Partridge Technology Blog

Wow, the last thing. I had times that I really thought I’d never get here. But in the end it has all been worth it. I have enjoyed learning all the new tools, and I have tagged several more that I want to try later. Some of the Things gave us many options and I just knew if I took the time to try them all I would never finish.

In this last week of the summer I have really spent most of my time trying to finish up. And doing this was a benefit of sorts. If you keep working on it you do not lose track of where you are and you also remember things better from one thing to the next.

This blog might just be the best thing I learned. I have tried blogging before, but never really got into the habit of using it. I think I was so focussed on Wikis that I did not think blogs had any merit. With this class I really learned its benefits and I will definitely share it with teachers, they definitely do have merit.

Thanks you Shelly for offering this course. There were several things that I had some experiences with in the past, but I still learned something new with every single one. I learned TONS of new things and I am also more confident about my Web2.0 skills. This year in school will be very different for me as I now will plan more exciting lessons for my technology classes using many of these new tools.

Social networking is something I have wanted to explore more. However, I am not interested in Facebook or MySpace. I want to focus my social networking to teacher related sites.

With that in mind, I did join Classroom 2.0 a year or two back. I have not done too much with it but after exploring the page more fully in this class, I will use it more often. When searching Ning networks I found a site called Teachers Using Technology .

This site was very interesting, and I have asked for membership to this community. I will follow this one and I think it will lead me into using social networking more.

I especially loved the video, “Do Not Go Quietly Into Your Classroom”. It highlighted all the ways you can use web 2.0 tools in education. It is something I will show others at school. Reading these posts can only increase my learning, and enhance my teaching. I have now heard back from Gladys who began the Teachers Using Technology Ning group. I have been accepted into the group and she also sent an offer to answer any questions I might have. I like this approach, very welcoming and helpful. Just one more reason to continue following and joining in with this network.

Instructify is one of my choices in my google reader. This week I read about a new weather site called SciJinks. It is by NASA so you know it is a good site for information. I will have to mention this one to the second grade teachers at my school. Here is an excerpt:

“The Weather Laboratory is divided into four sections – Weather Fun, People, Technology, and How and Why. Within each of these sections there are a few activities from which you can choose. Some of the sections have interactive activities, whereas others are pages with text and pictures.”

I know this will be interesting to my teachers.

I had heard about pageflakes before so I was very interested to learn more. I began with the link to the teacher pageflakes and was exploring around in it. Then I saw a banner on the top that said I could customize my page with my interests. I thought it sounded interesting so I went into it.

I wish I hadn’t. I wanted to explore more of the teacher suggestions and they all disappeared when I did this. If anyone knows how I can fix this please let me know. I looked and looked, but to no avail.

During this past school year our district moved to gmail. In the initial days the technology specialists were the first to test the new interface. Along with our own google interface we also had the ability to try google docs. In short, this class is not my forst experience with google docs.

We have shared documents with one another, used spreadsheets, forms, and presentations. We have also uploaded existing pieces to share as well. It is very useful, and this coming year the rest of the staff in Wayland will be coming on board with gmail and google tools for education.

I hope to share documents with our technology committee as well as with teachers as we work to collaborate our lessons together.

I also have a teacher that has created a very aggressive Writing program with her students. I would love to work with her to use this tool with her students. One of her concerns is that her students need to work at home on writing and then bring them back to school. Up until now she has had the students purchase USB drives to transport their work. Google Docs would be a much easier way to do this. I will suggest it to her and we will see.

YouTube is a medium that I began using last year in school. I found that the tutorial videos were fun for students. they especially liked listening to someone else rather than listening to me all the time.the first videos I tried were about the programming language Scratch by MIT. So today I went to YouTube again to see if there were any new videos about Scratch. This first video will tell you a little about Scratch if you are not familiar with it. It is not one I use with the kids, but it is informative.

The next video I found I think will be of great help to the grade 5 students this year. In fact, the Scratch contributor, SHEAH909 had several help videos that show different programing ideas for Scratch. I may use more than one this year from this contributor. This video tells you how to use the glide movements.

I am particularly happy that I learned about the customize gear in YouTube. I did not know about this and now I will use it every time I find a video to use with students.

For the video that is a tutorial I decided to look at what YouTube had about quilting. My friends know that quilting is my favorite pastime so I though this would be a fun subject to look into. I found a video that showed a new way to join a binding as you finish your quilt.

And finally, just for fun, I love hummingbirds. Check out this hand Fed one. It is truly amazing.

I really enjoy using Youtube in my classroom and I will continue using it this year as well.

This bare bones podcast was fun, well most of it. I found that Zamzar did not work for the Macs. When I made the Vocarro recording it was downloaded as a PHP file on the Mac. I tried to use Zamzar to convert it, but Zamzar said it was a file format that is not supported at this time. The PHP file showed the Dreamweaver icon. I wonder if there is a conflict with Dreamweaver? Anyway, I will try it again on another computer without Dreamwaever on it, and see what happens.

So I went back to an old trick that I use often in school. I just changed the extension on the file to mp3 and Voila, I had what I needed. Macs are so easy to use! The next step to upload to GCast was easy. Now I just want to see it in the list for our class.

Having already done podcasting with kids in school and some teachers too, I was not sure I would learn anything new in thing 18. But as always, just when you least expect it, you do learn something new. The three programs, Vocarro, Zamzar, and GCast were new to me, and I will use them again in school.

I am sure that I will add this podcasting and hosting of podcasts with GCast to my lessons this year in school.

I took out the embeded GCast because every time I looked at my blog it started playing. It was annoying.
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Podcasting, where do I begin. First, I have been using iTunes to listen to podcasts for a while already. I often put the podcasts onto my iPod and listen to them during my commute to work. I have found this to be fun and I can learn at the same time.

I have been to the Educational Podcast network before and often look to see if there is anything of interest there. For this course I looked at NPR and found one educational podcast series that I will follow called Educational Podcasts with John Moyer. I also found one on The Victory Garden. I think this one will be fun to listen to and a little bit more on the lighter side.

these podcasts I added to Tech Tip Tuesday, Bit by Bit, The Tech Teachers, and Make Magazine which are a few of the technology podcasts that I listen to.

I also looked at PBS and Learn Out loud by nothing stood out. I enjoy listening to podcasts and will continue to do so.

I have created podcasts in school and actually teach my students how to make podcasts as well. We use Garageband for this as we have macs in our schools.

Sorry Shelley, this one is not for me. I can see that this would be of interest to many people, just not for me. I will suggest it to my son however. He is the BIG READER in my house.

As I played around with it, I must say that I was not too happy with the book suggester. It did not work as I had hoped. Oh well, there have been many good things in this course that I have loved. So if only one is not to my liking I guess I am doing quite well.

I have had a Delicious account for a couple of years, but I never used it. When I started the account I do so on my own because i had heard that it was a useful tool to organize bookmarks. I think the reason I did not use it was because I really did not quite understand HOW o use it. I think I needed help getting started with this.

This course was just what I needed to understand using Delicious more. I am sure I now will use it more. I have only done a small amoount to get myself started bt I can see the value in it now.

My account is found at http://delicious.com/mrsploker