One last THING

Ok, some of these things were tedious and hard to complete. However, the vast majority were a great deal of fun and wonderfully interesting adventures. About half way through this journey I dearly wished I could stop but I am very thankful for the things at the end. I have learned a great deal and a lot of these sites are now in use in my life. I love Animoto the most. The RSS readers were my least favorite but they are highly useful. I use Facebook and Flickr anyway but I was quite glad they were included in the 23 things as I could relax and enjoy those things a bit more. I would like to recommend dropping this for future classes because of massive amounts of time required but I can not make myself say that. These things are amazing teaching tools and incredible inspiration.

...can't believe I'm saying this but....

I would do it all over again given the chance.
Happy Blogging,
Lisa

Thing #23 ... I never thought it could be...

Copyright law is just a sticky mess reguardless if you have studied it for three years or three decades. The person who created “A Fair(y) Use Tale” is most definitely an evil genius. I can see the legal types at Disney fuming at each clip being splashed out to the world with no pennies coming in. Having said that it is incredibly important for us to be aware of license issues and copyright in the classroom. It is really easy to open the web and swipe something off the pages that we find interesting but we rarely ask ourselves if we SHOULD be able to take those things. This thing was a great reminder of what we can share and what really is off limits. I am including a link to a copyrighted photo on Flickr. This image an interesting vortex of matresses. It does include the copyright symbol and other license information.

Thing #22

Podcasts are great if you can find a reliable source. I used teachertube to find a link from Luke Corazza about why he teaches math. You can follow that link to hear his story. I found it very familiar and I think a lot of people can relate to his thoughts.

I love this podcast from two students who are explaining probability in their podcast. It is actually a video podcast and it is evident they have made their props themselves. I think that is one of the reason's I like it so much. Take a peek at Ben and Jerry doing Probability.I also enjoy reading blogs from David Warlick and I've added his blog to my RSS reader. His line of blogs under the 2cents worth are quite interesting. They do not focus on the topic of math but teaching and philosophy in general.

Thing # 21

A video of my daughter is available on Animoto. This thing is probably my favorite so far. I am having trouble getting the video to embed here so I am including a link also called Cassie.This is an amazing site and it is FREE. That is just awesome! I struggled a bit at the beginning in how to add the video to the blog but it didn't take long for me to get it. I hope you all are having as much fun with this one as I am.

Thing # 20

This was a really fun thing for me. I enjoy Youtube clips. I am including the link to a dry math constant date clip. Blind Date was very humours to me and I hope you enjoy it. The good thing about this site is that you can find almost any topic in a clip. The bad thing is the amount of horrible clips you have to sift through to find the useful information. Some of these are truly inspirational but just as many are very offensive. User be warned before relying on this site too much.

Thing #19

This was a very enjoyable thing for me. I did not know these other social networks existed. I liked the Gather site. It is more about conversation than game apps or recreational time. A wide variety of people posted in short responses and that makes the blog streams much more interesting. I found several topics about family I was going to skim and wound up reading the whole story. I did not find a strong educational blog on this site but I really enjoyed what I did find.

I found a great deal of information on the Ning Teacher Pop site. I read several entries by Dr. Wall. I was quite impressed by the way. I could easily see this site as inspirational for lesson plans and philosophies.

Thing #18

I use Facebook. I think most of us do anymore. Click HERE to link to my account. I don't really mind using my real name as its pretty mundane information your likely to see there. I use this site a great deal to keep in touch with friends and family. I see that there is potential for classroom use but I have reservations about inviting co-workers to my private social network. Teachers are in the public eye constantly. No matter where we are we will be representing our school. With so much pressure to never be rude, offensive, or distasteful there needs to be a private haven to be yourself.

I can control me. I can not control my crazy aunt Hazel who is likely to post some obscure off the wall site that will inevitably offend someone I work with. I feel a great need to have a tiny part of my world private and Facebook is where I am drawing a line for now...