open your mind

My general impression was fantastic, with this 23 things course.  I have learned how  to use tools that I´ve never thought they will exist.  All is course is fascinating, I believe that each thing that we have learned has its function or application in almost all the teaching areas.  I had so much trouble with some of the tools but I got over them. I think that every teachers, professors or anybody dedicated to teaching human beings, they should consider taking this course as a requirement, I believe that we should find a way so that they lose the fear to experience al these new tools.  As I see things,  in the future we won´t  need physical learning stations or buildings, for any grade above elementary or 6^th grade, since we will be able to do all academics on line. Not having any knowledge on these new tools make me feel like an illiterate one. Thanks K12 team for all the teaching and thank you Shelly for your prompt support and understanding, be sure that I will do my best socializing all these new tools.

The thing I liked the best this time in my google reader was 47 Alternatives to Using YouTube in the Classroom   these are free Resources and Lesson Plans for Teaching with Technology.

Teachers  Pageflakes is great tool to classroom learning, I just wish all my colleagues will learn how to use it. To me in my  professional practice as a librarian will help me to organize my book club activities, I think I can pass some of the games there to practice math and other fun stuff.

Google Docs was a great tool for word processings and all the applications wie have in ther, WOW, I really liked them, plus things won’t change it’s formats, easy to link videos an other stuff. Google Docs in classroom learning and/or professional learning/productivity can provide tools for students to collect information for research projects and produce drafts and final documents give and receive feedback on writing and projects. We can create also rubics and use them you can transfer notes and documents between work and home as well as instructional documents and pathfinders

The two videos related to my professional interest that I saw are : How to Start a Book Club : Good Books for Book Club and How to Organize & Display a Book Collection : Choosing Shelves for Book Collection the video that taught me something was How To Decoupage : How To Decoupage A Box: Gluing The Paper, all these were really good, I really like youtube I think is a faster, better way to get videos and music.

Talking about Teachertube the story was a different, as you said it’s really slow, takes too much time to go from one thing to the other, also when you are about to get what you are looking for you get publicity, and/or also you are been asked to sign in for a free trial and unless you entered the credit card you can’t log in. I found it has great things for teachers to use, I was really into it, but when I experienced how much time it took me and all the other things, it’s discouraging.

I couldn’t produce a podcast to support classroom learning due to the lack of equipment. But I’m sure I can create something related to my Book CluB. I did listen to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Funny School Story

I think podcasting offers an opportunity to engage students in a lifelong learning experience. I subscribed to English as a Second Language Podcast and LearnOutLoud.com Podcasts. I thinks they have a lot of potential for language learning and for many more things. I reviewed the use of podcasting for learning English I can say it has an  ability to meet a range of learning styles and develop critical thinking and reflection. Laura Blankenship mention in his article “If you haven’t heard of podcasting in education, then you’ve likely been hiding under a rock”, I totally agree with her.

I think, It’s likely that in the future higher education institutions will become more virtual than they are now, sometimes I even think that we don’t have to attend to a campus in order to get a GREAT education.

LibraryThing for professional will be a great thing to use, to be able to access information and even books. I will be using it to search and get reviews to make my orders for next year. It will help me tans with my middle school book club as well.

WOW WOW WOW what else can I say, all this is just amazing. As a librarian this will improve my professional practice a lot, and I will be able to encourage students and colleagues to take adventage of it. During all the course I’ve been using three different computers due to lack of printing in one, lack of software in the other and the last one was too small I couldn’t see that well, and I was wondering how to get all my bookmarks my I have it all everywhere. Now in my delicious links are organize and ready to be used.

I viewed “Around the World with Skype By Maria Knee. It was a good one, disregard that it took me hours to download and actually see the presentation, I lost two precious mornings on that, I think it was due to technical problems, my computer was really slow. It was really good to see all the uses you can have through Skype, other than just to use as a plain phone. I think I will be able to access authors and have my students get in touch with them. I will be a good option to use it for professional development.