One More Thing

I have really enjoyed taking this course. Working with all of these tools is a lot of fun. Sometimes it certainly can be frustrating, but when you sit back, take a deep breath (or a break) and come back to the project, most of the time you figure it out and you have that huge sense of accomplishment. I am a "figure it out" kind of person anyway, so that fits me. I have enjoyed getting more familiar with tools and even terms that I have seen before but never know what it was or how to use it (such as RSS feeds, wow, what a cool tool). I was just talking to a friend and mentioned blogging and linking to a site, and they asked "you know how to link?" and I smiled and said, "absolutely!" :-) When I read the course description, I knew it would be a lot of work and take a lot of time ( and it was and it did!), but I knew it would be worth it. Many years ago when laptops first came out, I enrolled in a program where we did projects and lessons on computer and if we completed that course we could keep our laptops. I know that many people that took that course had to turn their laptops in, but I was determined to keep mine and I did! In fact, many of the things I learned in that course are the foundations to the technology skills that I do have today. This course reminded me of that and I knew going in what was in store, and I really enjoyed it. The only problem was that I had to take a two week vacation right in the middle, where I would not have access to the Internet, but I worked hard to get ahead where I could finish when I got back and here I am! Now that I have learned about the tools and am much more familiar with wiki's, blogs and such I want to keep using them. I am not completely sure exactly how, but I will work out the details between now and school starting in a few weeks. I have always been a person that hated to write, but I kind of enjoy blogging...hmmm. In closing, I want to thank those of you that spent a lot of time reading and keeping up with our assignments, I know that is not always an easy job. I can't take courses like this during the school year because of time commitments, but I look forward to many other offerings in technology during the summer!

Thing 23

Visit 23 Thingsters

I enjoyed looking around Ning. As I mentioned in the last post, I enjoy facebook a lot, but to have a site like that just for teachers is great. Granted, there are not a lot of music groups or even posts about music on the site, but I think that will get better as more people become aware of it. I enjoyed looking at a discussion thread about music technology. As you can tell from me taking this course, I am always looking for ways to improve my knowlege of technology and specifically music technology can certainly help me in the classroom. The thing about interactive sites like this (and of course all of web 2.0) is that it connects all of us across the country and the world. I like being able to interact and discuss something of interest to my classroom with a band director or music teacher in California, or Virginia, or Israel, or anyplace. The thing you realize is that even though we are in different areas, and sometimes different situations or socioeconomic circumstances, many of our problems are the same and the more we share ideas, the better we solve them and our students are better for that sharing and interacting.

Thing 22

Okay, so now I have to admit it, I am a Facebook addict. I actually resisted the idea of joining for a long time. I knew about my space and Facebook because my youngest son was a member of face book while he was in college (my oldest son still resists the idea) and of course many of my students have talked about their accounts and what was said or done for the past several years. To be honest, I was a little afraid to join, but my wife joined and began to reconnect with people that we had known from the past, many that had been my students. Therefore at her and their urging, I joined. I now realize what a wonderful tool this is. Since I joined a few weeks ago, I have reconnected with many of my ex students and have caught up with where they are, what they are doing, and that is a great benefit to both of us. Because band is such a family thing and because we do grow close to our students as we literally see them grow up, it is wonderful to see what they are doing with their lives, see pictures of their families, or just see where they are. I literally have ex students across the United States, many with all kinds of occupations and we all have the common background of having experienced band together. In fact, not only did I reconnect with my ex students, I reconnected with MY ex band director, who is now on Face book! Even though it is a social network, it does serve an educational purpose, because I can tell my current students that there is a future, that their current experiences in band will serve them well in it, and that they will have those connections for the rest of their lives. This helps be be a better teacher and helps them to be better students and helps all of us realize we are lifetime learners. In fact, many of my ex students that are now teachers tell me that many of the things they use in their classroom now, they learned from me. I am really glad I joined and I encourage anyone especially teachers to join and connect with students and ex students.

Thing 7b

Interesting question raised in this poll.................Can a teacher be a good teacher without technology? Here we are in the middle (or towards the end) of a course that deals with technology tools that will help in the classroom, so what a great question. The responders in the poll mostly voted yes as the answer. In my opinion, yes is the correct answer. I think a teacher can be great and very effective without technology. See, in my opinion, a teacher is effective because of his or her relationship with the students. If they believe in you as a teacher, they will listen and learn no matter if you just have chalk and a green chalkboard or if you have computers on every desk all the latest "gadgets" installed. I think technology is a wonderful tool and can really make learning easier, but like any other tool, it depends on the person using it. For instance, I can go to the local hardware store and buy all the latest tools for carpentry or plumbing, but just me holding them or owning them will not make me a good carpenter or plumber. So my opinion is that while technology is a wonderful tool, it has to be put in the hands of a master craftsman (teacher) to be highly effective.

Thing 21

Google tools can be a lot of fun to work with. I am somewhat familiar with them because when I got this new laptop, the home page I began to use was google. Immediately, I made an iGoogle page with things of interest to me. I have weather, latest news from sources such a fox news, sports news from ESPN and sports illustrated, and things like that. Also, recently I have begun to use google maps. I did not know much about google maps, but begin to work with it when I was planning our vacation to Wyoming. I was able to plan out the route, get directions and approximate travel times for all of the trip. I can also use this application at work because we do travel a lot as a band and when I need directions to a stadium or school, it will help a lot. In fact, with the encouragement of my son, I downloaded google maps on my mobile phone and have had a lot of fun working with it and using it for directions while traveling. The other thing I chose to use for this assignment is Google alerts. I follow some sports teams for fun and one of them is the Dallas Cowboys. So I added them to my alert and it will be fun and interesting to see what information I receive.

Thing 20

I think Google Docs might just be the most useful thing I have learned about in this course. I am a list and spreadsheet nut and am always using those type of tools to organize all of my office work and student's work. I found it very easy to work with so far, and will spend more time in the next few weeks trying things out. I did not do a work document for my sample, I went ahead and did a calender. We are in a busy season with the band right now, getting ready for summer band, and so I just put my summer band calender on it. I have worked with some other calender programs and found them somewhat difficult to use. This one was very easy. Also, when I am in the process of developing the calender, I can send it to all of the other directors (6) and they can put their dates on it so that we will have a really nice master calender to use for planning. I use spreadsheets to track the students tests, playoff scores, fundraising monies paid, and fees paid. Some of them (especially the ones that list specific amounts on them), I will not be able to use in a shared format because not everyone needs to see that type of information, but some of them that show where the students are in their progress (just like the one used for this course) will be very helpful. Also, in addition to my duties here at MHS in the band office and with my own students, I also organize, schedule, and administrate the UIL Solo and Ensemble for Music Region 3. I use a spreadsheet to schedule everything, and this tool will allow me to get input from the other directors in the region when I am scheduling their students. I have seen google docs used some this year and I am glad to be able now to work with it myself!

Thing 19

VoiceThread seems like a really fun tool. What a great way to share pictures and get comments. In fact, if you posted an album, you could get comments from those in the pictures, maybe telling stories or memories about the pictures. Maybe it would be a memorable vacation where everyone wants to tell his or her side of the stories and it would be a wonderful way for the family and friends to share. We just got back from a vacation and we usually post pics on the web(facebook) and get comments and such, this would even be more fun because of the audio capabilities. As far as classroom use, I can actually see a use for it. Many times we use pictures of formations in order to teach and sometimes we have pictures of the live performance. I could see us using this by posting it and then having the students give comments on how we can improve, or things they like or don't like about it, critiquing it in any way. I think this would be a very fun way to get student feedback on what we are dog and I think it would encourage a lot of participation.