Thing 23 & 24 - Creative Commons & OER

Creative  Commons:
I liked checking out Creative Commons.  It is cool to know that there is a resource out there where teachers & educators can share all the awesome things that they are doing.  As educators we are constantly sharing with colleagues in our school and district, but not with people 'all over the world'. It know that I browse and search the web for new ideas to use in my classroom.

I was pleased to see that I did well on my quiz:

Here is my image that I found using Creative Commons...it is a fan shot from the Bruce Springsteen show that I was at in January at the United Center.

Learning Registry:

http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/

IOER:

Twitter Activity

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/twitter-profile-new-class-activity-6435541

BIG HUGE LABS:

Thing 22 - PowToon

Well, I thought that I would like PowToon more than I did.  The tutorial videos made it look fun and easy to use.  I did not find it to be as user friendly as programs like Prezi and Animoto.  I struggled for a while to navigate through the different options to create my short PowToon.  I found it to be a little frustrating to know that there are limitations with what you can fully use if you do not upgrade to the premium package.
 I know that with time and patience that I could become more efficient in using it.  I think that the program would be a challenge to use with my 4th grade students because there are so many background/theme layouts to choose from.  I like using programs with them like Google slides when there are only so many themes to choose from.  As I said above with more time in exploring PowToon I feel that I could find ways to use it with my class, along the lines of the short PowToon that I created.

I could not export the video because I used props & objects that are part of the PREMIUM package.
Here is my link:
https://www.powtoon.com/dashboard/#/

Things 19 - 21...Prezi, Voki, and Animoto

Prezi:
 I found Prezi to be a great presentation tool. The continuity of the presentation, with the 'zooming in' and 'zooming out' is something that I believe is more eye-catching and engaging than other presentation software (eg. Keynote, Slides).  One thing that I liked about Prezi was the easy guide, and overall process of putting together a presentation.  There is little difficulty in adding images, and importing videos clips from YouTube.  I can personally see myself using this for multiple subject areas, and can also see myself having my students use Prezi for projects like their Biography reports.  It would be a nice way for them to show the timeline of their person's life.  Overall, it is a great presentation tool.

Here is a Prezi that I used with images from our Immigration unit:

http://prezi.com/kgmtzbeiptwa/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

My Voki:
After trying out Voki (and making my own Voki) I could see me using this next in the fall with our Immigration unit.  My students create immigration journals by writing 'their story' of leaving their homeland and traveling to America.  All of the students come up with their own character and create their story with the rest of their Immigration family.  I think that it would be a lot of fun for the kids to create a Voki for their immigration character.  
Here is the link for the Voki that I created...it really looks like me ;)
http://www.voki.com/site/pickup?scid=12940514&width=575&height=323&chsm=d4192b2dbcaf7ae030cb1a191b097ea8

Animoto:
Animoto was a fun program to use.  Again, I can see using this with my class as something different from the 'traditional' presentation programs that they've used in the past.  I love how easy it is to build an Animoto.  To begin with, the tutorial on their website is fantastic.  It is a very smooth step-by-step process to build a very cool looking presentation.  I loved how there is a great variety of templates to choose from.  I also really liked how simple it is to bring in images/photos to a presentation, and one of the coolest things is all the music that they available to play with the presentation!
I can see myself using Animoto for our 'Go To School Night' by sharing happenings of the first few weeks of our school year.  I can also see myself putting together Animotos for our bigger units like Immigration (like the one I put together - click on the link below).  I could see my students using it by taking pictures on Ipads of class activities over the course of the year, and making their own 'yearbooks'.  


Immigration to Ellis Island

Thing 11 - Google Hangout...

I think that Google Hangouts can be an effective and fun tool to use.  For personal reasons I like the idea of being able to 'hangout' and chat with people who don't have Facetime.  It is nice know that you don't need a Gmail account to connect with people on Hangout.  I don't know anyone who uses it, so it will have to be my 'job' to introduce friends and family to it.
I found debut on Google Hangout on Air to be a little tricky, but I'm sure after a few go's with it it would get easier and more natural to use.  It was a little goofy to be talking into a camera with no audience (trying to maintain eye contact with the camera).  I would like to work with it a little more so I can get comfortable using some of the tools with it (ex. screensharing).
I do like the idea that some other people brought up on their blogs of being able to possibly use Hangout for parent-teacher conferences if one parent cannot be in attendance.  I also think that it could be fun to try to set up a Mystery Hangout with another 4th grade class at some point in the school year.  I'm sure that my class would love it!

Things 15 -18 - Book Creator, Haiku Deck, Notability, Sketchnoting (Paper 53)

Well this week was a nice change from the previous weeks.  I enjoyed checking out these four different apps. I found all of them to be useful and fun to explore overall.
 Book Creator:  I liked book creator a lot.  I found it to be very user friendly...and more importantly kid friendly.  I can definitely see myself using this app with my students on our school Ipads.  Once the students get used to the ins & outs of how Book Creator works, I can see them putting together books for some of our fourth grade projects.  One project that comes to mind is making a scrapbook for our biography reports.  I like that my students will be able to easily import photos, images, and videos.  It really is a great app for all ages.

Deck Haiku:  I thought that Deck Haiku was cool to use, much like Google Slides.  The one thing that stuck out with Deck Haiku was nice how professional the presentations look with being able to upload high quality images as a background.  I worked on this at home, so I did not run into some images being blocked on my searches but I could see this as a potential issue at school.  One thing that I did not love about the 'text' feature is not being able to size the text.  As I said before, I think you can make some good looking presentations, but running into potentially blocked images and not being able to size the text makes me hesitant to use this app with my students.  I could see them getting frustrated with it.

Notability:  This was my first time using Notability, and I will say that I was impressed with this app.  It definitely helped to watch the tutorials, and once I did, I felt that the app was pretty much straight forward to use.  Some of the features that I liked the most was being able to type the text anywhere on the page, the ability to upload photos, and I really like the voice text feature.  I could see me using this app with my students this year, especially with our Great Brain project.  It will be a great way for them to collect notes on their topics, and create subtopics as well.  Overall this is a terrific app.

Sketchnoting:  I found Sketchnoting fun to play around with.  This was my first time using this app.  I can see true artists falling in love with this app, because there are so many tools to draw with.  I'm not a great artist by any means, but I gave it my best efforts to sketch out my 36 Things Learning (my daughters were impressed with my sketch).  I really like the the artistic options that this app offers, but I don't really see myself using this app much with my students.

Thing 9 - Twitter...

This is not my first look at Twitter, but it is my first time using it for professional reasons.  A few years ago I was coaxed into how great Twitter was for all the instantaneous news & updates at your fingertips.  At first I thought Twitter was pretty cool.   I signed up for a personal Twitter account in the past to monitor sports for the most part.   I was following all my favorite teams, athletes, and other sports related outlets.  I found it to be 'crazy' that if I spent more than a few minutes on Twitter that one of the people I was following would tweet something about a game.  Don't get me wrong I like that I had instant scores, highlights, and follower's opinions, but at the same time I felt sucked in to social media, just like Facebook & Instagram, and was missing out on the face-to-face interactions with my family.  So, I cut back on Twitter because of the 'time suck' it could be.

Now for this course, I was unsure of what I could gain from a professional Twitter account.  I think that it has been nice to spend just a few minutes a day to check out a few education articles & links a day.  I don't know that I can make the time to check out this Twitter account daily during the school year, but I can see myself checking in on it every so often.  For this account I have been following educational sites and educators such as Discovery Ed., Google For Education, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Grant Wiggins.  I have also added local news outlets like ABC, NBC, CBS, Chicago Tribune, and more.  I like reading some of the articles that these outlets have posted instead of picking up the newspaper.
  
One Twitter chat that I joined was #caringclassroom.  It 'meets' on Monday nights at 9:00.  The chat that I was part was facilitated by T Dolezsar-Glarvin.  She is from Canada, and runs the website caringclassroom.com  The chat was great!  It was about 20 or educators sharing about how they connect and reach out to their students.  The biggest (and yet fun) challenge in sharing with other educators was being limited to only 140 characters to share my thoughts.  Over the course of the hour long chat I gained a few followers, and also followed a few people who were on the chat.  Overall the chat was a great way to share ideas with strangers on how to reach out and connect with our students. Though I don't necessarily see myself as having time to become a regular in Twitter chats, I'm glad that this course has given the opportunity to participate in them.  

Thing 14 - Itunes U...

Well, this was my first time using iTunes U.  And let me say that even though I watched the 'Understanding iTunes U' video clip, I was still overwhelmed at where to start in exploring it.  There is so much to check out!!  I spent a while checking out different courses offered, iBooks for teachers, and different apps that are out there for our students by using the Learning Resources - 'Learning at Every Level'.
One course that I thought was interesting to explore more is 'Fall in Love with Real-Life Math'.  I know that thing that I'm always sharing with my students is that we use math all the time...everywhere.  This course seems to offer  projects that bring math into real-life situations.  I look forward to looking into this course more when I have time.  I could see myself sharing this with my grade level colleagues and our building math facilitator.
I did find a few iBooks that I thought were cool to look further in to, mainly the Starter Guides.  For example, I downloaded the iMovie for IOS starter guide.  I'm glad that I found the starter guide, and intend to use it in doing more work with iMovie.  I have messed around with iMovie on my own, and have looked for some kind of 'how to' guide outside of video tutorials on YouTube.  Needless to say I'm glad that I found it on iTunes U.
Like I stated before I found a bunch of apps that I think would be good in 'Learning at Every Level' on the iTunes U intro page.  I often find that I'm randomly searching for good iPad apps for my students, and it seems like 'Learning at Every Level' has done a nice job of organizing apps for different subject areas (I can definitely see myself going back here during the school year).
Overall, I'm glad that I've had the time to check out iTunes U.  Like I stated above there is a ton of stuff to look at.  I want to take more time after this course is over to check it out and see how I can adapt some of the courses, iBooks, and of course apps to my teaching/classroom.

Thing 13 - Ed Blogs to Follow

It was nice to have a list of blogs to check out.  I found it both beneficial and helpful to read through these various blogs.  With it being such an extensive list of people to check out I stuck to reading the most recent blog posts from most of these people.  I definitely found some of the people's blogs more readable and relatable than others.  One thing that I did not like about some of the blogs were the ads, or the one's asking me if I wanted to subscribe to them.

Out of all the blogs that I read through, the one that I connected with the most was Josh Stumpenhorst - Stump the Teacher.  The thing that I liked most about his blog posts compared to the others is that he seemed to 'blog from the heart'.  I found his blog posts to be thoughtful, inspiring, and made me reflect on myself as a teacher.  If I'm going to go back and check out any blogs during the school year, it will be his.  I also found it pretty cool that he is from Naperville.
 My favorite post that is on his blog is about how many teachers think about wrapping up a school year, and what message it can send to our students if we are 'counting down the days to summer'.  His blog post is below:

I thought that the curated resources had some nice information on them.  The one that I liked the best was Edutopia.  The site is nicely organized and easy to navigate to find specific areas of interests and ideas.   The posts on their site are definitely relevant to what is going on in our classrooms today.  I  liked the videos, the few that I watched gave some great ideas to try out with my class including the one below  called  'Rolling Out a Game' with a Classroom.

The insight that I took away from some of these blogs (particular Josh's) is to be real in what you post...feeling that you can post what you find to be good, exciting, frustrating, and overwhelming in learning as 21st Century Educators!

Thing 12 - ICE

Six or seven years ago (I can't remember exactly) I had the opportunity to not only attend an ICE conference, but I also presented a session with three other colleagues from Greeley school.  The conference itself was a great experience.  It was fun to be able to attend other teacher's/educator's workshops, and even more memorable to present.
My colleagues and I presented a session on making short claymation movies through storytelling.  We shared about how we had our third grade students work in small groups to write stories, create clay characters, and use digital cameras and computers make their movies.  It is hard to remember exactly what we shared at the ICE conference, but I do remember that when I was approached with the idea to present - I thought 'no way'.  After being coaxed into doing it, I was glad that I did.  It seems like such a long time ago, and thinking back on it what we were using with technology seems 'outdated' with what we are using with our students today.
All in all it was a great experience to attend and present at the ICE conference.  At the time I felt that I was out of my comfort zone, but proved to myself and 'impressed' others at our workshop that we were effectively using technology with our students!

Thing 10 - Google +

I will begin by saying like I have commented in other blogs, I like that this course has given me the opportunities to check things that I most likely would not on my own.  Google + is one of these 'things' that I would not have taken the time to look at on my own because I've been using other social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and I felt like I didn't need one more 'thing' to figure out how to use and consume any free part of my day.
My first impressions with Google + is that it is pretty overwhelming to use without watching videos/tutorials on how it works.  I don't feel like I would have taken the time to figure out all the 'ins & outs' on my own, like creating circles and joining communities.  The videos and other links that I discovered on my own definitely have helped me figure out how to use Google + a little more effectively.  With that being said I could see myself using Google + more in my professional life than in my personal life.  I really don't know any of my family or friends that use Google +.

I can see how building circles is a nice way to connect with other people that I know.  I started my circle with the people in this class, and built another circle with other colleagues in our district that are on Google +.  Because few of my colleagues are on Google +, I feel that I a majority of my 'electronic' sharing will be through email.

I think that the communities is a cool idea, but I don't see it being much different than Twitter (other than not limiting you to 140 characters, which is nice). I joined our class community, GEG Chicagoland, Mathematics Education (K-12), Mystery Hangout, as well as Boston Red Sox Talk and New England Patriots.  I can see that the educational communities will be valuable learning tools, but the personal ones that I joined (Red Sox & Patriots) have the same information that I can get on other websites.  One thing that I like about the communities is the ability to filter the thread options instead of reading through all the posts.  It is a faster way to find what you are looking for.

As for Hangouts, I haven't been able to attend one yet with my BUSY summer schedule, but I will write more about it when I'm able to.

Thing 8 - Google Photos....

 I've been wanting to try out Google Photos for a while now, and I'm glad that this course has given me the chance to explore it.  I'd been encouraged in the past by people to try it out, but to be honest have not made the time to check it out.  I love that Google Photos has unlimited storage, which is a huge plus over the storage on any personal advice (phone, tablet).
After downloading the Google Photos app to my phone & iPad I set up the 'sync & back-up' for my photos & videos.  Though it took some time to back-up my photos/videos I was thrilled to see that everything were successfully downloaded; yet I'm hesitant to delete the originals from my phone and Ipad to clear some space (I need some convincing/assurance from someone that it's ok to do so).

Next school year I can see myself using Google Photos with my class.  My former classes have loved taking pictures with our school iPads, and they always know whatever pictures they took were eventually going to have to be deleted.  Not anymore!  It will be great to introduce Google Photos to my next year's class and be able to show them that the pictures that they take at school can be uploaded and saved on their school Google accounts.
I also envision myself sharing pictures and short videos with the parents from my class.  I do take a lot of pictures of my students throughout the school year, but do not always have an easy way of sharing multiple photos with parents.  Now, I can definitely see myself using Google Photos to share albums from class 'highlights', in class projects, and field trips.

Now that I've had the chance to get my feet wet with Google Photos, I'm excited to take advantage of it!!

Thing 7 - Google Keep...

In the classroom and at home I've always been a big fan of sticky notes...big stickies, small stickies, lined stickies (my favorites), and different color stickies!  Basically I use them all the time.  I don't think I can totally abandon using them, but I think I can cut back on my use of them by using Google Keep!!
I found Keep to be a great application.  After watching the YouTube tutorial on Google Keep I found it very easy to use. There are so many great features with Keep including the checklist feature, color-coding, adding an image, reminders, and being able to share a note with other people.
One of the things that I found to be most useful was the checklist feature.  I really like being able to check off my 'to do' list, and be able to see it crossed off.  I can definitely see myself using the checklist next year in the classroom to help organize my day.
Another thing that I like about Keep is being able to share a note with someone else.  I can see myself sharing notes with my colleagues instead of sending emails.  It really can be a quick and easy way to communicate throughout a day/week.
  

Thing 6 - Using a Chromebook...

Well I've been playing around with a Chromebook for a few days, and I'll say I really like using it.  First of all, I love how fast it starts up and connects.  It is great to be able to turn the power on, and be connected to Google Chrome almost instantly.   Another thing that I love about the Chromebook is that it really has everything you need  (email, word document, browser, etc) if you're willing to make the switch to Chrome as you browser/operating system.  I think that once you put in the time to learn the Google tools they are user friendly.
I would love to have my students using Chromebooks next year as their primary technology tool instead of Ipads.  Almost all of my students have access to Ipads at home, so I would like to get them more used to using laptops for more of their daily use.  I think that once my students get comfortable using them, they will prefer them over the Ipad.  I'd love to be able to get a  class cart of Chromebooks, or at least a grade level cart for next year.