Thing #9

Using these online image generators is very easy - you simply select an image, add the text, and click a button to create them. I chose to use them to remind kids to do their homework and congratulate them on a successful exam. In the classroom I would probably print these images and place them on a bulletin board. On the one hand, they seem like a fun and cute way to remind students of the importance of studying and homework, something they probably don't like.

On the other hand, however, they seem kind of frivolous. For me, personally, I have never been entertained or engaged by cutesy things - it is just not my style. That made this a very hard post. I like hard-hitting, productive projects. While working on this post, I looked at some other people's blogs for inspiration and realized that they seemed to be getting way more out of this than I was. This taught me an important lesson; to be an effective teacher, perhaps I will have to learn to use "fun" or "creative" things in my classroom to hold my student's attention.

What do you think? Are fun, cutesy things like this a distraction and a waste of precious working time or something that can actually enhance the classroom? I am leaning towards the former...

In this post, I used

http://www.imagechef.com/
http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/

Thing #8

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/flickr_postcard_browser/app/

This is an image of the Flickr Postcard Browser. I found this to be a fascinating tool, and one that might be very useful in my future Geography class. It is very simple to use; you simply type in the name of a place (in this case Mumbai, India) and it arranges a set of "postcards" (actually just pictures from Flickr) for you to look at.

Half of Geography learning about other people's cultures. Using Flickr Postcard Viewer would be a fun way for Geography students to browse through pictures of far-off places. As a teacher, I could then ask them to share their impressions and thoughts about the place: how is it different from our home, how is it similar, does it look like what you expected it to look like? Perhaps I could even ask them to blog about their impressions of the pictures...

I am still a bit uncomfortable about uploading my own pictures to the internet. I suppose that I am just used to having my pictures in a big plastic container under my bed, not out on the internet. Although, in this post and the previous post, I have repeatedly found meaningful and useful images for my personal and professional life. Perhaps this is an indicator that I should return the favor...

What do you think? Are you going to use some Flickr Mashup in your classroom? Are you afraid of the content that students might find? Are you uploading your own pictures, or are you keeping them in a big rubbermaid bucket under your bed?

Thing #7

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reluctant_paladin/1604543573/

This is a photograph of a Farmall model H sitting in some weeds in Frisco, Texas. It was taken by reluctant_paladin and uploaded to Flickr on October 17, 2007.

I chose option #1 because I do not have a digital camera, and I do not have any really good pictures to upload. So, I searched for a photograph and decided to comment on it. Searching is really easy - every photograph has certain "tags" which describe the picture and help the search engine to find it. I decided to look for a picture of an old farm tractor, because I like old farm tractors...

Photographs like this really intrigue me. It was easy to find - Flickr has an easy-to-use interface and is really well organized. I simply typed in "farmall" (my favorite kind of tractor - this one was probably made in the mid-40s) and it turned up a whole list of images. To me, the Farmall (especially the H model - an affordable midsize tractor, used primarily to tend farms under 160 acres) is an iconic image of the family farm and represents a bygone era in American farming and culture. This old tractor has been forgotten and is now rusting away, surely replaced by some newer, bigger, more powerful, and more efficient tractor. The same can be said of the family farm; it, too, has been replaced by bigger, more organized, and more efficient "industrial" farms. However, I cannot help but feel that in the transition something intangible has been lost - some part of American culture that can never be regained, because progress only goes in one way. Luckily, thanks to pictures like this and photo-sharing sites like Flickr, there will always be reminders of the past...

In light of how meaningful I found this photograph, I am beginning to think that perhaps I should get a camera of my own, start taking some pictures, and share them with others. If other people found as much meaning in my photographs as I did in this one, it would certainly be a worthwhile effort both for myself and everyone out there on the internet.

What do you think? Am I a hopeless romantic for a bygone era - one in which I never even really lived? Am I a dinosaur? Or is there really something special about the way a small family farm promotes a connection to the land; a connection that an industrial farm - one with millions of dollars of equipment, thousands of acres, teams of scientists, and a truckload of hired hands - will never be able to replicate? More importantly, should I get a camera and become an amateur photographer? And would it be worthwhile for me, personally or professionally, to share these photographs on flickr?

Thing #6

On Seomoz's website, which gave awards to many Web 2.0 tools, I found one that could be particularly useful for teachers. This website is called esnips.com. esnips.com is a site that gives you 5gb of free space to upload just about anything: files, folders, pictures, words, and just about any other digital file you can imagine. Now, why would this be useful for educators?

Well, as I discussed in my last post, like it or not the world is changing and educators must keep up. esnips. com seems like a great place to start. As a teacher, you could make a page about, say, Romeo and Juliet. First, you could upload the entire play as a word document (it is not copyrighted anymore), in case some of your students misplace their book (not that this would ever happen :) ). Next, you could upload a study guide that you have prepared to help them out along the way. Then, you could upload some worksheets for them to fill out. Next, you could upload some sample exam questions. Then, you could share some "safe" links to other resources on Romeo and Juliet. Then, you could upload a video of the school's drama club performing scenes from the play, or upload scenes from a professional production (provided that you have obtained permission). Then, perhaps you could find some taped professional lectures on Romeo and Juliet that were presented at a local college that you could upload for students to consider. The list goes on and on and on...

Such a page would be a natural way for kids to learn about Romeo and Juliet, as they probably spend much of their time navigating the web, following links, and watching videos anyways. By presenting information in such a format, perhaps it will be a more engaging experience than just listening to the teacher lecture. In short, the opportunities for a teacher to use esnips.com are limited only by his or her imagination and ambition. How about you? Would you take the time and effort to construct such a resource for your students to use? (Clearly, this is not something that could be accomplished during a one-hour planning period...)

Thing #5

I really like the article by Richard MacManus entitled "Web 2.0 is not about version numbers or betas." I think he captured the essence of Web 2.0 beautifully when he described it as "everyday, non-technical people using Web technologies to enhance their own lives and businesses." What does this mean for education? If the world is embracing Web 2.0, and if the purpose of education is still to give students the skills they need to succeed in the world, then educators must adapt. To put it another way, if the world is moving onto the web, then schools and teachers must also move onto the web.

This is where the term "School 2.0" comes into play. School 2.0 is a handy nickname to describe the methods and techniques that the teachers of today must employ to prepare their students for tomorrow. The article on techlearning.com highlights how teachers can use web tools like blogs, podcasts, Del.icio.us, Flickr, even youtube (which now has a valuable resource for teachers called teachertube) to transmit content in new, interactive ways. All of this makes the classroom part of a larger community, thereby transforming school in the same way that the web was transformed (hence the term "School 2.0"). A perfect example of a tranformed classroom, the Decameron Web at Brown University, is highlighted in the "Minds on Fire" article. The Decameron Web unites content and instruction in a single place which students can easily accesss.

For myself, however, I worry about two things; credibility of information and the loss of a personal learning experience. How can we be sure that the wrong people are not posting the wrong content on the internet, which we are teaching (even urging) our students to use? What if students come across biased, inaccurate, or just plain misleading information? (I suppose it would then be our responsibilty to teach students how to evaluate information - but how can they do that without some context within which to evaluate it?) At least published textbooks have some accountability - they cannot just print things. On the web there are no such restrictions - it is wide-open.

The other thing I worry about is the loss of a personal learning experience. There is something magical about the face-to-face interaction between a teacher and a pupil that will never be replicated on a website or a podcast (to me, at least). I hope that a movement towards School 2.0 doesn't forget this...

The world is changing at an ever more rapid pace. Jobs are being created that didn't exist last year, and jobs that have existed for hundreds of years are disappearing. Now education must be about teaching students to teach themselves. Thus, education must reinvent itself to remain relevant. One way of doing this is by pursuing a so-called "School 2.0," which integrates the classroom into the wider world. So what does "School 2.0" look like to you? Are you as concerned as I am about finding credible information on the web? What about the relative merits of an impersonal/personal learning experience? Am I just old-fashioned?

Thing #4

A community is not just a bunch of random people; a community is a group of people who feel somehow connected. Interaction between people in a community creates this sense of connection - it shows members of the community that others know and care about their experiences. That, in a nutshell, is why commenting on other people's blog is so important. As Doug Johnson pointed out in his "Blue Skunk Blog," if bloggers were only interested in putting their thoughts or feelings into writing, they would use a private journal. Instead, bloggers use the blog - a public forum - to share their experiences with others. Hence, they hope that others will read the blog, consider what was said, and (hopefully) gain some pleasure or learn something from it. The only way for a blogger to know if their writing has struch a chord (either positive or negative) is if people leave comments.

So how am I going to put that philosophy into action? For one, I think that the page on problogger.net has some very good suggestions to get more people to comment on my blog. In particular, I am going to try to be open-ended and ask questions in my blogs to promote discussion and commenting. When I begin commenting on other's blogs, I am going to remember the suggestions on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog to not "be afraid to comment" and to "remember the power of words." After all, the point of a community is to make its members feel good about themselves, not to ostracize them (hopefully). So here are a few questions for anyone out there reading this blog: What else can I do to promote discussion on my blog? What else should I remember when commenting on other's blogs?

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Blogs That I Follow and Comment On
1. And the Addiction Begins...I follow this blog because the author seems to share a lot of the same views I do. I left comments on the post about animoto, because we seem to agree on Animoto's uses
2. The Magister's Missives...I follow this blog because the author is amazingly witty and creative. I commented about the limited uses of facebook and Myspace in education.
3. Pros and Conwells....I follow this blog because the author has some very insightful comments. I posted a comment about how much we both like Facebook over myspace.
4. Ms. Hicks Has Fun! I follow this blog because the author is just plain funny.
5. I can Do This. I follow this blog because the author is a friend of mine. I commented that I agree that time is a big issue with all of these Web 2.0 tools.

Outside Blogs That I Follow
1. http://cantertales.blogspot.com/. This site is authored by a good friend of mine. I follow it to keep up with his writing.
2.http://www.whitehouse.gov/BLOG. I keep up with this blog to try to stay current on what is happening in Washington. Not that it matters, really...

Thing #3

In my future classroom I intend to create a blog that everyone - parents, students, even other teachers - can use to keep up-to-date with what is happening in my class. On my blog I will post bulletins about upcoming school events (pep rallies, football games, field trips, etc.), homework assignments, links to sites that would complement our classwork, classroom rules, study guides and any other important announcements that parents and students might need to know. Parents will be able to access the blog to ensure that their children are keeping up with assignments, and students will be able to keep up with class even if they are ill and have to miss class.

I am also intrigued about the possibility of keeping a "reflective" blog which education students (like myself) could access to learn more about the teaching process from someone in the field. I think that putting my own thoughts about the teaching process into writing might help me step back and consider my experience from a different perspective. Perhaps this process of self-examination and self-expression might also help prospective teachers put their experiences into a larger context. If so, I think the blog would be well worth it...

Thing #2

The name of my blog incorporates elements of my name and reflects my philosophy about the importance of learning at the same time; it seemed like a natural fit. As you can see, I put a few definitions of the word "null" under my avatar to remind visitors of the meaning in the title of my blog. My posting name is an amalgamation of my real name and the subject (government) that I am most interested in teaching; it too seemed like a natural fit.

Creating the blog was quick and painless. Apparently Blogger and Google are part of the same company (Google, I suppose), so I just logged into Blogger using the name and password from my gmail account. Then, I selected "scribe" for the background because I thought it looked like a historical document, and history is one of my interests. Finally, I tweaked a few privacy settings (I removed my blog from blogger's listings and instructed search engines not to include my blog) and I was done.

My avatar looks more or less like me. It has a hat, needs a shave, wears jeans and boots. Most folks who know me could recognize the similarities. I don't like the eyes, however. My avatar's eyes have a crazy look to them.

Thing #1

I consider myself a lifelong learner; I am always challenging myself to pick up new skills or tackle new challenges. However, my approach to lifelong learning differs significantly from the one described in 71/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. I like habits #2-71/2, but I have never been able to follow Habit #1, which instructs one to "begin with the end in mind" and "develop a plan to achieve your goal." This approach may work for some but I find that when I begin with the end in mind, I become too focused on my goal and miss many valuable learning opportunities along the way. If I were to suggest a useful first habit for lifelong learning, it would be "Habit #1 - Don't Get Comfortable," and it would instruct lifelong learners that complacency is the biggest obstacle to lifelong learning.

Learning to use Web 2.0 Tools, many of which are new to me, fits into my philosophy of lifelong learning perfectly. Setting up this blog is an example of following through with my first habit - I was uncomfortable doing it, as I had never done it before. However, now that I am done, I am beginning to appreciate the possibilities that Web 2.0 has to offer me personally as well as professionally!