Friday, July 17, 2009

  1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? Some things that will be very useful are Flickr, Google Tools and the online image creator. Also, Nings is something I will be joining in the near future...
  2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? This has helped me realize the various resources out there, and I plan to use many of the "23 things" in the classroom.
  3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I didn't expect to learn as much as I did, and definitely didn't think I would apply this to my teaching. I will keep an open mind as return next summer!
  4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I wish I didn't have to join some of the sites to work on them...mostly because its going to be hard to keep up with all of the passwords lol. But that's pretty much unavoidable...
  5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Yes!!
  6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities? Awesome.

Thing #22

I found a group on Nings that is just for orchestra teachers! This is so exciting, because orchestra can be such a smaller world, and it would be interesting to see what other teachers are doing outside the state... I was surprised to see that there were not any teachers from Texas, since we have such strong orchestra programs and orchestra specific organizations such as TODA and TMEA.

Some of the forums discussed orchestra literature and string pedagogy. One discussion was geared towards vibrato and the various ways to teach it. Too cool, I'm kinda geeking out, lol. I will definitely tell my collegues about this group/website!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Thing #21

So I had trouble loading Photostory onto my computer because it's a PC program and I have a Mac...boo, lol. I am really familiar with podcasts though, I subscribe to Chelsea Lately and some of the orchestra series on iTunes. I love that it is so easy to access, I can just put it on my iPod and go... I found a cool podcast called Discover Spanish. You can subscribe to more extensive lessons online or buy the CD-Rom.

Thing #20

There are really great things on YouTube for education and entertainment, and I think that TeacherTube could be a great resource after it has more users and more videos/audio posts. This is definitely something to follow.

There isn't really much in my content area, but I did find a neat video of Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman performing together.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Thing #19

The one thing that is nice about the Web 2.0 Awards is that its one way to sort through all of the resources available out there. It is on way I can keep up with the developing websites.

I was also able to find new websites for personal interest, such as Urban Spoon. Urban Spoon has reviews of top restaurants all over the US, I personally like how you can search not only by city but also by area.

I also noticed that a lot of the websites that we are working with were on the winning list. Go 23 Things!!!

Thing #18

Google Docs is really useful..... I am a Mac user, so before I had Microsoft Office I would use Google to open documents that could not be opened in Apple Works. The formatting is normally like the original document. Also, since I use Gmail, I don't have to go to a different website or application, I can just open attachments right there!

Thing #17

I love Rollyo! Confession, I'm an online shopaholic lol. :) With this website I can combine my fav websites as a personal search engine and organize them by category. This would be useful from the educational perspective in which I can find credible websites and organize them as search engines for my students.

Here is a link to my search engine for Designer clothes & accesories...