Well it has come down to this the last week of school. Finals are this next week and then we get a break. I know that we are all looking forward to the break. This weekend I have gotten in a lot of studying. Simeon tried out for Mid-State. He did not make it this year, but it was his first year to try out. He is looking forward to next year. But one good thing came out of this weekend. Simeon made the UT Martin Honor Band. I hope that everyone is doing good and ready for finals. After this week I will start studying for my Praxis exams, no rest for the weary.

Marching Band is over

Well Simeon's first year of  marching band is over. It is kind of sad but it has been a great year. Goodpasture finish second out of 27 schools in division I. Basket ball is starting up right on the heel of band. Plus all of my classes makes it vary challenging. Samuel is not playing any sports right now. But he will be starting basketball the first part of the year. Both boys are doing great in school. I will try to keep up on my posts. I have been enjoying this semester. It has been fun going to Moore, and Byrns Darden. I will let you know it does take its toll on you  having to set up lesson plans for different children. I cannot wait to get my own class. It will be easier when I will only have to make one lesson plan.

One week of rest

Welcome back. I have just finished my Children's Literature class. I was unsure of how it would turn out. I do like to read but I do not usually read book. Let me till you that was the best class ever. I have found that to enjoy reading you must find book that might interest you. Some times I read a couple of chapters and stop, but most of the time I just keep reading. Not knowing what your schedule looks like let me give you a quick list of some that I read this month.

Chapter Books
One Crazy Summer
The Graveyard Book
The Higher Power of Lucky
Run, Boy, Run
Firegirl
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
The Hunger Games

I know that this list seems long but you do not have to read all the book. These are just the ones that I thought were great. It is that time again. Time to make some coffee and relax and read. I hope that your summer has been a great and I look forward to seeing you in class.

Prep for Class

Time seems to be flying by faster then I would like. Classes are getting ready to start, and baseball is getting ready to end. I have been keeping busy with many projects. I have taken the Praxis and hope that I passed. Last semester turned out great. I passed all my classes. I received my AS degree from Volstate. The boy's and I have been fishing a few times. They have caught some fish, I still have not but it has been fun. Simeon and I just returned from a mission trip to Mountian top. Well I must go for not I will try to update the blog more often.

Thing # 23.5 A Look Back

When I started this journey 23 things ago I never thought I would be sad to see it end. But then I guess it never really ends. There were many activities that I enjoyed. Flickr, Google calender, Picnic, YouTube, and LiveBinder. I still have not figured out how to use LiveBinder completely but I have the rest of my life to figure it out. This has changed my lifelong learning goals in that I will now look for new ways to use technology in the classroom. The 23 things was great but I also learned so much from the rest of the class. If I could make a change to how the 23 thing could be done differently I would cut back  the number of 23 things to 16 things. One for each week of the semester. There were many times that I would have to do a task but never felt that I had learned how to do it like it should be done. I would also let the students know that they will need to sign up for about 20 different sites. Tell them to keep a log of their passwords. I have learned that in order to keep up with new developments in web 2.0 I should keep up with the blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Teachers who use web 2.0 Tweet about new thing that they learn. I know that I can also go to Teacher Pop and get the newest info from Dr Wall. This is just a short list of what I have learned. If I write any more no-one will read it. My goal is to post to this Blog every week. I hope that you keep following me on my journey to become a teacher.

mangotreemusing.blogspot.com

Thing # 23 Creative Commons

There are many examples of how the APSU 2.0-23 things was taken from another piece of work. Here are two picture from two different sites. One is APSU, the other is PLCMC. This shows that both of these school will borrowed from the web site 43 things. The difference is that their program last for a full year. After creating the Creative Commons Power Point for class I know that I would be taking advantage of the CC. It will give me the chance to use and change someones lesson and make it fit to my class. As a future teacher it is important for me understand how to use this as a way to save money. This will also help me to use my creative abilities and come up with lesson that others will be able to use.

Thing # 22 Keepin' It Together: Livebinder

Well I went through the process of signing up. I tried to get this site to work for me and had nothing but trouble. I had to cut and paste the url. I tried to see my book but could not get it to open. So I was not able to link it to my blog. I did put in about five different articles dealing with differentiated learning strategies. I was looking forward to this task. I know that I will be using this site in the future. having the ability to save all the different links that I go to will make it easier to track the information down when I need. I will try again later to get the problems worked out and get my folder posted to be seen. I do not feel confident. Well I was able to place a picture to show that I did do the task even though I was not able to link the site.

Thing #21 Animoto

This was great I like how easy everything went together. I can think of so many application where this could be used. This would be fun to document different projects, class activities, field trip, and these could be given to the students. I know that I will be useing this as away to keep in touch with my extended family. The only this is trying to remember everything that must be done to get this to go just right. I will be using this for my son baseball games.

Thing # 20 You, Too, Can YouTube

As teachers we have to learn to deal with many different children with many different problems. What we miss out on are ways to keep up to date on what research is being done in the field. I have been looking at students with dyscalculia. This is similar to dyslexia but with arithmetic. There were other videos that I thought would be great but they lasted ten minutes. And knowing most people would not want to sit thought all that I chose a shorter one. The best part about learning to do this task is that it could be a great way to give assignment on a snow day. Post a video and ask the students to write a paper about what were the key objectives of the video. It would also be a great way to post a video that I will be teaching in my class and let the parents pre-screen the video.

Thing #19 Beyond Facebook: Other Social Networks

It may have taken me longer then most people but I did it (ya me). I started this lesson three days ago and when I was working on my reply to Dr Wall's post the power went out and I lost everything. As you can tell I am the proud member of TeacherPop. I am finding that a lot of these sites have the same features. I decided that I will hold my pictures and keep at one site this will make it easier to keep track. I did go to the other sites listed in the task. I liked Shelfari and think that it is one that I will visit again and again. But the one that I found most appealing was Bake Space. This could be just because I was hungry. I may not know how I would use it for teaching but give me some time I will come up with something.

 http://teacherpop.ning.com/profile/Phillip

Thing #18 Explore Social Networking

This was one that I hated. I do not like face book. I know that for some people it has great benefit. To me it is a waste of time. I know that the whole point behind this thing is to teach us how to use to talk to other teacher  about topic that come up. I have known many teacher who say that they do not even have time to grade papers. I feel that at some point it will be great but I do not feel that it is great for everyone. At school we are told to be very aware of what we post on facebook. Also we are told that when we apply for a job people will look for our facebook account. That is just to much stress to mess with. I have heard about all the good that can be done and I understand it's benefits that is all I care to do.

Thing #17 Tagging and Social Bookmarking with Del.icio.us

I followed the tutorial on what to do to sign up for Delicious but it kept trying to sign me into my yahoo account. This was not going to work for me all of the stuff I do is on Google. I have set up a iGoogle home page, calender, and reader. I do not what to link it to my home account. I did look at some of the tags. It does seem to be very helpful. I can see that this will be a site that I will use vary often. I just need to see how to link it to my Google account. I know that there are tons of links that will help but this is starting to get nuts. At some point there is tech overload and I feel that I am there.

Thing #16 Get Organized with Web 2.0

I created an iGoogle home page. I was able to add the reader gadget that way I could keep up with the blog, twitter, and other pages that I look for information from. We kept loosing power so every time that I would get started I would end up not getting things done. I tried to add remember milk but we lost power and now it will not take my log in info. It is nice having this as my home page because it take just a second to see want needs to be done. I have spent the remainder of the time trying to get a picture of my home page. I will try it one more time and lets see what happens.

Thing #15 What in the World is a Wiki?

I can see why people use Wiki. This is a great way to talk work together. If you can do it. I set up my own wiki site undre wetpaint. My goal is to have teacher place in ideas on this wiki and as we try them we can up date what works and what does not. There is the chance that the site can be misused. I have set the site so that NO one can edit anonymously. By doing this it should keep the site more reliable. So if you feel like placing your ideas for lessons down so that other can try them and give you feed back. I will be posting my beach ball math.
http://hansoloandcdebaca.wetpaint.com/

Thing #14 Go with the Flow

I signed up for Mind Meister and started to work with it. We have used apps like this in the job that I worked. It is a good way to brainstorm. It just started to scratch the surface of what the site can do. It will be something that I have to spend time with it in order to get better with this app. I also went to Gliffty. I did like this site and spent about an hour with the different charts. My favorite was the SWOT. I would like to use this chart when getting ready for parent teacher conference. This would be a chart that I could give to the parents. It gives them a breakdown of their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It would be something that they can look at and discuss with their child. Then I could give them another one at the end of the year.

Thing #13 Web-Based Applications

Well one more thing done. I went to ZOHO which was not bad it just seemed like another word processor. I did like some of the features. The way that it could be corrected on the doc. This is much better than having to work in the pop-up panes. After that I went to Google doc. and played with that for a little while. I liked the translator. I started to work on a rubric for assessment and then changed it over to Japanese. This is a good way produce rubrics for non-English speaking students. The only thing is does it change over correctly to mean the same thing that you intended. I did like Google doc. better then ZOHO, but that may just mean that I need to play/work with it a little bit more to understand it better.

Thing #12 Cool thing for Google

I have spent lots of time on Google but have never use any of the features other then for searching. This class is going to make me go crazy with all the thing that can be done on the Web. I did not want to know this much. It is nice knowing all this stuff. But it sure takes up the time. And because of that I chose to use the Google calender. That is why I was up until midnight I was trying to move all the information from our calender from the kitchen to my new Google calender. I was only able to get through one week. This is a great feature for teacher. If I use it right everything can be posted on my calender and be read by whoever I give access. This way all parents have no excuss not to know what event are coming up for their children. Also parents will be able to schedule time off for field trips, this will be a big help. I am sure there are more thing that I am missing and I will edit my post and put them in.

Thing #11 Finding Good Foods, I mean Feeds

I have been trying the RSS feed tool from the links that were given but I did not like them at all. What I found is that if I go to the corner of my Google Reader and type what I am looking for in the search it will pull up a list of sites I can click on. Now do not get me wrong I do like using Google to search for different thing it is just that for this task the links did not work like I would have hoped. I was able to use Google but I guess that I have use it so much it should be easier. The one I liked the least was Syndic8.com. It made no sence and was to hard to use. I did like Technorat.com I was able to find different thing. I did find the place where they have some videos. In fact the one I found was so cool it was this little girl singing a Lady Gaga song. I put the link at the bottom of the post. It was a little easier to navagate then some of the others. This was not one of my favorites tasks but I will give it some time and try it again. Who knows I may end up liking it later.

http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/lady-gaga-prodigy-goes-viral/

Thing #10 Learning About RSS Feeds

Let me start off by saying that I am married and have two boys who just finished basketball and have now started baseball. Time is one thing that I do not have a lot of. It has been hard to try to keep up with all the different posts from the people that I am trying to follow. Sometimes I feel that having to change from blog to blog I lose something. But boy was I happy with this task. I love the way that it will take all of the sites that I like to read and puts them on a page where I can read all of the newest posts. There is a chance that this could get two big. I know that the instruction said to choose five links that was hard. I had to remember that the link that I would follow would send updates all the time. This can be some what overwhelming. One of the best things that it did was it brought all of the blogs that I am following onto my reader page. Now I can keep up with them all. I do not think that I needed to put the names of these link but if anyone what to know what they are I will be glad to let you know.
This will be a neat tool for teaching. One way is that you can have all of your students blog feed to your reader. Second you can have any site that is helpful and gives good advice in dealing with school issues linked. In the classroom if you are dealing with current events you can find information that you could use. As for will I be able to use this as a teacher I will let you know in two years, but personal I am hooked. I have the chance to read just a part of the stroy and if I would like to continue all I have to do is click on the title of the article. Well I hate to go but I must check for updates on my reader.

Thing #9 Online Image Generators

Well I hope that I did this one correct. This was a little bit easier. I know that I will be using this in teaching. I know that some of the students will love seeing some of these cartoons giving them advice. This was something that I will be able to have the student get on and make some of these themselves. There are many fun thing that you can do with these sites. My favorite is the last because I am from Albuquerque.I had to come back to find the linds I forget to put them on my blog. But that is the good thing about a blog is you can edit it at any time. I listed a few things that you can do with these different sites. It is a fun way when you are posting to a blog that you can let parents see massages. Like if a students birthday is coming up you can put the day on a sigh with their favorite cartoon charactor.

http://www.txt2pic.com/celeb/addams-family-lurch.htm
http://www.fansigngenerator.com/make.asp?pic=cartoons/0-willie_coyote_road_runner-06-28-000000-ff0000-660000--topleft-0-200-~24-~40-74-130-188--center
http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Walk+of+Fame
http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Letter+Soup

Thing #8 Flickr mushup

Well this was not as easy as I would have hoped. I thought that I would be able to just go in make some changes and put the picture in the mushup. Well that did not happen. I had to upload some pictures from the storm damage in my neighborhood. this made it easier for me to make my mushup. This was far from being a fun task. I did like some of the other tasks that I was able to do. Like making your name out of different letters. This was not working because I could not get all the letters for my name. Well I just took a few minutes and as you can see I did it. I have my name in the letters. This may turn out to be better then I thought.

Thing #7 Exploring Flickr

Well after five and a half hours it is done. There were many pictures that I went through before I found this one. There was a great one of a bunny, and banjo on a bench. But I could not download the picture. It was a good thing because I like this picture much better. I love bluegrass and part of learning how to play is from those who have been doing it a while. This picture was taken at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

                                      http://www.flickr.com/photos/amarcord108/4303967111/      By amarcord108

I learned that flickr is a great tool if it is your pictures. By uploading pictures from different events at school, I would be able to get to the pictures at any time. I do not feel that this would be something that I would use for school. There are so many rules about taking pictures of children. I do not think that I would want the hassle. If I load the pictures on my computer I will still be able to download the pictures and not have everyone in the world looking at pictures of my students. Every year my wife and I are asked if we will give permission for pictures of our boys to be used. We waited until they turned eight to sign the form. If the parents have not signed giving permission there is no telling what might happen.

Thing # 6 The 200L's of Web 2.0

There are way to many to choose just one, but it does open a new world for me. The cite that I found was called Picnik. I chose it because I thought it was about food. Just kidding. I like taking picture of different things. I take pictures of flower and birds and sports events. At this cite I can download my picture and then edit them. There are different tabs that I can open up that allow me to many different things. And I can add different images  over the top of the picture, (e.g., hearts, frames, etc). This can help with your blog. If you are like me when you set up your blog at your school you will want to take pictures of your students. You will be able to download the picture and make any changes to it before you move it to your blog. This cite is free but if you choose to you can get the premium level it will cost to use that. This cite gives you the chance to try it out on some sample pictures. Every year as a teacher you have different event. like New Year, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Breast Cancer Awareness, etc. You can put fangs on pictures of your student. There is one problem that you could have with editing all these picture. You could spend a Lot of money.


Here is the link go  and give it a try  you will have fun. http://www.picnik.com/app#/home

Thing # 5 Taking a look at Web 2.0

The other day I went to visit a teacher from my sons' school. She asked me what I was learning this semester. I told her about my technology class. I started bring up the use of smart boards and Web 2.0. She said that she did not feel as though all that stuff needed to be done in the class room. This is when I decided this could be a teaching moment. I spent the next twenty minutes telling her all about he benefits available using Web 2.0. I told her that the computer in her class is not a computer but a window to many educational places. All of which can be tied into the lesson plan. I told her that children are learning about this new technology and it make learning fun. We as teacher need to be on the front end of this train guiding them in a educational way. I do not know if she felt any different but I showed her some cites and gave her some ideas. I will find out if it took when I see her again.

One last thing we need to remember is that when it comes to teaching it is about the student. We have an obligation to them. We need to make sure that we am preparing the students for the real world. Today's real world uses technology. If we do not learn how to use this new information and how to relay it to our students we will be the ones who have suffered, and our students will be the ultimate victim.

Thing # 4 Why commenting is Important

There are many reasons why we need to comment, to relay a massage, to give instruction, to receive a instruction that will help us learn, and sometimes just to vent. Without commenting we do not have any idea as to what people think about our comments. The comments that others give us is vary important in helping us to become more well rounded.  Many people have some constructive input that will help to fine tune some of those strange ideas that you can come up with. I had an idea of what I thought would be a great way to get parents to get involved in my class. I put it out to some friend and fellow teachers. They all commented on my idea and now five of us have a way to get parents involved in our class. This would not have been possible without them putting in their comments.


One of the points that I thought was important is one from ProBlogger. If you are not willing to use your own comments section why would your reader. This make perfect sence when you think about it. Would you want to post to a blog that looks like they really do on want to Blog. And then there is one more part about the reading was. If someone leaves a comment interact with them. One of the most anoying things is makeing a post to someones blog and then they do not respond to your comments. The other point came from Cool Cat Teacher Blog. It is important that we model for children the right way to disagree on a topic and to show that we can do it while remaining civil and not attacking the other's right to their. Many forget that we will never agree with everything that people post. But as teacher it is very important that all comment are done in a civil tone. Plus if you attack people on their blogs it just turns people off, and will keep them from posting to yours. And that limits what the Blog was designed for.

1. The first blog that I visited is Mrs Baugh Class. I like how she has her blog set up. Going down the right hand side you will see what is coming up that is important. Her post are set up to keep the parents informed.

Thing # 3 Blog use in the Classroom

Before this year I would have been one who said I can not think of any use of a blog in the classroom.. But boy has that changed. Learning how to create a blog and make the post can be scary, but after getting started it really is not that bad. The only set back is if you have some parents that do not have a computer they may feel left out. As a teacher I will be able to post class art work. I will also be able to post the student of the week. Birthday with pictures if students. I will be able to have my students post to the blog about field trip that we have take  and what they have learned from the trip. It will give parents a chance to see what is going on in the class without have to spend time in my class. They will feel as though they are part of the class. This last thing is one of the most important items for me. When a parent starts sending their children to school they loose their name and take on the name of Samuel's dad, or Simeon's mom. I want to post picture of the parents with their first and last name. This way when the parents see each other in the parking lot, football games, PTA meeting, they can call each other by name. It may seem like a little thing but to me it is very important. You let me know by making a response to this post.

Thing #2 Avitar and Blog setup

     Well I have to say that that was a little harder then I thought. I have never set up an Avatar before. My family has a Wii, but my boy's do not let me make any of the me. I did have some help getting to the right places from a wonderful girl who has taken this class last year. I tried hard to make my Avatar look like me. My wife asked me why I created my avatar with glasses. I told her that at some point I will have to ware my glasses to school. I have never Blogged before. I have only read the blog of my son's forth grade class. It is neat how she keeps up with everything. She places the picture of the student who is having a birthday. She also has listed stories that the student have written. She also post what will be coming up the next week, and month.

     I know that some people will look at the name of my blog and say "what is this." Well it came from a friend who had a hard time saying my last name. He could never say it correctly and it drove me nuts. No that's not a far trip. So I asked him if he ever saw Star Wars.  I told him that my last name sounds like Chewbacca. After that he never had a problem with my last name. I have been called many different names, and I answer to them all. It dose not matter what you call me just blog in and we can talk.

Thing # 1: Lifelong Learning

     I have not spent much time thinking about what makes someone a lifelong learner. I guess that there are some who become stagnant and do not make an attempt to learn anything new. I feel that learning does not just happens it take a willingness to learn. I have never been able to just sit around and do nothing. I spend my free time reading books, magazine, or learning to play a new instrument. I have never seen the 7 1/2 habits of a successful lifelong learner. That being said I have approached my learning by using a couple of these habits. The first being #1 (begin with the end in mind) and then #3 (View problems as challenges). These would be the easiest for me to keep because I have been using them already. Before I returned to college four years ago I had to set my goal, and address all the problems I would have being in my forty's. The habit that will be the hardest for me will be #4 (Have confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner). I have spent much of my time learning about many different things before starting school. I have never felt confident with my ability to learn at this level. I try to push as hard as possible to get the information down to complete the course. The whole time I feel  like I am struggling to get all the information. This is what has kept me questioning my ability to be a effective learner. 
     I have been looking forward to this class. The ability to learn about new educational technology is a challenge. I love being challenged. I have seen this technology used at the school where my boys attend. My boys like the use of the smart board and taking  clicker tests. I can see what my son's fourth grade class is doing by looking at the teachers Blog.