Final Thoughts

Tonight is the finale for you 8 brave souls. You have entered uncharted territory and lived to tell the tale. Your final assignments are as follows: 1) Go to your blogs and post an entry as a reflection on the class. 2) Fill out the district evaluation form. 3) Listen to me for just a while longer.

I have really enjoyed teaching this class and I am really glad you chose to participate and stay with it. This really is cutting edge stuff and I hope you and your students will benefit from it. Thank you for your efforts and time. If you ever need any help implementing any of these technologies in your classroom please call on me for help and support.

Message from Brian

Group,

Brian sent the following message for me to pass along to you.


Hello everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed talking to all of you this evening. I am glad to see a group of teachers like you eager to make use of these tremendous resources. Remember, if we don't teach and guide students to use these tools productively and ethically, they will learn to use them in a negative way. No matter what, they will use them.

I blogged about our experience tonight. Take a look and drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

http://nlcommunities.com/communities/gli/archive/2005/11/30/3021.aspx

Later,
Brian Mull

Week 4

Okay, we are going to get to del.icio.us today. For this portion you need to; Create a del.icio.us account and add at least 2 tags and 5 sites to your account. Post your del.icio.us account name to your blog so that the others can find it.

Next we will look at some instant messaging tools. We will actually visit both with audio and with video another teacher in New Orleans.

Finally, we will look at or more appropriately listen to and discuss podcasting. We will create a podcast at the end of class.

Week 3

Today we are talking about Wiki's and del.icio.us. Click on the links for a brief descrption of what each is. Here are the handouts for the day (Wiki del.icio.us). For your assignments this week you are to...

1) Add 2 entries to the class wiki. I will assign you one topic, you will select the other on your own.

2) Modify one other person's entry on the wiki. Place your initials after your correction so we know who it was.

Week 2 Assignments

For the next week I would like you to do the following:

1-Check your Bloglines feed at least 3 times this week.

2-Post to your blog at least twice this week.

3-Comment on at least 2 other class members blogs this week (extra credit for commenting on everyone's)

4-Visit my blog at The Educational Mac

Let's look at it another way

Click on the title to go to the post.

Anne Davis is one of the prominent trainers teaching and using blogging. I thought this post was a great counterpoint to the things you read this week.

With Apologies

I forgot to print out the opening outline from the presentation this evening. I apologize. Here is a link to the outline and a link to the presentation in QuickTime format. Also the direct link to the class page on the T4 site is Social Software Class

A couple of other sites to make you think...

If you get a chance this week look at these three websites. All three are class or school webpages, but the entire website is a blog.

Room 208

Lewis Elementary School

Mabry Middle School

USA Today Article

This article talks a lot about what teens are saying on their blogs. Why do you think they have gravitated to this new medium? What do you think are the positives and negatives? How can we as educators guide them in their usage? If you read a student's blog and they said something innacurate or just plain mean about you, what would you do?

Answer any one or all of the questions.

Forbes Article

One of the things that this article skirts around but never really settles on is one of the biggest issues of blogging. That fact is that anyone can post anything, be that positive or negative. How do we judge the authority of the one posting on any given topic? Should one have to be an authority to post on any given subject.
Also anyone can comment positively or negatively. Why would we to expose our students to it?

This blog will be for our general class usage

Welcome, once again to those participating in the Social Software in the Classroom professional development class offered by Jordan School District. This blog is where we will post for general class discussion items. This is where I will expect you to post responses to the assigned readings and sites.

This is where you can also post questions about the class. So question on!