Thing #23 Summary

Wow! I did it! I am very proud of myself.

Answer to questions:

1- Favorites: Creating a blog, News feeds, Librarything, Delicious, other google search engines, web 2.0 award list and podcasts (Photostory).

2- It has inspired me to learn more.

3- Yes, that I am more confident of my abilities and I want to return and review some of the 23 things.

4- I like the prompt responses and when you added "a little bit more help" for those like me who need visuals and step by step at times.

5-Yes

6- Extremely informative!

7- When I first read the e-mail that was sent from our librarian to all the teachers regarding Library 2.0/ 23 Things plus the 18 hours credit, I thought: "This might be a good idea".

I felt I should try to do this just to try to stay on track with so many technology advances. Once I started my goal was to complete all 23 things before July 31, but it proved to be hard, just like I had imagined. Many times I felt this is not for me, but I was not ready to give up.

I am very proud that I began, worked through, and completed all 23 things. I am still going to go back and try to understand and figure out some of the things I could not include in my blog before August 13! I will no longer think I am not good with computers or web things.

I want to continue to learn and I am committed to learn more about computer basics before it gets way to difficult for me. I am glad I challenged myself and plan to attend more technology staff developments.

Thing #22 NINGS

I decided to visit Ning for teachers and read some blogs regarding teaching children with Autism.

I love that from just reading their blogs I can learn new strategies to use with my students and I can ask questions and share information.

I like that eventhough most information regarding students with special needs is confidential we can connect with other teachers with the same concerns.

Thing #21

I really enjoyed creating this mini film with pictures. I know this could be a very good tool to promote independence for each of my students. I like what I created and saved in both ways and I am encountering a problem, the message I receive "Problems processing the video, contact support".

This is where I am having most of my problems, trying to upload items to my blog and really would like to review and learn how to do this. It could be in the way that I am saving, but I am not sure!

Thing # 20 You tube...

I am very familiar with you tube. Again, plenty of interesting, creative and at times funny videos regarding libraries.

I will return when I figure out correctly how to include the video I chose from teachertube...

Okay I am going to give this a break, for some reason I am not able to embed the video of Capital and States song that I saw on teacher tube, I believe I am following the instructions on posted on thing 20...

I shall return!

http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=15395=50_States_and_Capitals_cartoon_song

Thing #19 Web 2.0

Special about this tool: How the information is rated. I will definitely go back since it's in my favorites.
I explored the food and found very easy recipes to cook. I love to cook when I have the time and I found very easy ones. Also I enjoyed the reviews on Houston restaurants.
I can see libraries and classrooms using this to facilitate finding information for students and teachers.

Thing # 18 Online Productivity

Very interesting and new to me as well. I explored both and one thing that stood out from OpenOffice.org was all the different languages, I also enjoyed all the templates for education documents.
Google.doc was also very good and I can see how it can be another tool to share information.
Advantages: It is free and you have easy access.
Disadvantages: You need to be on-line.

Thing #17 Rollyo

I believe this is a really great tool, it is one of the few times I am not stressing and having to go back to understand. It was easy and fun. I created a link for my parents with only three sights, but I plan to add more, some of my parents are very interested in free educational sights for their child to be able to use with little supervision.
I am working on creating individualized search engine based on my students interest, their personalized engine!

http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=autism+activities&sid=568566

Thing # 16 WIKIS

I use Wikipedia a lot and always tell my son "wikipedia it..." he always laughs. I understand now what it means and that I can have my own wiki "place". I though of many ways I can use it, but then I had to re-think due to the confidentiality issues with my students, it is not as private as I wish it was.
I can see how it can be useful for social events and not having to meet for planning events. I volunteer for different organizations and this would be a great way of sharing ideas and updating information a lot quicker.

I wrote my entry but it looks different than other entries, I wonder why? It was not difficult at all but I forgot to include my blog address or any info on who was creating the entry so I went back and edited mine:-)

Thing #15 Articles

One of the articles that I could identify with was Away from icebergs, to be honest I read all of the articles and found them each hard to understand and not easy to read. That just confirms to me that I am out dated when it comes to the web, but it made me realized how important it is to try to stay informed and interested even if it is hard for me.
Reading the articles made me also realize that is why I decided to sign up for these 23 things and not feel so intimidated.
I was happy to read web 2.0, I needed to this to understand better and the video "A vission of students today" showed really interesting statistics.

Thing # 14 Technorati

As I began to read and understand Technorati I already knew it would take me a little longer. I got very different results from tags and blog directory, receiving more using blog directory.
There is a lot more information than I am really interested in reading, even when I tried to blog a theme that is interesting to me, I got some information not related and I was trying to understand the reason.
I believe it can be very useful if you are working on a project or an oral presentation, it really is not for the type of students that I teach, but I can research for more information and best ways to help my students. One of the sentences that I read that caught my attention is that you are really connecting directly to other people.

Thing #13 Tags/Delicious

As a special education teacher it is an additional tool to share great information with my parents and specifically with the other teachers that also run a classroom like mine, which is kind of unique since we have a small but increasingly growing population of students diagnosed in the moderate to severe range of Autism.

It is a great tool to research the latest information on best interventions for our students and keep all the websites that we and our students use.

Also I really like that I can organize my favorites into tags and access this information on any computer.

Thing # 12 Creating Community

First: Two important points for me are to keep comments meaningful, show that you really care, plus try to make it easy to comment, especially for people like me who are so new to this.

Third: Two very interesting blogs outside the Library family are:
The John Harris Blog, he is a co-worker and some of you might know him. His family keeps his friends and peers informed regarding how is health is improving. His sister in law writes beautifully and is really funny, they also have shared the most wonderful pictures of his rehabilitation. It is amazing!

Terri's Special Chidren Blog, in this blog the writer asks for advice from other parents to new parents dealing with the news of having a child diagnosed with a special needs condition she has it organized in a way where you can access a specific condition and become part of that group.

Second: More to follow... I am working on my five comments...

Thing # 11 Library thing

Creating an account was easy and I added 3 books I had the opportunity to read in the past year and one I am planning to read before the students return.
I was interested in the Romance group, I enjoy dialogue and good characters, so I read some suggestions on books I might be interested.
I believe it is good to use to feel like your are in a book club without having to meet, my mother and sister like to share book ideas and they can keep me updated through Library things.

Thing # 10

I will be returning with other items I create, it is just taking me a long time to figure this out. I am having difficulty downloading pictures.
src=http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/992754/Iris_Guzman I was hoping I could put in my blog the wordle I created but I can't. If I can't figure this out I assume it is going to get harder for me to complete the remaining 13 things!!

Thing # 9 New feeds

I found Google blog search and Topix.net easiet to use because they seemed simple.
Most confusing to me: Syndic8.com (I kept trying to access articles or pages and I could not)

I know Topix.net will be one I will be using to find news information that I can share with parents regarding Autism. I did not find any to be unusual, other that just needing more time to explore and understand better.

Thing # 8 RSS

Okay, so much to learn, so little time. I am old fashion, so I have my spiral notebook titled: 23 things summer 09. Everything I write here I already wrote in my spiral.

What I like about RSS, convenient and easy access.

How can I use it? As a time saver and more learning.

Although I am not a librarian I feel we can all benefit because it offers a way to stay connected especially with what interests you and you continue learning. Plus it is a different way to communicate.

Thing # 7

My favorite two are google scholar and google advanced search, I spent a lot of time reading on my favorite topics "Autism" and was really interested in new information I found. OMG I did not know that teach tube existed, now I know Google reader will be hard for me to set up but I am working on it...

Thing # 6

Wow, I had to go back to thing 6 several times, and still I know I will be re-visiting. I really liked the Mosaic Maker and other things to explore under Mosaic Maker. I continue to struggle with completing some activities because computers are not my thing, but I keep trying. It was very fun and very new to me!

Thing # 5

I really enjoyed viewing pictures from different countries, especially finding this picture from a beach in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico and sharing with my students where I use to swim when I was a little girl.

Thing #4

I am officially registered, now I will continue my journey!!

Thing #3

I set up my blog!? I also created an avatar (don't really know what for...) I did have fun trying to make her look like what I would like to look like:-)

Thing #2

Easiest habit for me is being responsible for my own learning, hardest would be changing my view of a problem to a challenge, which makes a lot of sense because at the end every experience positive or negative provides a learning opportunity.

Learning 2.0 Thing 2

I agree that by wanting to learn something new we are all life long learners, but choosing Learning 2.0 for me could have been a problem, now it will become a challenge! It has everything to do with my attitude and I will prove to myself that I will, I can, and I do... so here I go!