#23 Summarize your thoughts

I found this course to be extremely valuable and will certainly recommend it to my colleagues.  Since we don’t start back with the students for another week, I’ve yet to incorporate any of the new tools in my classroom.  Thus, I had to give questions 8-10 a score of three on the survey.   However, I have made it a goal to implement at least one new thing each semester for this coming school year.  I am especially motivated to work on a Calculus website as I move through topics this year that I can launch for the students the following year.  I had a bad experience creating a Blackboard account, so I look forward to doing this “on my own terms”.

With regards to the 23 things to do, I have to admit it became extremely overwhelming as I would rather have spent more in-depth time on fewer things.  My concern with this course is the same I have after other intense trainings on new educational tools – how will I find the time to implement them?   I do understand the need for the course to be more of an overview of all the tools, as each of us will find different items more useful.  Thus, as a follow-up course, I would prefer to now choose from the list of tools and have deeper instruction on them and assignments which allow me to actually set-up something specific for the courses I teach.   I would not sign up for another overview of more tools, if that is indeed what the next course is as I have not even scratched the surface of using what I now already know.

To know there is an easy way for me to create my own webpage that I can manage myself and invite only certain people to view is the most useful thing I got from this course.  Although, I love all the visual things we can do, which I will indeed incorporate in my webpage.  I liked a lot of the other ideas too, but most likely will wait a while before using them.

YAY - DONE BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Let the fun begin...

#22 eBooks and Audio books

As stated before, I am not an avid reader.  I rarely read a full book and as a math teacher I don't assign books to read.  I do however read alot of articles from magazines, and often will have my students read some interesting finds on new research in mathematics, the correlation between upper-level math and higher-paying, more challenging jobs, etc.  Thus, eBooks don't interest me, but finding single articles would be great.  Unfortunately, as with many of these new things we are learning in the course, they are very time consuming to find.  Thus, I am glad to know it's out there, but it will be a while before I venture into using this tool.

#21 Podcasts

I had heard people talk about podcasts, but I honestly didn't really know what that were until today.  I am not an auditory learner so I have to see things written down in order to remember them.  I was a frantic notetaker in my formal education days, simply for this reason.  Thus, podcasts would never work for me.  Now, as a math teacher, I can't imagine putting anything on a podcast, as math is extremely visual.  Okay, maybe one of the silly songs or "slogans" I use to help kids remember concepts...but that's the one thing I know the students remember from the classroom experience.  Maybe it'd be fun to make a podcast of that...especially since my students are always trying to video me doing one of my silly songs so they can put it on utube.  Somehow I always seem to dodge that one, but I wouldn't be against a podcast being out there.  Well, I am rambling, so in summary, I don't see me using this much, but after doing this activity, this will be new suggestion to my students next year.

I did look at a few of the links but found it difficult to find anything on math.  I even did searches on math and calculus that both came up empty.  I guess it's not surprising since I really don't know how you'd learm math just from listening.  I also tried to listen to a podcast about smartboards as they intrigue me, but it didn't work.  However, in lesson #20 on utube, I did listen to an audio file which was a rap on the quadratic formula which was really cute.  I'm not sure if that's considered a podcast, but the concept is the same and how I envision using audio/podcasts in my classroom.

#20 UTube and Video

I've been looking forward to getting to this task since the beginning of the course.  I have used utube numerous times already, but I don't know how to embed one in a power point presentation.  I still don't but I haven't spent enough time yet.  I'll be back again tomorrow.  In the meantime, I wanted post this link of a teachertube video I liked because it motivates me to implement all the things we are learning in this course:  http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=448&title=Pay_Attention  and another I thought was cute realting to math:  http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=3682&title=Got_Math_

Much more on this topic tomorrow...

#19 Library Thing

Sorry to all the Librarians, English and History teachers, but I just don't enjoy reading.  I can count on one hand the number of books that I've actually read from cover to cover.  Thus, this "Library Thing" perks absolutely no interest for me.  I will certainly let my bookworm students know of this great tool, though...if they don't already have the inside scoop.  Don't hate me - I teach math for a reason :)

#18 Online Productivity Tools

Okay, I absolultely love Google Docs!!!  I can't tell you how many times I have emailed back and forth documents with coworkers, friends or family.  It takes forever and gets so confusing as to what's updated, etc. I think this is my favorite discovery from this class!  It'll be great for making tests for school, but I'm more excited about it from a personal level.  I also know the students wil like this too.  .It's getting to the point that I almost have too many tools for how to go about the same thing (not really, I just get overwhelmed with too many options).

Here's a document I started:  http://docs.google.com/demo/edit?id=scABpsx8T6Dpb4yeKAkkm5spF&hl=en&dt=document#document

I also watched the utube video about google sites.  This also seems really great and especially user-friendly.  Although I didn't create a webpage, I can see it could be used for any class as a "home base"and it seems you can do most anything on it.  I will most likely use it this coming school year.

#17 CL2.0 Wiki - Curriculum Connections

 I went through all the links on this wiki and played around in the sandbox as suggested.  I didn't find anything that related to high school math, so it was a little disappointing.  Actually, this task seemed much like #16 where I already discovered how I might use one in the classroom, but honestly, I probably won't because it isn't convenient for upper-level mathematical formulas and problems.