer at HBU; this goes to show the importance of relating to your audience.

This summer I created a video for a unit on Antarctica that I will use with my students in January. I used iMovie to create this video and followed all the copyright rules and regulations. I am pretty proud of it since it took so long to get the music and pictures to align correctly!




 I tried to upload the video to TeacherTube but still haven't received an activation code. I will try again later with a different email and see if that helps.

Thing #11: Web 2.0 Tools

Okay, so, I could not find any of the Web 2.0 tools on Web 2.0 Awards. Luckily, I saved the link to Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools on my Delicious account this summer. I was hoping to find a graphing tool I liked more than Excel since my class is currently making graphs of their family members and classmates. Sadly, I found them more difficult to use and since I work with young children I have found that the technology I use needs to be straightforward and simple to use. I found a tool called Briangle that provides daily Brain Teasers. This would be great to use as a warm up in an elementary class. The teacher could post it on the SmartBoard to start class in an entertaining, light hearted manner. It would get students into their seats quietly and help start a discussion once the students finished solving the puzzle. Another useful tool is Shiddoni. Shiddoni allows students to create a pet, watch it come to life, and play with it. This would be a fun activity for my students during our "Community Helpers" unit. They could pretend to be veterinarians and create the type of animals they would want to help. For my example, I created a dog. The only down side is that I couldn't enter a username and password to watch the dog play for more than a few seconds. I will have to keep exploring to find a site that works perfectly before using it in class.

Thing #10: Web-Productivity Tools

Thing #9: Playing with Wikis

I wish we had a technology popper at my school. This would be a great way for our teachers to share ideas and lesson plans. It would be really nice to see exactly what the younger and older classes are working on in their rooms. I feel like this would provide a more cohesive, fluid learning experience for all the students if the teachers were working together behind the scenes. A technology popper would be a great way for us to work together all the time, teachers could log in at any time from anywhere and contribute. This way we wouldn't have to use in-service time to collaborate since we would be able to do it from home in the evening or before work.

Here are the ideas I added to Dr. Wilson's Technology Popper:

This summer I created a unit plan on Antarctica to use with my preschool students. I came away loving so many web 2.0 tools. A great way to integrate technology into the classroom would be to create a story with the students using Little Bird Tales. The kids could each illustrate a page of the story and add their own ideas and thoughts to bring their class story to life. Little Bird Tales allows the author to record their voice. Since my kids are just learning to read this would be a great way for them to tell a story since they can't type or spell yet. I love the idea of student ownership and creating a class story would help them learn about collaborating and teamwork. Another thing I love is the Treasure Hunt. This could be used at the end of unit to see what the kids actually learned. It's also a great way to introduce younger students to the internet without overwhelming or endangering them. A Treasure Hunt uses specific, teacher selected, child-friendly websites to help the children answer questions. Here is the Treasure Hunt I created this summer.

Thing #8: Wikis

I had no idea wiki was the Hawaiian word for quick! Wikipedia's name now makes sense. I tried to use the link Dr. Wilson provided to help teachers that are new to wikis but it was a broken link. I feel like this would have been a helpful tool. I checked out Teacher Wikis and found a wiki called "Great Ideas." This wiki is fantastic, it has lesson plan ideas, apps, and Web 2.0 tools that a first grade teacher has used and found success with in her classroom. This resource is perfect for someone like me (someone new to all of the technology resources available to teachers) since I sometimes feel overwhelmed by all of this new information. They also have a wiki page called technology workshops that helps you learn to use tools like digital storytelling, the Elmo, and Microsoft Office. I am so glad that I have found these resources and can't wait to share them with other teachers at my school. I feel like they make technology more user friendly for teachers that have little experience with all these new ways of learning and teaching.

Thing #7: Image Generators

The first image generator I tried was WordSift. This is a pretty neat tool but I think it might be too advanced to use with my preschool students. Next I tried Wordle, and created a word cloud of words that begin with the letter 'F' since this is the letter my students will be learning about for the next two weeks. I like this tool since I can create word collages and print them out. I could post these collages in the writing center in my classroom. I like the idea of giving my kids more sight words, especially ones they wouldn't ordinarily see, hear, or use.

I used Glogster this summer in my technology class at HBU and created a poster as a new way to present a chapter summary. Here is the poster I made! I think this would be a great way to introduce myself to my class at the beginning of the year. The kids would love the colors and presentation.

In college I used Animoto to create a video for my art class. I am sure Animoto has improved over the years, but when I used it I found it frustrating and difficult to work with, so I avoided it for this assignment.

Flipsnack looks amazing! I would definitely use this at work and can't wait to try it out.

Thing #6: RSS and newsreaders

This took me forever to figure out, but I finally got it!! I originally tried working on this while I was at work, unfortunately our school computers would not allow me to watch the tutorial video or read the resource pages correctly- they just would not load. I became frustrated with this discovery exercise and left it alone for quite a while. Now that I have successfully created a Netvibes account, I am in love. I will use this every single day for personal use. I feel like I am too busy to check every website I want (social, news, financial, email, blogs, etc.) and now I can find everything in one spot and skim through to find what I need at any moment. This is going to be the biggest time saver and help me feel up to date with the world. I'd have to say that I think this may be my favorite exercise, at least so far. I can't see using this with my students, but it will benefit them since I will use Netvibes as a teacher resource to collect articles on education and keep up with new ideas for lesson plans. I am not including the link to my Netvibes account simply because I included links to my email and facebook account, therefore, it should be kept private! I am so glad I figured out this assignment!

kajohnson713's photostream

kajohnson713's photostream on Flickr.

These are photos of highlights from my summer! The first photo was taken in Las Vegas outside the white tiger and dolphin exhibit. The second picture is one of my favorites because my 6.5 pound teacup Shih Tzu (Luca) had never met anything smaller than himself before and he was completely amazed by this tiny kitten! For the third, I included a view of Lake Austin simply because it makes me feel happy and relaxed. It reminds me of how much fun I had before and after the next picture was taken. This last picture is of all the girls at my friend's bachelorette party. We spent Labor Day weekend celebrating on Lake Austin.

Thing 5: Flickr Mashups

I think this is a pretty cool way to learn about new apps! Until now, I had no idea Mashups existed. I don't spend much time sorting through the app store on my iPad/iPhone because there are too many choices and it feels overwhelming. I like that there are so many options for using pictures. I never would have thought to pair pictures with a map or create a color wheel that leads you to pictures containing a specific color. I could see myself using a color type app in the future, especially if I'm trying to match a paint color to a specific image. 
Some of the Flickr Mashup apps take you to third party websites and/or don't provide enough information about what they do. These sorts of qualities make the apps undesirable to me as a preschool teacher. I want to use something that is kid friendly and safe. I ended up choosing an app called Jigsawed (www.jigsawedapp.com). It is straight forward, easy to use, and kid friendly. I would have no problem using this in my classroom. Not only that, it is fun and I got a kick out of solving the puzzles! All you do is upload a photo or select one from Flickr, choose a puzzle type (premium or regular), and then have fun solving your jigsaw. The app is accessible on iPad, iPhone, and iPod. The only improvements I suggest are creating a format that allows it to be used on all tablet types, then it could be used in schools implementing the 'Bring Your Own Device' plan.

This is what my puzzle looked like:
1) Jigsaw pieces
2) finished product- looks just like the original picture
3) Fireworks- because I did an awesome job solving the puzzle!

Thing 4: Flickr

Flickr is amazing! I need to suggest this to my friends and family. I have attended tons of bachelorette parties and weddings recently where my friends and I were all taking pictures. These pictures are not necessarily ones we want to put on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media site. We have been looking for a way to share our photos and it never occurred to me to use Flickr, even though I have worked with it in the past! My dad would also enjoy this site since he collects comic book art and loves to share his collection with artists and fellow comic book lovers. He has a website and a Facebook page, but he might like to check out this option as well.

I love that Flickr allows me to create groups and tag pictures to make them more accessible. It's also great that I can explore new photos uploaded to the site and download them to my desktop if I want to use them for a project later. It seems like Flickr was the original Instagram!

I missed the second half of these instructions before I posted this. Here is the link to a separate post with photos and a description I posted using Flickr's blogging tool.

Thing 3: Digital Photos

I am not allowed to own fancy cameras (this is a personal rule of mine) since I tend to break or lose most of my cameras. I took this picture with my water resistant, shock resistant, neon yellow digital camera. It doesn't have any fancy features, but it gets the job done and I have had it for two years now; a personal record. This picture is from David Adickes studio here in Houston. I visited the studio while helping my best friend plan her going away party- a scavenger hunt involving cool spots around Houston. 

Thing 2: Blogging

This is going to sound silly, but i found blogging to be so difficult! There are many different blog sites and some are more tedious to navigate than others. I originally started with blogster.com and was so proud of myself for setting up a name for my blog and getting a URL! I waited and waited for the verification email to come, but it never did. So I thought, "Well maybe I don't really need that verification email," and tried to log into my blog to do Thing #1. FAIL. Apparently, the verification email was very important after all. I ended up creating a second blog with blogster.com (this time I received the verification email) and proceeded to fill out my thoughts on the 7 1/2 Habits. About this time I realized I really do not like blogster.com. I couldn't figure out how to change the backgrounds, uploading pictures was a strange and difficult process, and even picking fonts was a chore! Not the ideal blogging experience, I presume? So, after emailing with Dr. Wilson and realizing everyone else was using Blogger.com I switched to this blog and the experience has been nothing but pleasant! I found a background I like, changed the font for my blog title, and am working on picking out pictures for my pages. While blogging does not come naturally to me (I have never done it before and had no clue what I was getting into) I think I will actually enjoy this project.  

Thing 1: 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Learners

I am definitely a Life Long Learner and I believe I come from a long line of life long learners. My grandmother, at 81 years old, is a huge fan of facebook and uses Skype to communicate with her sons and daughters, who are scattered around the United States. We are getting her an iPhone for Christmas because she complained that her flip phone doesn't allow her enough access to the world!

I have always been an avid reader and lover of education. I think that in order to be a great teacher you must be willing to learn from others and yourself. You must constantly expand your horizons. If you aren't, then how can you be sure you are reaching your students in the best way? 

The video on the 7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners was interesting! I wish it provided more detail on the Learning Contract, I am someone who always wants and needs more guidance. I couldn't get the sound to work so maybe I missed details because of this issue. Here are the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful People and Learners: 

1. Begin with the end in mind

2. Accept responsibility for your own learning

3. View problems as challenges

4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner

5. Create your own toolbox

6. Use technology to your advantage

7. Teach/mentor others

7 1/2. PLAY!!

Easiest: The Habits that come easiest to me are Teaching Others and Play. I have two younger sisters, have worked with children since 6th grade, and learn best when I teach someone something I've just discovered. I feel like teaching comes naturally to me and that I am always looking for new ways to be better at this. I am preschool teacher so playing is the at the core of teaching for me. I also love to play and have fun in my free time, so this may actually be something I need to watch to ensure it doesn't interfere with other aspects of my life!

Hardest: The most difficult Habit for me is using technology to my advantage. I am great at using the Internet to find answers to questions or using Google Maps to navigate, but I am terrible at researching new technology and figuring out how to use it in my personal and professional life. It is not something that comes naturally to me. That is why I am pursuing a Master's of Education with Technology, so that I can learn more about an area that is very difficult for me. I hope to make it easy for my students to use technology. 

I have created a Learning Contract that will help me use these Habits to my advantage!