Final Exam

I was able to rush through this course b/c I already know a lot about web 2.0. I took this class to see if there were things out there I didn't know. I'm new to blogs and I was required to use them for this course. I still greatly dislike blogs. They annoy me, and I have no patience for them. However, I do recognize their value to education and to socializing. I didn't know about RSS feeds, either. I was intimidated by them and that was my least favorite task. But once I figured it out, it was all downhill.

I browse my reader every now and then and I have come across some interesting articles. One for example is that the US is allowing foreigners to be a US citizen in 6 months if they serve in the military!!

I liked making the PB wiki and seeing what other teachers' PB wikis looked like. I was thrilled to have seen examples of wikis w/ titles in the tool bar. My wiki toolbar had a lot of links, but was really messy! Now w/ my titles, like "culture", "music", "tools", "fun", it's a lot more user friendly. I was happy to have learned about the flickr toys and flashcard friends, even though it had glitches.

Did this class influence me? It only enhanced what I already knew. What would I change? I would have liked a web 2.0 for the advanced. Where will I go from here? My goal is to be a force in the FL teaching world. I want my 6th grade French textbook that is now exclusively online to be published this summer. I want it in every FLE MS classroom around the world and in every bookstore. Let's start in Fulton County, though, for now. Ha ha! I want my teaching methods to be known around the world. I want to do conferences about my methods and 2.0 knowledge. Is that too much to ask?

Thanks Paideia, for this opportunity.

Best,

Joanne Thomas

Task 12: What I have learned

I can easily share what I have learned w/ my cool tools wiki: http://mmethomas.wikispaces.com/

I already have, actually. With teachers and family. Anyone who is interested. I've had great feedback. Here is feedback from my main wiki:

http://ah-bon-french.wikispaces.com/Order+a+hard+copy+of+__Ah+Bon%3F__+textbook

I shared it w/ my FL department head and she is arranging a day for me to teach it to my colleagues as a PLU class. I have also joined a network of FL teachers called MIWLA where I share videos and my websites w/ teachers all over the US.

http://miwlaconnect.ning.com/profile/MmeThomas

And I have joined another network of Teachers of French as a foreign language where I have added 46 videos and my website.

http://flecampus.ning.com/profile/jothomas

I'm sharing ideas and learning things from colleagues just like me, only they are from Spain, France, Morocco, Mexico, Maurice Islands, Canada, China, you name it! I have about 200 videos on teachertube, 350 videos on youtube, 3000 public photos on flickr, and my main website has had international visitors from at least 118 different countries.

I have made a total of 14 wikis:

Ah Bon textbook
7th grade French
Cool Tools
5th grade French
Exploratory French
Exploratory Spanish
Exploratory Latin
6th grade Spanish
7th grade Spanish
HIES
France-Spain 2010 Trip
My Artwork
Son, Evan, wiki
Son, Alex, wiki

I have almost 200 social bookmarks on French alone on delicious. So what have I learned? That I still have much to experience and learn from others, but I have a good head start to sharing w/ the world thanks to web 2.0 (insert angels singing here ;))

Thomas out!!

Task 11: Use Your Tools

I used "flashcard friends" http://mmethomas.wikispaces.com/Flashcard+Freinds already in my classroom. It's similar to the test option of quizlet, only images are allowed. I had my students practice their flashcards on the flashcard friends where they had multiple choice, true/false, matching, and writing. I had images w/ French and French w/ English. I discovered that is it best used w/ exclusively images to French b/c the French to English lines are narrow and the image/French lines are wide and it confuses the students when they see those differences. There were some glitches, though, w/ flashcard friends where it said a hamburger was a lobster, for example. Also, it said I was allowed to upload audio and even add my own audio in the program itself, but I was unable to do it. I e-mailed tech support, but no response. I made a 2.0 wiki to teach a professional development class and maybe even offer it as a PLU course! My first one :))http://mmethomas.wikispaces.com/

I added flickr toys on the flickr page that I learned from this course: http://mmethomas.wikispaces.com/Flickr

I plan to add more to the wiki now that I know where to find more cool tools.

Task 10: Find New Cool Tool

I looked at the 10 cool tools posted and was not interested in any of them. I e-mailed my dad the LetterPop b/c he in charge of his church newsletter. I didn't see anything exciting on http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0#cat_117. There were DOZENS and DOZENS and DOZENS of choices on http://www.go2web20.net/. I finally had to go to the webcloud of tags to narrow it down. I only found 1 I liked, but it was for my personal artwork: http://myfolio.com/edit_portfolio.php

As far as cool tools I found elsewhere on my own, that would be http://classtools.net/. There are 2 cool things there; random name picker http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php?fruit_machine where you can put all the students' names in, and a candy machine randomly picks the name. Or use it as a random vocab or question picker for students to answer or translate. The other cool tool on the site is "post it" http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php?postIt where you can upload an image and give up to 10 post its to label it. The downfall of this is that you may only use 10 post its. I'd like to do Western Europe Geo, but w/ only 10 labels, it's not worth it.

Task 9: Social Bookmarking

I have already discovered social bookmarking and I love it. I have 361 sites I have tagged. I have imported all of my personal bookmarks. Of the 361 sites, 193 are French. I absolutely love it. I have all personal sites private w/ username and password info in the notes in case I forget. My delicious is http://delicious.com/joanne.thomas. I have tagged 3 sites w/ pi20. I try to tell everyone tech-savvy or not about delicious and they are fascinated!

Task 8: Sandbox Wiki

I added a page on the PB Wiki, did bullet points, favorites, added pictures, did discussion tab question, added to favorites on 2 other sites, responded to two other discussion tabs on other sites. I know a lot about wikis, so this was quite easy. I'm "wiki-happy". I have 5 wikis I have made that I use on a regular basis. It was fun exploring the other wikis. I noticed font changes and one title was colored and outlined. I'll have to figure out how she did that. Always learning new things!!

Thing 8 - Stretch

I visited wikipedia and typed in TPRS, which is a foreign language teaching method. I'm already fairly familiar with it, so I wanted to compare my knowledge w/ their info. It was accurate, well-written, clear. It included names and links I recognized. There was no discussion that was obvious on the discussion page, but there were helpful links to go to other collaberative wikis. The history was unclear. I was pleased with the amount of info on TPRS. I was surprised to see so much, actually. I'm inspired to learn more about becoming a wikipedia contributor.

Task 7: Wikis

I have a lot of experience w/ wikis, so I was excited about task 7. I checked out some wikis and noticed a few that needed some TLC. Paideiaapes, for example. It looks like it is for middle schoolers, but has no pizazz. Only 1 picture, 11 pages, very few edits, the class discussion was empty. The wiki is a year old and the history shows the average unique visitor is under 5 a day. From Feb to October of 08, there were no edits. The most edits were on the food chain page which was quite long w/0 pictures. It would be so much more inviting and interesting to know what climatis or smilax look like. http://paideiaapes.wikispaces.com/Food+Web. I was so bored. Looking at it closer, it was an AP wiki!! What a waste of time for AP students. So much potential . . . There was a note saying on the projects soil sample page, IT LOOKS LIKE MANY GROUPS STILL HAVE NOT ENTERED THEIR DATA AS OF SUNDAY MORNING. GO AHEAD AND USE THE DATA THAT HAS BEEN POSTED FOR YOUR LAB WRITE-UP. THOSE GROUPS WHO HAVE NOT POSTED THEIR DATA WILL LOSE POINTS ON THEIR LAB REPORT. That's because the students are so uninspried!! Not a lot of effort on the teacher's part and the students are showing the same energy. The other wiki was http://monsonclassroom.wikispaces.com/. It was cute with a picture of the world and inviting colors for the 5th graders. The site posts 1 question a month and the goal is to have 1000 answers from all over the world. I translater site would have been a nice widget to have. I noticed that the monthly goals of 1000 questions were met. It started in 2007 in September w/ 20 visiting countries. In 2008, 62 visiting countries. That must be very inspiring to the 5th graders to know that many visitors from that many countries are interested in them. It makes them want to come up w/ the best and most creative and intriguing questions each month. I enjoyed it.
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Task 6: Cool Tools

Cool tools I have explored:

Skype

I used it to talk to my local friends and my e-pal teacher in France. I love it. I'd like to use it for a student meet in Canada, but I get bad sound and picture. I'll get it looked at by the tech department.

Quizlet

I've explored and use it but I wish they could have images like Quia.

TeacherTube

I have over 100 videos on it, but the "buffering" is painfully slow, so I abandoned it for now.

Library Thing

Not interested . . .

Flashcard Friends

I did explore for the first time and am excited about the images and audio available and it's free, unlike Quia. I used it in class w/ my students. I made 2 so far.

Pixton
ToonDoo
Not interested.

Ta-da List
Not interested.

Glogster
I'm a little intrigued for posters. I saw some great student samples on art and historical figures.

Stretch Task: I'm using goanimate this week. I just made a new quizlet. I'm always making quias w/ images. I download 2-4 lesson plan videos daily on youtube.

I put a flashcard friends on my site for my 7th graders to practice boutique vocab and demonstrative adjectives.

I made a cool tools wiki: http://mmethomas.wikispaces.com/

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Task 5: Feed Your Reader

I added a custom RSS on foreign language education. I read a blog about bi-lingual schools in Ireland. I teach a 6th grader who moved here from Northern Ireland and I was interested in what sort of fl education they have there as opposed to here. I'll ask my student of they taught old Irish where she lived. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7885942.stm I love the custom news RSS. I can find so much!!

Task 4 - RSS FEEDS

I saw the video and I clicked on the RSS symbol and my bookmark bar came up and I was really frustrated that the URL didn't go directly to my reader. I finally figured it out w/o seeking extra help, which is what this class's theme is; learn by doing even if there are mistakes. I added the 3 required feeds and some extra. I like the goanimate feed. I get to learn more about this new animation site my 6th graders are leaning about and the site just added non-English animations to the mix. http://blog.goanimate.com/2009/02/whats-new-february-2nd-2009.html So, now I can search in French and see and hear authentic French voices.

Task 3: Blogging Begins w/ Reading

I checked out Student 2.0. I read a few. Random subjects. Tolerable and intelligently written for the most part. One girl mentioned Oedipus, Arthur Miller, Aristotle . . . It's good to hear about fears and dreams of today's youth. I didn't notice any replies, though, to what I read. The next blog was Why I Don’t Assign Homework. The title brought me in b/c I don't assign a lot of homework. I liked reading about why he doesn't (those who need it the least do it and those who are the weakest don't). He had a masters thesis he wrote to back up his claim. Other teachers quipped in. It was interesting to see all the differentiated instruction in and out of the classroom, all concerning to homework or not to homework. I saw the cooking blog and then saw the Nerd World blog. I wanted to see how much I was able to relate to the "geeks". I started about the satellites crashing into each other. That was scary to think there is no traffic controller up in space! http://nerdworld.blogs.time.com/2009/02/11/two-satellites-crashed-into-each-other/

I read Elizabeth's post on task 3.

Tasks 1 and 2

Tasks 1 and 2: I saw the videos and read the articles for tasks 1 and 2 online.

Web 2.0 tools have tremendously changed my teaching practice. My main 2.0s are my wiki, youtube account and flickr account. I can offer notes, flashcards, videos, audios, online activities, e-pals in France to students. I can share over 200 of my teaching videos w/ other educators to demonstrate my teaching style. I can share over 3000 images with students and other teachers. I can answer a question from a teacher not with mere words, but with a video of my screen that I can send her in 10 minutes to New Jersey. My students may use my wiki to practice at home, create projects, communicate w/ e-pals . . . I've never had better teaching years. It's overwhelming, though. It's impossible to be the perfect 2.0 teacher. My mind would explode. I've learned things that in a perfect tech world would be nice, but I'm not willing to use them. Blogging (this) does not interest me. It gives me a big headache. I have too much on my plate to deal with blogs. I hate them, actually. I may change my mind later, though . . .

Ah Bon?

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