The Final Post??

Summary: My Crazy Trip through Web 2.0

I can't begin to thank the instructors, PFK, Mesquite ISD, and everyone else involved in the creation of this class. I have learned so much and have had so much fun learning. I have been telling all of my Mesquite teacher friends about this class and how great it is. My family thinks I have gone nuts because I "play" on the computer all the time! And, my youngest son said, "I can't believe that you are taking a class to teach you how to play on the computer at work!!" My very favorite-most Thing was Animoto. I absolutely love making the little 30 second videos and I am very seriously contemplating paying the $30 a year for unlimited videos. I can see so many uses for school, Scouts, family, and friends. I have also used Image Chef a lot. I guess that the biggest surprise of all that has come out of taking this class is the fact that I can really do all of this stuff! I always thought that it would be too hard or too complicated to learn all of the "fancy" stuff, but it has been so easy. Even if I had a little difficulty figuring something out, I kept on until I "got it". Learning it for myself, by myself, just helped me to remember how to do it next time. I can't think of a way to improve the format. This is my best style of learning: self-paced, figure it out yourself with the instructions. I guess that is why it was so easy for me to follow. I would definitely take another class like this. I am hoping that there are more cool things to learn, because I am ready for another one next summer!! I am kind of sad to be finished and I have to admit that I kind of poked along on the last ones, making them last. Like at Christmas, when you don't want to open up that last present because you want to make it last longer. I plan to keep on "playing around" with all of my newly learned tools so that I can find lots of uses for them next year at Berry. If nothing else, I can just teach all my friends what to do!!

Thing #23

I loved the Disney "A Fair(y) Use Tale". It was very clever. Copyright infringement is such a scary thing! I am glad to get this information and to have these sites for future reference. I can remember in the "old days" when we could show whatever movies we wanted in class to go along with books we had read or whatever. Now, teachers must be so careful in what they show. Our all-knowing school librarian is a great resource to have. In order to give credit where credit is due, I am adding to this post, the information from the Learning 2.0 "About" page concerning this class: "The Learning 2.0 - 23 Things program is based on the Learning 2.0 program that was designed by Helene Blowers, Technology Director at the Charlotte Mecklenburg County Public Library system, with the support and assistance of several staff. Helene's program was loosely based upon Stephen Abram's article, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006) and the website 43Things."

Thing #22

Podcasting is interesting....even though I am a visual person, I do like to listen ocassionally!! I played around in the four different directories listed. I found a very informative podcast about pets (cats in particular) entitled Tacoma Pet Hospital. I listened to two different podcasts on fleas by a vet who specializes in cat care. Alas, poor Jasmine has a few fleas from her walks into the wild. (I promise I am NOT the crazy cat lady.) The life cycle of the flea is fascinating, believe it or not, and I learned something new. Then I looked around at some more podcasts, but then couldn't remember which directory my cat care podcast was on!! I finally found it again. It was on Learn Out Loud, which was by far my favorite directory. It was definitely the easiest to use. I added Tacoma Pet Hospital to my Google Reader, as well as my iGoggle home page. Now, I can find cat care information whenever it need it. I don't plan to make my own podcast at this time, but who knows, maybe I will have something important to say in the future...then I will know what to do!!

Vacation 2007

Jasmine

Thing #21

There have been several of these "things" that I thought were my favorite, but I think that Animoto wins my vote hands down. This was so easy and so much fun. And, just to think that I can make as many 30 second videos that I want for FREE! It is just such a thrill. I really enjoyed making my video and can see so many possibilities for making more. Obviously, I can make some for Boy Scouts, but I can see taking pictures of various students and/or class activities, making videos, then sending them to the Special Education teacher to show to her class. I could also make some at church to add to our church website. This may be the most useful tool of all.

My First Video!!! Scout Show 2008

Thing #20

I have really be looking forward to this Thing!! I enjoyed looking at the different videos. I actually have YouTube on my iGoogle home page and the video that I chose popped up on there today. I couldn't believe how cute that little rabbit is, so I had to add it to my blog. (Now I may have to get a rabbit for Jasmine...) I did have some difficulty posting it, but I finally figured it out. When I tried to copy the code for "Embeddable Player", I wasn't getting all of it, so it didn't work. But, my persitence paid off and I finally got it to copy. I guess that is what I disliked about it, but at least, I did figure it out. However, whenever you want to watch the video, you must first turn the sound on my playlist off or you have both songs going on at the same time. Not cool......... Anyway, I love YouTube! I can see how it could be applied to the library website. You could have little videos of different books, like "teasers" to get the students to read them. Very cool!!

My favorite video on YouTube!

Thing #19

Okay, so now I am a member of Fuzzter, of course, because it is about pets and I love Jasmine! It was easy to join and so cute! I probably will never post anything, but I enjoyed filling in all of Jasmine's talents (walking on a leash) and interests (sleeping). I looked at several of the others and think that I may actually join Crafts. I really enjoy sewing and making things and that social network looks really interesting. I could probably get some good ideas. I also joined Ning, as you can see from my two other posts. I loved adding the pictures and looking at everyone else's pictures. The new babies are so sweet!! It takes me back about 20 years or more!!! I think that these social networks are more fun that MySpace and FaceBook, at least for me.

Here's my family!

Find more photos like this on 23 Thingsters

My Thingsters Badge

View my page on 23 Thingsters

Thing #18

My sons have both MySpace and FaceBook accounts and I must admit, that my youngest, who is at Texas Tech, said, "Mom, you are not going to set up an account!" I did set up a MySpace account for this class, but will probably delete it afterwards. I can see the uses for social networking--such a great way to connect and communicate. My son has been able to keep up with all of his friends when they scattered after graduation to different universities. There are so many features that can be added to a page, such as pictures, slide shows, videos, etc. I think that it is very important for educators to know about social networking so that they can monitor their student when on the computer. FaceBook seems to be easier to use and set up. It took me a while to do my profile on MySpace. I did add my son as a "friend". I guess that my concern is the privacy issue. I think it is a great way for young people to stay in touch and meet people, but I don't feel the need for an account at this time. As for school uses, much care would need to be taken.

Thing #17

Well, this is an interesting Thing! I viewed all of the tutorials for each of the social bookmarking sites, as well as the cute tutorial by the Common Craft guys. (I always enjoy those tutorials, so simple, yet effective.) I can see how social bookmarking would be helpful with research, as well as a great way to keep up with personal bookmarks. It seems like I have a million bookmarks on my home computer and on my computer at school. It would be nice to have them easily accessible no matter where I am. I am going to try Del.icio.us because I seemed to "get it" at little better than the other two sites. I can see uses for research into Cross Battery Assessment for our district diagnosticians, which I think I may investigate before school starts!

Thing #16

I enjoyed playing around with the different web 2.0 tools. When we were discovering all the wonders of iGoogle, I made a beautiful home page with five different tabs. So, I played around with it some more, adding more stuff. I decided to try out a different home page, so I tried PageFlakes. It did indeed have much local information, but I still like iGoggle better, so I made it my absolute permanent home page. My other tabs besides home are humor, games, cooking, and olympics. So I can just flip through my tabs and get all kinds of info. I added "funny cat pictures" to my home page and every time I open it up, I get a random crazy cat picture! The other two tools I tried out were 30 Boxes , for my calendar, and Ta da list, for my to do list. I liked the calendar okay, but I can do just as well with my calendar on my kitchen wall!! However, I really liked the to do list. I made a list of things to do next week and I have already finished one item and checked it off! I can see how it will be very helpful. I will definitely use that tool next year at school to keep up with things I need to do. I definitely would recommend the iGoogle home page to everyone. It is such a great way to stay organized!!

Thing # 15

How interesting to know that "wiki" is a Hawaiian word meaning quick! I watched the YouTube video, which was quite cute and informative, and read several of the articles about the wiki. It seems to be quite the thing for planning. I can see many uses...including coordinating our Scouting events! We have people from all over the Metroplex area trying to plan a weekend or week, so what a great help this would be! The sample wiki for the AP world history class looked wonderful. When my son was in Mrs. Muhl's class, they had vertical teams to discuss literary works. This would have been a great tool for them. I was also very impressed with Mesquite ISD Library Policies and Procedures. No wonder we have such great librarians in MISD!!

Thing # 14

I explored Flowchart.com and mindmeister and set up an account in each. My invitation from flowchart.com came almost immediately. It was very easy to register for each one. They both looked very interesting and I played around with them. I am not sure how I would use either of them in my current job as diagnostician, but I will have them, if I ever need them. It is always great to have resources. I can surely see how either one would be great for brainstorming in almost any class, but especially English. (I am partial to English class because it was my minor and my favorite class in school!!)

Thing #13

Wow!! Obviously, I did publish my document from ZoHo Writer to my blog. It was unbelievably easy and I don't think that I will ever use Microsoft Word again. I love how easy it was to write the document, change the font, and add the photos. I will be using this article that I wrote to send to the local newspapers in the Cherokee District area. This will make my job as Marketing Chair for the district much easier! I send my articles out to about 8 or so different newspapers. I will also use this program at school for handouts and such that I do for my department. I could do a testimonial for ZoHo Writer. It is so user-friendly!!

A Week in the Woods

A Week in the Woods
by Judy Johnson
Marketing Chair, Cherokee District
Boy Scouts of America

On June 7, 2008, almost 600 Arrowmen descended upon Mark Twain National Forest for a week of cheerful service.  Nine of those Arrowmen were from Canupa Chapter of Mikanakawa Lodge, Order of the Arrow.  By now, you are wondering what in the world I am talking about!  Let me explain...the Order of the Arrow (OA) is the service organization of honor campers---a part of Boy Scouts of America.  Members are called Arrowmen and are voted upon by members of their respective troops, some of whom are not members of the OA.  These Arrowmen get together many times during the year to spend the weekend in cheerful service, working at the various Boy Scout camps.  This year, Boy Scouts of America, through the OA, in conjunction with the National Forest Service, scheduled 5 weeks of such cheerful service across the nation at five national parks.  The program is called Arrow Corps 5. 


Arrow Corps 5 camp in Mark Twain National Forest

Canupa Chapter is the Order of the Arrow chapter from Cherokee District, which encompasses Henderson, Van Zandt, and Kaufman counties.   Four youth and five adults from Canupa participated at the first of these weeks at Mark Twain National Forest, in Missouri, and they will never be the same. They were: Max Irion, Ben Huddleston, Collin Brown, Bill Neighbors, Earl Brown, Sheri Robson, Willie Robson, David Johnson, and me, Judy Johnson.  The week was spent in the forest, where we camped, played, cooked, ate, and chopped down cedar trees in the deep woods of Missouri.  The work was hard, but fun, and the food was excellent!




Max Irion, Collin Brown, Bill Neighbors, and Ben Huddleston from Troop 333, Mabank at ArrowCorps5, along with other AC5 friends, are  getting ready to cut down some cedar trees!

Thing # 12

My home email account is Gmail, so I am familiar with Google; however, I mainly use it as a search engine. It was interesting to explore the other Google tools. I played around with Picasa again. I took the district Picasa course, so I was familiar with it, but I really like Flickr so much better. I will be using Flickr for my photos. The notebook was good. I can see how it would be very useful in the classroom with research. Students would love the ease of use. It is so much easier than taking notes on those little note cards! I really like the calendar because it is so user friendly. I plan to use it to keep up with all of my school, church, and Scouting activities. If I were still a special education teacher, I would use it to keep up with my class activities and trips. What a great tool! But, my very favorite of all is the Google home page for the Web. Oh, my gosh, it was so much fun to go in there and add the parts that I wanted. Then I was able to customize each part. I really like it. I did have a little trouble figuring out how to link to my creations, but figured it out eventually. I looked some other class members blogs to see how theirs worked! Trouble shooting at its best...

Thing #11

I continued to explore RSS with my Google reader in two different ways. First, I just typed whatever topic came into mind in the search window. I found some great sites that I subscribed to, including one on sewing! Then, I looked a several other class members' blogs to see what they had found. I got some really good ideas. I really liked the word of the day site, so I subscribed to it. I also subscribed to a joke of the day site, which had some really funny jokes on it. There is just so much out there to look at; it is unbelievable!! Right now I have 15 sites on my Google reader, but I have a feeling that my numbers will grow!

Thing #10

I took a little break from this online course to complete my other one, Photo Story 3, because it was a one week course. It was fun and I learned how to do a photo story complete with music, narration, and transitions. I could get addicted to all this computer fun! Next, I spent a couple of days playing with RSS. I created a Google reader. It was extremely easy and I added the recommended sites. I can see how this would be a great way to keep up with all of my interests. For classroom teachers, this would be excellent for current events! As a diagnostician, I could keep up with news in special education.