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.