Okay so this is my last "thing." I think I will explore more of the resources during the summer.
For now, I tried to look at the videos, but had trouble seeing the embedded one. I did watch the vimeo one. I think I might show that to my students next year.
I had previously explored Spokeo, Pipl, SocialMention, and 123People. I find it really scary how much info these sites have on us. Even my 84 year old father is on them! I am not a big social media person. I use GoodReads because it is related to my job. I have tried Twitter, but was not impressed. I have a Pinterest account, but it is more for the ability to store links than for the Social part. I really want to keep my personal and professional lives separate for the most part. I guess it is really because I am an introvert, although most people say that you wouldn't guess it when I'm with the kids. Even in my small rural school, there have been several incidents where Social Media has gotten teachers into trouble, not so much teacher-student issues as teacher-parent issues. I check my school e-mail regularly, so I am fully accessible.
Perhaps because of being a small rural school, we are fairly conservative in our work with students. The older elementary students are given e-mail accounts, but they have historically been local only, not gmail accounts. We are exploring Chromebooks, so that might change. Our primary students have logins, but no email accounts.
I read the article about the CO Teacher Librarian who uses Digital Passport. I use Digital Passport with our students, too, but in a different manner. Our library catalog has a social media aspect -students can make friends, recommend books, comment back and forth, and review books. I don't let them access those features until they complete the Digital Passport. Many students start the process, but not all complete it. Perhaps if I start it at a lower grade, I can attract more kids to finish it. Another option is to try to get it adopted as part of their computer lab training, but that is difficult since Common Core sets typing speed expectations and SO many of our students don't type at home at all. Although they practice in the lab regularly, there is still a lot of hunting and pecking going on. I actually recently had to ask the Computer Lab to have the students power off the machines when I had some lessons with the laptop cart and, despite my instructions to go to Start and choose Shut Down, I caught the students just hitting the Power button. I also caught some kids coming in for recess to use the desktops who were just hitting the Power button. Sometimes there seems like there is so much to teach and so little time to teach it!
I had previously ordered the Netcetera OnGuardOnline materials and while I still put them out for parents, since the "student" book covers sexting and we are a fairly conservative rural school, I am not handing it out! I will look into more of the links from this thing to see if there is anything more appropriate.
In other final thoughts...
I really love these CoolTools lessons. I keep copies of them to refer back to when I want to learn (or relearn) something or when I want to look for a new tool for a project.
I want to follow up on Productivity. I still have Evernote on my phone and at home, but I decided that I wasn't sure it was the best tool for school. Again I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate and I was worried that others might see my Evernote notes as I am always logged into one of the computers at the circ desk. I decided to explore the Groupwise Calendar, tasks, and notes more. It syncs with my phone. And that is working fairly well. I have a calendar to carry with me as well as to-do lists. The only problems with it is that you seem to have to set the notification every time you add an event or a task and if I check off a task at work on my desktop (after signing into Groupwise), I still have to check it off on the phone. Annoying! Still, for now it beats the methods I have been using.
Another new site that seems really great is Quizlet. Did you mention that in one of the Things and I missed it? I learned about it in a magazine article. I used it to make flashcards, games, and quizzes to help our students remember some important vocabulary words. Then I shared those lessons and the site with the teachers. People seem pretty excited about it. I know that there have to be other sites like that, but I haven't found them yet. I am also looking for a way to make games/quizzes like HyperStudio used to have where if they answered wrong, it was recorded, but you could make the stacks so that it told them they were wrong with an explanation and had them try again to learn the correct answer. There seem to be a lot of ways to make it so that they get points for being correct, but not so much the teaching why they were wrong. Maybe there is something I just don't get. PowerPoint works great for me teaching a whole class, but it really does not lend itself to individual viewing. A Google form is great for a quiz, but not for teaching. Quizlet is good practice, but still has limitations.
Well, thanks for the lessons! I hope that we do this again next year! I have learned a lot!
