Thing #23 The End!!

1. Favorite discoveries/exercises. I have several favorites. First, is Delicious. I've been putting websites on there and using tags to label which class and topic the sites are for. I have to figure out how to organize the sites so students don't have to scroll through a ton of sites looking for what they need.

I also like Google Advanced Search. I've used it to look up information on one topic. I expect to use it a lot.

LibraryThing is neat. I have a rather large class library now... I've been working on it for a couple of years and add to it each year. I'm going to put all the books on it. I can keep track of what I have. Students can access it to see what is available in my room and find out about the book before deciding what they want to read.

2. Life long learning goals. This program has been a really sharp learning curve. I know very little about what is available to use and had never heard of Web 2.0. My use of technology is very basic. I've learned A LOT and have found really useful information for my history classes, such as http://sovietposter. blogspot.com Now I need to keep working with what I learned, so that it becomes easier and I can create a variety of learning opportunities for students.

3. Take-aways/unexpected outcomes. Nothing struck me as unexpected. I knew there was a lot out there that I had never explored, so that is why I signed up for this program. Because of being assigned to look for blogs, I found the John Wayne site. I had not thought before of looking for a fan website. Turns out it is a blog and it is fun. I told a friend, who is also a big John Wayne fan, about it today. I'm also glad to find the NCSS Ning. I'm going to tell teachers in my department about it.

Actually, there is an unexpected outcome. I was asked to write curriculum this summer for a new district Economics program. It is an independent study program for students who are taking Economics at HCC. The students need activities and lessons on Fridays at their home campus. It needs to be very easy for teachers to monitor. Besides looking at Plato and other sources, I've gotten ideas from doing this program, including using the structure of the program for the Economics lessons for the students, if that is okay.

4. What to do differently. I don't know. I really like this format. I like being able to work on the lessons at home when my daughter is in bed. When I go to workshops, I have to send her to my parents' house. She has fun, but prefers being at home. The instructions were good and understandable. It was possible to just click on links provided or to explore even further from that. I like the independent study aspect of the program.

5. Another program. Yes, I would definitely participate, especially if it were in the summer. I need more practice with what I learned. There is so much that needs to be done all of the time. One goal I had this summer was to exercise, but that didn't happen. I did paint, unpack boxes, hang pictures... lots of things connected with moving. Having the structure of this class got me on the Internet and exploring information that will be helpful for my classes. The structure gets me doing it and since I didn't even know what to look for, the information in the program guided me as to what to do.

6. One word or sentence. Enlightening. Useful. Very interesting (sorry... two words). This program guided me to expand my knowledge by exploring the technology world where I had never gone before (apologies to Star Trek).

Thank you!

Thing #22 Nings... (Thing, Wing, Zing)

I couldn't resist the rhyming words.

I think using a Ning for class sounds like a good idea. There are other areas where we try to teach students that work and play are separate areas. There are the registers of language. Facebook is for play, Nings are for work/school.

Nings could be used for discussion groups. There could be a Ning for each period, or put them all together. I have students do an outside reading assignment each grading people. As part of the assignment, students would need to get on the Ning, put a post tell about their book and make comments about a couple of other books.

A Ning would be easier than everyone having their own blog and having to get on each other's blogs. They could just go to one place.

Another teacher at school had a Facebook assignment for her class that the students enjoyed very much. If we did the assignment on a Ning, instead, students wouldn't be tempted to get on their own Facebook account while working... it wouldn't be quite as easy.

I did a search for history nings. Many are from various classes... AP US History, World History... for class projects or assignments.

I found the national Council for Social Studies Community Network Ning. I looked at it, read some of the posts. I found an IB teacher who teaches in Thailand! One of the groups on the Ning is for European History, so I joined the NCSS Ning and the European History group.

So Nings can be used in the classroom for class projects and as a listserve to connect with other teachers, ask questions and learn the latest information in my field.

Thing #21 Creating a Photo Story story

I read the comments about creating the PhotoStory assignment. I clicked on Audacity and looked around the program. I read the Help section. But I could not figure out how to record my own narrative. All I saw was information about downloading something else, I guess from a website. How do you create your own narrative on Audacity? I was planning to create a PhotoStory about a book I have been reading this summer called "Forge of Empires: 1861-1871". I did download some pictures to my Photostory, put titles on each picture and chose transitions between the pictures. Since I didn't have any narrative on Audacity, I did not try to load PhotoStory to my blog yet. I guess I cannot finish this lesson until I learn how to use Audacity. I don't think I will use PhotoStory to create a presentation for my students, but if a student wanted to use PhotoStory as a way to present a project, that would be great. On some projects, I give students choices for how they create their assignment. I have not included PhotoStory as a choice before, as it becomes more popular and more people are using it, I'm sure some students will want to use it. I think that would be pretty neat. I got my pictures from Wikipedia, so hopefully there are no copywrite issues.


I'm still having trouble with adding narration. When I clicked on "record", the program did some adjustment to the recording program on the laptop... that is what the message said. But, when I recorded, then played back, there was nothing.

Also... the first slide is visible for 38 seconds, then the rest go by more quickly. I tried to change the number of seconds for the first slide, but when I save the change, it reverts back to the original amount.

I did add music, which does play. So, there is some progress!

Thing #20 Web 2.0 Visual Tools

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ_1VsxhqqU
http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=33774

The first URL is for "The First World War: War Without End Part I" covers information in the summer of 1918.

The second URL is for "Germany after WW II" which covers the start of the Cold War up to the Berlin Blockade/Airlift. It was put on teachertube by the American Institute for History.

Question: I copied the URL and clicked on "edit html" when I put it in my blog, but I can tell that a person will not be able to click on the URL and see the video. How do I get the URL to link?

I was surprised to find history videos on You Tube. There were several on World War I and World War II that were quite good! It would be nice to know who the group is for each. There is their name, but nothing about them. I need to put in more history topics and see what there is. I did try some 19th century topics, but nothing came up. They seem to have only 20th century.

The advantage of You Tube over the Streaming Video we have at school is that I can look at You Tube at home. I'm assuming (not a good idea.. I'll try it out at school) that if I can access You Tube on my school laptop, I can access it at school to use in class.

I also looked at Teacher Tube. I was not as impressed with that. At my level of classes, I prefer professional videos, rather than videos produced by someone's class. However, I did find some videos produced by the American Institute for History. There is a really good one for introducing the Cold War.

Basically, both are additional tools that I can use in my classroom. Having good videos is very valuable. Students remember them and it enhances learning.

Thing #19 Web 2.0 Award List

There is a lot of variety of Web Tools. I looked at several.
1. Biblio.com... At the IB workshop I'm at, there is a book one of the teachers has recommended about the Interwar Period 1919-1939. However, all of a sudden it has become very popular, due to the curriculum change IB has made and the book has become very difficult to find. I tried Biblio.com, but its results were no different from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. However, I can see this as a useful site to search for books on a particular subject or maybe a subject where it is hard to find books. The site doesn't seem to be much different from the other two sites, but it is another place to look.

I will include it on a list of sites for my IB students to use when looking for sources for their Internal Assessment research paper.

2. MyHeritage... I would love to use that site. Before I became a teacher I worked on my family's geneology and got quite far with it. It would be neat to put it on the web and connect with other family members. Our immediate family is quite small and it would be interesting to see if distant relatives would be interested. However, I've got a couple of other projects that need to be completed first, before I start doing that.

This is not something I would use in my classroom.

3. Livemocha.com... the site begins saying a person could learn a foreign language for free at their site. That doesn't really seem possible ("there is no such thing as a free lunch"). It took a while, but they finally got to the payment part. The site is not what it appears to be at the beginning and is not something I would use in my class, anyway.

4. Googlemaps... I played with that a little. This is not something I would use with my class.

I did learn about another map site today that I will use with Model United Nations... it is http://www.worldmapper.org It has over 300 maps showing visually what parts of the world have or don't have some characteristic. It's really neat.

Thing #18 Productivity Tools

When my computer at home crashed a couple of years ago, everything was restored except for Microsoft Office. That is when I learned about Open Office. It was a little odd to use at first, because it does look a teeny bit different than what I was used to with the Word document, but it worked the same, so things were fine.

EXCEPT... I had to remember when I saved a document to manually save it so that it was compatible with Word. If I wasn't thinking and automatically hit save, then friends would have trouble opening the document.

Other than that, Open Office worked great and the best thing is that it is FREE! That beat paying $150 to buy Microsoft Office.

So I have spent time exploring Google Docs. Two of my students last year did an assignment on Google Docs. I like the fact it can be accessed from anywhere. In fact, when I got on Google Docs for this assignment, their project is still there.

Some of my students had trouble last year e-mailing information to each other to complete a group project. If they had done it on Google Docs, that could have solved that problem. I didn't think to tell students they could use Google Docs.

It seems that Google Docs is similar to creating a Wiki. Both allow a group to work together on a project at one site and everyone can contribute and edit the assignment to get the project in its final form.

What are the differences between Google Docs and a wiki? Are there situations when it would be easier or more efficient to use one over the other? Are there features that are unique to one, but not the other?

Maybe Google Docs would be a site that an individual student could use to put Interactive Notebook assignments on. Some students who prefer working on their computer instead of pen and paper might want that option. Would Google Docs be appropriate for an assignment that would be added to every other day, such as a notebook?

I'm definitely interested in becoming proficient at Google Docs. A big advantage for me is that I could access student assignments at home after my daughter has gone to bed, instead of having to stay later at school looking at assignments in their school folder.

Thing #17 Rollyo

Well, I have created a searchroll on Rollyo. It seems in some ways Rollyo and Del.icio.us are very similar. Both of them allow me to create a list of websites.

One difference is that on Del.icio.us, when I click on the site I have saved, I can go to it. I tried doing that on Rollyo, but couldn't do it. I noticed that the URL I typed in for some of the sites did not save the entire URL. I know for one of the sites, if someone types in what shows on Rollyo, they will not get to the site I intended.

http://rollyo.com/dashboard.html I called my Searchroll "Things Historical".

At the moment, I prefer to use Del.icio.us.

Thing #16 Wikis

Wikis are a cool idea. I liked the idea I read about doing collaborative note taking on a wiki. Students would need to contribute information, make comments, ask questions, give their opinion, make connections... That could be a simple participation grade.

With Model United Nations, students are grouped by the country they represent and by the issue they are researching. They could establish a country wiki which would allow them to share their research more easily and an issue wiki to share information about their issue.

With the information learned about their country, each group could create a trading card with a picture and information about their country to share with the rest of the MUN members at meetings.

I have some projects that students work on as a group, such as a WW II magazine. Each group could establish a wiki as a central place to put information, create and edit their assignment.

In the past, groups have had trouble with students e-mailing information to each other.

It seems like there are similarities between wikis and Google Docs. I'm not sure about that.

Thing #12 Community Revisited

Thanks to reading Elmore's Glue, I tried his idea of creating a student badge for a field trip. I missed the badge project when I worked on my mosaic. I take my 11th graders to Rice University Library each fall to begin their research project; my badge is for that trip.

There are a number of positive reasons to have students create a badge. I'm going to have them do that this year.

Thing #15 What will a library look like five years from now?

I use the library a lot between my history classes and Model United Nations activities, so the library is very important to me.

I have observed that many students want to find all of their information on Internet, rather than reading print material. The challenge is in finding internet sources that contain credible research. Another challenge (not limited to information found on the computer) is getting students to interact with sources, rather than simply "cutting and pasting."

The theme of the articles on Library 2.0 seem to emphasize a synthesis of the older look of a print library with the technology offered students today.

One goal of the IB History class is to get students to take on the role of an historian. Part of that involves looking at a variety of sides or interpretations of events. One way to do that is to read books written during the 20th century. As archives are opened or additional research is conducted, new interpretations and descriptions of events are written.

Sometimes the older books give information that newer authors don't include, because of their access to newer information. (But that doesn't mean libraries should be full of "old" books only!)

For history, I think students need both a facility for using the newest technology... which many already have and they need an appreciation for books. I think there is a place for both in the Library of the future.

For me, Library 2.0 means I need to be more skilled at using Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technology... which is why I'm taking this class! There is certainly a lot to learn.

School libraries are still needed for research and to support classroom learning. The difference between the past and now and the future is the form that the learning takes or will take.

Thing #14 Technorati & Tags

As I understand Technorati so far, is a site for searching for blogs. The tags would help a person find a blog that matches one's interests.

At first I thought that Technorati would not be very useful in a history class. Blogs seem to be about today, current events, right now. I need information about the past.

I did a search of School Library Learning 2.0 at Technorati. Using the blog directory, 248 results came up. When I filtered "tags only", there were no results. I think there were no results because there were too many words. I also filtered using "search blogs" and got 71 results. This gave me a list of people's blogs who were doing school library learning classes.

Using the blog directory gave me too many choices. I liked "search blogs" better. It was much quicker to scan 71 descriptions.

Then I used "search blogs" and put in history+Russia. A lot of the results were about Russia today, but I found a couple of blogs about Russian history! I'm really excited about one of the blogs I found. The writer/author gave his e-mail address so I have written him and asked if I could use his blog in my class and I sent him a link to my school website, so he could see what I teach.

One of his blogs is called "A Soviet Poster A Day" so I hope to get a positive response.

I want to go back to the Technorati site and do more searches for other countries that I spend a lot of time on. It's a good thing it's summer... it takes time going through all of these sites and doing all of these searches but some interesting things are coming up.

Thing #13 Delicious

Delicious is an interesting site. I have always kept my use of computers very simple. I don't bookmark, I don't use an address list on my personal computer. I don't want to take the chance of passing on a virus or other bad problems to friends I e-mail.

I like the idea of keeping sites I would like to bookmark on a website. It is neat that I can click on sites I listed and go to that site. That's really helpful. I have my students do some sort of research assignment for many of the units we study. I give them a list of websites to use to help them with their research. Sometimes students tell me about a site they have found and I try to remember to go back and add it to my handout I give them.

If I set up a Delicious account for each of my subjects, I can put on websites. Students can access them and add good ones they find.

I wish there were a way to create folders on Delicious, so I could group the sites around different periods of history. It seems that after a while, the list may get to long and unwieldy.

I think that would be a problem for librarians using Delicious. The list of websites could grow quite substantial and the only way to search through it would be by the use of tags. If you don't use the correct word, you could miss a great site.

Thing #12 How should one comment on a blog--revisited

I was able to comment on a number of blogs today. Another teacher had commented on one of my postings. I had not replied back, but have now done so. I can see if a person had a blog with many people posting to the blog that it would be really difficult to reply individually to each one, but it also does seem rather rude, if someone "talks" to you, to not talk back.

I also now am a member of the John Wayne forum. It is a blog. I made my first posting on that site today. That was interesting... we'll see what happens. They had a thread about a John Wayne movie I used to show my 7th grade Texas History students, so I wrote about that and why I used the movie in my class.

Thing #11 Library Thing Revisited

When reading another blog, I found out how to add some of my books on Library Thing to my blog, so I'm going to try it.

Thing #12 How should one comment on a blog?

I learned a lot about different kinds of blogs reading the Wikipedia article. There is a whole different vocabulary to learn.

The articles about commenting on blogs seemed common-sense, but I'm sure they are necessary. It seems that the point to a blog is to foster communication and exploration on a particular topic. Just like classroom discussion needs ground rules so that all students can participate in civil discourse, the same needs to happen on a blog. It seems that two important points to keep in mind are (a) the comments need to be meaningful and (b) make it easy to comment.

Knowing why something is good, or what specifically can be improved is better than just "that's great." The more information provided can lead to new ideas. Some of the ideas, like posing questions at the beginning and using open ended statements were good things to think about to encourage comments and discussion on a blog.

One discussion centered on whether a person should reply to every comment on his/her blog.

It was not surprising to read about "Darth Commentor". Not only are there people out there that have their own agenda and do not believe it important to have discourse in a civil manner, but some people seem to want to destroy what other people have. One thing that worries me about blogging and social websites is the possibility of viruses or other problems being spread as many people get onto a blog.

Ease of commenting is also importnat. I, for one, have trouble with technology. The easier, the better!

I looked through the blogs and wrote a comment on one. At the end was "comment as: select profile". I didn't know which one to choose, so I couldn't post my comment.

On my Google Reader, I have Rick Steve's blog... Blog Gone Europe. I love to travel and enjoy his show on PBS so I have started reading his blog. My favorite actor is John Wayne. I found the official website and they have a discussion forum. I have registered for that. Their registration is rather elaborate. They want to keep off spammers. If you don't make any comments within 60 days, your account becomes deactivated. I don't know if that qualifies as a blog, exactly, but it seemed close, since the point is to foster discussion among John Wayne fans.

Thing #11 LibraryThing

Wow! That was fun! I really like LibraryThing. I sat down in front of my bookcases, set up an account and added 25 books. Some of them are history books I've read for classes I currently teach or have taught in the past. I added all of my John Wayne books (but one that must be in a box I haven't unpacked yet). I put a few books I learned about/found while living overseas.

I looked at some of the features of LibraryThing. When I clicked on "groups", I found a group called History: on learning from and writing history. I read some of their posts. It was really interesting because there was a series of posts discussing the issue of how/why groups of people get their own countries, such as Jews, but others do not, such as Kurds or Palestinians. One of the posts discussed Wilson's 14 Points and the countries set up at the end of WW I. The person mentioned reading Paris 1919. I had just come across that book when doing Thing #7 and using Google Advanced Search.

This could be really useful. Reading ideas about historical topics and finding books others have read and their comments about them would also be useful. I spend time in used book stores looking for books to put on my shelves for my students to read. Being able to read reveiws and comments about books would help me know whether a book would be interesting or as useful as I hope for my students.

Thing #10 Playing around with images

My first choice was Wordle. I used a James Taylor song (the bottom Wordle). Next, I took a document segment from an IB History DBQ (the top Wordle). It is from an assignment about Mao Zedong and the Chinese Civil War. Perhaps students could take documents we use, put them in Wordle and comment about the words that appear larger and the relationship of those words to the questions in the DBQ. They could perhaps share their Wordle and their thoughts about the document to the rest of the class.

I liked doing the Wordles.

I looked at Glogster. Creating a poster sounded neat, but some of the examples they showed made me uncomfortable about sending students there. I would consider some of the samples not at all appropriate. Same thing with Custom Sign Generator.

Then I went to Comic Strip Generator. That was neat. I looked through their images of famous people... no John Wayne :-( I did find Pierce Brosnan and created a sign for AP Macroeconomics. As I add pictures, they are added to the beginning of the post. I can't seem to get them to come with the paragraph that discusses the particular picture.

I know that I am more conservative than many people... I think it is important to look at image sites before telling students what to use... same as with anything we do... we have to be careful about what we select and make sure it is appropriate for the assignment and for students.

Also, I think time is a big factor. If I give students specific sites to go to, it will help reduce the time students need to do an assignment. They can spend more time on the assignment itself rather than spending lots of time looking around at many sites.

Thing #9 Blogs & News Feeds

My biggest passions are my students and my daughter. I looked at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog and read the article about creating a circle of the wise. What she had to say about choosing what to read and who to listen to was very true... your friends and those you associate with have an influence on you as well as you having an influence on them. Choosing those who are a positive influence and with whom you can learn and grow as a person is very important.

I tried Edublogs' Award Winners, Technorati and School Library Blogs on Suprglu. I was trying to find sites or blogs about European History. It actually did not work out so well. When I did a search on Technorati for teaching history, I got too many choices. I tried to narrow it by putting in European History; then I got a lot of choices that had nothing to do with history. Some were about Father's Day or other topics.

Edublogs' Award Winners was interesting. I found a blog called Creative Teaching. It sounds like the author home schools. There were sites attached that will be good for my daughter... math, science, spelling... information and games. I added Creative Teaching to my Reader.

Another blog on Edublogs' was about a class blog from a teacher in Australia. That was interesting. I read a couple of the entries... it was almost the end of school and told about a question the students had to answer. The last post was a list of awards the teacher gave students for their work on the class blog during the year.

None of the search tools were confusing. The problem is how to word a search in a way so that what you are looking for comes up. There doesn't seem to be too many history blogs.

While looking at the different blogs at Technorati, I saw one about someone's travels and that sent me looking for Rick Steve's blog. I LOVE to travel and enjoy his show on PBS very much. So I have added his blog to my Reader.

I think the biggest obstacle to finding things is time. There is so much on the web, it takes time to sift through it to find what is useful.

Thing #8 RSS Feeds/Reader

I like the Google Reader. Having various websites I like to look at all in one place is really convenient and time saving. I think those are the two best things about having a Google Reader. The drawback is that I couldn't put some websites on my Reader that I wanted to add. One I wanted to put on is http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/. I did add www.un.org.

I do have five sites on my Reader. All are school related in some way. Two of them I get in my e-mail each day. Two more are helpful for my Model UN club and the fifth is one I found through the Google Alert I set up in a previous lesson. I chose it because it will help me with Economics curriculum writing I have been asked to do this summer.

I can use the Reader to keep up with information important to specific subjects I teach. I'm not sure right now how else I can use this technology in school. It seems the only way to share what I have on my Reader is to choose articles I see and put in e-mail addresses for those people I want to share with. That seems like a lot of work. For example, if I see an article about an issue we are researching in Model UN, I would have to type in all the students' e-mail addresses to share the article with them. That's a lot of students.

Right now, the best thing I can see about Google Reader is that it makes it easier for me to browse through information and choose what is most relevant... making me a more informed teacher for my students.

I'm not sure how libraries/teachers/administrators can use Readers other than gathering information in one place and allowing them to share a particularly interesting or important article with others.

Thing #7 Google

I have always been curious about why the Google Search Engine/web company took the name "Google." In math, a google is an extremely big number... a 1 followed by 100 zeros. There is a book called "G is for google." I thought maybe the company used "Google" to signify the amount of information you can find on the web... not just thousands of sites, but a google (1 followed by 100 zeros) of sites.

I focused mostly on Google Alert, Google Advanced Search and Google Scholar.

Google Alert... I think that would be really neat for the Model UN group. Students could create alerts for their country and their issue, since they need the most up to date information in their research. I started off with two items in my Google Alert. I chose Bulgaria and comprehensive to see what an MUN student could get if he/she used it as part of their country research. I also chose my favorite baseball team and news, just for fun.

Google Scholar was interesting. I put in League of Nations. I have always taught a unit about the League as part of the 12th grade IB curriculum. Starting next year, the League will be an even bigger topic, because it will be part of the Document Based Question, so I wanted to see what I could find on the web. Google Scholar gave me a long list of books about the League. I never thought there was so much information. But, I didn't really want a huge list of books. There were very few articles in Google Scholar. The few I saw were mostly on Jstor, so I could not access them from home. I did find an article about a documentary. I'm going to look up the documentary... it sounded pretty interesting.

Better that Google Scholar was Google Advanced Search. I have been using Dogpile as my primary search engine for years, because it gives information from a combination of search engines, not just one. I have never used Google Advanced Search before, but it will now replace Dogpile when I am looking for sites for students to use in assignments or when I'm looking for information for my own research. They had over 10 pages of sites for the League of Nations. It was so amazing! Many were university .edu sites and they were so neat. I made a list of some of the sites and a description of the information on the sites to have for the fall.

I also started thinking of an assignment I could have the students do using Google Advanced Search. I'm working on it!

Another tool on Google is the Google Docs. I would like to learn more about that. Two of my students last year created one of their assignments using Google Docs.

fd's Flickr Toys: Do fun stuff with your photos

fd's Flickr Toys: Do fun stuff with your photos

Posted using ShareThis

fd's Flickr Toys: Do fun stuff with your photos

fd's Flickr Toys: Do fun stuff with your photos

Posted using ShareThis

Thing #6 Mashups

I have never heard of mashups before. It sounds like a really neat idea... taking information from several different sources and creating a totally new product. That would be a neat project to create for students to do that. Several concerns come to mind. One is copyright issues, depending on where students get their information. Second, some of what I read about mashups sounded so technical... I'm not sure I could actually create one as a model for students to see and reference in creating their own.

The most common examples I saw used Google Maps. There are several units in history that students could take a map of Europe or a map of Africa and combine that with information from other sources to create a mashup of colonization statistics/information or a mashup of Revolutions of 1848 or a mashup of WW II battles/information.

I created both a trading card and a mosaic. I used Louis XVI for the trading card, because I was thinking about a similar assignment I have my 12th grade do. I created the mosaic, thinking about my Model United Nations students. Groups of students research a country. They could create a mosaic showing aspects of their country and give a presentation to the rest of the group, discussing their countries through the pictures they chose for their mosaic. I hope the students think that is as cool as I think it is!

I am able to "share" the trading card and mosaic by posting it to my blog, but I was unable to get it on this specific post. For each product, I clicked on "share", then "share this". I don't know how to get it on this specific post. I tried saving both images to my desktop on my computer, then I was going to copy and paste, but that option did not work. There is more to learn!

Vaughn, thanks for the tip. As you can see, it worked!

Thing #5 Flickr Pictures

I have traveled a lot and have a TON of pictures--most of them in albums--on my shelves at home. It would be neat to share them with other people who are interested in seeing different places.

I already knew about Flickr, but only thought of it as a place to find a picture to add interest or illustrate something in one of my lessons. I did not realize that I could scan my pictures and load them onto Flickr for others to see. That would be better than having them just sit on the shelf.

I looked for pictures of Sevastopol, Crimea in the Ukraine. That is one of the places where the Crimean War (1853-1856) was fought. Most students don't know much about that war, but it had big effects on European history and diplomacy and is a topic I cover in class. It was interesting looking at the pictures of Sevastopol. I knew it was a port on the Black Sea, but did not know what the town looked like. There were 129 pictures of Sevastopol and the surrounding area on Attribution part of Flickr. There were street scenes, monuments, a few of battle places... I think they were from the Crimean War. It is neat to have an idea of what the place I teach about actually looks like. I think the students would like it, too.

Balaklava Bay, Crimea

Sevastopol, Crimea

There are some drawbacks to using Flickr. Not all pictures are labeled as to what they are. I wouldn't want to use something without knowing for sure the name of what I was looking for. I also looked at pictures of Vienna, Austria. There were a TON of them, many not labeled. It could be really time consuming if one were looking for a specific site among all of the pictures.

My last problem is getting the picture where I want it in the document! I was hoping the Balaklava Bay and Sevastopol pictures could be side by side, but that did not work out well. The label for Sevastopol is not with its picture and I don't know how to get it to stay where I typed it. That would drive me nuts, because if I am going to create something to use in class, I want it to look good. I don't want to distract from my purpose by having a product with mistakes or editing problems.

In spite of the problems, there are some neat things I could do with Flickr in my history class.

Thing #4 Register Blog

I have added information for my profile... yippee! I've sent the e-mail registering my blog, so now I am "official." I can't wait to try out the next lesson.

Thing #3 Creating Blog & Avatar

I don't feel like I know what I'm doing! But, I have the blog and I managed to export my Avatar to my blog. I couldn't tell whether the avatar was actually exporting, so I ended up with three copies on my blog! Getting rid of two of them was pretty easy.

Creating the Avatar was fun. It was like playing dress up doll. I was looking for an outfit that expressed some aspect of my life or personality. When I saw the Japanese kimono, I thought it would be neat if they also had a Korean hanbok. I would have chosen that, because I lived in Seoul, South Korea for 5 years, teaching at Seoul International School. But, no hanbok. So, I chose the Elizabethan dress, since Queen Elizabeth I is my most favorite person ever. Too bad I don't get to teach about her in my IB History classes :-(

I'm going to try to add information about myself to the blog and see if that will be successful. The learning curve is going in a positive direction!

Thing #2 Learning for Life

As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to make my classes interesting for the students. So, I signed up for this online class to learn about technology tools I can use. That is a weak spot for me. I know there is a lot out there that I can use, but I need to take the time to learn about the new technology and take time to explore what I can do with it and what I can create for my classes.

I have read both the "7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners" and the article about Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I love learning and would be happy as a clam if I could be a "professional student." However, that is not possible, so I need to expand my "learning toolbox" to include more than books and classes.

The easiest of the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners for me is to "begin with the end in mind." As a student in college, I had a goal and reason for the particular degree I earned. With the classes I teach, I also have goals and reasons for units I include and for the activities I choose.

The hardest of the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners is to "use technology to your advantage." It has seemed to me that learning new technology would be very time consuming, because there is so much out there. I am a confident learner in many areas, just not with technology.

So, I'm hoping this course will help change that for me.