All APSU 23 Things assignments

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Thing #24 of “23 Things”

Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

This is the most unexpected thing of all... Really, I did not expect thing 24 at all…

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I am back. The most important thing that I discovered working on this assignment is that there is more information out there that I can handle… and it is getting worse… or better, depending on how you look at it. I had a lot of fun doing this exercise and it gave me many ideas. I also think that my written English got much better... I never studied English before; I learned it by trial and error, by talking to my friends and my kids, with the help of MS Word and the internet!. My only hope is that I will find the time to continue to explore and use these ideas.

Let me answer each question separately:

  • What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

My favorite exercise was creating “plug and play”, ready to go, easy to use and make websites which could potentially became useful tools when teaching my students. My favorite discovery was the wikis. I did know about how Wikipedia worked but never had the opportunity to make or work with a wiki. I see a lot of potentially good applications for wikis in the classroom.

  • How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?

It revived my interest in the internet and the things that I can do and learn from it.

  • Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

Yes, thing 24 was much unexpected!

  • What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Just concentrate on the 23 Things instead of the many other assignments going parallel to this one. At least minimize the amount of assignments additional to the 23 Things and work more with the 23 Things. Let’s face it, many of us were teachers with a very limited amount of time. For example, there is no need (in my opinion) to write another paper with 1500 words or more. We did it in Assessment, in Models of Teaching and not to mention in Dr. Buttery’s class. There is no need to do anymore… really.

  • How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher?

I want to use the same idea in the future with my students (2300 Things). But I would have to modify it greatly because I teach freshman in HS. By doing one thing at a time you end up doing a lot and not even realizing it, and that is important because it is easy to became discouraged when you see that you have to do a lot of stuff. APSU 23 Things presents one thing at a time and this way it is less intimidating.

  • How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.

In the thing about lifelong learners I said that I was bad planning. Let me say it this way: I plan to continue with the spirit that Dr. Wall has motivated in us… that is my plan… Not much of a plan I know, but a plan nevertheless.

Seriously, I decided to write the story of my life and post it on the internet. Hopefully, someone will read it and pay me millions to write a book… Ok, at least as a legacy for my family and since my family it is all over the world (Spain, Cuba, Miami, Bolivia etc) , the best way to reach all of them with pictures and text is with the internet. My old friends are even more spread out and they, being part of my life, could help me write it, if I use a wiki and a blog site.

Finally, thank you Dr. Wall for always having a smile for us (and an email answer for me!) and make this class instructive but yet fun. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this before I get my final grade since I could have to change my opinion… just kidding! No, really, people could think that I am saying this only to soften you up ah… Oh well, I am too old to worry about that. I really enjoy having you as a teacher… you inspire me!

Ridelto

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Thing #23 of “23 Things”

Creative Commons

I suppose the credits at the end of Learning 2.0 – 23 Things for teachers is evidence of this.

Credits

Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers is based on Learning 2.0 - 23 Things, a staff development program for the Mesquite Independent School District. That program was based on the Learning 2.0 program that was designed by Helene Blowers and adapted by the California School Library Association and others. Content and style for Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers has been borrowed and duplicated with permission, under a Creative Commons License.

How am I going to use this knowledge? Umm… Let me see. First of all, I will teach my students to give credit when required by law and to do this in a clear and correct way. Second and last, I will keep this in mind all the time and will always credit those who deserve the credit, not only because it is the law, but also because it is the right thing to do. I really don’t know what else to say here other than… FINALLY DONE! Yeahhhh!

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Thing #22 of “23 Things”

Podcasts: No iPod Needed!

Ok, now I get it, a podcast is any audio or video content delivered over the internet in a program or episode fashion. It is like radio or TV over the internet and not in real time. It is just an mp3 file. It turns out I’ve been subscribed to podcasts for a while now unknowingly. I watch House and Dexter over the internet. When a new episode becomes available a “new episode” flag shows on top of the picture of Dexter or House and I can watch it anytime I want and as many times as I want because I own the episode. Amazon’s shows and movies podcasting are not free and therefore they are not just MP3 files that I can move from media to media, but the idea is the same.

So obviously podcasting, like everything else, is evolving. When I searched the internet for podcasts of interest I immediately found several. Interestingly I could not find a way to add the RSS to my website… they do it differently, they add the RSS to your browser‘s taskbar and automatically download the mp3 directly to your computer so that you could listen to the podcast, in this case an audio recording of an interview, offline.

I decided not to subscribe to this podcast because once subscribed, the website would download to my computer not only the interview that I was interested in, but also all the previous podcasts or episodes.

Here is the podcast I was interested in: Twenty-two minute podcast Interview with V.S. Ramachandran, Professor and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition in La Jolla, California. You can click on this link or go to Educause Website to see (or listen) all their podcasts.

Learn Out Loud requires a paid subscription of $12 and up and it is more like a website where you can buy audio books or listen to those included in the subscription without paying an additional fee. The other three are actually podcast searching/holding tools. I liked Podcast alley better. I did a search there and found another podcast that I am interested in and perhaps other students and teachers may also be interested in. It is called Teachers Teaching Teachers or TTT. I subscribed to this one and added the RSS to the end of my blog page.

I don’t plan to make any podcast for now for my students but I definitely would like to eventually create some explaining math concepts, to use as a teaching aid or when I am absent. Ideally I would like to make my own collection of mp3/mp4 podcasts or audio/video clips or tutorials created by me or by others. Only time will tell.

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Thing #21 of “23 Things”

Animoto

I always wondered what tool people used to create the video clips found in you tube with music, transitions and text right on the pictures and videos. I guess Animoto is one of these tools. I wish they would give you more choices for you to customize and of course, for free. Animoto is a good idea but I suspect there are better and free web applications on the internet that allow you to do more than Animoto. Please correct me if I am wrong, or tell me if you know of any other tool.

I chose to use pictures of my dogs taken recently by my daughter. Since just uploading 10 pictures to make this Animoto composite clip seemed too simple, I decided to give the pictures some effects to see if the final product had some sort of originality!

The good thing about Animoto is that you don’t have to do anything, it does everything for you. This is also a bad thing. It would be great if you could switch to manual mode and combine or create effects on your own.

Apparently Windows Movie Maker let you create similar video/picture compositions. I have not done my podcast yet but I suspect that the MAC application that I am going to use for my podcast also let you create such video compositions since I have heard very good things about it.

Although this is not a very fun thing to do (since you don’t do anything really!), it is always fun to learn something new, something that may come in handy when customizing my family pictures' website. Besides, I am glad that it didn’t take me hours to finish this “Thing”.





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Thing #20 of “23 Things”

Tou, Too, Can YouTube

This was supposed to be an easy “Thing”, and it was, but it took forever. As soon as I began to look for videos worth posting here… guess what happened? Too many videos are worth posting. So I decided to look for one relevant to teachers, something different, when I came across the No Child Left Behind debate. Interesting stuff… The divide is obvious and it seems to me that more and more people don’t like the original law. But it is a law, who cares if you like it or not? Well, apparently it is up for reauthorization. The President is definitely looking into the law to at least adjust it and hopefully make it better. Since I saw so many opinions, many of which I couldn’t fully fallow, I chose to go with our President’s opinion about the role of the federal government in enforcing this law: Barack Obama on No Child Left Behind

As I have mentioned before in my blogs, I use YouTube all the time, for songs, recipies, expert advice, you name it. I like that YouTube is open to anyone, experts and novices, and we, the public, are the ones who decide who is the expert and who is not. I like that the product goes straight from the creator to the consumer, without a middle man to become rich. So many new people creating can only generate the best. Here is, in my opinion, an example of a young couple with a brilliant future thanks to YouTube (and their art of course!): Pomplamoose Music

Something that I would find useful to have in my library website is ratings, comments and the counters (a visual display of how many people access the video). I would change the way YouTube reports the number of hits; I would divide the hits by category. For example, how many people watch the whole video, how many people watch halve of it, one quarter etc. This would give a better idea about the quality of the video. Some people start the video with some sort of hook, a false or deceiving start, and then they change to something completely different. A “Category Counter” will prevent such videos to succeed in their deceiving efforts.

About Taylor’s Mali video: Powerful thing! I would show it to my students if it wasn’t for the “middle finger” and one more word. I watched all the videos I could find from him. Another one I liked was: Totally like whatever, you know?

I agree with Dr. Wall that there is a lot of unwelcomed stuff, a lot of trash in YouTube. This site is definitely NOT for kids. Unfortunately many parents don’t realize this.

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Thing #19 of “23 Things”

Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

First of all, I loved TeacherPop network. This place is not just another educational website created for teachers, but it is a “local” one. It is great to have a place where you can keep in touch with your classmates and talk about topics related to the teaching profession with teachers from here. I think this alone is already ideal.

Of the social networks listed here I liked Open Source Food because of the beautiful pictures accompanying the recopies. I still prefer YouTube for recipies though. For example, I search for “Puerco asado” in Open Source Food and found two recipes, while YouTube returned too many to count and these were actual footage of people cooking the “Puerco asado”.

What I found interesting that I may use later is TeacherPop itself. Not only to get ideas from other teachers but also to communicate with my classmates after the class is over, and to comunicate with colleagues. Hopefully they are also planning to come back to TeacherPop after this class is over.

I was aware of social networks because I’ve been a member of “Secretos de Cuba”. This is an online community of the Cuban exile. I’ve been posting on this site for a couple of years (in Spanish). Please don’t try to translate their posts with an online translation tool… what you get is a horrible version of what is actually written there.

I decided to translate a song by Wylli Chirino, a Cuban singer in Miami, which defines the Cuban community in the US and especially in this Cuban network. I could not find a translation on the internet and even the lyrics that I found in Spanish were incorrect to some degree.

Wylli Chirino – Ya viene llegando (It is coming)

When I was just a kid back in the Antilla

My father dressed me as a sailor

I had to navigate 90 miles

And start my life as a foreigner

Fleeing the sickle and the green olive

Running away from this absurd ideology

Because I never wanted to be an appetizer

Of hatred, resentment and apathy

In the case I brought a hummingbird

Martí‘s book, a dream and a Danzón

Beny Moré came as stowaway

Next to The Matamoros and Cumin

I also brought a palm tree and a hut

And even “Pinar Del Río” I relocated

To my humble place of accommodation

Around the Twelve Avenue of the Southwest

Eh, eh….

Thus began the hard reality, Oh God!

Of anyone who throws himself into the “maroma”

To survive outside their own language

Their customs and identity

And what needed to happen, happened

From my new city I took its coat

Because resignation is a loyal friend

Of man when has to migrate

And despite the distance and the attack

Of a rigid almanac, I live with the luck

To feel Cuban to the death

And to be a lover of liberty

Now that my people lives hopeful

I feel inspired and I’m singing a Son

Announcing to all my brothers

Our day is already coming

Oh, oh

It is coming

Oh, oh

It is coming

And everyone is waiting

It is coming

Ay, beautiful and exquisite Cuba

It is coming

Because we are people who go singing

It is coming

I want to see my flag flying, Cuba is waiting for us

I will sing my song from my heart

It is coming

In the gazebo in “Consolación's Park”

It is coming

Every day I love you more my beautiful Cuba… I love you more

It is coming

From San Antonio to Maicí, for Maceo and for Martí

Ya viene llegando

Nicaragua
FREE!
Colombia
FREE!
Hungary
FREE!
Czechoslovakia
FREE!
Romania
FREE!
East Germany
FREE!
CUBA
FREE!

It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming
It is coming

When I was just a kid back in the Antilla

[Cuba is the biggest island of the group called the Antillas and located in the Caribean Sea]

Fleeing the sickle and the green olive

[The communist flag hammer and sickle and the green olive is Castro’s uniform]

Martí’s book, a dream and a Danzón

[José Martí was a Cuban poet and patriot. A Danzón is type of Cuban music or rhythm]

Next to The Matamoros and Cumin

[Cuban musicians]

I also brought a palm tree and a hut

[The Palm Tree is in the official Cuban shield. Cuban country-people live in huts made out of palm trees]

And even “Pinar Del Río” I relocated

[Pinar del Río is one of the old six Cuban provinces where Wylli Chirino is from]

Comment to Dr. Wall post on TeacherPop:

Absolutely yes! The problem is that I cannot play anything from YouTube in my school. There must be a way around this and I think I have the solution. I will embed the YouTube videos that I want to watch in my Windows Live site. I am not sure this will work but it may, so I will check it out. If you know of any solution to this problem please let me know. As I explained in my 23 Things blogs I have been using YouTube to learn stuff for a while now and I have found very good videos about Algebra that I would like my students to watch. Right now I am using videos from http://www.learner.org/index.html. This website has tons of good educational videos, but it is limited to the website creators’ vision. I think YouTube is better because anyone can post on it; but a section just for educators would be even better.

I noticed that your link was not a YouTube link but a tinyurl.com link. Is this a useful thing? This website says that the url created this way will never brake. Is this true? If it is true – how do they do it?

Ridelto

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Thing #18 of “23 Things”

Explore Social Networking

I don’t have a lot to say about this thing. It turns out I already had a MySpace account. I created a new one anyway using the same email address that I use for most of the Things in this class: Ridelto@hotmail.com. My MySpace url or web address is www.myspace.com/ridelto. It doesn’t make much sense to create a new website when I already have the www.ridelto.blogspot.com website as well as the Wiki site, the igoogle page, the MS live pages etc. Also, I don’t really like the way MySpace sites look like and other things. I don’t like the layout system they have and I certainly really don’t like that several wannabe musicians use the MySpace customization feature to sell their product. I am not sure about which one of these sites had most useful features. They are both similar. Perhaps MySpace is more appealing. From my point of view they are just like the rest of the websites explored previously in these 23 Things. The main difference is that you can talk to people and socialize while you are on your site. This is not new, but I think is the main reason why MySpace is so popular. I remember loving ICQ before America Online took over to destroy the essence of it and make it into a money machine (I never used it again so I really don’t know if they corrected this). This combined with the possibility to listen to music while you are working on your space and texting or talking via webcam makes the difference. I personally don’t do any of those things but I can see how it can be used in the classroom, for example to have and meet a distant class friend, say in a different country, with which regularly a conversation is established during a lesson to collaborate and share ideas.

I searched for friends but the only one that I decided to add was my younger daughter Alberta. I know that my other two daughters had a MySpace site for years but apparently their accounts are private so I didn’t find them.

Educator should know how social networking works because they could use it in their classroom as I explained above to get their students to collaborate with other students around the globe in real time. Another reason is because most students, at least in HS, are using MySpace and FaceBook to socialize and communicate with each other, therefore, we should be informed about these tools.

Unfortunately, there are issues discouraging teachers from having their own MySpace account to interact with their students. Some people believe that adding your students as your “friends” is not right, especially because this teacher-students interaction will happen outside the school environment which is not seen proper by many. The word “friend” when referring to your students doesn’t seem right. I, personally, don’t plan in using this MySpace site, as I did with the previous one I had, which I made before I became a teacher.

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