Thing 23

Web 2.0 and the 21st Century Learner.

The world changes in the blink of the eye. We have technology that some people said would never happen. Everyone thought the telephone was a crazy idea, way back when. Now we have phones that we talk on, surf the web, take pictures and video, type into blogs, and a whole host of other applications. This means that teacher must take the time and school systems must embrace the technology and teach the teachers how to use the technology that it has and what it buys. Only then can we do our jobs and teach the students.

We as school need to prepare our students so that they know how to use this technology. When I say use, I mean appropriately and effectively, so that they get the most out of the information it can provide. We must teach the dangers of its use as well as all of the positive things that it can do.

I am really glad I decided to take this class. I have used wordle with my students. I have used creative commoms in a project from bighugelabs.com. I also cannot wait to share "Things" with my students and my co-workers.

There is so much out there, I am not sure that I have even scratched the surface of what is available, but I do know where I can go to keep my students and myself growing in the applications and uses of the World Wide Web.

Some of the stuff I have done for this class I did with the mindset of what will I need for my classroom to do. Others I did for me. I think that for me to grow as a teacher I must continue my quest to find others who want technology to continue to grow and become useable in the schools, so that our students are prepared for life.


I hope to continue posting to this blog and maybe some of my classmates will to.


See ya on the back side.

Chris Pannell

Westside Middle School
Barrow County Schools
Winder, GA 30680

my blog http://panedlife.blogspot.com/

edmodo.com panedlife
twitter.com pannellcatlanta
plurk.com panedlife
schoolrack.com panedlife

google account- chris.pannell@barrow.k12.ga.us
barrow county email chris.pannell@barrow.k12.ga.us

Thing 22

The image was created at http://www.wordle.net/.







The second exploration took me into http://www.edmodo.com/home/
I created an account and started playing in the calendar feature, it is pretty neat. Can't wait to play with it some more and and some files. I want to see if I can build each individual class and have assignments posted there. Right now it is a toss up between here and schoolrack. http://www.schoolrack.com/panedlife/welcome-to-my-place/

Thing 5d

http://www.11alive.com/rss/rss_story.aspx?storyid=131545

The words DA investigates and education are never a good combination. Here is a perfect example of administrators so caught up in making AYP and having good test scores that they have now jeopardized there careers and apparently lost. As of this post the principal has resigned and the assistant has been reassigned. Will have to keep following updates on this as I know more will be coming out on this one.

Thing 21

http://www.pageflakes.com/Default.aspx

I see this as a great place to gather and hold lots of information that you may want to get to in a hurry. Without having to open up 5 or 6 different addresses.

I can see having not only personal information here, but also professional stuff and even things your are learning about or how to do activities.

I posted the template that you created and love it, but I will add my own stuff as I go. I added country music, twitter, and facebook and I can not wait to see how they work in this environment. If they work well I can see having my blogspot, plurk, podcast, and any other host of items housed in different pages so that they could be easily accessible for what ever class you happen to be teaching.

Thing 20

I think Google Documents may be my newest favorite. I have always wondered, just as I did with my favorites on my computer- how can I access these from anywhere. Now I know if we set up forms on Google documents then we as a collective groups can go in and edit and then everyone in our group can see the changes and see if others need to be made.

Being the Staffing Coordinator if the people in my department could go in and edit a form I created then there would not be constant emailing back and forth of documents that I need to have updated every couple of weeks. They could just make their changes and I would have the very newest version right at my finger tips.

Thing 19

http://www.garageband.com/mp3player?|pe1|WdjZPXLrvP2rYVW_ZW1jBA


Subscribe Free  Add to my Page

Wow I can't believe how easy this was. But it did say your grandmother could do it. I am sure with the right equipment, this would be just as easy with a video podcast. I reserve the right to try that later and maybe I even post it when I decide to do one of those.

Through the use of a podcast, you could let your students actually talk about the project they have completed for class and then let of student make productive comments about it and let each others comments lend to the final grade of that project. But, reserve the right to take points off of the person making them if the comments are not giving good criticism for the project.

Thing 18

I signed into the NPR podcast site. http://www.npr.org
There is a great podcast with the new Secretary of Education talking about all of the changes he is going to make. However he said it will take years for all of his ideas to come into reality. Hence I here the government saying we have all of this money for Education Reform but you the teachers will not wee any of it.

I was having computer issues and it was saying that it could not play the pod cast, but I jumped over to another computer and was able to hear it.


http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboards

is another current favorite of mine right now. It teaches things that you can do with you Interactive WhiteBoard.

I am still contemplating what all I could find as resources for my classroom, and as I start expanding my searches I will get into more class based podcast.

Thing 17 part 4

Well until this class I had never even heard about a Ning or even microbloging for that matter.

I did join Classroom 2.0, and posted the badge in an earlier post. I did not get very much out of the site until I was a member. I could spend hours and hours scrolling through the site and blogging in it, if I had that much time on my hands, but since I don't, I tried to stay with things that I could actually start using and maybe keep up with. My blog Thing 17 part 2 is the ning I thought I could utilize first and then maybe expand as I go along.

I decided that starting a classroom web site through schoolrack was a good free way to start with something that I could use and my students and parents could look at for additional information. http://www.schoolrack.com/panedlife

I think there is a lot of information out there we as teachers just have to be able to find it. I recall in one of your videos, that you said you did not get much out of something, until you spent the time to create what you needed out of the site. I think this is so often the case, we don't want (or have) the time to find out everything that we can about what we teach. It is always a race to the finish line to make sure material is covered before test time.

As for my own microblogging site I am not sure about that. I think I would be more comfortable joining someone else's for a while to see what I really could or would use it for.

I have a plurk http://plurk.com /user/panedlife and I have a twitter www.twitter.com/pannellcatlanta So I think I need to play with these a while and get more comfortable with them. Then who knows I will see where it takes me.

Thing 17 part 2

http://www.schoolrack.com/panedlife


Well this something I have wanted to try to see if it can keep me more focused and on top of what I want my classes to do. I found http://www.schoolrack.com through the nings search. I started my own very basic web page and I hope I can keep building it.

Thing 17

Visit Classroom 2.0

Thing 16

Prior to this course I was just getting started with social networking. I got on Facebook to keep in touch with some out of town relatives that I don't get to see very often. Then it was a good way to keep up with church stuff and our friends there.

I had never thought about using a networking for professional purposes, but hey why not. We all want to try new things in our classrooms to get and keep our students engaged. With all of the teaching professionals that there are this could be a great asset. I once had a professor that always said "Don't recreate the wheel."

This made sense then, but now through the internet you may be able to find what someone else has done and tweek it to what your classroom needs are.

I signed up for Plurk http://plurk.com/user/panedlife and and I know it takes time, but you should be able to search for friends without going through your email accounts, so for right now I am not sure about this PLN. Maybe this could be set up for Barrow County teachers and then let us pull our teacher friends, that could be a large base of teachers and resources, in its own right.

I always am willing to try something that has already been done by someone else and I just make adjustments as I need to. So I would say that there is a strong reason to join a PLN or create your own. Since I teach so many subjects and three different grade levels, I would benefit from others more than my own. But, one I might create would center around technology.

Thing 5c

http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/06/15/links-for-2009-06-15/

"Curriculum Mapping is sweeping the country as a dynamic tool for communication. By collecting data about what is actually taught during the course of a school year and sharing those data, teachers are able to work together to reach an efficient and powerful level of decision-making."

Wow I think people in education have been saying this for years. Maybe if the higher up Education people would listen to some things teachers say, we might could accomplish some things and better our test scores also.

Thing 14

Well this is something I am always dealing with at home. My computer is so old and so slow. I don't really want to upgrade right now, but if it gets much slower I will have too. So I am always trying to find out things to make it faster. This video does a good job telling three different ways to try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-za7hy_Rdq4

Thing 13

Well, well, well. I had never heard about voice threads nor had I ever seen one until this course. I can see by listening to the other ones that you can really use voice threads to enhance a presentation or provide other ideas that may not have been thought of yet. When multiple minds collaborate on a single topic, many ideas can come form it. It we were doing something like the math problem that you gave as an example, you could have different students telling how they would solve that problem. We a student can explain how they did something to a teacher or another student they then have more securely locked that information into their usable memory.

If a student had done their own slide show other students could make comments on it and even tell what they learned from them.

Thing 12

Well first off, some of these I have heard about and seen some of them used. http://blabberize.com for one . One of our teachers used this with her language arts class, so they used my computers. I did not really pay much attention to them, but you know as well as anybody else, when something is going on near you, you can't help but notice. I still haven't tried it but I plan to. I think it is a neat way for students to really take ownership of something they have created. My daughter and I are going to try one, and I will see if I can post it.


The next one I am interested in is http://www.glogster.com/edu/ I only played with it for a few minutes and it seemed really neat. I always create and invitation each year and I think I am going to see what I can do with this. As for the classroom I think you could use this in social studies or science and let the students make a poster about some system or some person. Will have to investigate this one some more when school is back in session.

Thing 5b continued

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-takes-200-mln-from-russian-internet-firm?siteid=rss&rss=1

Facebook raises $200 million from Russian Internet firm
Social-networking giant says deal implies $10 billion valuation; no board seat

Things like this, even in hard economies show where the people with money, invest. Clearly this Russian firm knows that the future of these types of social networking sites is only going to go up. When someone does not have to pay to socialize with anyone, anywhere, there is going to be a market for this. This was their third purchase of a social networking site.

The reason for a delay in the second part of the post was I want to really see what was out there and then decide what to post about.

Thing 11

Photo Sources
1.Atlanta_Skyline_from_Buckhead- http://www.flickr.com/photos/cokak/355135172

2. Atlanta, GA-http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/2102755866

3. Downtown Atlanta-http://www.flickr.com/photos/jekemp/6598786

4. Bright Atlanta-http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/449052129

5. Turner Field - Atlanta Fulton County Stadium-http://www.flickr.com/photos/partee/10678497

6. Turner Field-http://www.flickr.com/photos/ucumari/481430565

Thing 10 part 3

Turner Field image by ucumari's on flicker

Wow this is really cool. I was just playing around making a collage of places in Georgia. I teach Georgia Studies and I was thinking how can I get my students more interested in what they are learning about, so when I came up to this Thing 10 I was like that's it. Let them make photo collections of different parts of the state as we talk about that section becoming part of the state itself.

I would have to think with the information you gave us there must be almost anything that you can find in pictures.

I found the above picture and new it was the one I want to post. So you will see it with some others in thing 11.

Thing 9

I am leary about creative commons, but I will be trying this out. First off I have never done anything like this, so it is still a little greek to me. I have seen the cc logo on certain site but have never know what it meant. Just like in the beginning of the course I had seen the RSS but never known what it was either.

I know my kids use things off of the internet all most every day and have wondered, at what point does plagerism come in. Well this thing answers this question very well. I typically won't let my students just copy text out of an article, I make them type it in their own words. I make them limit how many pictures they use for their projects, also.

I have used pictures, and videos in my lessons, but most of the time I have to say that I don't own them but our school does have the license to use them such as Safari Montage http://10.1.3.172/SAFARI/montage/login.php . I am just now getting into using the internet for all that it is worth, when you don't have the technology to use, or the equipment to use it on, you kind of just let it go by the wayside.

I am glad that there are firm guidelines to follow when using stuff from the internet. I am sure as I start using stuff more, I will become more familiar with what is acceptable and what is not. Fair use seems to be fairly easy to understand and follow, also.

Just a couple of weeks ago we used the web site http://www.bighugelabs.com and did a picture autobiography about themselves. Some student were amazed that some pictures would not show up in their project. I explained that not all pictures that are available for viewing are available to be copied and placed in your project. I guess this is the perfect example of fair use. Some artist freely want you to use their stuff and others don't want you to use it at all.

THING ME

I have my promethean now. WOO HOO!

Thing 5b

Well, I must say that I love my google reader. I don't have to read the newspaper or even watch the news. I can just look at my metro Atlanta feeds and see what is going on around Atlanta. http://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=oy#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fatlanta.bizjournals.com%2Frss%2Ffeed%2Fdaily%2Fatlanta

http://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=oy#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FTeachersLoveSmartBoards Is really cool about learning things to do with our smart boards. I don't currently have one, but should have one soon. It is neat to be able to use "Things" from this class and off of the web and try them out.

I really enjoy what the Google Reader does and how I only have to read what I want to know more about.

Thing 7

Well, I need to say this is not my first experience with a wiki space. Last year a group of teachers participated with the gifted class as we read "The Boy in The Stripped Pajamas." We had to read sections and then post our own thoughts about what we had read, and make comments about what the students had posted.

Well, now I have one of my own. http://23thingssandbox.barrow.wikispaces.net/chrispannell

Hope to add more soon.

See ya on the other side.

More thoughts of Thing 6

My diigo http://www.diigo.com/user/pannelledlife is going to be a great source of information that I can use and can have my students use. I have to figure out a good project that will tie in technology and how I can use this to help teach. I want my students to be able to use the technology and know what is out there for them to use. We already use wiki spaces in one of the reading classes http://bcswikis.barrow.wikispaces.net/mccallcharacters. I think I am ready to try one of my own.

Thing 6

Now I have my diigo set-up and working. OH MY!!!!! Being able to see all of your favorite websites and being able to get to them from anywhere in the world as long as you have internet connection. I started out with some of my basic ones that I use on a regular basis. Now I keep adding more based on what I want to know.

Thing 5 and 5a

I have had my google reader for about two weeks now and I am loving being able to glance and get information. When I was out, week before last, I was able to get to my blog and post through wikispace, and with my diigo I could get to my bookmarks. This is a great thing. I was not at home where all of my favorites are stored on my one computer, but since I had setup my wiki I was able to get to them.


SMARTBoards and Updating the Lesson Activity Toolkit

Well I am getting a smartboard soon and I have been trying to find out as much info as possible. So one of my reader site is Teachers Love Smart Boards

The blog above is a very helpful one talking about how to update lessons and a toolkit resource. I can't wait till I can post some of my own flip charts and save them in a blog. But, this will have to wait till next school year.

Thing # 3

Well not much to be said about Things 3 and 4, but WOW!!! I had know idea about all the information that you could get without having to keep searching for it. I set the daily news as a feed in my Google reader and I can just skim the headlines to see if I want to read more about the article. I did and still am have a little trouble with one of the feeds and can seem to figure out what to do. http://www.techlearning.com/blog does not seem to be the most friendly blog to try and follow. I cannot ever seem to get just one part.

Anyone else having trouble with this one?

Help Please!

Talking about the world at your finger tips, it is all here and more that you may ever need or want. I love watch my Google Reader and it just keeps showing more information each minute.

Thing #2 part 2

Ok, so here I am again back to my same old self. I have stated before the Time is NOW. -http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=349/ In this blog he states along the same lines that I do, We Must embrace the technology at hand and start using it in our classroom.

If we look at the blog on the new digital divide.- http://betch.edublogs.org/2008/07/31/the-new-digital-divide/, we see that those views are also about not where we are but where we need to go and how do we take our students there with us. I worked in Resturant/ Retail Management for many years before I decided to become a teacher. Every year we would get new technology to make ours jobs easier and make sure our inventory was where it needed to be to make sure what we brought in was going out through sales and not through theft. Well now I am a teacher and I can definently say that techonolgy in the schools does not even attempt to keep up with the real world. When I first started teaching the computers I was using still had Windows 98 on them, well the rest of the world was already using Windows 2000 and then XP. Well now technology is Windows Vista, but we are still on XP. Times do change and the cost do effect everything we do, but Are we hindering our students by not keeping up with the times so that they will know how to use the technology that is out there.


If our children are our future then we as parents and educators need to support and want for our kids to be able to learn on the latest and greatest technoloy there is. Our government needs to provide the financial resource so the antique-dinosaurs, we call computers, can be replaced as often as the technology of the future happens. We keep saying we want our student to perform to the standards of the world and we are relying on them to be able to go from school to the workforce and be the most creative productive people in the world, but I don't think we do the students justice if we can't give them all that technology has to offer to them.

As is written in this blog Imagine turning on a facuet..... -http://www.missbakersbiologyclass.com/blog/2007/10/07/imagine-turning-the-faucetand-nothing-coming-out

What if this happens in technology?

Can our students really be prepared if we don't give them the tools?

How can we expect what we can't provide?

Thing #2 part 1

Reading different blogs, I have noticed that there is not really any correct or incorrect way to make a blog or to write in one. *They can be short, They can be long. They can be written to persuade or simply to inform, they can also be used just as a venting space to see what others are experiencing and how we can help each other.*

Reading a blog is no different than reading a story, Writing a blog seems to be less formal.

The way I see a blog---- I can use them to inform----or I can use them to get others opinions on some topic that I am interested in. The more people that respond to or comment on a particular blog, the more knowledge I can gain. If I am using one to inform, then my students can make their comments according to what I have posted.

Collaboration is the key to greater success. The more communication between students and their classmates and with their teachers, the better the outcome of their education. When we post to someone else's blog we must take care to only enhance what is written. We are not there to criticize but to gain knowledge and add supporting comments or simply comment on a differing opinion, or give our own slant to a blog.

These are my thoughts right now, I am still investigating my opinion and will post more in part 2.

Thing #1B stretch

What if?

All the books combusted. We need more information that our school had.

What if a student was so interested in a topic, and we could not help them?

What if…..?

Our time is here and our time is now. We must embrace technology and start using what we have and keep pushing for more. How can we say we want to teach if we don’t want to learn ourselves. Our goal as people in a society should be to learn something new everyday. If we don’t we can never prepare our students to be all that they can be or need to be for a successful life. Our students here in 2009 will be performing jobs that don’t even exist yet but are on the edge of reality as we no it.

I want to catch up to where I am at the best position to force my students into the reality of what they will have to accomplish just to be able to survive.

There was a time when a Bachelors degree was enough, but now if we do not educate ourselves, we miss the boat on what the students of tomorrow and beyond need.

Thing #1B

I remember a day long ago when I had to dig through books to find out relative information for any topic I was trying to find information on. Now with all of the electronic resources the information is literally in our hands. I attended a bible study the other night and one of the girls that was in the group did not appear to have her bible (which was clearly stated to bring it), but to my amazement her entire bible was loaded into her cell phone. This makes me wonder where will we be next year. I already try to teach my students how to use technology in the classroom, And this is when I realize that I am the one who needs to catch up. So many teachers are embedded into old school ways that they do not stop to think what do I need to do to keep up with the times and prepare my students for their future.

We have technology coming at us everyday and we need to grab hold of it and immerse ourselves into the future. When I am able to use technology with my students they seems to understand and pay attention more to me and the classwork.

The old ways are still here, and some teachers are still holding on to those ways, but if we truly want to engage and help our students we really need to jump on the technology bandwagon and plunge into the great unknown. Our textbooks are electronic, and our knowledge is but a click away. Teaching out of a book is not how a student is going to learn and we as teachers need to push these children into the future so they will be able to compete in the real world.

Now as for us teachers, if we would start using the resources that are available we could go far in helping ourselves, as well as, our students. If we were collaborating with each other through blogs and could contribute to each others classes I think we would begin to want to most for our students and stop thinking that our subject is the only one that matters.

Thing #1A

I have never set up or even posted to a blog before. I hope it is as easy as some people say it is. I will be glad when other people start posting, so I can see if I really know what is going on.

Thing # 1A

My name is Chris, and I teach 6th, 7th and 8th grades. I teach Special needs students all subjects. I have been teaching for 6 years and I wanted to increase my technology abilities so I can teach some of them to my students.

Thing # 1A

I am now set up I hope. Glad a first grader can do this.