My $0.02

I know that people use Wikispaces professionally, but this would not be a good choice to use with students because there is no way to control what they are doing - unless you want to have a paid account. For instance, with wikispaces, if I had created student accounts, they would then have the ability to create their OWN wikis and say whatever they wanted on it. I did not want that. That's how I found PBwiki.

I created a wiki for ELA teachers to share material.
I also created a wiki that my students managed that was about our school. They created pages for teachers, for our policies, and other aspects that are specific to our school. At this point, PBWiki is only open to Vistas Only, even for teachers.

I use podcasting right now, but it is a slow process. We are working with an audio-visual element, and right now audio-visual is blocked during the day.

Right now, my students are trying to vodcast. We worked on creating TAKS tutorial videos for students. I took my class and gave each student an era. However, my students ended up not being able to use videos because there was no way to convert MOV files to WMV files. We ended up just using still photos. It still worked, but we were saddened that we spent a lot of time harvesting videos. Some students were even considering videotaping themselves a la Bill Nye the Science Guy. I kept trying to girl who was researching the Cold War to start out with a video of her in a heavy coat being cold. Cold... get it? We had to scrap it, but I'm hopeful that we'll get a solution soon.

I have loved this class. As I said in my last post, I'd love to have a web 2.1 class next year to continue this learning. Things that we could do:
* iGoogle page (could have this set up with students)
* Jott
* Ning
* Flock - integrates social networking sites
* Net vibes
* Pandora!
* Vuvox
* Vyew/Yugma
* Nuvvo
* http://learnhub.com/
* http://www.digication.com/

In fact, I found this web page - All Things Web 2.0.

Facebook revisited and other random things...

I blame this class and my lunch buddies for getting me sucked in to Facebook. I have had a MySpace account for years, and had always assumed that the same people would be on Facebook. I can admit I was wrong.

I'm kind of sad that this class is ending next week. I think that there are a few of us in the class who are already familiar with many of the products that are being highlighted, but it's a great time to share and get ideas.I wonder if there is anyway that we can get a web 2.1 class for year. I know that I'd take it if it was available. Just think of what will be around at this time next year!

For those of you who are bilingual, do you have a good translation site? I'm looking for an accurate webpage that can take my English text and translate it into Spanish. I found this one, but my Spanish isn't good enough to judge it. I also know that Gaggle has a translator as well. Any ideas?

Speaking of wikis...

This is a wiki that I am currently working on: http://1to1english.pbwiki.com/

I don't have much up there right now, but if you want to see an idea of what I'm trying to do, click on English I and then Choose Your Own Adventure under Romeo and Juliet.

Wild, wild, wiki!

I created a wiki that my students worked on this year, but by the time that web sites were unblocked and my students created accounts, we really didn't have the time to finish it. That drives me nuts. I hate leaving projects unfinished, but in the classroom, the clock drives instruction, right?

I also have a personal wiki that Gregg and I use for our wedding. Since we are organizing an overseas wedding, it is really helpful in organizing our plans with all people involved.

You can easily use wikis in the classroom - it's pretty good for editing purposes. In fact, I created a page in the wiki tonight where we can brainstorm and generate ideas.

I love working with Google Documents - I just wish that it was unblocked at school. I find that most of my lesson planning that involves technology is done at home. I just have more technology (and freedom) at my disposal at home. When I work on something at home, I have to figure out how to get it to school. Now, I normally have Blue, my trusty external hardrive, but he's not failproof. I have left my harddrive at school before. I have had hardrives crash before (now THAT'S a tear-inducing experience). This just seems to be a an easy and free resource that the schools can utilize. I can't see how this can be a security issue since students can already share files.

For wikis, I like PB Wiki the best. In Wikispaces, if you want to monitor your student accounts, you'll have to spend money. In PB Wikis, I can create accounts that can edit only. The district won't allow a student to create his/her own wikis - I am the one who creates accounts. This really works well for me.

I'm cheap

I take lots of random pictures of random things. Because of this, I used to have a paid account, but then I switched over to Picasa.

I would use these sites a lot more, but I can't access any of them at school. I just keep everything on the external hardrive I had to buy.

One problem that I forsee is that as we make the move to more technology (especially with the 1:1 schools!), teachers are going to need more space to store things, or at least be allowed to access them on the internet, like Google Documents or Flickr.

Philosophy of Education

Some of my pics from Flickr

Since I made so many bad decisions in my 20's, I decided to blow them all out of the water when I turned 30: I jumped out of a plane.



I am originally from St. Louis, so I still root for the Cardinals. w00t!!111