Chapter 10 What It All Means

     In chapter 10 Richardson describes how he sees the read/write web offers many new opportunities for students and teachers to interact with each other and to interact with other people throughout the world.  He speculates that the read/write web is in it's infancy and "The coming years will be marked by a flood of new innovations and ideas in teaching, most born from the idea that we can now publish and interact in ways never before possible."  I do agree with his speculation especially considering that as more and more Internet web 2.0 experts and users become teachers and administrators, more and more the web 2.0 will be integrated into education.  I also agree that it is the schools responsibility to contribute to the education of the read/write web technology to our youth.
     So, how does this new technology affect me as a 7th grade math teacher.  I recognize that I can contribute to the education of our youth by using the read/write web as an extension of my classroom.  Not only can I be part of the education of the Internet technology to our students, I can also implement the technologies for enhancing the math education.  This will be a major change in how I manage my classroom.  And I know it has the potential for significant increases in student learning.  I will accept this challenge with open arms and will enthusiasticallyimplement these new technologies into my classroom.

Chapter 9 Social Networks

     In chapter 9 of our textbook, Richardson describes using social networks like Facebook and Ning.  I think for me to appreciate the real value of these types of web sites I need to use them for my own personal use.  Then I might be able to find ways to effectively use them in my class room to enhance instruction.

     I looked at the Ning classroom social web page  Sean Nash's Marine Biology Ning Page to get ideas about how other teachers have used social networking in the classroom to enhance instruction.  The page was a powerful way to make the classroom into a unique community where all the students have an identity and can participate in discussion and in adding information, ideas and photos.  In many ways this is a similar use as a classroom wiki but it differs in that it is more usable for computer "socializing".  I like it, but at this point I feel adding a classroom wiki is more than enough for me to handle so maybe the social web site is for the future after I am successful with the wiki.

Chapter 8 Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, & Live Streaming

     Wow, kind of overwhelming at first to think about.  Then I realize it's good to read about and become familiar with all these computer internet multimedia publishing web tools especially to offer them as options for students to use for presentations and/or other ways of communicating their knowledge and questions.   So, even though I may not use these tools for presentation of lessons or material to the students, the students can use these tools to present to the class or just to me.
     I tried listening to a math podcast on teaching with smartboard Podcast on Using Smartboard.  I could not hear anything so I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or my school computer equipment isn't set up or working correctly to hear it.   I found the screencasting web tool to be most interesting.  I looked at the screencast by John Udell a wikipedia entry about Heavy Metal Umlaut Wikipedia Screencast.  It was an awesome lesson on wikipedia and Heavy Metal Umlauts.  I could imagine using this web tool to create a math lesson or creating screencasts to post on my classroom wiki.  I do need to get an MP3 player or a microphone that connects to my computer to be able to make a screencast.

Chapter 7 Fun With Flickr

     As I learned by reading chapter 7, Flickr is a Read/Write web site used for posting digital photos to share with the world or to share with a select group of invited people, like a class.   My initial reaction was what math photos can I share with my classes?"  Of course there is the obvious fun with classroom photos.  Then, as I read I thought more about possibly posting math work that could be annotated and that students could comment about and vice verca where students post photos of math work with annotations and comments/questions.  Maybe this has value.  I looked on-line at Mr. Crosbys 4th grade class on Flickr Mr. Crosby's 4th Grade Class .  I did not see a lot of photos of math class or math work.  Looks like a lot of photos that might have value in social studies and science classes.

     Of course at some point while reading chapter 7, I thought about the major issues of safety and risks.  Wow, I'm not sure how you prevent students from finding inappropriate photos.  I guess it all boils down to the parents/guardians are responsible at home for what their child views and we are responsible for making sure that what the students post in our classroom web page is appropriate.  We also would need approval and authorization from parents to take & post photos of their children.

Chapter 6 The Social Web Learning Together

     I found this chapter very interesting but it is very unclear to me how I can use the social web ssuccessfully in my math classroom to improve education.  I was very interested to see how, for example, Twitter could be used in the classroom.  So I went to the website Twitter For Teachers .   At this website I found a video on using Twitter in the classroom.  I was turned off becasue it looked like a college classroom which is much different then a middle school classroom.  The students were using twitter to tweet opinions, issues, and other quick thoughts which they may be less likely to say out loud in the classroom.  Good for college but risky for middle school students.  For personal use I could see using Twitter to find other people who are tweeting about a book I'm reading maybe to get thoughts like I would get in a book club.

     In chapter 5 there was a significant description of how to use social bookmarking web sites for searching more eficiently versus using other search engines.  The bookmarking services are a community of people who join and and then save links and tag them with their own keywords.  I checked out delicious.com  http://delicious.com/ and searched for George Babbitt who is the main character in the novel I'm reading and got zero results.  That was surprising because when I googled George Babbitt I got many results.  This result indicates to me that the website is not yet populated with many links.  Sooooooo, I'm not quite sure why it is better to use a social bookmarking web site for searching then a high powered search engine like google.   

Chapter 5 RSS

     In chapter 5 I learned about how to use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) web sites to more eficiently manage all the information available to me on the internet so I can use the web more effectively for finding and reading information of interest.   I like the idea of setting up an RSS site for me that allows me to search for and find information on a particular topic and then to get notifications when new information on this topic is available.  For example I have a large interest in lesson study research.  So I could set up a feed for "math lesson study research" that will provide links to newly published work on this subject.

     I went to http://www.bing.com/search?q=tinyurl.com%2F2x7zhs&src=IE-SearchBox&Form=IE8SRC website to check out RSS sites.  I felt most comfortable with the RSS website Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page.  So I went to Google.com/reader web site and noticed that the weblogs I am following for this class were already shown.  That was cool.  I played around a little and entered "Lesson Study" search using the Add a Subscription button and found many interesting articles and videos on Lesson Study.  I did find it a little overwhelming with all the "digging" down through all the articles that I could do .

     I'm starting to get concerned that using all this internet technology for reading and writing to the internet could become a full time job.  Between managing a weblog and a wiki and an RSS site I imagine could require a great deal of time every day.  For me, I usually shut down down if I find something to be overwhelming and therefor I will then do none of it.  Also, I enjoy reading books and magazines.  I find that I am more efficient reading books and magazines to find information.  Maybe an RSS site will help me but I am concerned that I will find it to be to time consuming to manage and keep checking.  I find checking my email is time consuming and sometimes I wonder if I would find my life to be better if I didn't have email to check or voice mails to check or texts to check and now I will have my RSS to check.

Chapter 4 Wikis: Easy Collaboration For All

     Chapter 4 is about Wikis.  The quote by Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.  That's what we're doing." made the value of wikis comprehensible to me.  I quickly realized that a Wiki is a website that allows every person who enters the website to input additional information.  Clearly the issue with such a website is that if every one can anonymously enter information there is no way to know what information is accurate and what information is not accurate.  However, the evidence shows that the information in Wikipedia is highly accurate because the pier editing causes the "bogus" information to be edited out.  I used Wikepedia to look up information about the town I grew up in (Carmel, NY) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_NY.  I noticed that in the news and events information there is more about Carmel now and Carmel in the recent past.  There was very little information about Carmel from the more distant past.   This indicates to me that the people making the entries are younger and only familiar with the recent history and not familiar with the past from when I was growing up.  Also, it indicates that these people are not doing "research" to find out the full history.

     I like the idea of making a classroom wiki of 7th grade math information and problem solving.  The students can provide the input and pier edit the classroom wiki.  I love the idea that the students have to negotiate with each other on the validity of the information.  The wiki could become another resource for the students to use in addition to their notebook and text book.  The students could input "cool" math virtual manipulative and other videos or podcasts.  The students could input  problems that they want to pose to the class or questions that they have and concepts that they are not sure about.  Similar to a blog the wiki could become a great place for me as the teacher to assess what the students comprehend and what some of the students are still working on and need more time with.   Also, I could imagine that the classroom wiki could have a chat room box for on line discussions.