Thing 23 - The "END" to the journey

The biggest thing this journey has taught me is that all people can learn to use the web products. Many of them are very user friendly and there are tons of sites and videos to teach you to do anything. My biggest concern was that not all students have access to the internet so it would be difficult to make the new technology a requirement. Also the amount of time it takes to implement and run these technology endevors is a concern. I still have these concerns. For instance right now we use edline to communicate announcements with parents about classes, and only about 50% of parents are connected to edline, and I find myself posting less often. However, if a parent has an e-mail address I find myself able to communicate more regularly with a parent if necessary.

I can see that this movement will really begin to take off in the future when access becomes more available. For instance, my cousins go to a middle school that has a program which requires you to have and use a laptop regularly. I think this may soon be how all schools operate. Instead of making copies the students may download the document to their computer complete the work and submit it online. Blackberry's are making access to the internet a 24/7 activity.

In the meantime I believe this technology should be used among the teachers, administators, etc. because once you get the staff on board the technologies will slowly start to integrate themselves into the learning environment. I think the wiki will be a good place for me to start. This is a place I can collect my lessons and assignments which can be edited and added to by my collegues. I think that the wiki would also be a great thing for group projects and might be something I decide to do in the near future. The good thing is that the possibilities are endless.

Thing 22 - wikispaces

My Wiki is http://mathteamsters.wikispaces.com/ I am going to use this to put all of my teaching documents so they are available to me all the time. Between my home computer, school computer, and orca I feel like my information is all over the place. One thing I don't like is that the wiki is not like microsoft word so I can't just have the document on the page. However, if I attach the documents and delete and replace them everytime I make a change I still will not have multiple copies out there.

A wiki is different than a blog because it can be much more personal. You can set the wiki to only allow the people you want to see and change the site. It also is different because it allows multiple people to change the actual text not just post comments. I think that a wiki is a good idea for professional use and planning events between many people.

Thing 21 - Wikis

I thought that Wikihow was great. It allows you to look up ways to figure out how to do pretty much anything, and it lets you add tips to help others. The first wiki I thought of creating was one for the 6th grade math department. This year we have not been able to get together to modify the common assessments as often as needed. I think this caused frustrations between people because if you couldn't go to the one meeting it felt as though your voice was not being heard. A wiki would allow the group of teachers to put the common assessments on a wiki and edit them right there, or just discuss the changes that need to be made without a hundred e-mails.

On a smaller scale I would like to create a wiki that my teaching partner and I can use to edit worksheets, study guides, tests and quizzes on a more regular basis. If all of these things are on our wiki we can access them anywhere and do not have multiple copies all over the place. In addition if a computer crashes there will always be a "backup" on the Internet.

The problem I'm unsure about is will I be able to put on there exponents, tables, graphs etc? Will I be able to create a bunch of links from the first page to all the documents that need to be on there? How long will this take and will it be easy? I believe it's worth it and I'm going to definitely consider giving it a try.

Thing 20 - Subscribing to podcasts

I found that podcastalley and itunes were the easiest way to search for podcasts. Itunes seems to only download new episodes of podcasts but not the older episodes. Podcastalley allows you to locate older episodes more easily. I searched for math podcasts since I am teaching math right now. I have subscribed to Video Math Tutor: Basic Mathematics & It's all about math. One thing I really like about both of these is that there is video that goes along with the podcast. However, I'm not so sure that I will be able to use either of these for my current math classes.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

With very few good math videos for students podcasting may be the way to go. I thought it was interesting that one teacher made review podcasts for his students. I find that many middle school students do not know what to do in order to study for a test after they complete the study guide. Creating a review that goes over the material allows the student to review as many times as needed before the test.

I listened to the math grad podcast at http://www.mathgrad.com/ When we are learning about probability I play deal or no deal with my students. On this website there was an explanation of the math of deal or no deal. I may use this after we play the game.

I also listened to Dan's math cast at http://dansmath.libsyn.com/index.php?post_category=podcasts This podcast seemed to have many topics that are covered during the school year. This could be a good place for absent students to go to listen to an explanation on the topics we covered in class.

The problem I see with listening to podcasts is that there is a lot of advertising in the podcasts I listened to which made me think twice about encouraging students to listen to them. In addition, with nothing for the students to look at as they are listening tends to get a bit boring. If a podcast is short it is easy to listen to, but those that are on the longer side seem to drag on and I can see students getting bored listening to them. Creating a podcast of my own to review the lessons I teach may be a really good way to help absent students catch up or help students on there homework. I'll have to think about it...