My delicious name is fistralbeach.   I do not have a lot of bookmarks in there yet, but I intend to use delicious every time I surf.  I am leaving one school and going to another in the fall – and all my bookmarks are on the computer at my old job!  If I had started using delicious earlier,  this would never have been a problem.

For those of you who are interested, my links will mostly go to these areas:

Math,       Literacy,     World Languages,      Project-based learning,      and    21st century education.

I have seen many of the videos gathered here at inservice and conferences.  It was great to see them again and to be able to retrieve and reference them for future use.

I visited several sites.

I love glogster and think it has really great potential.  In a second language classroom, students often have to create presentations on culture or language themes.  This is a great multi-media tool for students to use in their presentations.

I was frustrated by wordle.  It just wouldn’t run on my computer although I tried most of the troubleshooting tips recommended on the site.

Eventually I worked in bubbl.us/beta/ We have a  brainstorming meeting this week to plan our school theme for the year.  A digital concept map is actually so much better than a written one as it is much easier to edit.  On the bubbl.us main site I was able to see options for sharing and collaborating, but I could not find this option on the bubbl.us/beta/ site.  This is a very important feature and I was disappointed not to be able to share my work once it was completed.

“What causes students to engage in learning without the bells and whistles?” = the passion for learning

“We don’t need technology to engage our students.  They are already engaged.  They need us to notice what they are engaged with.”

Some quotes from Angela Maiers’ presentation on the K12 Online Conference.

This is a video version of one of those motivational / inspirational posters for me.  It is also a very important reminder that all of the Web 2.0 tools are just that – tools to support our work with children.

Even if you don’t watch every minute of the presentation, please watch the final segment of the little boy playing the Jack Johnson song on the guitar.  It will make you smile!

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”  Plato

The stormy seas of digital picture filing!   Actually, this is a beautiful picture of the North Cornwall Coast, where I am from.  Picture by iknow-uk

I am now working with photographs on my wiki and in my blog.  This is the MOST frustrating area for me.  My husband and I love to take photos but we just can’t find a way to organize them.  We have pictures in Picasa, pictures in Adobe albums, pictures on 3 different hard drives, pictures on a portable hard drive, pictures on my iphone, pictures on smug mug at work, pictures on CDs – you name it, we have tried it.

And now I am trying to organize other people’s pictures on my computer and running into more problems.  The computer has a mind of its own and I don’t seem to have control over opening and downloading and saving.  It seems that Picasa is set to default and I can’t do anything with the photos.  But if  I get rid of Picasa, how do I keep the photos that are already there? Arrrgghh!  Who can help?

I am completely green in this area.  Personally I have not yet even figuured out how to organize and share my family photos, let alone post digital files belonging to others.  I also just got finished with a graduate school program that had me looking over my shoulder anytime I wanted to reference anything.  I still live very much in the world of Big C.

Which means I have a lot to learn.  I am ready, but I have a long way to go.  I did take a quick look at the Creative Commons website last week, but I became quickly confused by all of the different categories.  This week I will have to pay more attention, as I can no longer use the excuse of I don’t know how to do that.  K-12 learning 2.0 is teaching me to read,  to learn, and then to do.

We are now learning to create pages on a wiki.  Follow the link for my first attempt at a wiki page – “Summer on the porch” There  is a beautiful picture of my home beach on it.

Well, this doesn’t really count as my stretch task, but I worked on a Wikipedia page for a graduate school class that I took a couple of years back.  Go to Smith Academy of International Languages in Wikipedia.  I added the section that is labeled History.  It was really fun finding resources to back up the history of the immersion program in Charlotte, NC.   I knew the history because I worked there from 1993 – 2000, but I had to find real references to back up my anecdotal knowledge – and then work out how to list them in Wikipedia.

Wiki wiki.  Now we are getting really stuck in.  As soon as I opened up the k122.0 learning wiki, I knew that this is something that I was going to do.  As a second language teacher I am always being asked  if I could teach someone German, French, Japanese, etc.  Using a Wiki, students could get a taste of learning a language through a really basic beginners course.  I knew it was possible when I saw the videos incorporated into each page.  Wonderful wikis!

I looked at about two thirds of the wikis that were listed under Thing 8.  These are some of my initial thoughts:

1.  Clearly a Wiki can be used to gather one’s teaching into one organized (digital) place. See Dr. Reich’s chemistry page and English Language Arts at the Wolves’ Den This is another use of a wiki that I could see myself putting into practice.

2.  In one wiki I found teacher reflections on having students work with wikis. It was great to hear from the teachers’ perspective.

3.  Directions given to students were hard to find.  When they were visible, they often seemed too wordy and not kid friendly.  See The Great Debate for example.  The question remains, how do you assign items in wikis?  What is the best way to present the work to students?

4.  Loved the Greetings from around the World wiki.  Really student friendly application – glogster.  Lots of opportunities for color and graphics, plus video inserts.  Great wiki!