Thing #10

Learning about the new fair use doctrine was great. I hope I'm not the only one out here that didn't know about it. I've been working under the old copyright rules that were extremely restrictive--either you got it from the library or bought materials that could be reproduced.

When it comes to my students, I am absolutely sure they don't know or care about copyrights--anything on the internet is free unless they tell you to pay for it--don't you know! Seriously, though, I am glad so much work has gone into making it easier (and cheaper) to educate our students.

In addition to books and worksheets (either owned by the district or me), I use math videos from the internet. I never questioned whether they were copyrighted or not--I guess I'm like my students in that way. I also use math web sites that the district purchases. For these, the name of the student has to be loaded into the data base.

All in all, I guess I'm glad the fair use guidelines are in place. These days, my material comes from so many places that the fair use guidelines make creating varied lessons easier.

Thing #9

The section on wikis has been the most difficult so far, but also the most rewarding. I may have learned more about my computer in the last two days than ever before. Some of the things I had the most trouble with were pretty common sense things--after I figured them out. Before that, they were just frustrating. I'm an older user and most of the creation process on a computer is foreign to me.

The most rewarding part of the sandbox experience is gaining the knowledge that I can put my professional wiki together in a useable format, and I'm pretty sure that the other math teachers won't mind using it.

The lessons I still need are mostly in the area of pictures--I really haven't used my computer for pictures, personal or otherwise. I visited some of the sites, but I think I will need more intensive instruction to gain the necessary knowledge.

Thing #8

Wiki Wiki Teaching was empowering. I really felt excited as I read through the post. Vicki Davis's wiki, Westwood Schools Computer Science, was even more enlightening. The things she has the students doing on the wiki are phenomenal. She is definitely a "guru" when it comes to using the web as an educational tool. I'm not sure I'm ready to introduce blogging and wikis to my resource math class, but I can definitely see a professional wiki my future.

We have 11 math teachers on our campus and we all have a cache of math tools. I would love to create a wiki where we could deposit that wealth of information to use as a web library. I can envision a navigator on the side broken up into math objectives and each objective broken into areas for videos, Promethian slates, interesting papers with a new twist on teaching an objective, etc. It would take the first year to load all the information we have in our separate caches, but the following year we could benefit greatly. I see an important advantage for new teachers. One place to look to enrich their lessons. So much time is spent that first year just trying to find everything you need.

One of the best wikis on the list was the Room 15 Wiki. I am in awe of the quality of work he is getting from 4th graders. He must have them do most of their work on a computer. Their use of computer tools was great and I even noticed their spelling and grammar were great.

Math 12V Outcomes was another great wiki but not as surprising as the 4th grade class. This was a 12th grade Advanced Math class that totally outlined the course into their wiki for everyone to access. I'm sure the teacher taught, but the students did the reteach by dividing the sections among themselves and providing notes, instructions, and any other relevant tools necessary for mastery.

All in all, I think I like wikis more than blogs.

Thing #7

Commenting...hmmm...!?? I read many comments that left me wondering why the people bothered. I also read some blogs that had astronomical comments to one posting (336). I was curious so I visited the post to see what was so great. Many of the comments were one word--great, thanks, etc. That blog made me wonder if it wasn't more about competition to get the most comments than about sharing ideas.

Yes, I believe commenting is good, but only if you have something constructive to add. It's O.K. to comment that you find the post helpful and how you might use the information, but please be more specific than "thanks."

As for my experience with commenting, it seemed to be easier to comment to my fellow classmates because we're all working off the same information base and sharing different aspects. I found the links to be very interesting. We all received the same page of instructions but we all came up with different information from the same exercise--cool!

Thing #6

RSS feeds and my reader took a long time for me to complete. There's so much out there--I just can't believe how much. The required feeds were full of information but not very much fun. Then we got to the part where we could tailor our searches and I had a lot more fun. I found a way to get every news article from the Times on Obama and nothing else--that was fun.

The educational blogs left me somewhat cold. Too much opinion in some and too much technology for me in others. When I did my own google search on resource math, I found much more to interest me. Some of the blogs were political but most were on teaching and resources and problems faced by teachers of disabled students. One very exciting resource was homeschooling parents blogging about educating their children.

The homeschool lesson on math analogies was particularly interesting. Many of my students have trouble with patterns and sequencing. This particular homeschool parent was teaching analogies using geometric shapes to seven and eight year old boys. Wow!

Thing #5

The article that interested me most came from the TechLearning feed. It was about the 10 "no-nos" of teaching with a projector and whiteboard. Mesquite must have read the article or one like it because it said that a slate was just as good as a white board and much less expensive. He also said that the position of my projector is probably wrong. My setup has me at the back of the room and the writer's advice is to set up at the front of the room so we are speaking to the front of the class and not the back of their heads.

Another good tip was to leave the lights on. He says we should never teach in a dark room--it makes some people sleepy to turn the lights off. He says turning a bank of lights off in front of the screen is acceptable but not all the lights.

He also said to use a pointer (I'm assuming he means the lighted pointer) when getting the students to focus on a particular part of the presentation.

Lastly, he suggests that the projector should not run the entire period. If we're leaving the projector on just for instructions, he suggests copying those and handing them out to save the very expensive bulb.

Thing #4

Blogging is a new form of communication. Many blogs are diaries or logs of happenings in one's life. When the comments are added to the post, it resembles the responses to an editorial in the newspaper.

Blogging can be used for almost anything. One blog I read was used to communicate the trials and tribulations of gutting a home a rebuilding it complete with before and after pictures and a commentary of all the steps and surprises from start to finish.

From an educational standpoint, blogging can be used to facilitate homework, to communicate with parents, to create diversity with writing in the classroom, and to communicate problems and enlist the help of others in solving those problems.

If I were teaching literature, blogging would be an integral part of students' communicating their understanding of the concepts in the reading and for having my students communicate with each other by sharing their ideas through blog comments.

Thing #2

Web 2.0 information is extremely overwhelming. I can only assume that if I tune in next month it will only be worse due to the rapid pace that the information is changing. I hope to tune in to many of the ways to impart information to my students. I also hope that our math coordinator will begin to use the blog or wiki format to get information to us. If she starts the move, I am sure that our math teachers will get on board and begin to use the conveyances for communication about techniques that they have found beneficial.

I learned in the past that many of the disabled learners that I teach do tend to read better from a computer screen than from the pages of a book. I can only guess that the computer screen lends itself to dyslexic tendencies. I discovered last year that the students I teach that had two class periods of math (one dedicated to teaching math in another way with computer reinforcement) scored better on TAKS and TAKS-M than the class that did not received two classes and computer reinforcement. I know from teaching the students, that they endured the lessons from Monday through Thursday to get to the computer class on Friday. Many of my special education students even practiced at home through the Voyager online program. Next year, we will be using Study Island Math. The program may not be in depth as much as Voyager, but the results should be the same. We'll know when they take TAKS next year.

Thing #1

Getting started is always the hardest part of anything we do. The habit that would be hardest for me is having confidence. I may be the oldest person taking this course and computers are, of course, new in the span of my life. I seem to be always afraid of doing something I cannot get out of or of making the problem worse. I have no problem accepting responsibility for my learning or I would not have taken this course. I have taken other technology courses and find that I do not learn from the "follow me" approach. I tend to get lost easily and definitely do not have the skills to catch up once I'm lost. I am hoping that this trial and error approach on my own time will bridge the gap. The most important habit I hope to gain is the filling of my toolbox. My goal is to use these computer skills to help my students learn math. I teach Basic Math to 7th and 8th graders in middle school. Many of the skills they need were not learned when they should have been learned. This may be due to a learning disability, but my hope is that the skills were not presented in a way that enabled learning. If my hope comes true, stimulation through computers may help them bridge the gap.