Thing 22

In Classroom 2.0 I watched an introductory presentation. It allowed me to watch the creator of the site navigate, answer questions, and discuss with others their use of the site. It was long, but I feel that it gave me a lot of insight for an hour long tour. It would have taken me much longer to learn that much on my own. I saw how groups are formed and discussions are started and tagged. I also learned how to have conversations on the net about various topics and in all sorts of ways. As far as use in my teaching, I am not so sure that I am ready for this type of site. I like wikis and pageflakes better, so I will probably start out with those. They seem to be a little more in line with the teaching of mathematics.

This investigation has also opened a door for me to finally look into joining facebook. My best friend has one with all of his family pics on it and is trying to twist my arm to join facebook. Maybe I will take that step, because this is interesting stuff.

I also looked into an eductional ning, but it appeared to be VERY similar to Classroom 2.0. I could not find much of interest there.

Thing 21

Pageflakes is a very cool site!!!! I really like all of the tools that it allows you to use in one place. I can see it as a very helpful site and it might even be able to do a lot of things that I wanted my wiki to do. I can post homework, make announcements, have an assignment calendar, post podcasts, and basically anything else that I want all in one place. I really enjoyed the weather flake and the podcast flake. I made my page fit my interests outside of school, but I can see how useful it would be to my students. I found flickr pics of my team and tried to post them (still working on that one), woodworking podcasts, local weather, and kept the calculator. I like having everything in one place. It is like having an on-line desktop of the tools that you use most on the web.

Thing 7c

I found an interesting page discussing dividing by zero. I liked the way the author broke down three problems and discussed the answers and why they were the answers. He also interjected quite a bit of his own opinions of math teachers that I found interesting and agreeable (most of the time). I have not thought about this topic too much so it was refreshing to see it described in such great detail.

Thing 20

Google Docs are a useful tool for creating documents within a group. It allows all of the contributors to work on one document without the trouble of having multiple documents all over the place. I would like to use this service to allow students to create review documents for their classes over a chapter or even for their final exam. It would also be nice to see presentations created through this service. This might also be a useful way to keep up with our basketball stats. Currently, I have many documents with lots of different names floating around our network. This may prevent this problem, if I can get this spreadsheet to do everything that I want it to.

Thing 19

I have use youtube in many ways for the last two to three years in my classroom. Before that time, I had never heard of the site. Once I found it, I have used it in my geometry lessons, summer reading discussions, and leading bible studies. It is a very useful tool and there is nothing that you cannot find on it. I have also had success in using Godtube which is a video site with Christian videos. I could not find much on teachertube, but I did see some good lessons as well as some nice presentation ideas from other schools. It is a site that I would like to investigate further. I really like the use of videos to help introduce, expand, or to give a word picture for my lessons. One interesting video that found interesting was this video involving a rhombus. Be sure to listen closely to the music.

Thing 17

I listened to some of each of the podcasts in the math section. My favorite was the MathGrad Podcast. I enjoyed his description of this famous problem and its solution. I would like to hear more from him and find podcasts like this one that I could use in the classroom. I am not quite sure how, but maybe I could use them in a problem solving unit or to introduce problems in my classes. Other than the previous, I did not enjoy the other choices in the math area. I have recently bought an ipod and have really enjoyed podcasts in all of my areas of interest (golf, home improvement, woodworking, home theater, and even some Christian comedy) for the drive to and from work when I am on my own. I love the feeling I get of learning in an otherwise wasted time, so if I can find some math content for that time in the car then I will be quite happy.

Thing 16

I examinded Library Thing in detail. It seems to be a great place to find books and people that match your reading interests. If I am ever looking for a title or ideas for something to read this would be an excellent place to start. I found several suthors and I even looked at a member's page to see what it is like. I am not too sure how to use this in a mathematics classroom, but I do see it as a useful educational tool and especially useful personal tool. It also appears that you may trade your books with others through many different serives, but you have to be willing to give up your own books. I might be willing to try that depending on the shipping costs.

Thing 15

I think delicious is a wonderful tool and it is really a nice way to keep an accessible list of my favorite websites. I have to change computers often at school and my links to websites do not always follow me so this will be beneficial for me. Also, I can use and add to the same links at home and at school. I often find myself emailing links between home and school and this should save me some time. The use of tags narrows your search down tremendously. I even imported my links (about 300) and spend time tagging them for future use.

Thing 7b

I found some interesting articles in the edublogs magazine. This teacher discusses his use of technology in a fourth grade classroom. In this blog, he focuses on the benefits of PowerPoint software and how it adds to the learning of his students. I use PP in my classroom and have found it to be very beneficial to my students. It really helps to bring visual ideas into the classroom through pictures, videos, and it helps relate the class to the world of my students. PP really helps me do this on a daily basis and I am constantly trying to better my lessons each year through its use.

Thing 14

I chose quizlet as a tool to investigate. I really like the idea of having on-line notecards. I would much rather type than write and you do not have to worry about losing your cards. Once you put them on the site, they are there forever. Also, you can share your cards with others and have others add to the set making it a very useful tool for a class. As a geometry teacher, I am always trying to find tools for my students to master the vocabulary necessary to be successful in my class. I think that quizlet would be a great tool for students in my class and any other class that has a large amount of vocabulary like a foreign language.

There is a study mode and several ways to test your knowledge that gives you automatic feedback. If you are into a concrete set of cards, you may print them to look over instead of studying on the computer screen. Also, there is a way to share them on myspace and facebook and you can discuss the sets if you like. That way if there is an error on a group's set of terms, the group can discuss them and find an acceptable solution to the error. I would highly recommend this tool for teachers to link to on their wiki page as a student resource.

Thing 13

I chose a presentation on Games in Education. I learned several things during the 23 minute presentation. I thought I was going to get some games to use in class, but I ended up beginning to think more about why I want to have games in class. I like them because they are fun and a nice change of pace. The presenter, Sylvia Martinez, believes that games are more than that. They are tools, if used the right way, that can promote learning at a high level. She feels that games are misused in education and that they can do so much more. After her presentation, I would tend to agree. She even suggests "taking it up a notch" and having the students produce their own games. As a geometry teacher, I think this might be something I can attempt to do in my own classroom. I will look into her wiki and some of the websites she recommended (scratch and etoys).

Slideshow links

Here are the links for the photos that a chose.

basketball request by ratterrell

IMG_0995 by Bruno Girin

Cameron Indoor Stadium by scbluedevil

IMG_1285 by Bruno Girin

Basketball team 1909 by j3net

Team A Color by Tom Leuntjens Photography

Thing 12

This was a lot of work, but I think I learned a great deal through the process. I created three different shows and lost the first two because I just did not have enough time in front of the computer. Once you step away for an hour or more, you lose the show completely or at least parts of it. I chose to do mine on basketball, just for a little something different.

Thing 11

I enjoyed using Flickr to search for photos and I found much more than I expected on the CC portion of the site. I searched for Geometry items first just to get used to the process and see how helpful it was. I then tried to specify tags such as isosceles, quadrilateral, midpoint, etc. I found a nice selection and I plan to use this instead of Google image search in the future. I really like the fact that the images are of higher quality than most images on a standard web page. Also, it seems that the pictures are a little easier to seach through since they were tagged by the photographer. In other words, I got less junk in my searches than I usually do. Here is an example of a triangle that I found.

by yui.kubo

What do you think? It is titled as "an impossible triangle"?

Thing 10

I think that it will help me most professionally with the fact that I can post my PowerPoint lessons on the internet with out fear of copyright issues. I use pictures, videos, and sounds in those lessons to help my students apply geometry to their lives and to add interest. Currently, I do not share any of my content on the web, but I would like to through a wiki. It would be tough to have an interesting wiki without using pictures and other items from the internet. CC will allow me to do this and who knows what I can find once I put the time into it. The only negative that I see with CC is the limitations you have on what you can add to your site or lessons. It is SO nice to just use Google images, find what you want quickly, and put it into your lesson. CC will force me to be more creative with more limited amount of material to pull from.

Thing 8

I really enjoyed Vicki Davis' story of how wikis impacted her classroom and in turn impacted the entire school. I looked at the study hall wiki and the other course wikis to see how they were used by students. I found a useful study guide created by students for breaking down King Lear. I found this interesting and very applicable to my course, geometry. We have a great deal of vocabulary and a wiki might be a good source for my classes to compile their notes, vocab, ect. in one convienent place from which to study. I looked everywhere for a good geometry wiki and/or blog and thus far I have been unsuccessful. Maybe that will be enough incentive for me to create my own. I would have liked to see more pictures on this wiki, but I guess it suited the purpose for which it was created.

Another one of my favorite wikis was of elementary school math. In this wiki the teacher used geometric pictures from the environment to teach patterns. I think I would like this format to be used in my geometric classroom. I could have the students take their own pictures and upload them to the wiki for all to see. We could investigate patterns, shapes, solids, area, tesselations, etc and the best part is that the students are finding examples that interest them and they are learning at the same time. Of course, the downfall to all of this is you must trust the students will use the site in a positive and educational manner.

The third and best wiki I found was concerning Chemistry. This wiki was very good because it was totally student-centered. The teacher posted his notes and then asked his students to create their own timeline for the various atomic models. I am not certain how I would use this, but maybe I could have them do a project on tesselations and the various types. Students could learn about the types and find pictures on the internet. They could also take their own pictures to ensure that they know what the different types are and how they are different from each other. Overall, I see wikis as a very useful tool that I would like to incorportate in my methods of instruction.

I am even considering using a wiki in my other passion - woodworking. I will have to see what is out there first.

Thing 5

I found several interesting things while reading the feeds that I subscribed to. I would like to discuss the idea of a mini-term. This student seemed to really get a lot out of this project that deviated from the normal routine of bells and rotating from class to class. I think it would be nice to see something like this in my school, but I do see the drawbacks from a teacher standpoint. It would take away from critical classtime, takes a lot of creative thought, well-thought and detailed planning, and requires highly skilled and pationate teachers. The instructors would have to totally buy-in for the project to be successful.

Teachers would have to develop a "hands-on" project like the one described and be very well organized. I read a few of the comments on his story and one said that it was too teacher-centered. While I agree with that statement, I understand the reasoning behind that fact. It was the first time trying something like that before. If the program is deemed successful, then I suggest it become more student-centered as they modify and change the program to improve it.

I also really enjoyed the fact that the writer, Anthony, could assess his learning at such a deep level. He gets the big picture of learning. This idea would probably be a very successful move for those students that feel confined or are board with the routine found in a typical schedule. I am not sure how successful this program would be if it were done more than twice in a year. We would lose out on the time necessary to cover all the material necessary for a student to have the foundation for college. Otherwise, I like it and would like to try to find a way to do something similar.

Thing 4

Blogging appears to be a useful tool for discussing a topic in great detail from many different views. Reading a blog is very different to me from reading from a textbook, newspaper, magazine, or any other paper communication tool. Everything is in a fairly narrow vertical area and does not allow you to scan all of the content at one time. Instead you scroll through the material to read it or find what you are looking for, because you are limmited to the size of the computer screen you are using to access the information. After reading through the recommended blogs as well as other content on the internet, I can say that I do prefer reading out of a book. I can get more information in less time, because I can easily look over the content that I am not interested when reading out of a large book. For some reason, when I am looking at a blog I feel the need to read everything I see and thus spend more time than I would like obtaining the desired information. My time seems to be waisted rather than used to its fullest extent.

A positive difference is that when blogging you appear to have more tools on the internet to use in demonstrations (in my case mathematics). You can link to videos and (I imagine) include music on your blog which is not something any other written form of communication can do. This can add an incredible amount of interest to your topic and even set the mood you want when reading your material posted.

Commenting is a very unique aspect to blogging. When writing an article or book the reader can never talk or interact with the author. Blogging has totally chnaged that and it seems to have a lot of positive results. I was really interested in everyone's take on homework, or lack there of. The discussions of math teachers and how they assigned homework was interesting. The only way to get all of the different views on this topic was to see how his readers were commenting.


It also can be used to allow students to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of specific topics. I really enjoyed the students' posts in this SCRIBE blog from another math teacher. A scribe is a student summary of a lesson that is posted in a blog. The best scribes are selected by teachers and other students and are added to the "Scribe Hall of Fame." It was a very different way to assess the learning of each student and can even add to the learning of the student readers of the scribe posts because the info could be presented in a different (and possibly more meaningful)manner than the original lesson.

Thing 2

I initially was a little overwhelmed in seeing how much is out there that I am not too familiar with. I have never blogged nor recorded my own voice for the internet. It was strange to do both, but after I got over the initial nervousness it was pretty cool.

I really love the videos on Web 2.0, so I would like to bring that aspect into my class as a demo tool and those videos maybe something my students can produce. I also see blogging as a way to continue learning outside of the walls of the classroom if I can take the leap and get it started this year or at the very start of next year. We could discuss real world problems and the different ways students approach and solve problems. We often do not have time to discuss multiple methods or strategies to solve word problems, yet this could be the solution to the constraints of time.

Blogging might also be a tool for me to learn more about myself through recording info like a journal or maybe using it to follow my studies of the Word of God. Who knows, I do not see that I have time in the day to do such things, but I do think they would be a valuable tool for me to grow as a husband, teacher, parent, coach, bible study leader, etc.

Thing #1

The most challenging habit for me would have to be "Create Your Own Learning Toolbox". I love to learn new things from many different areas, but my biggest problem is finding my new tools in my toolbox. Once I learn something, sometimes I will have trouble finding accessing the tools that I discovered during my studies. I get frustrated and just decide it is easier to continue with the my comfort zone rather than search through all of the material to find the tool that I need.

The easiest habit for me will be "Use Technology to Your Advantage". I really enjoy learning about technology and trying to find ways to use it in my life and in the classroom. I learned to teach using technology in college and any time I can use it to my advantage I will.

The most important habit for me will be "Begin with the End in Mind". I am already behind in the class and my hope and prayer is that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and keep running until I get there. If I can just make time to work and not let the chaos of every day life prevent my progress, then I will make it.