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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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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Thing #17 of “23 Things”

Tagging and social bookmarking with Del.icio.us very similar to each

Once again I was surprised and impressed by the reach of these seemingly simple ideas such as social bookmarking. My initial thought was that social website bookmarking was useless or at less unnecessary. But I was wrong. This is a sharing club if you will. Remember Napster? The power of Napster and later LimeWire and other files sharing internet software was in the numbers… millions of people collaborating and sharing files (music, pictures, movies, programs etc) directly from computer to computer or “peer to peer”. Well, Delicious.com and Diigo.com are similar ideas but instead of sharing files you share your searched product, your invested time, the information that you have found, in the form of a website, as a result of your activity on the internet. And the power once again is in the numbers. Like Wikipedia, if someone is wrong about something, it doesn’t matter because a thousand other people most likely will be right and you are guaranteed to get the best product anyway.

I wish Google had something similar. I always prefer a well know company (a brand name product). For example, it turns out Furl doesn’t exist anymore… when you click on the Furl link (www.furl.net) you are immediately taken to www.Diigo.com. I suppose they change the name from Furl to Diigo. Also, Magnolia is accepting subscriptions only by invitation so I did not explore it. I did look at Delicious via the APSU account provided for exploration but I did not join in because I already had one created when I was hired as a teacher over a year ago. I tried to look at my old account but for some reason I was unable to sign in.

During my exploration of Delicious I realized how useful it can be for everyone and especially for teachers. It is like a search engine with limited but intentionally and properly selected sources. At the end I decided to join in www.Diigo.com because I this one not only allows you to bookmark websites but also let you save them either as a snapshot or completely. A service similar to Google’s cached websites, but instead you choose when to cache or save the site. Imagine not having to worry about links that don’t work anymore since the links to your saved sites are guaranteed to always work. Of course, if Diigo decides to shut down you will be in trouble. This is why I said before that I wish Google had something similar since Google is on the rise and will probably stay with us for many years to come. It would be better if Diigo allowed to choose to save the websites also in your own hard drive together with the internet or just let you save locally but share globally in a “Peer to Peer” fashion, like Napster or LimeWire. I think the browser; the IE or Google’s Crome or even the OS should include this functionality.

Years ago MS was experimenting with something similar. With Windows 98 you could easily customize your local folder to include background pictures, internet or local links etc to make your folders look and feel like a website. I think MS was thinking about blending in the internet with your computer at home and make the internet browsing and your computer “browsing” look the same. Somehow they did not continue in this direction. Either way, I think I will use Diigo a lot from now on. It installed in my computer as a toolbar. Eventually I will explore Delicious with my Mac where I initially installed it but right now I need to go to sleep.

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Thing #16 of “23 Things”

Get Organized with Web 2.0 Tools

iGoogle, PageFlakes, and Netvibes are very similar to each other. They all are very simple to set up and useful to keep organized. All of them allow you to customize several pages via tabs. PageFlakes and Netvibes have the tabs on top and iGoogle has them on the left side which makes it a bit less obvious at first but equally useful. I chose to stay with iGoogle for several reasons, some more important than others. iGoogle has a more attractive and innovative look, but more importantly, I was already using iGoogle because Google has combined many other services that I use all the time on this page, such as Gmail, Maps, internet search and more. This is how my iGoogle page looks like now:

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

I have already made this page my permanent page and I plan to customize it further.
In reference to the online Calendars I looked at Scrybe. Scrybe is not accepting subscriptions at the moment but I look at a video clip where Scrybe is explained. I could not take a look at “30 Boxes” because I would have to create an account and I didn’t want another account. Again, Scrybe seems very user friendly and useful, but once again I chose Google Calendar for reasons similar to the ones explained previously. I am not using Google Calendar but I may, because it is on the internet and therefore I will have access to it from anywhere. Right now I am using MS Outlook at home and my “smart phone” when not at home, but I don’t like that I have to synchronize them all the time manually. I wish my cell phone would connect to my computer automatically via my wireless network when I am at home without my having to actually connect it to my Vista desktop computer, open Outlook and manually synchronize the calendar. The only problem with Google Calendar is that I don’t know if I can synchronize my calendar with my cell phone. If I do, I will definitely prefer Google over Outlook.
“Ta da list” or “Remember the Milk” are online To Do lists which require you to create an account. Honestly I don’t need this, simply because the things that I have to do are always clear in time. Without a To Do list I never forget to do anything. Very rarely I forget something that I have to do. Jott don’t appear to be an online To Do list. Perhaps their new owner got rid of that. To Do lists seem to be too much work for me and I don’t have the need for one.
I would recommend the Google online Calendar since it is online and it is for free. I am considering using it myself. I will also recommend iGoogle.
I decided not to do the Challenge part this time.

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Thing #15 of “23 Things”

What in the world is a Wiki?

I really liked Wikis. It is amazing how a simple idea can became something huge, like Wikipedia. I can see a lot of potential for Wikis now and in the future… too bad I didn’t see this years ago… I would be rich by now. But the hard thing is to see the reach of an idea before everyone else, not after…
Anyway, teachers can really use these "wikis" in their classroom (an obvious statement), especially history teachers, English teachers, social sciences teachers etc. I don’t think math teachers can use wikis now so much. The reason is because it seems there are no wikis where you can write formulas; equations etc (correct me if I am wrong). In other words, there are not public wikis with symbolic editing.
I would love to see a wiki created by one of the leading companies producing mathematical tools today, such as MathWorks which produces MATLAB and Simulink, or PTC, previously own by MathSoft, the creator of MathCad or Wolfram Research with Mathematica, or MapleSoft with Maple, or even Texas Instruments with their new TI nspire calculators (CAS and regular) with symbolic capabilities.
My wife and I own Maple and MathCad 14 and I have worked in the past with all of these software packages capable of doing much more than just calculations. They are programming/simulation suites designed for engineering and science at the highest levels.
It surprises me that these companies don’t have a Wiki friendly software package yet because it seems to me it is a great way to acquire users at early ages which is very important because these programs are not simple to use.
MathCad 14 (and also Maple) have a symbolic editor page which looks just like this page but wider, technically it can continue as far a you would go to the right (obviously there is a limit to this). On this “superpage” you can write whatever you want and anywhere you want… text, formulas, pictures, freehand writing (with an electronic pen or the mouse), graphs etc. This page automatically recognizes any math language an automatically calculates anything that could be calculated and if you need anything you just right click and ask for it to get the answer. Of course, you must know mathematics but it makes your life a lot easier.
Here is how MathCad looks in my computer.

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

Imagine if you had a Wiki looking like this where you could leave not only text comments but also math comments. Imagine if there was a place on the internet where you could create a Wiki for your students where you could speak the language of math.
I visited the suggested examples wikis but none was about math. The WikiEducator link by the way takes you to http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/ just like “10 reasons why your next pathfinder should be a wiki “.
I also “explored” the APSU sandbox and it didn’t seem very user friendly. I created a new page named Ridelto and pasted and played with some text and then uploaded a picture file which did not go directly to my post as you would expect. Of course I didn’t spend much time on it but still…
Finally, I created my own Wiki located at: http://www.ridelto.wikispaces.comi/
I thought it would be a good idea to use a Wiki as a way for my readers (Do I have any?) to help me correct my grammatical and orthographical mistakes… Perhaps my professor will do that hehe. I even added a link to every one of my posts (which are repeated verbatim in my Wiki) to facilitate this “human spell checker”. Anyway, here is the introduction to my Wiki:
This Wiki contains all my answers (blogs) to an exercise for an Austin Peay State University class (EDUC 5540-81). The exercise is about the new trends and technologies used on the internet (Web 2.0); and it is divided into 23 parts or assignments named “Things”. The name of the exercise is “23 Things” and each “Thing” or assignment posted by Dr. Anne Wall can be found at:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23

This Wiki itself is one of the assignments: Thing # 15 - What in the World is a Wiki?
The idea is to collaborate on this Wiki to correct grammatical and orthographical mistakes that I may have made since English is not my first language. I will appreciate any help from anyone.


Thank you. Ridelto


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