My Route to Choose

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

I love that poem! I don't know how times I have read it and it never gets old. My whole career as a teacher seems to match this poem since I always change positions or duties from year to year. It also seems to explain my attraction to Web 2.0. Unfortunately Web 2.0 is still the road less traveled, but since I took that road it does seem to make all the difference.

There are so many ideas that I have gathered traveling this road. I learned that students could and should be responsible for their learning. To know that I don't have to talk the entire period and I am doing the students a disservice by being a dispenser of information. That sometimes I need to "back off" and let the students as Tim Gunn from Project Runway say "work it out."

So from my previous travels and this class, here is my action plan:

1. To keep blogging! I want to include more tool reviews than I have done in the past. While others already do it, I think my perspective might be helpful to others.
2. To not judge so quickly. I have a tendency to not use a tool if I don't understand its purpose right away. Voicethread, here I come!
3. To keep up with Google Reader. I have read so many amazing articles that I want to try to keep up with the blogs I have chosen to follow.
4. To remember to choose the right tool for the right project. Sometimes the newest tool isn't the best tool for the project.
5. To remember is not about the tool, it is about student learning. Before any Web tool is introduced in class, I will have a well developed plan on how it will further student learning. Technology should be transparent.
6. To never be afraid to take chances. It is okay if the project or the tool doesn't work, if I learn and reflect on the experience.

Ok Diigo, You are not so bad.

My Diigo account started in 2009 when many of my Tweeps were moving from Delicious to Diigo. There were many good features that made me think about making the big move. Yet, Delicious was comfortable, easy, and quick. So I left the account open in case things changed, but this was my first visit back since 2009. Even with the big scare earlier this year when Delicious was sold by Yahoo and there was a rumor that the site would shut down.

Of course there are many reasons why social bookmarking is so important. On a personal level you have access to all of your favorite links on any computer or device with an Internet connection. Tags let you organize your links to find them faster. Tags also allow you to search through other users' bookmarks which is helpful when others ask you for links on various topics. All of the social bookmarking sites meet these basic goals, so the next step is to find out what makes Diigo different.

There are a few main features that make Diigo stand out from the other bookmarking sites. The first one is that you can add notes to the web site you save. This feature has never impressed me since I like to save links quickly and don't use notes in Delicious. Another feature I do like is Groups where an user starts a group with other users. In this group all of the users share notes and links based on one topic. Currently I belong to a digital citizenship and podcasting group. I could easily set up a group for my school so teachers could share sites they use in the classroom. The new feature I was excited about was the Diigo app for iPad. I currently save links to Delicious on my iPad, but it is a crazy process. The video about the app looks exciting.

Will I make the official move to Diigo now? That is unclear, but all of my links are now on Delicious, Diigo, and Google bookmarks under the same username: thetechtiger.

Hello Google Reader, Have we met?

Ok I will admit it. I have been known to sign up for a new tool, play with it for a while, and then abandon it. I am sure I am not the only one, right?

This was the case with Google Reader. I set up my space when I went to the Google Teacher's Academy in 2008. I thought it was really cool for catching up on all of the blogs that I wanted to read. Then the unread posts number started to rise as I had less time to read. It got so overwhelmed that instead of just clearing my unread posts, I just abandoned the tool.

So when I revisited Google Reader, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the updates. There is a whole new "People You Follow" section that shows the blogs of people I follow on Twitter and Google+. There are Notes where I can share comments, websites, and more. If I don't know what to still follow I can use bundles saved by others. I love that there is now an app for my Android phone so I can read on-the-go (of course not while driving).

Probably the best reason for me to personally use Google Reader is to read posts without distractions. When I just visit blogs, I get distracted by the blog design, links, images, widgets, and more. Google Reader lets me focus on just the content which actually allows me to read more and remember to visit my favorite blog writers. It was so easy to add new blogs from those that I met at ISTE '11.

In the past, I used Google Reader in the classroom too. Each student in my 8th grade classes had a blog as a portfolio for their projects. Instead of visiting each blog to check for updates, I created groups for each class. I would check once a day for updates and it was super easy to add feedback.

I am glad I had a chance to re-visit Google Reader.

Symbaloo: A Real Hot Tool

This past week was spent in Technology Wonderland, also known as ISTE '11. It seemed like many people were looking like the new, big tool. For myself, I was looking for new strategies and ideas, but felt I had plenty of tools in my web toolbox. I noted a few new titles and avoided sessions that were all about the tool. As much as I love that students can create and share their work online, it is about the the learning not the tool.

Then there was this one tool that kept popping up, Symbaloo. I had heard about it before ISTE, but never had the time to check it out. Then representatives from the company were at the DEN (Discovery Educator Network) pre-conference event. I skipped their sessions to learn more about topics that I was already interested in like mobile learning and green screening.

I ended up sitting in an unplugged session about Symbaloo on the last day of the conference to support the ladies that work for the company. It was more about the personal connection than the tool. I met the ladies during the opening session and then again at the EdTech Karaoke party. We even sang a song together. If there is any evidence to this, I won't admit to it.

The conference is over and I decided to give Symbaloo a try. I have to admit I like. Symbaloo is like a dashboard of web sites, media, and widgets. It is easy to make your own web mix and edit as much as you need to. You can save and edit webmixes from other users. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they already had an edu version.

So I started building a webmix for class to check it out. So far, so good. I am thinking of making this the home page for my students. Then I can add the link to the class site in case students want to use the web mix at home. I have to admit that this hot tool has gotten my interest.

Google Docs vs. Wikis

I thought I would start off by giving a little bit of my background. In 2008, I was chosen to attend the Google Teachers Academy in Chicago which was also the first year of Google Apps in Prince George's County. I have enjoyed being a Google Certified Teacher so much I went ahead and went through the process of becoming a Google Apps EDU Certified Trainer. The reason for mentioning all of this is that I LOVE Google Apps and there may be a little non-biased opinions in this entry.

Google Docs have all of the best qualities of wikis. You can collaborate on any Google Docs, just like wikis, by sharing. Not everything you work on you want to make into a web site and Google Docs solves that problem.

Unlike wikis, Google Docs has more options when it comes to privacy settings. A Doc can be private, shared with a few, or published on the web. Through each of those options there are view, edit, or own options to grant the new users. The best part is that all of the options can be changed within seconds. This makes true collaboration a lot easier than wikis.

Now for a real life example... Our school is working on new professional development models for next year. The administration and I shared a Google Form to create a survey on the comfort level of teachers in different areas: co-teaching, technology, Webb's Depth of Knowledge, etc. At first I created all of the questions in private mode. When I was done, I gave editing rights to the administration in case they wanted to add or modify questions. After changes, I used the public link to share with staff so they could take the survey, but not view the results. Results are instant and Google has a nice summary of responses feature. All of this will be applied to our school improvement plan. This whole process was a lot faster than the traditional paper method.

Using Google Docs in the classroom is a little trickier since students don't have access to Google Docs yet (fingers crossed for the Fall middle school roll out). There is an option where any one with the link to the Google Doc can edit, but this has issues. You cannot track revisions back to individual students, so docs can be sabotaged (Revision History is wonderful in these situations). It also makes it hard to use other features like discussions and comments. I do use Google Docs as a storage area for students to upload projects they are working on. I set up an account for each grade level and change the passwords between assignments as a work around to the system. Setting up collections makes grading and archiving student work a breeze.

Did I mention I LOVE Google Apps?

Building DIY Tech

Probably one of the hardest steps in creating this wiki was choosing a topic. Since the school year has come to a close, it didn't make sense to build a student projects site. In all of my classes I like to build assignments I can use later, so I decided to build a professional development site for teachers. My hope is that this site will appeal to educators that embrace technology and don't require face-to-face time with an instructor. I like the idea of a wiki for this because it becomes more interactive with teachers posting examples, questions, and tips.

I have used Wikispaces in the past and it was good to see that it is still an easy process. It only took a couple of minutes to have the wiki up and running. Of course I had to start looking at how to customize the look of the wiki. There is a number of themes and even more if the site is an approved K12 site. Adding a new logo was very easy.

The hardest part I had to deal with was the navigation widget. In other wikis I created, when I created a new page it automatically showed up in the navigation sidebar. This layout did not do that so I had to edit the navigation widget.

To make sure that it was still simple to embed work from other sources, I decided to create the intro to the site in Google Docs. The experiment worked! Just like in the past, I chose the "other" option to paste in the presentation embed code. In a couple of seconds the Google Doc was on the wiki and running very well.

I look forward to continuing to work on this wiki and see what it becomes.

Wild About Wikis

Wikis are wonderful for the classroom! They are a simple and safe way for students to publish their work on the web. Since students are not supposed to sign up for accounts, most educational versions of wikis allow the teacher to set up accounts for the students without an email address. This makes the process so much easier. At the same time this makes wikis the type of project that requires more teacher planning than other types of web 2.0 projects.

Another great aspect about Wikis is that students can feel successful without having any previous experience with web site creation. The format is very simple to add text and images. It is super easy to embed videos, glogs, and anything else that has an embed code. I like to take this time to explain basic html code and how to customize embed codes.

The one slightly negative aspect is when students edit the wrong area. Usually I set up all the pages and assign them to students, but there is always someone that will edit the home page because it is the first one they see. The revision history option is perfect to avoid student meltdowns when they think their work is lost.

I thought I would share some of my wiki projects that I have used in the past. When I first created a wiki project, students had to create a virtual zoo. In teams, they created pages that detailed one animal. Some of the requirements included informational text, images with citations, and videos if possible.

Another wiki was Summer recommendations. Students had to suggest places to visit over the summer. The classes loved this project because they felt like travel experts.

My favorite wiki project was called, “Brand of Me.” 8th grade students worked on creating a personal brand using various web 2.0 tools. The wiki allowed the student to put all of their creations in one area along with reflections on the process.