THING #23

It's been a great journey through the world of "23 Things". Here are my thoughts on my experience.
Favorite Discovery?
I enjoyed looking at award winning blogs from educators and librarians from around the world. When I'm learning something new I always look for those people who are doing it well. I found a lot of great blogs to follow by looking at the award winning Edublogs.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I've always enjoyed learning about new technology but 23 Things has helped me learn how to apply it in the classroom to increase student achievement. I have a SMART Board and six student computers in my classroom and I have an obligation to my students to bring web 2.0 technology into the classroom. I am going to continue looking for ways to bring more and more technology into my classroom.

Unexpected Outcomes?
While I know I enjoy working on the computer I'm surprised how much I enjoyed sitting down to work on 23 Things and surprised how long it took me to complete some of the "things".
Improvements to 23 Things? How disappointing that we can't access Library2Play, our own blogs or many of the web 2.0 tools on our district computers. I can see that this group of future librarians is going to shake things up in the district as we advocate for our teachers and students.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? You bet!! We learned a little bit about a lot of things but I think next I'd like to learn a lot about a few things. I'd like to focus on 3-4 web 2.0 tools and really learn a variety of ways to apply them to classroom learning.

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?
23 Things opened my eyes to the power of web 2.0 tools for the classroom.

Thing #22 NING, no longer free

Just announced this week, Ning will no longer be free and they will be phasing out this option. Looks like teachers and librarians will need to find a new option. You can read about their rational here. Steve Hargadon, who created Classroom 2.0 Ning blogged about this on his blog about the changes to Ning including a link to a Google doc to post alternative networking options.

I took a close look at the Teacher Librarian Ning that was started by Joyce Valenza (who seems to be in the middle of all things library) Currently there are a lot of resources about the benefits of a well staffed library to student achievement including the video below.

Find more videos like this on TLNing

There are also a wide variety of examples of student work, a discussion boards to exchange ideas and a calendar of events throughout the country.

Thing #21 Podcasts and Video Casts

Creating podcasts and videocasts are a great way for students to demonstrate learning. Photostory is so simple to use and is accessible on our school network computers. I created this project in less than 15 minutes with great results. Because of its simplicity, Photostory can be used with younger students. Students need to be sure to use images and music that is not copyrighted. They can find images from Creative Commons and can choose music from Photostory to include with their project.



I have my iTunes account set to automatically download several podcasts onto my iPod including This American Life (from Chicago Public Radio) and The Moth. I love to listen to these in long car rides.