Bendin Blog

Of the three Ning, Ning in Education, and Classroom 2.0, my favorite was Classroom 2.0. A lot of what I tried to look at in the other two prompted me to join the site before I could look (and I just didn’t feel like joining one more group – ha – maybe later).

Ning was so big that it was almost too big for me and when I did find a group that I thought I might enjoy, there really wasn’t anything there yet (or maybe only one member). I know that the groups have to start somewhere so I will definitely check back and see how it is progressing and I might eventually join in for the ride.

I liked the “gadgets” in Ning in Education and I also enjoyed looking at some of the forums. When I tried to search the videos there wasn’t much there for me to use with my particular search but I did see some lovely vacation pictures of the other members.

Classroom 2.0 had a wiki section that I liked and I found some things there that I could use with my own digital citizenship search. I think that this site could be useful in a lot of ways for professional development as well as professional collaboration with ideas and best practices. The video section was also easy to browse through and I found a few things there that interested me as well.

I know I’ve got to become more “clickable” and join more social networking sites. I’m beginning to learn the balance of “reading” vs. “skimming” for information but I also have to protect my time (I could spend HOURS on this stuff). I appreciate the opportunity to explore some of these networks with some direction rather than just floundering in the dark for good groups to visit. There is so much out there that it seems a waste not to learn more. My plan is to try to get a buddy to do it with me (maybe carve out some time for a cup a coffee once a week while we scan the cyber world) and maybe that will keep me charged to do some more exploring.

I have been listening to Grammar Girl a bit and I like her. Her voice is not all that inviting but what she has to say is relevant. In one that I listened to she was sharing info on the correct way to use shall and will and comparing the American version and the British version of what is correct. I think that my students would find this interesting. Another one that I found helpful was a talk about attribution in writing. She shares several examples of how and where to put these in sentences. I feel that I will really have to pick and choose with her casts (I’m not thrilled with all of them) but if I can keep up with my reader regularly, I think that I will find some that I can use.

I had a little bit of trouble finding the template (you have to type “template” onto k12 learning 2.0) but when I did it was easy to load it up. I wasn’t able to edit the to-do list so I finally just deleted it. I liked browsing through the themes and page edits for different looks. There are a lot of cool features, almost too many to wade through. I grabbed a few and changed a few that were on the template. It was fun moving things around until I got it the way that I wanted it to be.

For students, I think that they would enjoy and find this tool useful. I teach 6th grade and many of them don’t belong to social networking sites yet (although this is changing) and this might be a way for them to have a way to personalize a page without belonging to a networking site. For the classroom, students could contribute to a class page themselves or just go to a teacher created page and review posted class information, see class assignments, use the calendar to see what is due when, or check out web sites/RSS feeds/podcasts that that the teacher thinks are important.

Professionally, I see our English department using this as a tool for contributing professional ideas to share with each others. It could be accessed by all of our department and folks could add things to share with the group. We could also use the calendar for upcoming meetings and dates of relevance to our department.

Even though it is a good tool, I must say that I probably won’t use it. Our school has a very good technology network and I think that a lot of what pageflakes can do, we are already doing. I’m thankful to have such a good tech program already in place.

This was really pretty easy. I know we were asked to wait and use this when we really had something to work on but right now, THIS is what I have to work on! I created a document in googledocs and invited others to share their ideas/web site for help with a project that I am working on.   This is one way that I would use this as a professional tool.

The document portion really just works like a word document with a few extra features. My doc looks like a circus page because I tried to use different things (and yes, I put in that same old picture of me). I tried to upload another picture but it was too big and I just didn’t have time to adjust it right now.

I really don’t work with spreadsheets a lot but I did look at the presentation feature. To me it was similar to power point and I think would be easy to use. I still had trouble with the pictures but I’m sure with a little more work/time I could figure out how to make that go a little more smoothly.

If you were doing a presentation together it would be a GREAT way to collaborate. As teachers we could create classroom/school rules to share and post on a school web. We could also create expectations for collaborative projects that we assign in class and then they may be viewed later online for student use.

I think students could really use this a lot. It would be a great way for them to work on a presentation together but not necessarily have to be in the same room or working on it at the same time. I had trouble this year with kids creating something on one computer at our school that was a little older and then trying to present it on another computer (or even one from home) and then it wouldn’t work when they were trying to present. This would eliminate that problem.

I recently used YouTube, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube for a presentation that I was sharing at a workshop. There is a lot of good (and bad) information out there. I think that are three are VERY useful tools for the classroom. Not only did I find some interesting stuff to use, I think it is good to show the students that these tools are not just for fun and silly stuff, but that they can also be used as helpful tools. Who knew? Ha!

In my recent searches I was looking for information on how to teach students good digital citizenship. One particular topic was about posting personal online. See this YouTube video about “Amanda the Babysitter” and how posting her personal video online came back to haunt her… The video was originated at ConnectSafely.com.

Feel free to take a look at my wiki page (a work in progress) that we hope to use with our MS students this year in Advisement.

As far as making my own videos this year… I’m not sure I can tackle that (but you never know). I do hope to use some slide shows and some of the other tools that we’ve learned in this course but I may save video for another time. I’ve learned that I can’t take on more than I can chew at a time (unless I go in knowing that I can spit it back out – ha) so for now, creating a video is on hold for me.