Thing #11: Flikr.

Picture by lostajy


Flikr is a website that shares images and videos of everything you can imagine to the public. You can choose to either look to the images without being able to manage them in any way, or work under a Creative Commons license, where you can copy, distribute, display, and perform their copyrighted work in different ways. Sometimes you will have to give credit to the authors, use the images for noncommercial purposes only,use only verbatim copies of the work or derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs that work. There are thousands of images published, and Creative Commons gives the license so you can choose the option that best fits your project.

Thing #10: Creative Commons.

Did you know that when you create something you automatically own the full rights of your work and Copyright protects it from being anyway modified or used by others? Creative Commons CC, is an organization that provides free copyright licenses that tell people exactly which parts of your work can or cannot be used without having to personally come to you and ask for your permission to use it. "Creative Commons has refined the rules of Copyright".
The Creative Commons licenses allow students, teachers, dj's, writers, etc to learn and enhance their projects with the fair and appropriate use of your work. I personally abstain from using some work from others on the web such as images, audio and video to avoid skipping the copyright rules, but why not making better and more complete projects with the fair use and share of materials on the web? We can do this by going to the Creative Commons site and find answers with a language that is easily understandable to us.

Learn more from this by clicking on:
Creative Commons

Thing #9: Reflections on my sandbox.

Making my own wiki and playing in the sandbox was a lot of fun. I learned how to create a table of contents, add images, links, page breaks and lists. Although it was complicated at the beginning to add my voki, I could find the instructions on how to paste the code and have it on my page. I really enjoyed playing and learning from "thing #9".


My Sandbox Wiki:
http://readingwiki23.wikispaces.com/

Thing #8-Stretch: About Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the first searching tools I use to find answers to my or my student's questions.I like to find the contents in an orderly manner right at the beginning of the site because you can either find what you are looking for by clicking on a link or know that it is not what you are looking for and add or delete words on your search to find your answers.

Thing #8: Wiki wiki teaching.

I think that blogs and wikis are very practical communication tools that we can use to better teach and know our student's factual needs. I noticed that most of the wikis that I observed are organized in a predictable manner, which provides more probability to find what we are looking for. Some others  were over-saturated and were hard and tedious to read. I would rather place links on the side to have the information handy and organized rather than all stacked in the same place. I will start a wiki for my class about reading. It will have a space for my students to share their comments on the books they are reading, as well as a space for them to write questions about those books for their peers to answer when it is their time to read them.

Thing #7: Importance on commenting in blogs.

Commenting is a key component on a blog, it is very important to keep new ideas flowing to maintain the site alive. By commenting, the reader and writer can feel a connection when they share their ideas and each other. New readers can learn from past conversations and input more feedback so new readers can feel identified and feel the spirit to continue expressing their ideas and continue keeping the site alive.

Thing #6: Interesting blogs.

I have just started adding subscriptions on my Google reader and love all the filtered information we can get with a simple click of a button. I love technology and found a high techspectations and an Iphone new apps and news blog. I cannot wait to find more sources of interest that enrich my learning and knowledge.

http://www.lucygray.org/weblog/atom.xml

http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss

Thing #5: Of Creativity and Art from Students 2.0

I read the article of creativity and art by Morgante Pell. It was very interesting to see his output about how creativity cannot be just taught because of its nature.  I think that a person can develop their ability and some are born with more creativity than others, but you cannot only teach creativity to a human being per-se. We as teachers can have our students working in art projects that can enhance their creativity through time, but it would be almost impossible for a teacher to focus their teaching and force her students to become creative just for the sake of it, as Pell said “creativity can be practiced but not taught.”

http://students2oh.org/2008/11/19/of-creativity-art/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Students2oh+%28Students+2.0%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Thing #4: Sample blog posts.

In the sample blogs posted on "Thing #4", I found that writing in general was about school blogging and what a useful tool it can turn into. It is not just a lot of nonsense words, it actually shares opinions that can grow learning in many different genres. Students, teachers and people around the world can learn from each other and share their thoughts on a interactive environment. Students can get more engaged in learning and writing at higher thinking levels because it shares real life themes and situations that people who is reading it might be coping with. It is different from another writings because it engages the public with oncoming and going interactive responses from each other which might be renewed every certain time. Blogging in a classroom can facilitate learning by discovering what teachers and students really want and need to learn.

POST 1: Thing #1 - Reflections on Lifelong Learning

The most challenging habit for me on my Learning 2.0 experience is to create a toolbox, I know that it can be very useful, and I will also start using it more often in my other duties.

The easiest habit for me as a lifelong learner is to begin with an end in mind because I like to see things on a short or long term basis with a timeline to follow to avoid procrastination.

I think that the most important habit for me as I work through this course is to view problems as challenges and to continue applying it in all the other ambits of my life.

POST 2: Thing #2 - Thoughts about Web 2.0

I love technology and have many tools available in my classroom such as a Promethean Board, a projector and Elmo. Now I would like to learn all about Web 2.0 tools to enhance my teaching method every day. It is amazing what an impact in can cause in our student’s different learning methods.

I think that using blogs would be very helpful and handy for my students if every Monday they have the course material ready for the coming week showing the detailed instructions of what, how and when are they supposed to turn in their work. It can also be used by different subject teachers to connect their teaching with each other each one focusing on their particular subject, and I would like to learn about more tools we can use to make our teaching more rich and entertaining.