Thing #11.5 Evaluation

Thoughts on this professional growth program:

1. The Thing I found most useful was the one about slideshare sites. Discovering slideshares has immediate potential in my classroom. Word generators are always fun, and I enjoyed playing with Animoto.
2. This program facilitated my life long learning by expanding my knowledge of interesting and useful sites on the web.
3. I'm a little disappointed to admit that there weren't a lot of surprises for me in this program, except for slidesharing. I'd already explored much of the stuff in these Things prior to starting this exercise.
4. Basically the format and concept of this program are the same as the format and concept as "23 Things" which I completed last summer and really enjoyed. I did notice that a couple of Things in this program were not as well written as others and lacked personality. Otherwise, everything was fine.

Thanks for a nice program, the opportunity to participate and earn professional growth hours.

Thing #11 Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship is probably taken for granted by most educators because it incorporates most of the same elements as good old fashioned citizenship, something that comes naturally to most educators without a lot of thought and consideration. As we all know, however, elements of good citizenship, both traditional and digital, must be frequently emphasized to our students so they learn to be productive and pleasant citizens because people lacking polite manners, consideration and respect for others, and common sense/intelligence are unpleasant company and may be shunned by the general population. So as it's crucial that we teach our kids these basic life skills, it is likewise important to teach digital citizenship.

As I'm not a librarian, I won't be planning or teaching a library orientation lesson any time soon, but if I magically became a librarian overnight and felt inclined to offer a library orientation to students, I would emphasize the five elements of digital citizenship outlined by Cool Cat Teacher in her blog: literacy, safety, learning strategies, etiquette, and student.

Thing #10 Virtual Worlds

I really do love technology and all it has to offer both in the classroom and personally, and I've been thinking myself kind of hip because of my adept computer skills and knowledge of the web, but after completing Thing 10, I'm beginning to think I might be a bit of an old fuddy-duddy. While it does look pretty cool, Second Life seems like a colossal waste of time to me. I can envision kids spending endless hours perfecting their avatars and visiting virtual worlds instead of completing their homework, and I know of few teachers that could devote much time to creating a virtual world to use in their classrooms. I also found the avatars a bit annoying, too "Anime" for me. I like my cartoon characters with more fur and floppy ears, maybe a cold nose too. And why are the avatars in Second Life all SO skinny? Does anyone ever create fat avatars? I guess I just don't get the whole virtual world/escape thing. Does that make me (gasp!) OLD???

Thing #9 Slideshare

Wow! I didn't know about Slideshare before, but I'm glad I do now. This will solve lots of issues when students choose to make a Power Point type presentation. Often students spend hours creating their version of the perfect Power Point for a school-assigned presentation only to find they can't "burn" their creation to a CD, it's too large to email to the teacher, and they have no flash drives at home. Bummer! But with Slideshare, students can create their presentation on one of the slideshare websites and simply "pull it up" once back at school. Really successful students could also easily share their presentations in other classrooms. So many possibilities.....

Thing #8 Screencast

Screencasts would be a great tool in a classroom with an Active Board or even with a projector connected to a computer. Alas, I have neither (tear, sniff). I did play with several of the screencast sites, however, and even made a screencast, using Screencast-o-Matic, explaining how to use Yahoo! Mail for people like my mother-in-law that like to use email but get confused with all the options. In appropriately technology-equipped classrooms, screencasts could definitely be widely utilized.

Thing #7 Video Resources

This is one of my "Favorite Things" so far, maybe because it validates what I've been doing for years (while secretly hoping the copyright police don't bust down my door - shhh!). In teaching Theatre, Communications, and Broadcasting, I've used clips of television shows, movies and documentaries, news clips, and snippets of music in my classroom, both to demonstrate topics I'm teaching and to enhance student projects. I haven't posted many of my creations to the web, but I've used lots of clips/snippets in productions both onstage and via closed-circuit television in our building. It's comforting to know that due to the fair use and best practices codes I've been legal (mostly). Some of my favorite places to "borrow" clips are Hulu, Netflix, and PBS.

Thing #6 iTouch Apps

First, in the interest of transparency, I must say I own a Blackberry. I LOVE my Blackberry. I've never been a fan of Apple anything, except iTunes and my iPod which I actually do love and use all the time. Otherwise, I'm purely a PC kinda girl. Admittedly, I was way less than excited when I first read the instructions for this "Thing."

Having made my disclaimer, I did borrow my daughter's iTouch (which, by the way, was a "must have" last fall, so she saved her money and bought it herself; I got her iPod hand-me-down, and instantly fell in love, but I digress....). I found the actual process very similar to downloading apps to by Blackberry, and there are several cool iTouch apps: a Spanish translator, a learn-to-play chess app (something I've always thought I should do - maybe I'll add it to my bucket list), some flash cards, and a general tuturial app.

However, our students are prohibited from bringing electronic/digital devices to school, so this "Thing," despite its coolness, seems fairly futile for our building. Therefore, I'm having trouble discerning advantages of making a list of uses for the iTouch in the library. Maybe I'm missing something....

Thing #5 Microblogging

I've been on Facebook well over a year now, and I love it. Not only has it allowed me to reconnect with old friends and relatives, and share more with close relatives, it's also facilitated getter better acquainted with colleagues. Students should use this social networking tool to help each other keep up with school work and collaborate on projects as well as stay connected with each other since they all seem to have such busy lives.

I explored Twitter about a year ago, and just couldn't get excited. I felt like it would be just one more thing to keep up with, and since I am already using Facebook I decided not to sign on to Twitter. Perhaps subconsciously I was afraid I would get hooked on it just like I am to Facebook. :)