Joanne Wicks Web 2.0 BLOG Another excellent Edublogs.org weblog

My overall experience of this class is that it is awesome.  I enjoyed everything I learned and explored.  The only challenge I encountered was creating the last voice thread.  I have no idea what I was doing wrong after I tried setting the sound preferences and repeatedly trying to create my voice threads to no avail, I just booted up my old computer and finally finished Thing 23.  I made it!!!!!  My next step is to start integrating some of these tools I explored into my curriculum.  I will also encourage all my colleagues that will listen to me to take this class.

The classroom 2.0 exploration was fun, the forums, groups were very informative.  I enjoyed reading the forum on administrators using web 2.0 tools.  In the groups category I found the teachers use of podcast as a teaching tool very interesting.  I found a vodpod of basic use of Audacity as a widget very useful.  The videos section of the site I saw some familiar videos used in this class.  I explored the topics of technology and vocational on the educational Ning network site.  I believe that social networking is the new wave of today’s classroom future.  It most certainly brings the teacher instruction into a whole new dimension where digital students of today could relate.  Both these sites are unbelievable resources.

Link to my Pageflakes page.  My Pageflakes page is a work in progress.  It took me a while to figure out how to make my page a public Pagecast.  The only time I see the K12 Learning Pageflake is when I log in.  I would use a Pageflakes page to organize all my classroom instructional website links, YouTube videos and RSS feeds.  Its a great way to centrally store all your classroom resources.

My podcast was how to create a podcast using GarageBand.  I decided it was time to figure out how to use GarageBand.  Some of the students at Shawsheen Tech have used GarageBand for video voice overs, but they never explained the process to me.  This was definitely a learning curve for me, but a very useful tool.  After I shared my audio file with iTunes, I converted the mp4 file to a mp3 file using Zamzar this was very easy to do, I always use Zamzar to download YouTube videos.  I used Audacity many years ago in a media class I took to create an audio file that was integrated into my final presentation.  Audacity was also very easy to use.  Both these audio tools will come in handy when students need to create voice overs or podcasts for school videos or class projects.

An interesting article I found in my Google reader was an article from my District Administration RSS feed.  The article is about Governor Duval Patrick who wants to put more students in charter schools.

I have used Google groups before in a class I took last summer.  It was very easy to create a group and collaborate on a presentation with others.  It was very easy to create my Google document.  I created a Google form.  I think being able to share a document, spreadsheet, pesentation with others and being able to collaborate on projects is awesome.  I can think of many uses of the Google tools for future classes I will teach.

I have used Zamzar and have taught a few teachers how to successfully capture a YouTube video using the  converter Zamzar, here is a link to an instructional video I created using Jing.  I have explored YouTube videos for some classes I have taken and have uploaded some videos that I created for classes.  I have explored TeacherTube and feel its an awesome website to share videos and lesson plans with colleagues.  I thought I would share a video presentation I created for my foundations of educational administration class (I had less than 24 hours to create this presentation).  I know I forgot to cite the music and I’m not sure I cited the images correctly, but you will notice one image from the Creative Commons website.

The Grazr widget was easy to use and navigate.  A podcast can consist of an audio, video or a slide show.  I viewed some of the podcasts in Grazr and was amazed at how many educational podcast options I had to choose from I explored the technology podcast directories.  I went on the iTunes podcast and added Buzz Out Loud podcast to my Google RSS reader and also subscribed to it in iTunes.  Buzz Out Loud features Tom Merritt, producer Jason Howell, and a rotating roundtable of CNET’s top tech experts reviewing the day’s tech news. Each episode, five times a week, the crew analyzes, interprets, and argues about what all this technology means and what it’s doing to us.

The Library Thing website is an awesome tool if you are an avid reader.  I liked the Local tab where you could see upcoming events in book stores in your area.  I could imagine using the Library Thing in a classroom to keep a book inventory.

The social bookmarking site delicious was very easy to use and navigate.  I see how tags make all the difference in bookmarking websites.  I was able to add some sites to my delicious account, create a subscription using technology as a tag and added a few shared sites using the k12learning20 tag which was linked to a RSS feed to our sandbox wiki.  I see where the delicious social bookmarking website could come in handy for particular classes where students needed access to many websites or where you could share all of your bookmarks with your colleagues.  I can also see where students could add valuable websites to a delicious tag list for a classroom.