Test

Please click the picture to access this worksheet.

Final thoughts

This class has been enlightening to say the least! I learned about sites that I never knew existed, helpful uses of sites I had thought should exist and got more comfortable with the web overall. This is a great class and one I would recommend to others. There are some things I will use for the classroom, but more I would like for my own entertainment and information.
I also enjoyed the format, where we could explore on our own, then read other students blogs to see what they found in their exploration. I found I learned more reading the blogs, then going back to see what they were talking about.
I did spend more time on each week than I thought I would, more than the hour and 15 minutes! I think it just takes me longer to process new stuff, and feel comfortable with it. Some weeks were more difficult than others to get my head around the info.
Thanks Barb!

E Books

When I checked out the 'original' Alice in Wonderland, I didn't realize I'd be reading what looks to be the ACTUAL original handwritten book. It's amazing see the authors handwritten words, turn the pages with your mouse and have the story read to you in a British accent.
I'd love to use this for school, but I couldn't find the couple of math books whose titles I could remember in any of the sites that have a read aloud feature. That's ok though, I will use it for my own reading pleasure, when I someday have pleasure reading time!

Mrs. Shadid's math fraction rap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMddnlWz-eA

Week 9: Youtube and Podcasts

I added a podcast series about teaching math with the smartboard to my Google Reader. The teachers who do the show have great tricks and tips.

On Youtube I found a fun fraction rap for keeping the rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing straight. I'm going to try to post it here now.

Ugh, that took a really long time because I didn't see the box to the right that said embed code. It looked like a link that would take me to teacher tube. I just didn't get it. I went to youtube help, which was slightly helpful, and blogger help, also slightly helpful. Then I went to another blog that had a youtube video in it and searched youtube for that video, saw the little box. Ahhhhh. Serves me right for waiting until the last day!!!

Mrs. Shadid's Math Fraction Rap, finally

Week 8, Zoho and Library thing

I am so excited about both of these 'things'!!!
My favorite thing about Library Thing is the recommendations option. The Beverly Public Library has, or used to have when I had more time to read, a binder in which you could look up books or authors and see recommendations based on those preferences. I used it all the time, but it is much easier to use the website!! Love it!
Zoho is wonderful! My friend and I were just discussing how it would be great to be able to create a document online so that we could access it and not have to worry about carrying (forgetting) a flash drive, or emailing it back and forth. She was referring to Googledocs before I knew we were going to be looking at this for this class. I'm going to try that one too.

Week 7

Rss feeds are a great tool, and I see lots of potential, but sadly, all I could subscribe to were weather sites, Beverly Citizen (thanks Collsy) and Salem News. I don't check several sites a day to see if there is anything new, but hopefully I'll become more informed by checking my new Google Reader. I'm a little confused though, because I did an 'add a subscription' search for weather in Beverly but when I click on that subscription it doesn't give me current Beverly Weather. I don't think I found what I wanted. I'll try again another time though!

Week 6, response to readings

I vacillate between the desire to grow with technology and the feeling that I should hang on to tradition. I want to keep up with technology and prepare my students, but I still believe that 'top down' education is necessary. It is what gives students the basis from which to create, produce, extend etc. I like the analogy that one of the authors used about the lecture hall and the hallway. The real learning happens when the students can discuss the concepts, work with them and make them their own. The web 2.0 world gives people a forum for collaboration, participation and creation but the traditional classroom setting, with teacher guiding and instructing, wading through the 'flood' of information and gathering the relevant into a smaller tidepool, gives students the opportunity to examine without being knocked down by the next wave of information.

Week 6; Technorati

I did a search on "number theory" to see if I could find any ideas on teaching concepts like prime, odd, divisor, relatively prime, etc...
I searched the "blogosphere" and found a blog about a site designed to find primes; cool.
I couldn't find a 'keyword' search in the Blog Directory, and none of the titles had anything to do with the concept I chose, so I didn't find anything on number theory there. Same with Popular Tags, although I did find Julian Smith's 25 things I hate about Facebook, which was very funny, so not all was lost.
articles later...

Wk. 6, Delicious

I'm in NC at my friend's house and her husband will freak if I download anything on his laptop, so I'm afraid to sign up for a Del.icio.us account, but I will when I get home for sure! When I explored the site, it was a little overwhelming, and I thought the popular bookmarks weren't very interesting. I don't quite get how it works but I'm hoping to use delicious to store and organize sites that I find helpful or interesting so that I can get to them whether at school or home.

Week 5, little late

Warm weather has arrived, and I'm finding it harder to do school work. Getting ready to go on vacation next week, so I should really be trying to get ahead, ha.
Putting an image on my blog from an image generator was easy, but I wanted it to be on the side of my blog, and it got cut off. I tried making it smaller, but that didn't help. It's there though!!
My mind is boggled by the Web 2.0 awards list. It is awesome that there are sites that organize everything on the web. I thought you had to use search engines like Google to find what you're looking for, but that can sometimes be frustrating and sort of needle-in-haystack like.
I hope to be using Rollyo, del.icio.us, backpack to be more organized in my teaching. Finding good websites for math, and saving them in one place = huge time saver.
I'll have to look at urbanspoon, because it has my name in it and last.fm because I love music, but usually not mainstream stuff. Last, and totally least, hairmixer, because that's just silly.
Ok, this was fun.

IMG_1238

IMG_1238
Originally uploaded by dinlaroche

This is a photo from Creative Commons of Flickr, uploaded by 'dinlaroche'. I can't figure out how to put it on the wiki photo page, so here it is.

Under The Weather !

Under The Weather !
Originally uploaded by Ragstatic

I love this picture; the layers and the way your eyes are drawn to the horizon make it so interesting. It looks more like a painting than a photograph.

Long Island3

Long Island3
Originally uploaded by bspoon7

Long Island Maine in the fall.
I took this picture of my niece a few years ago. I played with Picnik to change the color and crop the photo. There are some neat options on Picnik so I'm thinking about paying the fee so that I can do things like soften the focus of the background of some of my pictures. Right now I use Shutterfly to edit and order pictures, and there aren't a lot of options for advanced editing.
I thought it was fairly easy to use Flickr and the directions on how to upload an image into my blog were easy too. I used Flickr's blogging tool.
I had some Flickr photo fun.

I am having trouble uploading an image from the Creative Commons section of Flickr onto the Wiki page. I keep getting the message that I need to be signed in to upload photos. I can't remember if I made a password for that or not. I think I'm overwhelmed! Maybe it's because I'm trying to do this at 11:30 at night, and am just plain sleep deprived on a regular basis and my brain is like swiss cheese. I guess I'll just email Barb tomorrow....

Ideas for communication and commenting on others blogs

I have some ideas about how to communicate with my students and parents and I'm just wondering what people think. Another teacher I work with has an incredible web page with places to click to see grades, lessons she's created on her smartboard, homework she's assigned, projects, and tons and tons of links to helpful math websites and games on the web. I have two little boys and not enough skill to create something like this so I want to use something on a smaller scale, that I can manage easily and won't take too much time to figure out or use on a daily basis.
Facebook is one idea I had. I figured I could make a 'Mrs. Spoon' facebook page and post stuff on my wall. But I'm not sure I want access to students' facebook pages for a whole host of reasons. I'm talking about middle school kids, enough said. But it is easy to use.
Now that I looked at Wiki's, I have a vague idea of how I could use one for communication, or a blog, but I only want one thing to manage. Any ideas?

Also, I'm not sure exactly what to post on other people's blogs. What are we supposed to be commenting on? On Paula's blog, I couldn't figure out how to comment since it didn't have a box at the bottom of the page for comments.

Wiki's

I just figured out that I've known about Wiki's and have used them for the past year. I had no idea what a wiki was, but like others I had been directed to Wikipedia numerous times while searching one thing or another. Also, I took a math course last summer, which cost me nothing if I participated in 20 hours of online participation in an extension of the class. The way we got our assignments and were led to links was through a Wiki, and I knew it was called that but never made the connection until I saw the example Wiki's on the barb2.0 page. Now it has more meaning for me because I loved how the information was presented and how easy it was for me to maneuver around wherever we were supposed to go through that class. I'm definitely going to make one of my own and see if it'll work for me to post assignments, helpful links and classroom information to my students and parents/guardians.

setting up a blog and creating an avatar

Interesting.
It was really fun for my 4 year old to help me make my voki and dress her up. He told me what to type in for her to speak. He chose her glasses because they are sort of like mine.
I'm not sure how to use this new skill in my classroom, but hopefully that will become clear soon.