Flowgram Presentation

Note: Somehow my Flowgram ended up on the sidebar of my log.

This has been the most frustrating module for me so far. I had so much trouble with the Flowgram website. I worked on the presentation for a long time and could not get the narration to work. I finally went to mom's house and used her microphone on her new laptop and it worked on her computer.

The Power Point presentation is on economics spi for 8th grade history about following the steps in making a resource into a product. My presentation is called From Tree to Paper, Step by Step. I had trouble finding pictures that were copyright friendly last week. There are other pictures that I found on a google search that I would have loved to use but they would not have worked.

I love the idea of Flowgram. I just wish that the site was easier to use. I can definitely see possiblities. When I teach, I show PPt's, Websites, and interactive games. I could literally recreate my lessons that students could access from home. I am going to play around with the site until it gets easier for me to navigate. I'm sure it's a great tool, I'm just not good at using it yet.

Thing 23 (Finally)

I have heard of Creative Commons before but I had forgotten all about it. I think that it is a great idea because the original creator still gets the credit, but the work can keep being expanded and perfected through the work of others. As a teacher I will use a creative commons lisence so that other teachers can use my work in their classrooms. Up until this point I had given very little thought to getting pictures from the internet for my presentations. I have saved the sites from the last module so that I can use them to search for pictures.

Thing 22

I love books and I just got to hear a podcast on Learn Out Loud that is an exert from the book Don't Know Much About History. The book is all about how Americans don't know as much about our country's history as we should. In fact, a poll of high school juniors showed that many of them could not identify the Declaration of Independence as the document that marked the separation of the colonies from England. Most of them could not identify when the Civil War occurred. Thanks to this podcast, I will definitely check into reading this book.
I would like to help my students do a podcast eventually, however, I am still feeling very overwhelmed by this stuff. Some of what we have done has been so easy and fun and some of it is still very intimidating to me.

Thing 21

http://animoto.com/play/KdIX5pgClcfgUrjwYbuJiA?autostart=false

This is the easiest and most fun step that I have had to do. I loved doing this video. I call it My Life. The soundtrack is "Stronger Woman" by Jewel who happens to be my favorite recording artist of all time. I have been a huge fan of her's for close to 15 years. The song and the pictures describe what my life is like and has been like for the last 2 years.

I wish all the things that we have done would be this easy and fun. I can definitely see myself using this application again.

Thing 20 Teachers are Like Mirrors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPWU30S2HA

I have a video called Teachers Are Like Mirrors. It's a nice reminder that how we see students is how they will see themselves.

Thing 19

I have a confession to make. I actually signed up for TeacherPop back in the summer and then forgot about it. Thankfully I remembered my password. I got on the site again today and added some fellow APSU Alumni to my friends list and left a comment for one of my friends. I won't forget about TeacherPop again. I think that I am going to enjoy keeping in touch and sharing ideas with people that mean a lot to me.

Thing 18

This has been my least favorite step so far. I have toyed with the idea of setting up a MySpace page before, but something has always held me back. I guess that I have heard too many stories where people got into trouble with MySpace. I am going to educate myself about social networking sites like MySpace for two reasons: 1. I would like to be able to keep in touch with my friends and family while still staying safe. 2. I would like to understand these sites better because I have a 15 year old daughter with a MySpace page.

I think that social networking sites can be very useful for teachers because we need a place to meet and share ideas without have to leave our houses. We can network in our bath robes and house shoes. Searching MySpace and Facebook has helped me see that these sites can serve a useful purpose. I can use them to my advantage as long as I use them wisely. Facebook's site really surprised me because a couple years ago I browsed it and got the impression that it was a "Teeny Bopper" site. When I searched for members of the class of 93, I got nothing. Everyone on there seemed like they were ten years younger. FaceBook seems like it has grown up some. I am definitely going to explore social networking further, but I am still feeling cautious.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=420664194

Thing 17

First of all, let me say that I love the Common Craft Show and their tutorials in plain English. I love the way that he breaks the information down and makes it so user friendly. All you see are his hands and visual representations of what I need to do. I have learned that I can't read and learn. I have to see and do it. I felt like after I watched the tutorial, that I could easily understand social bookmarking.

I research the internet all the time for information for my history and geography classes. A lot of students don't like those subjects and the internet is a great way for me to find interesting sites to spark their interest. The problem that I am running into is I find great sites on my computer at work and I bookmark them, but when I work at home, I have to try and find those sites again so that I can have them on my computer at home. About a month ago, I remember thinking, "I wish someone would come up with a better way to do this." I had no idea that I could be saving and tagging my bookmarks on the web and sharing with other teachers.
I love the idea of social bookmarking because I can take my classroom research wherever I go. I can look up and bookmark my websites and tag them into categories. I can share with other teachers and get their websites. I love it. As far as using this in the classroom, I'm still a little on the fence. I think that this is more of a teacher tool than a student tool. That being said, I think that this would be a great way for students who are older to keep up with research for classes in high school and college.

Thing 16

For the homepage, I chose iGoogle. It was the easiest to customize of the three, and I found it very cool. I really loved that when I clicked 'music' as an interest, it gave me a list of concerts coming to my area. Now when my daughter comes in talking about an awesome concert that's coming, I'll know first! I loved the Youtube widget as well.

The other tool I used was Zamzar. I used it mostly because as I was looking through all the tools, my daughter came in and noticed the Zamzar and mentioned that she used it a lot. So I decided to give it a try. It was easy to use and it worked. I'll probably be using it quite a bit in the near future.

I didn't make an online calender because I already did one for a pervious Thing, but they work very nicely and are very helpful. I'll be using them for use in the classroom now, to let students know when things are due and what tests are coming up.

The To Do lists seemed to be more trouble than they were worth, in my opionion. I could do the same thing with a piece of paper and a pen.

As for reccomending tools to others, I would definitely reccomend both zamzar and iGoogle. They're both very neat tools and are useful as well.

Thing 15

Before this Thing, I wasn't really aware of what a Wiki really was.I honestly just thought it was...well, Wikipedia. I didn't realize it was something that was so big. I'm glad that I have a better grasp of what they are now and how to use them. I found the links to some of the teacher Wikis that were provided very interesting and really showed how much the internet is used to connect educators. (Not that I didn't notice that already from all the other Things I've had to do.)

Thing 14

I just finished working with the Flowchart on Gliffy. I didn't enjoy it as much as the mindmap. It was harder to understand and more difficult to maneuver. The mind map I made on bubbl.com was very easy to use and even fun. The site itself just looked friendlier, if that makes any sense at all.
In the classroom, however, I love flowcharts. When I taught English last year, I used Flowcharts quite a bit in writing. The students probably hated them, but I after using the flowcharts there a a significant improvement in their writing. The ideas were more structured and they stayed on topic throughout their work.

Gibbons 5618 Module 2 (Thing 13)

For this assignment, I read the article “Technology tools for visual thinking: What does the research tell us?” by Catherine McLoughlin and Krzysztof Krakowski of The University of New England. I am not sure if this came out of a journal or if it was presented at a conference. I looked it up online and tried to find information about it on the University of New England’s website, but I didn’t find anything. I am not sure when the article was written either. When I initially set out to complete this project, I think that I may have begun with the wrong mindset. I read the article with the hopes of understanding it before I began to write my critique. After reading the article for the first time and becoming extremely frustrated, I put it down to work on something else in hopes of coming back to it with a clear head and ready to understand everything that the authors were trying to say. I read through it again hoping to find parts that I found to be enlightening or profound. Then I thought that perhaps I was incorrect in looking for what I liked and I began looking for what I didn’t like or agree with. Eventually I began reading it with the notion that this was not about what I liked or did not like. It was about reading the article critically and then responding to it. I think that I may be a bit dense, because that was really the point all along. Sometimes I simply have to figure things out on my own. I wish that I could say that no matter which angle that I approached this assignment from that I was able to understand the article. I found it difficult to get through some of the language that the authors used and follow their train of thought. The flow of information that they presented made me feel at times as if the train was jumping tracks. The grammar left much to be desired as well.

I think that the title and the abstract fail to make the authors’ message clear. The abstract only mentions technology in the last sentence. Upon finding the title in a Google search, a student may think that they hit the jackpot if he or she was trying to write a paper about technology and visual literacy. That student would probably be disappointed once they read or rather attempted to read the article. The information about technological tools is meager compared the time the authors spend defining visual thinking, visual literacy, and the differences between visual and verbal thinking. When the article did mention the research on technology it felt a bit biased toward Apple Computers. I happen to be a huge fan of Apples but other representations would have been nice. For example, the conclusion fails to bring closure to the article and instead becomes a plug for Apple’s Quick Time. The conclusion also introduces the topic of VR technology. This should have happened long before the conclusion. In addition to the introduction of a new subject, the definition that was provided for VR technology was vague at best.

As I read through the article, it struck me as odd that the grammar just did not look appropriate coming from individuals who worked at the university level. I make mistakes all the time when typing and I have trouble proofreading my own work, however, I expect a published article to have few or no errors in grammar. I did not mark the first error that I saw because I thought it was either my imagination or that I was somehow ignorant of the way that someone who is smarter than me may compose text. As I read further, I found what I think may be more example of misprints or typos. Part of a sentence on page five states, “They has to substitute…” The word “They” is a plural pronoun and needs a plural verb. Maybe there is a special way of writing that I am unfamiliar with, but I think I may be correct about this. I was hesitant to bring this up because I am by no means an expert in grammar and if it were not for spell check, I would be hopelessly lost. I found at least four or five more errors as I read. On page eight, it says, “students used language a means of articulating and expanding their understandings of how to investigate octagon loops.” I think that it should say that, “they used language as a means of articulating their understandings” (McLoughlin and Krakowski). I could be wrong. Is there some special technical way of writing in academics that I’m not familiar with? Other errors were found on pages five, eight, and nine.

Another problem that I had was that the research mentioned on page six was from a school in Western Australia. I would have been more interested in reading about the findings from schools in this country. Again there was what seemed like a plug for Macs.

I don’t feel that this is the best example of my ability to analyze and critique information because I simply had such a terrible time following the information in the article. Despite the fact that I read the article multiple times this week, I don’t feel that I could have derived a deeper understanding of the content. This has been one of the most challenging assignments that I have completed thus far, however; it did remind that I have a lot more to learn. The prospect of that is exciting to me.

Reference

McLoughlin, C. and Krakowski K., Technological tools for visual thinking: What does the research tell us?

This is what I did for my Zoho Writer. It was very simple and easy to use.

Thing 12

The first thing I did was make a Google Calender. I added the new Basketball game dates that I'll be attending with me cheerleaders, and some High School football games my daughter will have to go to. I think that this would be a good way to let my students know what days tests are, when assignments are due, and I since I teach American history, maybe I could add a "This Day In History" fact.
I also set up several Google Alerts. I made one for several authors, including one of my favorites, Diana Gabaldon, and one of my daughters favorites, John Green. Then I subscribed to The Killers. They're my daughter's favorite band, and I love having things in common with her.

Thing 11

Topix.com was definitely my favorite of all the links provided. It was orginaized in a way that was easy to read and still pleasing to the eye, and things were easy to find. The searchbar wasn't hidden away in a corner, and everything was divided up into nice little categories. I enjoyed Technorati for these same reasons.
Syndic8.com was very boring. The layout of the homepage was so plain, and the way some of it was set up just didn't make sense to me.
I loved how Topix had all of the political headlines on the home page. They were very helpful. I haven't had much time to keep up with all of that lately and I liked being able to read about it.
Also, while searching, I came across some videos from Saturday Night Live. One was from last night's episode, who's musical guest happened to be The Killers. My daughter almost had a heart attack. They're her favorite band, but she missed the episode due to a band compeitition. She didn't think she was going to get to see them performing the new songs live. She was wrong!

Thing 10

I had no idea what an RSS feed was until 3 days ago when I started reading about it for thing 10. I think that this is something that I am really going to like. I feel like I spend a lot of time searching the internet and saving websites to my favorites lists. I get frustrated with the wasted minutes it takes me to look up stuff. I love the idea of it coming to me. I will use RSS feed to get my local, national, and world news. I am want to have new information about education sent to me as well. I will admit that I don't understand all of this yet, but I also know that they only way to learn any of it is to jump in and start trying it out.