Tena+Nelson

Hi, my name is Tina Nelson... //um, yeah. You think Jason would be able to spell my name by now... Hi, my name is Tena Nelson!//

WEB 2.0 CONNECTIONS:
// 1. Below is an example of Glogster. The projects you can create look like online, interactive posters. This tool could be used a million ways, but I used it here as an extended booktalk. My students are obsessed with the book __The Hunger Games__ by Suzanne Collins. I created this blog to give them more information about the book and the author. I also wanted them to think of some issues pertaining to the book. Glogs are great for independent research projects in my GOAL classes. They're better than a poster because they're interactive. I think Glogs can also help students who have a tendency to write way too much on PowerPoint presentations. I like the tool because it will let you include links to click, it will let you embed video, it has the option to include music, and it magnifies the pictures you include when you click & hold on them. I let the kids experiment a little with it at the end of this school year when I heard about Glogster for the first time (thank you, Tricia!), but I really didn't know anything about it myself. Now I feel like I know a little more. // I did see a recent Twitter post (thank you, Tina!) saying that regular Glogster is inappropriate for classroom use. I don't know the facts behind that tweet, and I'd like to know more. I don't mind the educational version of Glogster, but it's a time-consuming pain for secondary teachers to have to enter in everyone's e-mail addresses. It would be nice if Glogster made an easier way to do this. media type="custom" key="6402395" width="42" height="6"

2. Below are examples from www.pixton.com. This is an online tool to create comics.This tool was easy to use, but I could see spending ages on a project if I let myself get that absorbed in it. My first example is an introduction to my 8th grade field trip to the Des Moines Art Center that sets up my expectations for behavior and assignments... definitely technocentric, but it allowed me to play with the program and figure it out. I'd love to use this tool for book projects. Comics are short and to the point. They can be used like the GIST literacy strategy in forcing students to make their point in a certain amount of space. Plus, comics allow for artistic creativity. I like this site because it can be complex or simple, depending on the needs of the teacher & student. The first comic I did completely from scratch which was really time consuming. The second comic I used the templates provided and just filled in a character choice and dialogue... much quicker.

media type="custom" key="6404121" media type="custom" key="6405609" width="80" height="80" 3. The following is an example from www.magmypic.com. I found this website on Shannon Miller's Web 2.0 page. You enter a picture into a template for a magazine or comic book cover. This was quick and really easy to use. There are several magazine & comic book covers to choose from. I think it would be a fun, quick activity for character analysis in literature. Students could take their main characters and decide which cover best fits them and why. It could be a fast & easy formative assessment. 4. The next Web 2.0 examples are from photopeach. Photopeach is a tool that generates slideshow movies from pictures you upload. I really loved how I could instantly upload an album from my Facebook account. For school, I would probably have all my pics on a flash drive or on the computer, but the Facebook aspect just adds another positive dimension. I love how I could label each picture, and there were a lot of different background music choices that were fun too. I think slideshows like this are great reflective tools, whether for a field trip, a novel, a unit... whatever! I also like how people can leave comments right on the movie. This would be great for a class to evaluate each other! I'm also a big fan of animoto, but this site lets you put up to 30 pictures, and it's easier both to write captions and to embed. I'm a photopeach fan! media type="custom" key="6411721" I couldn't resist using photopeach to document my vacation... it's like a scrapbook that you can embed. Fun! media type="custom" key="6461749"

5. Flipbook! This site lets you make your own animated flip book. It's pretty easy to use, but like all stop-motion animation, it takes time. You can see the example I did below, and I probably spent a good 20-30 minutes on just this basic animation. I think I'd like to use this site as an introductory exploration to my 7th grade unit on stop-motion animation. It would allow the students to explore with how to make movements small and smooth. That's one of the hardest concepts to get through to them, and seeing it and experimenting with it online before they start their big projects might help with that. I was also thinking that it would be good to use this site during my 6th grade Models & Design unit. The students could make animations to show their understanding of Newton's Laws of Motion. media type="custom" key="6479965"

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING NETWORK (PLN):
1. Skype: Skype is a tool I've personally used for about a year now. It connects me to my friends and family all over the world. I had never really considered it a professional tool until this class. One thing I've always loved about skype is the ability to view what is happening on the other end. A phone call with a toddler can be pretty uneventful, but Skype has allowed me to see my best friend's babies and communicate with them in a way that the phone would never allow. This same aspect would be great for school too. My class could Skype with someone who could actually //show// them something and not just tell about it. I was just thinking that something as powerful as communicating with a Holocaust survivor could be even more gripping when seeing that person talk about their experiences, being able to view the emotion as well as hear it. I'm also excited to be able to connect with fellow teachers in my PLN through Skype. The listserv for Gifted Education in Iowa is very active, but I'd love to be able to connect with these same teachers face to face or in a conference call. Even within this district, I'm excited to collaborate with other teachers. There's just something about being able to see a person while you're talking... it takes away the ambiguous nature of e-mail that can sometimes be misread.

2. Twitter: Twitter is another example of a tool that I've used for awhile for personal, social communication. I had tweeted about 1000 times before this class. I had never considered the professional opportunities in Twitter before. Now, I'm looking at Twitter in a whole new way. I'm still trying to balance the professional side with the personal side in Twitter. I think hash tags help a lot, but it's not perfect. I am adamantly opposed to having to create different accounts for personal and professional use. Having to keep a million windows open on my computer for everything is not appealing to me at all. But already, I'm seeing some problems with having everything on one account. I always filter what I say on Twitter (some people probably don't think I filter enough), so it's not the content I'm worried about. I just think my professional world will get pretty sick of the tweets I make to my personal world. Not everyone is up for daily reminders on the Hawkeyes, Julie Andrews, and what my boyfriend and I had for dinner! I'm still pondering how to make it all work in a way that's easy and convenient for me.

3. Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a lifesaver! Now, I can organize all my tweets in one place. I have separate streams set up for our district (see below), gifted education, educational technology, and books/literacy. Now, if I'm looking for a certain topic, I can scan through the tweets much more easily. If I have time, I can still scroll through everything. After all, I need to see what Rob Lowe & the Dalai Lama are up to every once in awhile... who doesn't? ;) But Hootsuite lets me get to what I need quickly. I think it has great implications for my PLN because now I won't miss anything important because I didn't have time to scroll through the tweets of every single person I'm following (191 at present). Another great feature is that there is a specific column just for "mentions." Before I had Hootsuite (or Tweetdeck... I use that too... I'm still trying to figure out if one is better than the other, or if I should just keep on using them both), I missed some of the tweets that were specifically directed at me without being direct messaged. I'll never miss them again.

4. Blogging: I have 2 blogs going right now, a [|personal blog] and a [|school blog]. I like that it's a way to publish writing with opportunity for feedback. In my school blog, I've tried to incorporate information for parents & colleagues as well as having information for my students. This may be biting off a little more than one blog can chew, but I'm still experimenting. I also struggle with how to get people to know about my blog. Maybe when I update, I can post the update on Twitter. I have some friends that do that already. It's hard because I don't blog every day. I think it might be cool to get my students set up with Google Reader next year, so they can have updates come right to them. Then, they wouldn't have to check my blog every day to see if I've updated or not. I'm also toying with the idea of a class blog where kids could post writing, commentary, polls, etc. They could show their projects there too. On one of the Van Meter blogs shown during class, I saw a map feature where you could track hits to your blog. I added that to my personal blog, and it's amazing. I've had hits from Canada, England, and Ireland. I have no idea how these people found me, but it's awesome! As far as my PLN goes, I follow several educational blogs. I incorporated those into my Google Reader account so I can follow the updates easily without having to go into each one. Now it feels like I have a world of colleagues right in my back pocket!

IOWA CORE CURRICULUM INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN:
Click [|here] to see my group's lesson plan. Scroll down on that page to see my reflections.

REFLECTIONS:
I tried to reflect several times during and after class. You can see my reflections throughout this wiki and on Twitter, but some examples are below.