Lego Lady?

I thought it was rather amusing for me to try to find the answers in under five minutes, but I was able to find the first one without a hitch. But, as for the second lego lady, I was stumped. I kept going back to the same site and I was not sure if the answer was what I thought it was, until I ran out of patience and tested the answer. Sure enough, it was the right answer.

I also like the soccer challenges. I was able to find the right words and its' matches. I enjoyed that activity.

As for my own learning, I was not surprised to read that there are many hoaxs or bogus sites on the net and that we should make our students aware of them. I am finding that the school filtering system does it itself anyway. There are so many sites that our school computers block. I can't view any utube videos unless a certain flash player is downloaded and I can't download anything to the school computers because I am not the administrator. So much for teaching my students about internet fallacy!

Standstill...

I seem to have brought my blog to a standstill. I was having so much fun and now that fun has turned into frustration at the highest degree. I am able to post but I can't see my own posts. Web 2.0 is still awesome!

I was thinking about this the other day. In our co-hort, one of our students wanted to know if we could do our final assignment using one of the many Web 2.0 tools available to us. This student was told that as we are in an advanced program, the university still wanted to see paper. In this case, the paper was to be twenty pages long. Do you think our universities will ever advance their evaluation standards to include Web 2.0 tools? Can you visualize a university where papers were no longer necessary as long as there was evidence through one of the Web 2.0 tools? Just a thought.

I am now also a twitter!

http://twitter.com/home

This is my twitter homepage. I think I will give this one a try too. I am like Rosalena said in her blog, I am having a blast and becoming a computer addict. I just have to get some work done on my AR paper as I sit her every night blogging.

Dene and Proud Wordle

I have tried attaching this word wordle as a link but it wouldn't let me, so I did a Print Screen, saved it to my picture file and added it here as an image.

Having fun playing in the sandbox...

I've had so much fun playing in the sandbox, I forgot that it was work for my masters! Just a thought; how much time do we as teachers, especially high school teacher, have on any given day to give our students the opportunity to play? Should we give them as much time as possible to create and recreate web 2.0 tools during their allotted school time without the classroom teachers feeling guilty? Would you like to think that our schools would allow teachers to make those decisions on their own without feeling any amount of guilt as long as they are following the curriculum?

What do you think of this?

I found this amazing calendar from an English teacher who plans on a calendar exactly like we are doing in this class, but, the teacher also included reading from text by including the text (somehow, maybe by taking a picture of it) so that the students can read. There are also questions following the reading that one would normally find in an English textbook. I can't paste the link here because it says it is scripted? If you want to view it, go to the resource page and find the link for wordle, click on Aristotle Experiment and view student pages.

My views......

Are your uses of these tools going to maintain traditional “teaching and classroom models” as these authors have observed, or will they help you transform teaching and learning and if so how and why?


I can honestly say that I have transformed my teaching practises to include web 2.0 tools. I have started blogging with my Communication Studies 20 students. I think that I want to include some form of a web tool to show them that there are many ways of communicating. They seem to enjoy the fact that I can respond and make comments on their blogs as well as view my blog. I have moved a great distance in my use of Web 2.0 from just barely turning on the computer to helping others in my school with their own Internet/computer problems and dilemmas. The distance can be measured by looking at my teaching day plans and at my student evaluation. I haven't had the opportunity to "play" in the sandbox with the many tools that are available, but what I have used so far are both amazing and frustrating. I want my students to experience success as well as feel the exhilaration as they venture into the unknown. That is my ultimate goal. Isn't this what every teacher wants for their students? Shouldn't students feel that they are somewhat 'in control' of their learning? What do think would happen if all teachers today decided to swish their practises to include Web 2.0 tools in their teaching practises?

Two Hours of Nothingness....

I have been sitting at my post (literally) for the last two hours, trying to post a link to my wordle, that I was so proud of when I completed it. But for some reason beyong my control, it would not let me post it to my blog. My computer froze and I was left sitting, looking at my wordle freeze and then disappear. It was quite funny. So if you see a wandering wordle somewhere in outer cyberspace, send it back to me, please.

Dene and Proud wordle

My Wordle Experience once again.....

This was actually fun to make. I think I would like to try this with my Communications Studies students. Their wordles can consist of words relating to communicating and each of them will look different. I only wish that I could print them out when they are done. Our computers in the lab are not hooked up to any printers. Their work cannot be saved on the computers too.

It is amazing how I have gotten over my fear of mouse clicking. I am not the expert, but as a teacher, I will find new approaches, new tools to support the learning in a different way as Marnie says in her podcast. Why deprive students of the opportunity to learn something new?

Still from Lucy Gray's blog

http://www.infinitethinking.org/

This site has numerous videos on how to implement the many web 2.0 tools that is available for educators to use in their classrooms with their students. As I was viewing some of the videos I was hit with this thought. Why is it that I, as an educator always thought that I was not 'smart' enough to do any kind of computer teaching in my classroom? I always thought that the 'experts' like the computer teachers were the only ones who were 'smart' enough to teach a lesson using computers or about computers. I have certainly debauched that thinking as I sit here at my laptop 'cruising' the Internet. I can honestly say that this is one teacher who is not scared to click a mouse and view the world at my fingertips. Thanks to all the teachers out there who are willing to step out of their comfort zone for the betterment of our students.

Lost Generation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA&eurl=http://passionatelycurious.typepad.com/passionately_curious/&feature=player_embedded

I thought that this video was pretty neat. I enjoyed the poem in reverse more than I did reading it from the top. As educators, we have to be so careful what we tell our students about their future. We seem to believe that our future generation will become self-destructive,but I have heard Aboriginal say that we, the present generation are the ones who are not thinking of our children's future. They say, that there is a generation in the future who will be the most powerful generation of all. They will save this earth from destruction. I do not have any problems with technology as it is today. I use it daily and so do many other people in this generation today. There are more and more improvements in every way possible. We are curing diseases that were once thought to be incurable. The only question I have is this; With all the technology we have in this world today, why is it we cannot save our DENE language from distinction? What is it that we have to do today so that my great grand children will be speaking it fluently? What types of technology can be 'invented' so that our Aboriginal language will not become obsolete?