Ta-Da! Thing #23...on to understanding...

Wow Again! And I still feel a bit like the new teacher who discovered they exist at the bottom level of learning, the "I don't know what I don't know" -though I am bouncing between the next level, the "..at least I know what I don't know...". I really am excited about the Wiki, but have soooo much work to do to understand how to link pages, organize content....I have found some Wikis whose purpose is to teach Wiki design, so I will start there. I have really enjoyed this process. I will have to reflect back, review, practice putting into my life these new tools, activities and applications. Mid-"Thing" I got so excited that I went to my Dad's to teach him Flickr and Picasa. I did manage some teaching, with many missteps, laughter and confusion. Many weeks still lay ahead, time to have fun, practice, and hopefully assimilate all this wonderful new knowledge. To you, designers of 23 Things, I would like to see a follow up course that challenges us to fully utilize and use these tools, and to learn even more new tools. How about a simple one also - I have somehow not perfected-organizing one's desktop. I juggle windows, moving back and forth, shutting the wrong windows, losing others...any help for those of us that somehow along the way never learned some basic stuff? Thanks for everything! A thoroughly addictive, rewarding program and process!

Thing 21-Wikis!

Wow, I remember how much I was enthralled with Wikis when I started these 23 Things last year (I do seem to remember the program was a more overwhelming experience then-how much has changed?). I found a few really amazing Wikis-all based on 2.0 tools, applications, tutorials and links. Just having these Wikis bookmarked will help immensely. "Educational Software and Web 2.0" had so much information, tutorials and links that I could spend the rest of the summer exploring every thing that was included on this site. The designer-Suzie Vesper has done an amazing job. She has inspired me to try and find my weak, original Wiki (more of a sicky ...) and try to refocus its objectives and to better incorporate some really neat applications and gadgets. My objective was and is to create a Wiki in which art educations can describe best lessons, the tricks and techniques of classroom management, lab set-up and break down, time saving tricks to ordering and inventorying materials...The difficulty in teaching art is having to discover all of this on your own, and its never-ending. My difficulty here in all of this is time. If I could get this adequately started and be proud of its appearance and purpose, then I could introduce it to a huge blog "Art Education 2.0". These teachers would take it and run with it! It would be a marvel to behold! Now..as Dory said it Finding Nemo..."Just keep swimming...."

Thing 20-subscribing to Podcasts-TEDtalk

Well, I can tell I will need to spend some time investigating this. I started in EPN but really found nothing I felt inspired, motivated, surprised...so I moved onto Podcast Alley. I found quite a bit of podcasts that seemed more specific to art and the media creative world. But...many of those that I found thought provoking also seemed redundant in that they echoed my RSS feeds. Which made me ponder sorting feeds, listening to pods, which should I choose-what a dilemma! What the deciding factor was, was time. I would much rather run down a scrolling list of headlines than listen to minutes at a time of podcasts, wading further and further in until I realize I am not interested, getting no where.... Until I met iTunes. :) Downloading was easy. I have Windows/PC and do not own a MP3 player or an IPod. (I never thought I needed one-silly me!) Now, my birthday wish list is to get one of these "babies" and download my podcasts, books on tape and ITunes! Wow-I feel younger already! I've subscribed to TEDtalks and GrammerGirl (after all, If I am going to sound urban and hip, I may as well use proper grammar). I will spend untold hours going through iTunes and I will continue to explore Podcast Alley. Its library was immense! And I am sure I will find some gems here, but the time it will take seems daunting. As for my students, I will also be on the look out for little gems, thought provoking, creative pieces to share, now that I have a better idea on how to go about this. They all own MP3 players, and anyway they can be approached opens an avenue to enriching their world!

Thing 19-Podcasts

While this "thing" gave the hardest time-first in finding anything art focused for kids, then in finding a podcast that was not too length and to "adult world" (ie. wordy, ambiguous, rambling....) I did so enjoy the NPR "This I believe" podcasts-I've read these collections before and listened to them on the radio. http://thisibelieve.org/ As for teaching art and their application--I could certainly create podcasts that accompany my power point presentations, reading the text aloud and going into more death explaining the project. I also have such trouble getting good substitute teachers when I am out. I love the award winning writings by students one can find on the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards site. This site is laden with poetry, short stories, and essays. Reading these aloud and making podcasts for a substitute to read while students illustrate the images they "see" would be a great way to get kids involved, and I think hearing my voice may keep kids on task! http://www.artandwriting.org/galleryhome.htm)

Thing 18-Slideshare

Uploading PowerPoint presentations form slideshare wasn't difficult task wise, finding an appropriate useful PowerPoint presentation was however. Most were very wordy, dull, not as factual in a "bulleted" sense and some were not done with authority, checked information or even spell-check. I did get off task laughing so hard that I cried at "Family photos". This presentation is well worth the investigation, though not appropriate here. So, at the moment I have not found many presentations that I can use as is. I am sure I can tweak them and re-write some for my students. I have uploaded a lovely short presentation from the Whitney Museum of Art. Enjoy!

Comics, Fine Art and Museums 2008

View more documents from Kim Munson. P.S. I have spent untold hours in Library Thing!

Thing 17 "30 Boxes" and Library Thing

OK, this is what I was afraid...if my search to organize my life, I seem to have fallen down the rabbit hole. I now have 3 blogs-one for 23 Things, one on Art Education 2.0 and another on Are Education/Art Educators-AHHH! I also have a calendar in my district e-mail, a new one here on "30 Boxes", and still can't keep the pocket one in my purse organized. After inputting all the info. I could into "30 Boxes" I was more than a bit disappointed in the blah appearance of the calendar. Where were the fun stickers? The color coded days? The animated gifs? Pretty sad. And frankly, if anyone I know makes there calender public and expects me to be in-tune with all they have to do, along with all I have to do, I may resort to nasty e-mails or Facebook taunts. (Idle jest, since I do not do a thing on my Facebook page.) Now, after all of that I discovered "Library Thing"! I don't know if I will ever sign in and enter data, but the vastness of it all was amazing! Recommendations! Amazon.com connections! Reviews! ...They had me at hello.

Thing 16-Google Docs

I really wish I knew about this last semester when a cohort and I were creating new documents for the Michigan Art Education Association, Honors Committee. Just this last week we finally mailed last "I think this is it" document. Between the mailings, corrections, adaptations...my MAEA file is a mess! It may take me all summer to sort it out. Now, if I can only get rest of organization on board! Can it ever become "too many cooks?". As to kids, this would be very cool for a class collaborative creative writing assignment. I need to think more on its art applications-I keep coming up with ideas that a Wiki would be better suited. Any ideas out there?

Thing 15-Delicious and RSS

Ok, while I got lost in Delicious and spent numerous hours exploring, I had some difficulty trying to find the "page" layout that presented on the video for tagging and subscribing to RSS feed. I went about doing this a very probably backwards way and am now tracking "arted" popular bookmarks. As to checking everyday-or remembering to check weekly for that matter-we'll see what happens.

Thing 14-Still Delicious!

WOW! You can learn so much watching the instructional videos in order! I just learned how to get into the social-sharing aspect of Delicious! Toocoolstuff! -Which by the way is my login for Delicious--toocoolstuff. I am having a great time. I hope I remember all of this and I need to tag and bookmark all of the places you have your learning videos-so that I can rewatch them as I need, incase this site for 23 things locks me out in the future! On to more bookmarking! At this rate, I'll be done with the internet my beginnning of September. (Now, how about reminding participants to use same logins for all sites and same passwords? I am showing how right-brain I am. Any help out there from the left-brainers would continue to be desired. :) )

Thing 13-tagging

If I haven't made it clear yet, I am one of those-"get half of the information needed-and then run with it"-kind of people. So, having read about tagging and having watched the video, I did not read further, that we would open an account in Delicious and tag in Thing 14...I just ran with it. SOOO...after tagging all of my bookmarks, it dawned on me that Delicious was "case" sensitive and singular, plural, accurate spelling...sensitive also. All I can say is, I am now an expert at editing tags, organizing tags and simplifying tags. (If I knew how to insert a frowny face icon, it would go here.) Lets see...how many ways do I love Delicious? I love the ability to type in a tag and see top 10 results or a kazillion. I love that suggested tags are listed to the right of the screen, so that you can branch off with some sense of where you hope to be heading. I love that when you bookmark a site from Delicious, suggested tags are listed below! And, I love how, true to this week's previous posts, I love how I have just spent another entire day doing a few "things", and am as excited to jump right in tomorrow as I was this morning!

Reflecting on Thing 12--

While I have a FaceBook page, I do very little with it. As a student in the 70's -the entire "Big Brother" aspect of it is more than a little disconcerting. I am also flabbergasted by how inappropriate so many people are in these social networks! Many of my students send me messages asking to be my "friends" and letting me be their "friend".These are pages they don't want their parents to see! I don't want to see their pages-ignorance is bliss!

Ok, one more gadget...

Get a Voki now!

Thing 12-the Gadget

Fun and informative. Now I have to go back into my posts and change sizes of pics and rearrange info so that I don't have a visual mess on my hands!

Thing 11-the Blog comment...

OK, having said this a few time before, I have just spent the entire day looking up blogs! I finally settling back into one of my favorite sites:http://arted20.ning.com/ Art Education 2.0. When you become a member you get your own blog page, and you can join groups, post forum questions, upload art, videos....The site is fabulous! So, I then proceeded to spend HOURS in the forum questions, posting comments and new questions. I hadn't visited the site in months and I experienced much joy at renewing this relationship. Since this was a site I was not unfamiliar with, I was perhaps not as hesitant or formal in my comments and questions. But, I did enjoy being part of the group, and being a professional blog rather than a personal "rant", there is a sense of "intellect", and sharing that one experiences here. And, I found another up and starting blog for Art Educators at:http://arteducators.ning.com/ Art Educators-Art Educators Unite! I will be spending some time here also. A year ago if you told me I would be managing 3 blogs, I wouldn't have know what you were talking about and I may have dismissed you outright! Now, with just 12 things to go I am feeling a bit "full of myself"! :)

Amazing Little video from "vimeo"

Was amazed at creativity in this music video! My high school students would love it!

SOUR / 日々の音色 (Hibi no Neiro) MV from Magico Nakamura on Vimeo.

Thing 9-YouTube

Subtitled "What do you mean School starts tomorrow?". Ok, I think that I mentioned recently how I spent untold hours playing, searching, uploading in Frickr. Well, I just spent umpteen more hours in YouTube. First it was "American's Got Talent"-which led to "Britain's Got Talent", which somehow led to Puccini and Italian Operas, Pavarati, Madam Butterfly...you get my drift. When I "came to" I segwayed to Rufus Wainwright, and somehow Woodstock. I slapped myself to get on track and I started watching art lessons-specifically, drawing, painting and PhotoShop. What was the origional question to this Thing? Oh yeah, can we perceive some use for YouTube et al; and is YouTube blocked in our school? As to question #1-it would be great to be able to upload specific videos for my students, or to be able to burn them to disk, but-(question #2)- my school like so many others block our access to video sites. Could it be that in their infinate wisdom (or personal experience) they forsee students getting sucked down the preverbial garden path, never to return to attentiveness-until released by the bell? Well, I wish teachers at least has access so that we could control our student's involvement here and be able to take advantage of these great tools! (If only we could learn some self-control first!)

Thing 8-Playing with Flicker

Well, rest of day spent playing. I can see how one can not only get lost with the gadgets and gizmos, superfluous and minutia; but once all of that fun has been had, there are some real teachable moments here for Art teachers and non-Art teachers . As I stated earlier, Flickr is great for teaching Enduring Understandings through visual imagery. How perfect for introducing big concepts, and making real connections. All students can use what they see here to begin a dialoge visually and through the written word. What better way to evaluate asimilation and synthesis of knowledge? Having said that, I am only at Thing 8--I am guessing there may be a few things I have to learn.

Thing 7-FLICKR-more....

Again, hours of my life, gone, never to be revisited! Ahhh Flickr! Well, I greatly enjoyed looking at everyone's uploaded photos. It did not go unnoticed that many of you have had fun thus far this summer. Many vacation photos...are my lamenting sobs going unheard? Well, back to my ruminations on Flickr. I require my art students to either bring in actual photos (even judging the authenticity of an actual photo is getting very tricky), or post address to adopted photo, before I let them use somone else's work in their own digital art work. I go over Copyright, Karma, and what ever means I can to instill the ethics of using another person's creation. We discuss how one can assimilate and be inspired by another's art, and how that inspiration must act as a "jumping off point" to then create from their own "voice". I work very hard at coming up with creative problems that require specific formats, techniques, juxtapositions...to overcome as much of this misappropriation as I can. (For anyone interested, please visit some of my student's art at: Artsonia.com, Lee M. Thurston High School, Redford, MI.) :)

Thing 6-My favorite thing!! FLICKR

I could wax on and on about how much I love Flickr! It is not just because I am an Art teaher who lives and breaths Visual Literacy! It's not because one can get lost for days, weeks, months admiring, learning, being shocked, surprised, entertained....And, it's not just because anyone would be crazy to not upload every precious photo they take, so that these images are saved in the time and space continuoum of the internet (forseeing the issues of hard drive crashing, lost or archaic disks, and no-back-ups). It is because of all of these and more! As an art teacher I can expound on any theme, principal, element of design, Enduring Understanding, Personal Voice, subject, era, media....I could go on forever! And finally, not to mention the goofy toys, attachments and gimicks that entertain! As to my photo of choice--here is where I lost an hour of my life--I wanted to see what Flickr could do when I typed in ambiguous topics such as "awakening", "path less traveled", "enlightened".... With each phrase came thousands of images! Breathtaking! However, what really did it for me was just typing into the Search bar-"Wow", and look what popped up! Amazing!

Thing 5-my own personal BLOGS

Who would have thought that someday in my lifetime I would be using terms such as "Blog", "Wiki", "Twitter"....Well, as to blogging, I found it easiest to use the button the I attached to my toolbar to save feeds. I did have some problem with feeds that I attached last year. Now, some of them have a red exclamation mark next to them. When clicked on they state "feed error". I can still get the feed, so I haven't really explored editing them, removing them and relinking the feed. I suppose this is as easy to do as my having explained the dilemma. I have already spent hours exploring blogs and connecting feeds. Here's to the time I hope bloglines saves me in scanning these sites on a regular basis. Perhaps we have opened Pandora's box?

Thing 3 & 4 -RSS!

Wow! Re-learning, remembering, trying to assimilate all of this very helpful, handy information! While I am sometimes a techno neophyte (and even a neophobe at times...) I can see how helpful Bloglines will be if I can remember to open the site, and not depend on my overwhelming, exhaustive semi-organized bookmarks -which change depending on the computer I am using ! RSS are also so helpful in that I have let many magazine and newspaper subscriptions lapse due to guilt over time, economy, going green....I can easily scan each feed and feel connected, tuned in and informed. My difficulties are: 1. Remember where I've bookmarked by bloglines 2. Remember my login! 3. Stay organized! 4. Read my feeds and get rid of the ones I continue to scan and never delve into! Time to evolve! I really enjoyed looking over the 100 inspirational-websites for teachers. Just seeing how educators are using blogs to share their growth, to teach, to journal....I was very inspired, entertained and motivated! Now, if I can just get outdoors for at least one day this summer....

Trying this all over again! Thing 1 and Thing 2

Ok! I've started 23 things a year ago, last spring, and due to a very sick daughter, I never finished. So...I am back again, rejuvenated, daughter is much better, my head is up above the clouds-here I go! Having had a year to reflect, I am all the more excited to revisit, learn and reflect on all of the great 2.o tools we will be learning about and using. An English teacher in my building had each of his students create a blog. What do you know-they did so much writing, reading and ENJOYING the written word that they hardly knew they were busy composing and learning. As an Art teacher, I had thought of using a blog strictly from my perspective, a dissemination of material....BUT hold on...how about my students creating their own blog so that they can talk about art, share their perspectives, discoveries....Oh! I am so excited, I may just wish my summer away! EEK! (Did everyone else immediately think of Dr. Seuss when reading your posting's title?) And finally, I do have to realize that what is written is read by public, that a posting is not a private thought or personal letter heading out to one....Hence the reason I also have trouble understanding Facebook.