Learning to Learn in 21

Ufff! I think I survived the whole experience of “tag you’re it”.  I know this site will be my best cyberfriend/second brain/GPS…etc,etc,etc.  to remember the location of all the cool and helpful sites tagged by other people and myself. The instructions on the Wiki page were kind of confusing to me, but I am glad I was able to learn and explore the different ways until I got it. As a result, I created my delicious site and now I have two tasks to do: learn how to be a good tagger and finish tagging all the sites I have.  Here is what I have so far on my delicious.

Very interesting idea. I browsed some of the reading clubs I could be interested in after I registered. I found some of the entries dated between 2008 and2009, not many were done recently. Also there was a sign reporting errors in the group as: 

      Problem with the concurrent query manager in the LibraryThing Bureau of Garbage Collections.
		We have an entire room of trained monkeys working to solve the problem..

I have spent quite “a lot” time going to the different “Tool” sites, signing in, and playing for a while with them.  I found some friendly use websites with intro videos while others were based on trial and error/use help… I found for example that Xtranormal won’t be a good site for Foreign Languages because the characters only speak using English pronunciation. Mixbook was another hard one for me. On the other hand, I loved the Jingproject with its film edit Camtasia.  Slideshare could help me uploading created presentations that could be seen by  my students and others. ToonDoo  takes time to create the characters. I am not quite sure about the fact the kids could create their own during their free time, since I did not like some of the toons created by others.  Finally I would like to use Weebly to create a web page. I like the idea to drag, drop and write or use different kinds of media to enhance the topics we have studied in class. I saw in our sandbox many good comments about Quizlet. I have not been there yet, but soon.

These conferences were a plus. I browsed several of them and I was able to attend to four.  “The Wizard of Apps” by Joyce Valenza Dec. 2009,”Communicación 2.0 en el aula” by Pilar Soro Dec. 2009,  ”Options for Building Your Teacher Website and Why YOU Should” by Cyndi Danner-Kuhn Dec. 2009,  and “Web 2.0 Tools to Amplify Elementary Student’s ‘Creativity and Initiative’” by Jackie Gerstein Oct. 2008″ All with sizzling topics and lots of info to apply into my particular field of instruction. I have chosen to comment ”The Web 2.0 Tools to Amplify Elementary Student’s ‘Creativity and Initiative’”, Jackie Gerstein describes not only the projects designed for her students ages 8-12, but also presents her philosophical point of view for the 21st C education through her blog. She emphasizes three aspects:

She presents her mission of statement, values and principles in her Wiki and Blog. Jackie procures the best quality learning experience for each one of her students. She loves diversification and exposes her students to immersion, experimental and holistic learning experiences. She also gives important lessons about ethics and integrity where her students develop their unique abilities, talents, and learning styles in a motivating and fun environment. I found related information about this topic on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. The 2006 document exemplifies what the engaged teachers should have to consider as they move on the 21st C education: Web Safety and Privacy, Info literacy, Web citizenship, Web Teamwork, Intentional Web Activities and Accountability.

This is going to be a very powerful tool to introduce students to new places in different countries since I can do slideshows without using PP with music. I can select a few images from different countries and show them to the students. For the advanced students, they can create their own slideshows and share them with the rest of the class.

Flickr is a great site to look for videos or photos. Do not  forget to use the  CC photos with Attribution-Non Commercial-Non Derivs license and search for tags. Always copy the URL where the author is written to give proper credit. We can annotate a picture and use the Advance Search option to locate videos and photos. An inspirational  blog is Classroom Uses of Flickr by David Jakes. Jakes on Line  is a very interactive blog that helps organize the collection. He has a Del.icio.us site for favorites. Other uses for fotos in classroom are maps with real pictures added to it to create a living tour. Geotagging is a feature from flickr. Follow the next link and click map. I played with it. Students can create a slide show with pictures they find in Flickr and then create a slideshow with Slide Show Creator, fun!

Here is a picture from my house

Nuestra casa en la ultima nevada

Creative Commons

This is both a good idea and a solution to solve the common copyrighted problem. People are very protective of their personal ideas and stuff. CC gives the opportunity to reuse the material found, share and develop from it new knowledge. CC is great as long as it is not misused to harm or to obtain profit out of it. Copyright laws are very strict, that proved to be so protective that something new had to be created in order to use the material. One good example of how to spiral the knowledge, is to use the Open Course Ware. Though they do not grant any kind of title or certificate, they can support the knowledge itself to reinforce ideas to make people think.

I really love the Creative Commons video, courtesy of Nuuvo. This lies down in my k12learning20.

I went to look for an article in Spanish. I found out several remarks during my process. I realized that the cover pages are different according to the language. The Spanish Wikipedia main page looked different in content and format from the English  Wikipedia version. I also looked the French Wikipedia version, and found out the same. Since I am able to read and understand those three languages, I chose the Colombian Presidential Election topic. It was well written in the three languages. There was no direct translation, but rather a presentation of three different approaches with the same information. The information was complete, but of course, the Spanish version had more content than the other two versions. The content seemed valid. About the discussion and history of this particular wiki, There are 16 different topics in Spanish.  Among those, people discussed more the presidential polls than any other part. There are not so many entries to validate in other languages. Just out of curiosity, I include a picture of the new Colombian president .

Image courtesy of Diario de Navarra

I visited my Google Reader and I chose the Successful Teaching Feed. I found the song “You Have Made a Difference” as the most recent post. It was both a thank you and an inspirational song to start the day with. I feel happy:).

Doing this is very easy. I have learned two important lessons: First, do not feel overwhelmed and second, I will retain important ideas because they will come back at some point in my reader.