Web 2.0 Slideshow!

I found this and wanted to share it with whomever may still be reading these blogs!

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Final Thoughts

This has been quite a journey. I have learned so much throughout this experience. Now to answer the final questions:
I.
1. Favorite exercises: I loved creating this blog site. It really showed me how easy it is to use. I really want my kids to be able to blog this year! I also enjoyed learning about Flickr. What a great resource. I enjoyed learning about all of it ... but these are my favs.

2. I have always thought of myself as kind of a tech savvy person. I thought I really kept up with the "new" things happening. By taking this class I realized how much I did NOT know. I really need to make time to "play" with the new things that are continually popping up.

3. I didn't expect to like the google tools as much as I do.. especially my homepage. I thought.. well I will create it for this class. But I have actually checked it at least once a day. I love that it gives me ideas for cooking as well as keeps me up to date with what is going on in our world.

4. No ideas. I was impressed with how smooth the class went. Thanks for a great experience.

5. Yes. of course.

6. By actually playing with everything, it made me realize how easy these tools would be for my students to use. I will be bringing several of these tools to use either personally or for my class.

7. I really would like to have another course offered. I really plan on taking the time to play with things as they come available.

II. I plan on continuing to play and learn. I want to become more efficient with the tools and I want my students to be able to use these tools as well. I never thought about adding my URL to my sig. line. That is a great way to get others to get involved as well. I have subscribed to the Learning 2.0 site. I also plan on creating a class blog as well as continue my blog about things that I am learning.

Thing 23

I can not believe this is the LAST thing!!! WOW.. what a journey this has been!

Now, to answer this question: This is the quote that talks about Creative Commons.
"Learning 2.0 is a discovery learning program created by Helene Blowers and adapted by the California School Library Association and others. Content and style for Learning 2.0 - 23 Things has been borrowed and duplicated with permission, under a Creative Commons License."

I am glad they have a site that will help when using things from the internet. Sometime I get a little confused when dealing with what I can and can not use. I hope this will help me.

Thing 22

I am struggling with this "thing". I am not real sure I am into the whole podcast. I am still investigating but I am finding it hard to locate things I would use. There is not a good system for searching on the site. I have found the educational search site is probably going to be the best, especially if used by my kids. Some of the other sites had questionable titles.. Not sure about that. I have read some other blogs and I see some ideas of how they could be used educationally, like by the 2nd & 6th grade classes. That would be good. Maybe in math they could explain how to multiply 2 digit numbers. Then someone else could listen and follow the directions to see if they got the correct answer. I am brainstorming and I am not sure if these ideas would work or not. OK, I did not find anything I REALLY liked from the directories given....SO.... I "googled" free podcasts and I found a National Geographic site that has free podcasts for different topics. This I like and I can use. There is one on the history of San Antonio. I can see how this can be educational to my students. I have subscribed to the National Geographic podcasts site as well as the digital site. This will be useful in the future and I will want to know when they add new topics.

Thing 21

This is really cool... I love it! It is so simple to do. I just uploaded my pics and picked some music. I really want to know how to add my own music to this. Where do I go to get music that is ok to use in something like this??? They have made this very user friendly and I was able to publish my flick from the site to both blogger and to facebook. I can see so many ways of using this. It will be a great thing to add to our blog spot after we have completed a project. The parents will love this! My students can create their own video after taking pics. So many ideas! I can't wait!

Thing 20

I enjoy YouTube when I get a chance to sit down and view some of the things they have. I have not used it alot but I am learning. I have used it to show an excerpt from "The Tale of Two Brains" by Mark Gungor . I think you will like it as well.




I would like to be able to use video sites to show clips of relevant topics in class.I would also like to be able to post them to either our class blog or wiki. I would try to post things that would show them insight into what we are discussing at the moment or what they are going to be discussing. I would also like to post things that are just interesting or what I thought as funny. This could be a good tool to bond with them and allow them to see another side of me!



I posted a video on my wiki site as well.. check it out... Rivera's class wiki

Thing 19

I joined the Ning network MISD 23 THINGS at the beginning of this journey. I uploaded my avitar and today I uploaded some pictures. I have personalized MY PAGE. I also copied the countdown to my blog site on blogger. I love it. Everytime I log on it is there to remind me.


View my page on 23 Thingsters


I have looked at the other social networks. I think I might like the goodreads network. I love to read so this will be a perfect source of information for me.

Thing 18

I think it is important for educators to keep up with what is going on with our kids. These are things that they are doing. We need to be able to help protect them as well as guide them. A couple of years ago I started a My Space page. I had for a couple of months and then canceled. I did not have time to keep it updated. I also have a problem putting somethings out on the internet. Today I created a Facebook account. Most of my family and some friends are using facebook so I decided to try it. I found that with facebook you do not have all the creating of pages etc. It is very simple and not alot of work. That was the problem I was having with myspace. I did not have the time to update my pages. I am not sure what educational value this has. I am not sure that I would give this account to my students, especially if I have a blog or wiki. Visit my facebook site.

Thing 17

As I have said before, I took the intel course this summer. One of the first things they made us do was create a social bookmarking account. We had several to check out and I chose to create one in delicious. WOW!! I have had my account for 1 month... AND I love it! It makes sense and it is so easy to use. I can definitely see advantages to this personally. I think about all the times that I have written down different URLs that I have looked at and then been working on a different computer. I love that it does not matter what computer I am on.. all of bookmarks are right there. I can also choose to make them private or public. I like having the choice to share or not.
I think this will be a great resource for researching. I can mark sites and then they can see what sites I have. This would save time. I think it would also be good for each school library to have its own account. Sites can be marked for teachers and some for students. It can be for books, research, lessons, etc. I feel like this could really help us find educational resources online.

Thing 16

I had already set up my home page with google. Today I added some widgets to it that will help me, such as a to do list,gmail , my notebook and stickies. By adding these things to my page, I will continue to use it because I have made it useful. I also have already started my calendar through google. I enjoy the fact that it will email me my schedule in the morning. It will also email and text me(yes on my cell phone) reminders of events. I LOVE THIS! There is one thing that is bothersome..It is showing my primary email as my gmail account. I really want my reminders to come to my school address. Is there anyway to fix this?

I checked out the to do lists online. I signed up with Remember the milk. It works with the google tools like gmail and calendar. Your lists show up in gmail and it integrates your tasks with your calendar in google. I can see how this will be very useful for me personally.

Ok. I have signed up for My stickies but since I use Firefox and Safari, I have to use a plug in for it to work. It is more trouble I am thinking. The idea is awesome, being able to sticky a page from the web and it be there when you get back! I am going to continue checking for this so I can use it and I can show my kids how to use it. This will be a great thing when we are doing projects.

Thing 15

I went to the 23 things wiki site. It was pretty easy to use. I posted about my plans to use blogging in my classroom. I am not sure if I would use a wiki. Maybe if I wanted my kids to brainstorm some ideas for a topic in class. I could create the wiki and give them maybe 2-3 days to think it over and post some comments. This would get their thoughts headed in the direction of the next topic. Another idea I had was to have a homework wiki site. Where kids could go to ask questions for discuss their homework with each other. I am not sure how these would work but I would like to try to incorporate more student used technology into my curriculum.

I just created my own wiki page. I am still learning so it is very simplistic. I want to learn how to make it like the one we posted to. That might work even better for me because I have 2 classes that I teach. I am going to continue to play.

Thing 14

I used bubbl.us to create this mind map. It was not too difficult to use. I saw that you can collaborate as well. I need to play with it to see if you can export to google docs. It would be great to have a resource like this so you don't have to create it!


I created a flow chart using flowchart.com and I created one using gliffy.com. I am not sure if I like them or not. Maybe because I have been creating my own for so long, I am not use to having them premade for me. I am still playing with them so the "jury" is still out. I saw in gliffy that you should be able to bring it to you blog. I was not able to do this. Any suggestions?I didn't see anyway to bring the one from flowchart.com... Help there would be appreciated as well!

Thing 13- Zoho Writer

If I traveled a lot or used other computers other than my own, I could definitely see the benefits in using this. I have Office on my computers so I am not sure that this would be all that much better. I see that it is like google docs (it has the collaborators tool). That is definitely an advantage. I am not sure if it is any better than google docs. There are so many different websites that I am not really sure what the best site would be. It helped that I could establish my account with zoho through my google account. It looks like it has all of the features that my word processor has. It looks to be more a combination between an email (text editor) and a word processor. I think I could use this. I will play more with it, I want to see how the spreadsheets work. I am writing my blog in this document so that I can see how easy it would be to use this to post to a blog. I did it! I posted from Zoho to my blog. I really like that feature!

Thing 12

I took the intel course this summer so I was already using several of the google tools. I really like google docs. You can share a document and have several people working on one document at the same time but at different locations. It is so amazing. I have thought about using this for discussions in class. You can set your kids up in groups and have them work on documents that you set to share (kwl charts, thinking maps, etc.) I also played with the calendar. That is a pretty good thing also.. BUT I have so many calendars that I already use at the moment. You can have too much of a good thing. What I really like for personal use is the homepage- igoogle. It is great. I set it up so that I get new recipes daily as well as keep up with what is going on in sports and entertainment. I look forward to continuing adding gadgets and things to this page.

Thing 11

I found Blog lines search tool the easiest and most efficient way to find blogs. Feedster never loaded for me.Topix was good for giving you headlines and the sort. It was an easy way to find important news topics. I can really see the good in blogging with my students and their parents. But I am not as interested in blogging with others yet. Maybe because I have not really gotten into it or maybe it is because I have not found a blog site that interests me! I feel like I have so many other things that I need to be reading for school and for fun ( I love my novels!) that I don't really have so much time to sit and read blogs. I am trying though! Any thoughts out there or good blog site ideas???

Thing 10- RSS feeds

I set my rss feeds up using google reader. This was the easiest way because I already have a google account. It is one of many of the google tools! I love the fact that I will be able to subscribe to all of my students' blogs. This will let me know immediately who has blogged and completed the assignments. What a time saver that will be! I have already subscribed to information relating to the election and I know I will subscribe to the olympics as well. I have several blog sites also. This will keep me from having to open so many tabs while I am working on the computer.

Thing 9- image generator

This was fun to explore. We are using this as our theme for next year. I am thinking about putting this on my blog site. This is something that will add just a little more personal touches to things! I also created the animated firecracker that is posted in my blog's sidebar. That was a lot of fun. The ways you can use these are endless. This will make things more enjoyable and hopefully will make my students enjoy getting online to see what I have posted!




I used ImageChef to create my signs.

Thing 8- More Fun

Esperanza's 1st B-day Mosaic 2
Originally uploaded by RedRivera

This was my nieces 1st birthday party! It was a lot of fun to be with all of them today.



I think sharing photos online is fantastic. I am a little worried about sharing my photos publicly.. I don't like my family having to be a member in order to see them privately. I am going to have to play to see how to do this the best way. I can definitely see myself using this and I will use it to input photos into my school blog so that parents can see for themselves what we are doing.

First Day Swimming

Thing 7- Flickr

WOW~ I am loving Flickr. This is such a great resource to use when creating a blog site for parents. I will be using this site to show work done and things we are doing in class. I know I will have to get permission from parents but I think in return they will want to see what is going on in class. I have never used something like this online. I have been using iphoto for awhile but not anything like this. I am concerned with putting images of my family on the web.. although I do enjoy the fact that they allow me to choose who can view my pics.. Great tool. I can't wait to play with it some more!



This is one of my nephews. I take them swimming each year in my mom's pool. I take them at least once a week. They love it!


I know you are thinking.... this is one of the cutest kids I have seen!! I think so too! Another one of my nephews!

Thing 6

I have already used Skype. I love this tool as an instant messenger. If you have not tried this tool I would definitely recommend this.

For the new tool I chose to create a del.icio.us account. This was so easy to do. I chose to do this because I am constantly bookmarking a site on a computer, then needing it somewhere else. When bookmarking using del.icio.us you "tag" a site and it saves it in an internet based bookmarking site. You use it just like you would bookmarking through your web browser. The beauty of this is that you can log on to you account from any computer and find your bookmarks! Another great feature is that you can place your bookmark into a category. For example, I love to cook. I am always looking for and finding recipes and equipment on my computer. When I find something I like then I "tag" it and put it in my food category. Later when I go back to my account , instead of looking through all of my bookmarks I simply find the category of food and it will tell me all of my sites that are listed under food. Another great feature of this site is that it is a social bookmarking site. This means that I can log on to my account and search the entire del.icio.us site say under the food category. It will find all sites that have been labeled as "food" from all account holders who wish to share the site. So you not only have your sites but you have many, many more. The only dislike I have for this site is that it is blocked by MISD. This creates a little bit of a problem. You will have to get around the block. If you have not created a bookmarking account of some kind, I recommend that you do!

Thing 5- Web 2.0

I am thrilled to be involved in Web 2.0. To be a part of this changing environment. To actually see first hand how it is evolving our schools and classrooms. We have come from a READ ONLY web to a READ AND WRITE WEB. We have so many tools at the touch of keys. I know I am a digital immigrant, I am learning all of this later in my life. This is my "second" language of learning. I am awe struck by my students who are digital natives. I think I am going to have to go REALLY slow so they can all get it BUT I don't. They already know it.

To quote Web 2.0 A guide for Educators "Clearly, this generation—poised to shape the future—has already found Web 2.0 applications integral to daily life. And for education not to step up and maximize these resources for teaching, learning, and driving innovation is to risk becoming marginalized as a viable influence in helping to shape the 21st century." I think sometimes as teachers we hinder the possibilities of our students by standing "in the way". What else could they accomplish if we would just"get out of the way"! David Jakes says "The new tools and processes of Web 2.0, such as blogs, social bookmarking sites, podcasting and RSS, enable individual, continual, and highly customized experiences through the creation of a personal learning environment." These tools will take learning to whole new level. I believe that our kids will have take responsibility for their own learning. We, the teachers, will be there to guide and support them BUT it is on them to LEARN! Isn't that why we became teachers? To help these kids become lifelong learners. What better way to achieve this then for us to show them how to be successful in this century, how to learn from each other collaboratively, and to continue their learning when there is not a teacher there.

Thing 4

Commenting creates a community because it is a discussion between several people. It is like being involved in a book study. You come together to share your ideas and get feedback from others that you have formed a bond with. The more you get involved with others by commenting the more you are out there and allow people to see your ideas and also allow them to share their ideas and thoughts with you.

There were several ideas in the articles that I found important. From The Cool Cat Teacher Blog, I learned that if you are going to comment it needs to be meaningful and insightful. The author should be able to tell that you actually read and understood them that you "heard" them. I also learned that using a brand name (RedRivera) and avatars people start recognizing you and your comments. This allows you to form bonds with others and form a community. When commenting it is alright to disagree but do it nicely, it is a contribution to a "conversation".

Read and Giggle- I chose to comment on her site because I agree with alot of things that she says in her blogs.
mborden- I commented about blogging in the classroom. We agree that this would help our students take more ownership in their thoughts and in their learning.
ictbailey- I loved his son's youtube presentation. That is the kind of thing we need all of our kids to be shooting for!
gigiread- I commented on her site because I loved her animoto. I loved playing with this as well and can't wait to use it in my classroom.
ourclassjournal: I commented on this site because she really encouraged me throughout this process. I enjoyed reading what she wrote throughout this journet.

This is has been difficult for me. I am usually not the type of person to comment on blogs. I usually sit back and get the info I need and leave. It has been quite an experience to actually take part in the conversation that is going on. I commented on a site called Cookthink as well as a site on teaching writing.

Thing 3

I feel like I am really learning a whole new world here. I thought I was pretty tech savvy but I am learning how much I REALLY have to learn. One of the main reasons for taking this class was to MAKE me take time to play on the computer. I think so much of the time I use my computer and internet as I need it. I don't make time to really play on it to see how it can benefit me and my teaching.
I am currently a math and science teacher. I really wanted to be able to go back to school next year and be able to use blogging as my journaling. I think my kids would LOVE to type and be heard by everyone willing to read it. The one draw back would be that many of my kids do not have regular access to a computer. This causes a problem because I would have to use class time to make this work and I am already short on that. I know they would learn so much from each other and it would definitely be student centered learning. Would the time used to set up and establish the blog sites be worth it in the end? I have so many ideas in my head.. I am wondering if 4th graders would be able to handle being responsible for posting a blog on their site once a week or would it be better for them to post a comment on a blog site that I have created? How does this work with the school security on the internet? I will need to find this out.

Thing 2

Ok.. so I think I got a little ahead of myself. I have now added my avatar and created my blog site. This was a little more involved then what I originally thought. This has pushed me a little more than what I thought it was going to and we have only just begun. I am ready to continue. I am excited about learning more things over the next few weeks. I really want to able to use blogs in my classroom as well as learn more about podcasts. I think our kids can learn so much from technology if only we will lead them in that direction. So much of our world is technology, our kids need to be ready for that!

Thing 1

WOW! Well... I have learned a lot in just these two exercises. As a lifelong learner I use many of these habits. I would have to say that accepting responsibility for my learning is the easiest habit for me. As a teacher it is imperative that we take responsibility for learning so that we can pass that on to our students. The hardest habit for me is to create my own toolbox. I feel like my "tools" are more scattered then together in one place for me to get to and use efficiently.