Thing #10 Embedded Slideshow

Photo Credits:

All floral photography by Julia Walker

"Children Are..." by my daughter, Sarah Browning, in Ghana, Africa

summer 2009

"Unique" - children's day by M@rg

"Curious" - What a Child Sees by Thomas Hawk

"Amazing" - children's day by ayashok photography

"Bright" - Late for children's day! by Seema KK

The hardest part of this activity was choosing which images to use

from the millions that are available. CC is a great resource for any

kind of photograph you can even dream about needing.

I also incorporated some of my own photography. That is my hobby

and I love to share when I can.

The picture of the group of children is near and dear to my heart.

The one white girl in the picture is my youngest daughter, Sarah.

She is a 20-year old Junior at UT Austin. This summer she is in

Ghana, Africa, where this picture was taken. She worked with a

team of university students to build a library for an elementary

school in Accra, Ghana.

The most rewarding part of this assignment was the fulfillment of

the final product. I like the metaphorical imagery of the flower

pictures to the children's pictures.

I had a problem with the text in this post not wanting to wrap at the

end of a line. I had to manually return at the end of each line. Has

anyone else had this problem? How do I fix it?

Thing #9 Flickr

Wow! Over the last two days I have discovered a gold mine in Flickr. Before Thing #9, I found photos online through a Google Image search or used my own image (of which I have thousands). I even opened my own Flickr account and uploaded some of my own photos.

What I learned from Flickr is that there are thousands of photos on the web that can be used under CC. Some of them are similar to mine, some are better. I also picked up some photography tips.

The photograph I chose was taken by markiteightdude in Colorado. To me, this photograph represents the class - 23 Things. From a distance the Internet is colorful, unique, and intriguing as in the picture of the tree with red on it. As you get closer, you find thousands of individual, interesting, and different items as you would upon taking a macro view of the tree and finding a multitude of tiny ladybugs.

Thing #8 Creative Commons

Although I had not noticed the CC logo on pages I have visited, I believe it can have a great impact on education. Teachers and students both can search for resources without having to choose whether to use them or not due to copyright infringement. It's putting more tools in our toolbox.

I use digital images, audio, and video in my teaching. But, it is usually my work that I own. I share photos online on a regular basis. The web is a convenient way to share my photography hobby with family and friends.

CC is new to me. I have already found some things I can use in my classroom. I found a list of ESL Read Aloud books in one spot. It's nice to have a list to pull from at my fingertips.

I like the idea of "share, remix, and reuse." I look forward to learning more about CC.

Thing #7 Commenting

Darren Rowse published a post on his blog called "10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog." He states 90% of blog visitors are "lurkers," people who read and don't comment, 9% comment contributing a "little," and 1% contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Blue Skunk calls them "trolls."

I find myself often "lurking," reading gain knowledge. A blog should be more of an interactive discussion among a large group of people. I am working to learn how to comment. The further I get in this course, it is getting easier with practice.

Inviting comments, being open-ended, and asking questions are good ways to increase commenting on your blog. Bloggers want to know their work is being read. Commenting helps accomplish this.

Commenting is important to ensure the proper function of the blog... interactive conversation.

With each comment I make on blogs I'm following and subscriptions on my Reader, I get slightly more proficient with commenting.

One last blog I particularly enjoyed that you also might enjoy is Drake's Takes: Edublogger Etiquette - Responding to Comments. It is a good example of conversational commenting.

Thing #6 Feeding the Reader

Before 23 Things, I did not know about Readers and RSS feeds. After going through Things 5 and 6, I have a new passion.... Google Reader. I have a number of sites I want to keep up with daily. Remembering all the links or even names is a daunting task. If I tried to keep a list, it was a file on my hard drive. With Google Reader, the links are all right there in one place, online, and easy to find. It's fantastic!

I added personal as well as professional feeds.

I have been following Cool Cat Teacher. I enjoy her fresh look at the real world.

A new professional blog I have added to my Reader is Betty's Blog. The voice of her blog is down to earth and easy to read. One entry in particular stands out to me. In Technology Gone Wrong, Betty talks about her iPod breaking and the direction technology is moving. I agree with her assessment:

"Why are educators so set on keeping things the same? We are spending so much money just on testing. What if that money was invested in technology instead? Trust me, cutting edge technology would encourage more learning and career building skills than teaching strategies to figure out the right answers on a test."

Students, young and old, expect technology in this day. I think back to this past school year when a Promethean Board in one of my classrooms wasn't working for a few weeks. It seemed tragic at the time. The technology of the Board keeps them engaged, interested, and focused.

To my Reader, I also added links to blogs by my sister and my daughter, Sarah, who is presently in Ghana, Africa. She is a Sophomore at UT. Prejudice aside, she is a great writer and has very interesting things to say in her blog.

In exploring Google Blog Search, I subscribed to "ESL Google Blog Search." I'm not sure yet what that will produce, but we'll see.

I tried to add a feed to http://www.flashpuzzlezone.com/index.asp. When trying to add it, I got an error message. Don't know what's up with that. Guess I'll try again later.

Overall, I am excited to learn about RSS feeds and Google Reader. I foresee both of them making a profound impact on my life. :)

Thing #5 RSS Feeds

For Thing #5 I set up my Google Reader account and subscribed to the required feeds and some others. I like the concept of RSS and Readers. It is a hassle to go through every bookmark I have when I want to see updates. Feeding them to my Google Reader makes keeping up with my favorite blogs and news easy.

The challenge I see in using RSS is remembering to check the Reader. :) But, remembering to check one site for updates is definitely better than hunting down all my bookmarks.

Students 2oh I enjoyed reading this blog of actual students’ writing. I could relate to the students writing for the blog from a parental point of view. The students were documenting their journey of graduating from high school, applying, and starting college. As a parent I have recently gone through that same process with my daughter, Sarah. She graduated from WMHS 2007 and is now a Sophomore at UT.

Another feed I subscribed to is the Mesquite section of the Dallas Morning News site. I found an article reporting MISD is now allowing facial hair on male employees. From as far back as I can remember starting first grade in MISD in 1965 through 2009 and 24 years' experience as an employee, men in the District have never been allowed to have facial hair. My how times change. The comments after the article were other than complimentary… an example of Darth Commenter according to Cool Cat Teacher.

Thing #4 Blog Uses in Education - Part 2

I enjoyed reading the blogs listed on the 23 Things Discovery Exercise. I read more than five, so I chose five to write about in this blog entry.

Dan Meyer's Blog post, "Why I Don't Assign Homework" put my own opinions into print. Those that CAN do the work will do homework. Those that NEED to do it won't. According to Mr. Meyer, this attitude is doubled in low economic families. From my experience, I agree with him. In an update to his blog, Mr. Meyer said he has changed his opinion somewhat on not giving homework assignments. Since his class is taught in a secondary block schedule setting, he felt 48 hours in between class instruction time was too long to optimally enhance student retention of knowledge. Therefore, he gives two problems for "homework." One is "tough" and the other is "tougher."

Weblogg-ed (Will Richardson): Why Can't We Do This? Hmmm.... plastic or cloth? At first, this entry puzzled me. Why did the instructors include a blog about plastic vs. cloth grocery bags? After reading it 3 or 4 times, I realized the point was not so much the content as it was the style. This blog spoke a lot with a few words. In fact, the majority of the blog was a quote from the New York Times. It was interesting.

Mrs. Edmison's Class: Questions for One of Our Favorite Authors: Grace Lin It was good to see students' writing in a blog. The author's response provided a fabulous opportunity for the students to get up close and personal with her. She shared things with them that I imagine they will always remember.

Mark’s Edtech Blog: Is this SSR 2.0? I love Mark's approach to a relatively new idea… let kids read blogs during SSR/DEAR time. Their interest in reading is higher. They can read and respond to things written by peers. Writing and reading go hand-in-hand. You can’t write without reading what you wrote.

Cool Cat Teacher: Spies Like Us Vicki Davis is thought-provoking author with a deep insight into her subjects. It is a bit scary to read her interpretation of kids' use of technology in schools. If we don't make it OK to use cell phones and Internet, kids will do it anyway. Wouldn't it be better if we as educators acknowledge the technological path we're on and teach students a safe and intelligent way to use it.