Thing 23 I Made It!

How has my thinking changed between Thing 1 and Thinkg 23? Oh boy, that's a big question. I used to think I was something of a with it mom because I IM'd with my kids....that made me with it and in the know. Isn't that funny? I knew nothing. So I could IM...I didn't set it up, my son did. I didn't know how to find it, my son taught me over the phone no less. The other son, who makes his living in computers, would sometimes have to take over my computer from Lansing and fix what ever thing I had broken. Now I can muddle my way through and have some success on my own. More importantly, I now have tools that I know I can use in my classroom with my special needs students successfully. No longer are they limited to just playing learning games. While I will continue to use those games, because they are a very powerful motivational carrot for me to dangle, I will add the technology I've learned here. Already I have made a template for the trading cards titled My Favorite Thing in School. Most of the kids have already had their picture taken at their favorite place in school, doing their favorite thing. They have already written their stats and why this place is their favorite thing. All we have to do now is put the two together.

My big take away is this: I need to figure out a way/place to get a grant for my classroom to add a mini computer lab to my room. If I could have just 4 new classroom computers I could change the way I teach my kids. I would have them using the computer daily instead of on Wednesdays from 8:50 to 9:30 only. For now, we are going to be making books on line, writing on a blog, using the camera to enhance our learning, the list goes on and on and is only limited my my imagination and the kids limitations.

I have very much enjoyed reading everyone's blogs and seeing how they are thinking about the same things I have been learing. I did notice that many have stopped blogging and I hope that they somehow find the time to continue the Things.

I am hoping that we/I will be able to continue to access this 23 Things so that I can return again and again to repeat a lesson because I know I have missed many points the first time through. I think it's brain overload or TMI at the time.

I also plan to continue the blog, changing it to my classroom blog or a blog about my classroom since I think I'd like my classroom blog to be private to begin. I'm not sure I'm still processing how I will do that.

I have also started up a web page for my classroom. I am in the minority at my school but I plan to use if for the school year and see what my parents say about using it. Here is my very basic web site http://schoolcenter.fhps.us/mcintyre

Thing 22 On Line Video

You Tube
I like You Tube and I dislike You Tube.
I have a favorite You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxT5NwQUtVM
it's called the mom song. It cracks me up every time I hear it. So I guess I use You Tube for entertainment. I have never searched it for any thing of substance. I figure since I can't use it at school I should spend my time looking elsewhere.

I really liked TeacherTube. I found a lot of video's that my class could relate to. My class really learns well when the topic is applied to music. I found several topic applied to music, like the states and their capitals http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=4dc94d5749d44d4c6c73&page=1&viewtype=&category=, the water cycle, some math raps, 9's multiplications facts. I'm sure there are more. I will use these in my class if they're not blocked. I'll have to find out. The draw back is that they take a long tim to download. You could not do this on the spur of the moment...

You Tube is blocked in my school district.

Thing 21 Your Heart Will Be all aTwitter

I can see why teenagers/college students and others might be attracted to Twitter. I think it would be fun to use with family who are scattered about and you want to keep up. I can see my 2 daughters using Twitter but me? Not so much. I really can't think of what I'd use this for in my classroom. Shoot sometimes I can barely understand what they're saying vebally...how frustrating would it be to try to get it on to Twitter? I would not use them from the mobil phone. My kids are always yelling at me now to turn on my phone. I can hear one of my sons now saying mom why do you even have a cell phone if you're not going to turn it on? I guess I'll pass on this one too.

Thing 20 Bookmarking with Del.icio.us

Ok call me crazy...call me paranoid...this is moving me out of my comfort zone. I do not want all of my bookmarks placed on del.icio.us for the world to see. I do not want to share with friends. I guess I do not play well with others. Nope just not liking this at all. It sort of creeped me out I accidentally downloaded all my bookmarks to the site...and then I spend a few minutes deleting them all. There were way more book marks there than I thought possible. What I'd really like to do is go in and remove me totally from del.icio.us.
here's the site to prove I went there...it's empty....http://delicious.com/subscriptions/pndmac
and will remain so for now.

So let the comments roll!

Think 19 Introduction To Social Bookmarking

I think tagging will be useful for exactly the reasons stated on the video from Commoncraft. My favorites are a mess. Often times I'll have something bookmarked at school and wish I had the bookmark at home. Each summer the tech dept comes in and ghosts our computers and unless we save our bookmarks somewhere else, all is lost. This will eliminate that...although I suppose they'll come in and remove the add ons that we add to our brower.

Negatives? not having one? Maybe that I don't know many people who use one? I've never actually heard about them prior to reading tonight so possibly people I know do use them. I'm going to have to ask my kids.

I did notice on on the Mozilla Firefox browser, however, that they have incorporated tags and recent bookmarks into our bookmark tab. So that is nice.

Thing 18 Building Your Personal Learning Network

I first explored Ning. Oh my. Is there some way to search for what you want to see? I saw a lot of alumni sites but none from any of my alma maters...like Rockfored, GRCC, MSU or GVSU. I also did not see any for the district where I teach. I had no idea how to find what I wanted to see. I did see some weird sites and wondered what was up with them. I'm not listing them because they are too weird to even post...think sick. I did a little exploration of Ludington Talks and found out they are in the middle of a big controversy over Wind energy. That was pretty interesting and I could see where it would be a great site if you were living in Ludington. My husband and I love to vacation in that area so I'll be checking back from time to time.

I then went on to explore MACUL. That was much easier to sift through and I actually spent quite a long time on their site. I loved the videos. I got lot of ideas on what I could do with my kids. In fact we're currently in the middle of a writing project that will lend itself nicely to a slide show, now that I've found some examples and can see what other teachers are doing.

The MaCul site also had a forum with many categories such as: MACUL news, Cool Tools , Technology and the Curriculium and more. On Cool Tools you would find postings about a cool website, tech-tool, or resource. People posted links for others to use or explore.

The problems I see with the PLN are getting the staff to use them. In my district we all have the opportunity to create a classroom web page and list it on our school web page. We use Schoolcenter which is totally user friendly. Not many elementary teachers in the district have a web page. I wonder why? In our school it is the specials teachers, art, music, computer lab and PE who have web pages....also one 3rd grade teacher and now me. Oh boy. How would you get the staff to use a PLN? Who would start it and update it?

Thing 17 - More Web 2.0 Winners

I explored http://www.revolutionhealth.com/video/index your home for health and balance. I liked the layout of this site. I also liked that it has reputable sources listed for their references such as Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, and Harvard Health Publications. I was able to quickly search out trigger finger, a condition I have just been diagnosed with, and read all about it. Everything listed on the site matched what my doctor had told me plus a bit more information.

There is a health recipe section. I browsed through severeal recipes and quickly noticed that the recipes do NOT list calorie count, grams of fat or fiber or sugar and salt. I am a label reader so I did not like to see these items missing.

There is a section to search for doctors, hospitals or dentis in your area. There are also blogs to check out. You can become a member and keep your health records on their site.

Overall, this seemed like a pretty good site. I would visit it again.

As for the question could I see any applications for its use in a library setting? Whose library? In my school, elementary, no not for students. It may be useful for teachers looking up lice or other childhood ailments that they might have to deal with during the course of a school year. In my library yes...the public library certainly.

Thing 16 - Teach Digital

I was very interested in what the college students were saying. I was hearing them worry about their education and wondering if they were getting the right education for their future. I remember thinking the same thing when I got my MA in special education. Am I learning the newest, best practices for teaching special needs children. The songs the same the words are different that's all. What I also heard the kids saying is that there is more than one right way to do an assignment and that the professors were not willing to allow the students to deviate in any way from the peramiters the prof had set. I wonder why? Is it fear? If the student can meet the crideria of the assignment through technology why not? I know as a special ed teacher than technology can and does make a huge difference in how the child does the assignment. Why would that change as my student hits college age?

I loved the sarcasm coming out of the teacher's mouths in The Teacher Movie. Being a bit of a sarcastic person myself I could laugh at the silliness of the whole thing. Sadly in many instances it is true. I do hear teachers complain in the teachers lounge, I do hear an occasional teacher say what do I care I have one year and I'm out....but I think that is true in any profession.

Do Schools Kill Creativity - wow I needed to listen to several parts of this talk over again. I do think we kill creativity in school every day. I think part of the reason I teach special ed is because I view learning differently than other teachers (?) I don't know if that's true but I think about my kids and how they learn best and apply that to their daily learning by any means I can use to get them to learn. The traditional curriculium does not work with my population. Sir Ken Robinson said that intelligence is diverse and dynamic. I agree. The statement he made "We have to rethink the fundemental principals of how we're educating our children" was right on. I just also read an interesting article in a magazine that was talking about A & P grocery stores. It said that the owners kept on running the business the way they had always ran the business even though what made them a success was the way they marketed groceries during the Great Depression. After WWII consumers demanded more variety, bigger stores etc., but A & P wouldn't change because it they wouldn't change what had always worked for them before. So one of the biggest grocery chains in the US became eventually nonexistant because they wouldn't change. I thought, gee, isn't that what we're doing in education in many respects? We need to change what we're doing and teach to a future that we know nothing about. A huge challenge for educators and since we're not encouraging enough creativity in learning (according to Robinson) then who in our future will be creative enough to design a new system?

I constantly think about technology and today's students. I have no answers but I have a lot of questions. Technology is here to stay. Some of it I like, some of it I wonder about. I see my grandchildren and other children walking around with their game boys or hear them talking about all the time they spend on their Wii's and I wonder what is happening to their brains. My grandkids like to spend hours on their Wii, as do their friends. I don't think this is a good thing. I wonder about their brains and how they are being rewired for a new faster way of thinking. Is this good or bad? I do not like how they do NOT spend quality time reading and ask my self will reading just for pleasure become obsolete?

On the other hand, I teach special education. I had a student in my class who needed technology to communicate with anyone. Thank goodness we have the technology to help him express his every thought. Imagine being very young and having to live without being able to communicate your wants and desires. He uses a Dynavox http://www.dynavoxtech.com/ and when looking for his exact system on their web site I see it has already been replaced by new technology. I wonder how often his will need to be replaced or updated. They're quite expensive for the small device that they are. Or I should say his first one was quite expensive. I understand around $10,000. I'm hoping that they have come down in price similar to how computers have.

We recently (as in this week) have had smart boards installed into 5 classrooms in our school. Already one of the regular ed teachers has reported that one of my students seems to have a much easier time viewing the smart board as opposed to the white board. I think that the smart boards will be great if we get the training we need to use them proficiently.

Thing 15 - How to Use Podcasts In School

As I said in thing 14 we have Discovery Education Streaming in our district. I did not use it much and I've heard that other teachers did not use it much either. We were encouraged to use it by our tech people but I'm thinking not many did. I know, for myself, I didn't because something always went wrong when I tried to use it. Either I could not find anything on the subject I wanted...at the grade level I wanted, or it would not download onto my computer or my computer would freeze. It was often frustrating.

I also think time is a factor. It seemed like I'd search forever and not find anything that I wanted. I did not know how to search for podcasts and did not realize there were places like podcast alley to make searching easier. I will need to make a collection of podcasts for the future.

I did like the podcast that Fran has posted on her blog http://comeoninthewatersfine-fran.blogspot.com/ from storynory.com http://storynory.com/2006/05/06/the-gingerbread-man/. I know that my students will very much like to listen to those stories because they love books on tape/cd. I guess they're becoming obsolete. I don't know how much my students will like listening without having a book to look at while listening.

Thing 14 - Learning About Podcasts

I was already familiar with podcasting because our school subscribes to Discovery Education Streaming. It can be found @ http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?z=E0313407-BCD3-F4DA-3BE082E802B78827 . Discovery Education streaming is a digital video-on-demand and online teaching service to help improve students' retention and test scores; it is aligned to U.S. state and provincial standards. I have used several of their video's in my classroom. They have about anything that you could want. I also have used their vidoe's during indoor recess because they have picture books on line and several children in my class would prefer to hear the book instead of free choice.

I also listened to an LD Podcast I found on PodcastAlley. It is a podcast for parents by parents of kids with learning disabilities. They talk about subjects ranging from reading, ADHD, dyslexia, labelling, the laws that govern special education, dealing with parental stress and more. I liked this site because I am always having parents ask me for info or where can they look for others who are having similar difficulties with their children and now I can send them here. http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=29826

I really enjoyed the Vocab Minute from the Princeton Review. I sent that link on to my niece since she will be taking the ACTs later this year and may need to brush up on her vocabulary. I know my kids learn subjects more easily when I put it to song. I once taught a child his phone number to the Spartan Fight Song! It's perfect for phone numbers. At parent teacher conferences I discovered that the parents were Michigan fans.

Thing 13 - Sharing Your Vision

I decided to try Zoho Show. It was quite easy to build a slide show. I liked that you could choose a variety of backgrounds, fonts and sizes. All were easy to select. What frustrated me was the inability to post a picture in my show. It was also frustrating to find that Clip Art selections were very limited.

Since I couldn't insert a picture, I visited the help button. It was not much help. The explanation was rather vague I thought. At any rate I did everything it asked and the download failed, time and time again. So I'm guessing I didn't do it right.....

I did make a slide show stating my frustrations with Zoho Shoe here :
http://show.zoho.com/View.do?P_ID=293474000000005001&P_STIME=0&TP=true&displayall=true&THEME=eighty_greens&USER=pndmcintyre&DOC=Thing%2013
It's not pretty but it's mine.

Thing 12 Productivity Anywhere You Have a Browser

I checked out 30 Boxes It's your life. http://30boxes.com/welcome.php I liked this online calendar. It was very easy to use. It threw me a bit when I diligently typed in all my families birthdays and then scrolled back to August 1st and nothing was there. It does not back date. If you've already lived that date it will next appear in August of 2009. I did have a little difficulty deleating an item. Some of the things did deleat and one did not. I will have to play around with it a bit and see what I'm doing wrong. It only has 3 choices of background colors...not a lot in my opinion and none of them green...so that was a dissapointment.

You can share your calendar with family or friends which I really liked. I could make a birthday calendar and send it out to my father-in-law so he will be able to send out cards to the family on time. I might do with with all my family. We could update the birthday years that we don't all have as well as other important family events such as anniversaries or holiday parties.

I thought it would be great to put all of the school activities on the calendar so no matter where you are you can access the calendar and see when you need to be where. This would be especially helpful with all the IEP's I need to do during the school year. The calendar will automatically email you one day in advance of the event so that you are always in the know.

Thing 11 Zoho

Well, I did manage to post from Zoho to my Blog. However, I do not see how to edit my misspelled words. Also I notide that my little comment boxes are not appearing. I also do not like the looks of my post. I think I'd have to practice with it a bit to get it to look better than it currently does to meet my perfectionist ways.

Do I think that Zoho will replace MS Office someday? Well, yes, I do think it's possible. As fast as technology changes nothing is impossible. I do think that some people will just stick with that with which they are familiar and not branch out into new applications. I think that it will be the younger generation who will make the switch and the older generation dragging their feet along afterwards if they are forced to.

playing with zoho

Playing around with Zoho Writer_{subscript probalby shouldn't go here right?}

The first thing I notice about Zoho is that the fonts are not in alphabetical order. So what order are they in? Is it most popular or what? I like using comic sans but it falls under small font....so I'm guessing it won't let me type comic sans in font larger than 10 pt because every time I try it swithces to veranda.

It is very easy to highlight. I like that. However after you highlight, how do you turn it off? I'm not having any luck yet turning it off. I like that I can add this comment box. That was pretty neat.

Well I'm not sure if this actually turned off the highlighter or just changed the background color to white. And quite possibly I didn't actually highlight correctly. I used the style scroll down key to hit highlight. To get this white background I clicked on the actual highlight key and changed the background color to white. It did what I wanted it to do so I'm wondering if it actually matters?

It looks like increasing or decreasing the indent is pretty easy to do. I don't think it's particularly easy with Microsoft Word.

I always wonder why this feature is here? I've never had a reason to use it. Perhaps when you're doing a rough draft? Oh yes I see you can highlight and activate this feature...pretty cool.

While I haven't spent a lot of time here on Zoho, I think I do like it.

Thing 10 Create Your Own Wiki

OMG!
I can not tell you how I have agonized over creating this Wiki. What a dork! (as my grandchildren would say) It was amazingly simple. Here is my Wiki http://normac.pbwiki.com/Mrs-Mac%27s-test-page. I made it at PBwiki.com because they have this contest going and you can earn/win a free upgrade with the back to school challenge
http://www.backtoschoolchallenge.com/ By just creating my Wiki I earned 20 points. When you edit your Wiki you earn more points and on and on until you've upgraded your service. So that's my challenge....upgrade my Wiki.

Thing 9 Wiki

I was very interested in Wiki's and was hoping to find more about use with special education students in elementary schools.

On cool cat teacher blog http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-wikis-podcasts-and-laptops-help.html#links I found a link called How wikis, podcasts, and laptops help students with learning disabilities which caught my attention. I learned about a Microsoft program called Microsoft One Note http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/FX100487701033.aspxhich I will need to explore. The blog said that students love this because it allows them to type everything here and then export it to word. Of course this isn't a Wiki but I got there from a Wiki link...but when I tried to go back to that link I wasn't able to.

I also explored TeachersFirst: Wiki walk-Through http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikiideas1.cfm I saw the suggestion to make a Wiki on Thanksgiving Traditions and thought that we could make a Wiki about the Pilgrims to show to our parents and other special guests at our Thanksgiving feast this November. All I have to do in convince the other special ed teachers and the computer tech to let us do this. I think it could be fun.

I also visited http://booksforchildren.pbwiki.com/Books+for+Children. I love this Wiki. I found it on the PBWiki site. I'm thinking PB stands for peanut butter. Anyway Books for Children is a listing of children's books. Thus far it is not very long but you can see the potential for it to bloom. I like that children could be writing reviews of books that they have read although it dosn't exactly invite children to do that. Currently it appears that only college profs have written reviews but who knows?

I confess that I really have no idea how to make a Wiki and will need to go onto the site and physically do this to learn how to do this but I think I'm up for the challenge

Thing 8 Locate Feeds That Interest You

Feed Icons - I never knew what these were before now even though I'd seen them on many links.

Blogline Search tool- I decided to look up Plimoth Plantation since we had recently toured there. I found some very intersting blogs that other people had posted of their journey. It was interesting to look at it through someone elses eyes.

Edublog took me to best individual edublogs of 2007 and then to Ewan McIntosh's blog Everything You Wanted to Know about YouTube which was very informative. I recommend you all check it out. I also watched the how to Soulja Boy video and now the song makes a whole lot more sense to me. I thought I could spend quite a bit of time here looking for information.

Feedster was not accessable for what ever reason.

Topix.net was all about Sarah Palin and Hurricane Gustav interrupting the National Convention. It was a quick way to see all the headlines on those hot topics.

Syndic8.com I found this site to be confusing and basically had no clue what was happening....I would need to spend a lot more time here to figure it out I think.

Technorati - was interesting to search but I couldn't get the full articles....obviously I'm doing something wrong this site was the most confusing to me.

Google blog search. I searched for my niece's blog paris stranger....and could not find it...interesting since she has typed her title in french and so it does not appear under the English equalivant of the title.

BlogPulse Tools- I read an interesting blog about a couple who decided to travel to Michigan to visit their daughter. They came by bus and Amtrak.

I thought that Google blog search and Blog Pulse were the easiestto use. Edublog was very interesting and I can see where I may be back there many times looking for information.

Thing 7 Learn about RSS and set up a feed reader

Well, Imagine that! I did it. I continue to be amazed at what I can do. Of course the big question is can I do this next week, next month or next year?

When I first went to Wikipedia and read about RSS I thought oh no I'm in serious trouble. I could not makes heads or tails of what they were talking about....so I decided to do the kid approach and just jump into the assignment and see if doing it would help me to understand the assignment better and it did.

I ended up signing up for 10 feeds. Are they all considered news? I mean Woot? Technically that's not news....well, it may be to some I guess....but I think of it more as a store. My kids love Woot so I thought I'd just start there. It was easy.

I stumbled upon the site Weblogg- ed by Will Richardson and recalled that he was a guest speaker at a conference that our district held for us last November, so I added him. You can view him @ http://weblogg-ed.com/. He's a pretty interesting speaker, although I didn't necessarily agree with everything he had to say.

I also added Curtis Granderson's Blog. Although he's not my #1 Tiger, he is second and I find him to be a great read. You can find him here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=granderson_curtis.

I'm not sure how I'll use this in my classroom but I think that when I show my husband how to use this with his favorite pages he'll be a happy man.

Thing 4 - flickr continued

My creation, originally uploaded by dougjmac.

I decided to go back in and make a baseball card because I came up with an idea for school that I'm going to try with my students. The special ed teacher next door is a whiz with her camera. Her pictures look professional. I approached her and asked if she'd like to have our classes make baseball cards with some back to school information on them. We decided to have the kids use first name only, age and birthday, how tall they are (a good measuring lesson) and their favorite part, place or subject in school. We'd take their pic with them doing their favorite thing and then they'd have to write a bit about why it's their favorite.

So last night I made my own...as you can see...and discovered that I can't just print the card out I have to send it to be printed and it costs a buck for a wallet size plus shipping. Drat! I don't suppose there's any way around that?

second thoughts Aug 26th....so last night my son told me how to print from Flikr without having to send away for the prints...and paying for them....bless his heart!

Thing 6 Blog about Technology

I remember back in the stone ages when my son was 2 or 3, he's now 28, and I guess you'd say the dinosaur version of Game boy came out. It was some kind of toy, I've forgotten exactly what it did, but it boasted having "new" computer technology. When I bought it for him for Christmas my friends all gave me grief. I remember saying that computers would be his future and that it would be much better for him to grow up using them than to learn as an adult. Never in my wildest imagination did I imagine all the uses there would be for computers. And I was right, he uses a computer like it is an extension of his body.

I worked for Amway Corporation back then. I remember when they built a room for the new computer they were getting. The room was sealed and temperature controlled. It was a very big deal. The purchase of the computer opened up a new department at Amway called Data Processing. The ladies in Data Processing had funny little machines that they used to type information onto data cards which were then fed to the computer. I tried learning how to type on the machines but it was like a foreign language to me since it was all in bytes or some such thing. I made too many mistakes and they didn't want me to work in that department either.

Someone else posted a list of all the things we did not have as children that are now a part of our lives. When I think of what is available today that was not available when my own dad was alive it boggles the mind. My dad passed in 1999, nine short years ago, and I wonder just how many changes there have been in technology in that short time? So I Google d Technology available since 1999 and found that there are only 2,500,000 scholarly articles available for technology since 1999. Shoot Google was only one year old in 1999, and I know my dad had no clue what a Google was.

My good friend retired a year ago and moved to the state of Washington. We email frequently. I sent her the address to my Blog and said check it out. I also, in the same email, attached a photo of me brushing out a calf at a fair. So I asked her how she liked the picture of me and Norman (the calf). Her reply? I read your Blog but I did not find the picture of you with a cow. (Now when she checks my Blog again I'm sure that she will give me all kinds of grief for posting this little story). But she is a reluctant computer user and does not particularly like it so it was not a surprise to get that response from her and I know that she is not alone in her dislike of most things technical. My mother-in-law (also deceased) refused to drive the last van my father-in-law purchased. Why? Because the gas pedal could be moved to fit the driver preference. She couldn't deal with that technology so she drove the truck instead.

What about the technology at the Olympics? I watched swimming the other night and I swear the other guy beat out Michael Phelps but the computer says nope, Phelps won. Would he have been declared the winner when judged by the camera? What about the swim wear the Olympians are wearing? They're space age technology and apparently are shaving seconds off the swimmers scores and the swimmers are consequently setting new world records. I doubt if Mark Spitz could have envisioned today's swimmers wearing space age technology.

When I visited MSU last Monday we walked by the College of Education and I told the kids that I took so many computer classes when I was attending MSU that I had a math/science minor. I always found that funny. I had so many classes in computers that I received a math/science minor. It's on my teaching certificate so I suppose I could be asked to teach one of those subjects in middle school...and I would not be able to do so. Everything I learned in those computer classes has long been forgotten which I'm sure is a good thing since all of it is outdated. That's my worry for my special ed students, is what I'm going to teach them this year going to be worthless before they hit high school or will it ease the way into what's coming in their future?

The 5th Thing Motivational Poster

My creation
Originally uploaded by dougjmac

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to make for this post. I checked out a lot of Big Huge Labs and decided on motivator because I think my kids can easily do this with my help. I think we could take pictures of our favorite things or activities in our school using a digital camera. the kids could write a short sentence stating why this was a favorite and add it to the picture. Because I have so many reluctant writers in my class this could be an easy, fun activity to use with them at the beginning of the year.

I have deleted this post and reposted it trying to make my picture bigger. I realized after posting the ref pic that I need to make them bigger.

I took this picture August 4th at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts. If you haven't visited, I highly recommend it. You can easily spend most of a day there. Beware of the gift shop...lots of books for teachers to use in their classroom. They do give a 10% teacher discount.

Thing 4 - Flikr - Grant vs Big Rapids

grant_vs_big_rapids_008.jpg,
originally uploaded by dougjmac.

I think I'm just going to continue to be surprised all along as I do this class. The first thing, as you all remember, was to get a G-mail account. I had that thanks to a nagging kid. Now I open Flikr and imagine my surprise when I discover that we have an account and that there is a picture of my husband's football crew. I have no idea how we got the account. My husband did not do this. I doubt that the kid did it...so how did it happen?

Anyway, here is the picture of my husband's crew. The cute one of the left is our son. The cute one in the white hat is my husband. Now I know I have to give someone credit for this picture and honestly I can't find who took it...I know some guy from The Big Rapids Pioneer newspaper took the picture but I've searched and can't find him. So....thanks to the guy who sent us the picture and sorry that I don't know who you are. I did, however, find that this pic was taken September 16, 2005.

Thing 3 - 7 1/2 Habbits of Highly Successful Learners

Well, I think the easiest habit for me is to teach and mentor others. I love teaching special ed and I think I'm good at my job. I like the challenge of figuring out how my students learn with the disabilities that they have. I love it when we (my student and I) have a break through in that disability and suddenly the whole thing makes sense to them. It's as if the world of "school" has suddenly come alive for them.

The hardest thing for me would be use technology to my advantage. I know that I can use technology to make school easier for my special needs students, I just don't know what to use or how to do it.

Thing 2

Yesterday my oldest grandson, my niece and I took the "Grand Tour' of Michigan State University. The kids took the tour as I imagine high school students of today take a college tour. My niece was awed by the size of MSU, my grandson was awed by the fact that he qualifies for Honors College and all it can offer to him. I, on the other hand, viewed MSU through much different eyes than I did as a student or even as I would have 2 weeks ago.

As I walked through Wells hall I kept remembering the video from Thing One, A vision of students today. You all will remember the video clip opens showing an empty auditorium and the statement "Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented classified patterns subjects, and schedules." Marshall McLuhan 1967 and I thought OMG! When will we change the way we're teaching our future?

I began to look around in each building we entered, looking for technology. I realize that it's summer and equipment may be locked away somewhere but I wanted to see it being used at my alma mater. We did watch a power point presentation prior to our tour and I couldn't help but notice that the presenter was not showing the full screen but rather was allowing all the pages of the power point to run along side of her presentation. She didn't seem to notice and I thought boy, she needs to become a bit more proficient in her Power Point presentations. Now, I think that's a simple piece of technology to use but I'm guessing she didn't feel the same way.

So, on one hand I'm nervous about this class and on the other hand I'm excited about this class. I do not like being moved out of my comfort zone although I realize I have much to learn. I want at the very least not to sound like an idiot when around people who speak technologically around me.

For my students (all LD except for 2 with autism) I want to begin to expose them to as much technology as I can. My fear is they will learn something and then it will change and they will once again be lost. I know their learning styles and know that they need many more exposures to a topic or item for them to learn it. I'm wondering how I can apply what I learn here to be able to change my way of teaching. We shall see...

23 Things The First Thing

Wow! I made a Blog!
During 23 Things I hope to learn to use technology, in ways I currently know nothing about, to hook my special ed students on learning not only about technology but reading, math, science, social studies, writing, critical thinking, etc. You know all the things they need to become successful students. I want to give them tools to be successful in their future.