Shower in Humble

We went to Humble this weekend and Philip and Denise's church gave her a wonderful shower. Be sure to check out the slideshow. I love picture where Philip is playing with some of Micah's new puppets.

Shower in Dallas

Jamie Gillespy and Stacy Hill gave Denise a wonderful shower on September 12, 2009. Despite the rain we had a wonderful time.

Blogging Out

Where do I start on what I have learned. This course has been so informational and at times so overwhelming. I am going to have to go back and review items that I think I will be able to use in my position so that I will be able to use them effectively. We have experienced so many different items and learned to do so many things I didn't event know were available.

Thanks for all the time and effort put into this course as well as the time spent in reading all the blogs. This has been a great learning experience and I hope I will continue to further explore all 23 Things and learn more and more about them.

Blogging Out - For Now

Thing 23

This site is a new thing for me. I have never heard of Ning but what a wonderful idea. The entire Facebook/My Space has worried me about there not being any way to monitor what information, pictures, videos, etc. are put on the site. This is a wonderful way to network with others who teach the same subject/grade. Even though I don't teach I think we could use this as a tool to monitor to see what subjects teachers are interested in and use that information in forming staff development sessions geared toward those interests.

You can connect with other on your grade/subject or on a specific subject. I was interested in the whiteboard discussion. My daughters have really used these in their first grade classrooms so it was interesting for me to hear what others are saying. This is an awsome way of using social networking within the education world.

Thing 22

OK, 23 Things has done it. For several years my daughters have tried to get me to create a Facebook account. Stacy is always saying I say... on Facebook. She would tell me if I only had a Facebook account that I could keep up with what is going on. Then my boss, Dr. Karen Nix, get one and starts telling me information she gets on Facebook.

OK, I now have a Facebook!!!! Here is my Facebook. I have a profile picture and several friends. Stacy has already tagged about 40 pictures on there. I am trying to get up to speed on the social networking thing. It has taken a while, but here I am!

Thing 7b

I received a news story about the Texas Giant being closed down at Six Flags. It has been closed since Monday, but officials would not comment on the problem. Today they said that it is closed due to the wood being dried out because of the hot weather. They will not disclose if anyone was injured prior to them closing the ride. For the full story go to the following link Texas Giant.

Thing 21

I downloaded Google desktop to my computer at home. I really like it because it has the temperature for your zipcode and it scrolls through all the pictures on you computer. It makes a really neat side bar. I have used Google Earth before and it is a really neat tool to use, especially if you are looking to purchase a house. You can actually go in and look at the neighborhood.

I looked into Google SketchUp 7 but I don't think there is anything that I would use this for. I went in a made a Google Calendar, Diana's Google Calendar. I work with a Google Calendar with the Technology Department. I have access to read it, but not make changes. This calendar is very similar to the one we use to schedule rooms at the PDC. It is user friendly and easy to navigate.

Thing 20

Family Cruise July 2006

This has been so much fun to play around with. I did the document, spreadsheet and uploaded a document. After I finish that I did a presentation, Above is a link to a cruise we took as a family in July 2006. I spent time on this and it is so easy to do.

I also worked on creating a form. This is something that I need in my job. I am creating forms for Staff Development and I think I will be able to use this a lot. It is very user friendly and easy to get around in. I was even able to do a multiple choice question. I also like the fact that you can force a question to be answered.

Thing 19

An idea that I have to use Voicethread in my position is to make one with the Electronic Registrar. We constantly have people calling and not understanding how to get on ERO and look at their transcripts, register for classes, drop classes, etc. I could make a voicethread and e-mail it to them when they are having problems and that would give them direct instructions. I could get a copy of each screen on ERO and narrate how to login, press the tabs across the top of the screen to look at their transcript, etc. This would be a neat tool to have.

I loved the way different people interpreted the picture in Coming and Going. While a lot of them had some of the same ideas, each individual one was original. The first one mentioned that they might be going to the beach and a lot of them kept with that idea. It was fun to hear the different views.

In Measuring Volume of Wierd Objects it was neat to see the step-by-step pictures. I think the visual helped to make it easier to understand. This could be used as a great learning tool.

Thing 18

We just got a copy of Photoshop to use in staff development. I will be the one that will be using this software. I found a video on Photoshop on YouTube. This will be really helpful as I learn to use this new software. I subscribed to this site so that as new information is posted I will be able to learn more nuggets about this software. I also found a video on how to embed a YouTube video into Powerpoint. This is something I have done in the past, but have spent a lot of time working on getting it to work. This video showed me the correct and quicker way to do it.

I have only used YouTube to watch funny videos that people have told me about. When I got in and started doing searches for education things, wow!, I was really suprised at what is available. I was able to find lots of videos on techniques I will be able to use in my hobby, rubber stamping.

I found a funny video of a little boy that was on the Ellen Show and he loves vacuum cleaners. It was so funny. Another one of my favorite videos is Charlie Bit Me.

Thing 17

Podcast - what are they? I explored several different podcasts. I listened to some first graders reading stories they have written, a middle school that podcast their monthly news/announcements and one about being green without being a hippie. It was precious to hear the first graders read the stories they have written and I am sure that it thrilled them to hear their own voice reading a story they have written. What a tool to encourage new readers. The middle school news was probably heard by more students on a podcast than over the announcements at school. Using the technology that the kids are using is a great way to get information about school out to the student body.

The More Hip Than Hippie podcast was very disappointing. I only listed to the first part of it because they were using inappropriate language. This just proves that we must always audit anything we use prior to using it. This could be a really bad situation if we found the podcast and read about it and then went to use it and didn't realize that there was bad language used.

Two podcast that I subscribed to are Learn Out Loud - 8 Quotes, a motivation podcast under the Staff Development category, and UpWords by Max Lucado, a daily podcast on christian living. The Learn Out Loud could possibly be used in staf development. I will monitor this and see if there is anything useful.

Thing 16

The LibraryThing is something I think I could use in the Staff Development Department. We have a library of books that people all over the district use. Teachers will call and ask if we have a book and we are constantly looking through the books to see if we can find it. We have a "list" but it is not up to date. Using LibraryThing we could put all of the Staff Development books on there and be able to tell someone quickly if we have the book.

After New Teacher Orientation (summer is one of our busiest times) I am going to try and get this implemented. I could also do this for the ladies I work for. This way they could locate a book quickly. Often when someone calls it is hard for them to remember if they actually had the book or if they just read it. I think this could be an effective tool in our office.

Thing 15

The Wiki Sandbox was lots of fun and I enjoyed looking at the other participants pages. It is interesting to see how different each person's page is. The information about making little edits and then saving was good advice. A few times I would get involved and forget to save and I guess I would have too much information and would have to go back and redo. I enjoyed the burning questions. Some are very serious while others are just fun. It will be interesting to watch the comments on the different question.

The tools in the Sandbox are very easy to use and are a lot like those in word processing documents. I have worked quite a bit with graphics so I was able to insert pictures and artwork without any problem. This is one of my favorite activities so far.

Thing 14

In the Wiki 1001 Flat World Tales it is so interesting how student in Korea, Colorado and Hawaii are all able to post, comment and suggest changes on the same story. What a wonderful tool to get input from so many places. Students will take suggestions from their peers better than from their teachers. This is an awesome tool to strengthen students writing skills.

I also explored Grazing for Digital Natives. It was great to see all the tools that are available on the left hand of the page. I went in and played with Voicethreads. This program allows you to upload pictures and then you can put a voice in that explains the picture or have someone in the photo talking about what is going on. This would be fun to do a reflective activity after a lesson. Pictures could be taken during the activity and then the students would be able to talk about what they were learning or thinking about. When students see their own picture and are able to talk link their voice to speak about the picture they will have excitement about learning.

The third site that I really enjoyed was Code Blue. This is a 6th grade medical informational site. Some of the items that really caught my eye were the links on smoking, drugs and alcohol. This is a wonderful way for young people to get information on the danger of these habits. This site had sites about the actual body as well as safety items such as bicycle safety and even sun screen. Hopefully this will help students to consider the dangers of bad habits early in life.

In my position I am considering trying to implement a Wiki page for our New Teacher Orientation (NTO). We could set up a Wiki page and everyone could post items that we needed to make sure we finished before NTO started. As we completed an item we would be able to go in and mark it as complete. With so many different people work on NTO it would be great to have one location that we could go and make sure everthing is being taken care of.

Thing 13

This tool will be fun to use. I am constantly looking up websites and trying to remember where I found information later. Using delicious I can tag that site and use tags to pull up all the sites with similar information. In my position in Staff Development I do searches on the web and continually need to go back to the site for reference. This will be a way that I can tag searches and be able to go back and pull up all the sites I have found with the search. I think when we are researching topics that this will be a very useful tool.

Since I am in Staff Development, I think this could be a resourceful tool. Teachers who have taken 23 Things already have a blog. This would be good information for the Staff Development Office. I could look at teachers blogs and delicious sites. This would give us an idea of the topics that teachers are interested in and what teachers want to know more about. We could create staff developments to meet the needs of teachers in MISD.

Thing 7a

I am a stamper and I make all my greeting cards. One of the posts on About.comRubberStamping:What'sHotNow told me how to make paper envelopes. I make an envelope to match every card that I make. This is a new and exciting way to be able to make an envelope out of paper that matches the card and not just decorate a what envelope to match. The link to this is http://rubberstamping.about.com/od/projects/ss/EasyEnvelope_3.htm. This will be so much fun to use in the future. I probably would not have found this if I didn't have the coming to my Reader.

Thing 12

I played with Blabberize (www,blabberize.com) and Wordle (www.wordle.net). Wordle would be neat to put different learning ideas for staff development in a powerpoint presentation. Generally the sessions will have Norms and this would be a different way to post the Norms for a session. Blabberzie could be used to catch the participants attention. The first picture on blabberize is a llama talking. I think people, students or participants in a staff development session, would really watch if they saw a llama talking.

I spent about two hours just playing around with them. It was so much fun and I posted the Wordle on the Web. I just can't believe how much free stuff is out there!

Thing 11

This was really fun to play around with. I used the button maker and made a button that I could put at the top of my blog page. I used the Fake Magazine make for the Parenting magazine and put my daughter and son-in-law's picture on the front and I used graphic make to write the name.

It is becoming much easier to work with the tools the more I play around with them.

Thing 10

Photo Credits -

1. Prince by Or Hitch
2. Back from vacation, Huh? by Just Us 3
3. Mine, it's all mine! by cursedthing
4. My cat Tigger - personal photo
5. My cat Rascal - personal photo

This was fun and I used some photos from Flickr and also a couple of my own. This will be useful information for my position now that I know how to make slide shows using photos from the web. I make shows for presentations and this will allow me to branch out and make better shows.

Thing 9

I chose to search sunset in the Creative Commons photos of Flickr. There were many beautiful sunsets from all over the world. The same sun shows up in different way in different parts of the world, but as you can tell by the photos, they are all beautiful. This sunset is from Barcelona by taken by MorBCN.


This sunset is from Toronto and was posted on Flickr by Ian Muttoo.

With the opportunity to use other peoples photos the possibilities are endless. I want to start using Flickr to back up my photos. What a wonderful tool to make sure that those priceless memories are never lost!

Thing 8

I had noticed the CC on one of the RSS feed sites and was not sure what it meant. It is very interesting to know that you can use information from that site.

I make Powerpoints shows and have often wondered if I would be able to use different items that I find on the web in these presentations. I will know now that I need to watch for the CC when searching for items. I will bookmark the CC search website on my computer so that when I need something I can search there first.

This information will be very helpful in my position and I am glad to have someplace to go to get the information I need. Thanks.

Thing 7

The information on how to increase you responses was very interesting. Since I am new at blogging I feel very unsure of my blog posts. I guess with practice and learning how to comment on other peoples post I will get more confidence. I can see where comments make you feel like someone is reading and paying attention to your post and will therefore make blogging easier as time goes on.

I need to really make a point to respond to any comments that are posted. The information on blogging etiquette was really interesting and I learned a lot from it. I am going to try to make a point of commenting back on comments even if it is just a thank you.

Thing 6

I can't believe how easy this is to set up feeds to come to one place! WOW! I am really looking forward to going to one place for so many different items of interest. I am going to have to be careful not to let the amount of items distract me. I am the type of person that keeps my Inbox on my e-mail cleaned out. I cannot stand for it to get really full. I will have to get use to scanning and reading the items of interest and let the other items go.

It is hard to believe how much I have learned in just over a week. I had not idea that all these options were available and so easy to use. Thanks to Learning 2.0 - 23 Things I am becoming more aware of what is available.

Thing 5

I am going to be a grandmother in October! I have added my daughter and son-in-law's blogspot so that as they update with pictures of our new little boy, Micah Ryan, I will be able to see them. The blogspot is http://therawleys.blogspot.com/. You are welcome to come and look at the pictures

I have never been a newspaper reader. I think I might be interested in subscribing to the Dallas Morning News so I could just scan over the headlines quickly and read only the stories that interest me. I will try this for a while and see if I like it.

Thing 4

Blogging starts with reading, or creating your own ideas. From there the options are endless. When someone posts a comment on a blog you created it can take you in a totally different direction and sometimes even in to new ideas. On the 5th Grader blog a student was encouraged and empowered by how people commented on his blog. He seemed to have very little self confidence, but with the comments posted I felt he had to be empowered. Normally if a 5th grader wrote something like this in a diary or journal there may be one person, their teacher, make a positive comment. On this blog he was encouraged not only to do well in spelling, but to continue on through life. I really feel like this could be a fork in the road for this child's entire future.

We must be careful what we put out there for people to read because on the blog An Open Letter About Cyberbullying the original blog was talking about how people whine about this. Because of a blog written about Beware These Six Lamest Social Networks the blogspot about Cyberbullying had to screen who was able to come and comment on their blog.

Students have wonderful opportunities to learn tons of information from blogs but we must still make sure that we are aware of what our students and our own children are doing on the web.

Thing 2

In today's society we must stay up with the most current technology or be left behind. I want to be a Life Long Learner and this is a starting point for me. I feel as time goes on that more and more will be done on the Web and I must be able to keep up. In my position in Staff Development we are offering more and more online courses and I need to be able to understand the items that are being offered so that if there are issues I will be able to at least understand what needs to be done to help correct them. The web is constantly offering more items to learn and more information and I want to be able to keep up.

Thing 1

I am a secretary in the Staff Development department and I feel like I am pretty knowledgeable on computers. I can figure out most software, but I had no idea how out of touch I was on the web. Out of the 7 1/2 Habits I feel like I will have the hardest time with #4, Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner. I am determined to complete this class and learn how to effectively use Web 2.0. I am really going to concentrate on the Attitude "I will, I can, I do" as stated in the 7 1/2 Habits. I tend to lose confidence when things get tough but I am committed to stick to this.