Thing 6 Ning is the Thing

WOW!!! I think Ning is great. I am looking forward to joining Nings and finding out what my peers are thinking and doing in their classrooms. I feel like the world of education in particular ESL is blossoming beneath my fingertips.

Thing 12 It's sooo delicious!

I love having a way to organize bookmarks and it's easy. It will be a great timesaver. I haven't used it very much, but I plan to; so I can find out what other teachers are doing. The biggest advantage to tagging in delicious is that I gain access to information that has already been found. I won't have to spend a lot of time researching and searching topics I am interested in learning about. I can use these tags as quick resources and ideas for lesson plans or ideas.

Starting Here PBL

I have not been exposed to PBL until now. I looked up the definition, so I think I have the gist of what it is. I think it will be motivational to the student,becausef it will give them control of what they are learning and that learning will be relevant to them. I hope I have many oppurtunities to collaborate with teachers who are using PBL.

Kathy's Thing 10

Eureka! I have finished thing 10. I hope to use my slide show to teach my ESL students about action verbs, synonyms, and pronouns. We have already talked about Aesop's fable The Tortoise and the Hare. I hope they enjoy the retelling in my version.

Kathyw's Thing 7

Speakingeasy is the name of my wiki. I am excited to have it, and I hope to add more to it as I learn more about wikis.

Kathyw's Thing 9

I am still learning my way around Flickr, but I think I will have a lot of fun with it when I figure it out. I have only explored the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, my limited knowledge of how to use the computer slows me down so much that I get frustrated trying to accomplish what we're supposed to be doing in Thing 9.

If I can ever get the pictures saved into my folder and wiki sandbox, I plan to create an exercise for my ESL students using Aesop's fable The Tortoise and the Hare. I want to use the fable to teach them about action verbs, synonyms, and pronouns. I think my students would be able to use Flickr to create visual stories with phrases or simple sentences. I hope they have the opportunity to try. Many of them also have very limited computer skills. Time is flying!!

Thing 8 Getting Creative with Creative Commons

I am excited to learn about Creative Commons because it opens up so many possibilities to me. I think my students will be excited to learn about it for the same reason. Imagine being able to access text, videos, songs, (the list goes on) and being able to remix it and share it with the world. The potential to connect with other people who are interested in the same things and getting feedback from them about what has been done or of looking at something they've created and giving them feedback is daunting (in a good way).

I didn't know about Creative Commons until I read about the task for Thing 8. How many times have I found the perfect text or picture for a class assignment and not been able to use it, because I can't print it legally. I know that also happens to my students. Now there is a way around that problem. Creative Commons give us freedom to use information however we want as long as the Creative Commons guidelines are followed. That is powerful motivation for me, and I think it will be powerful motivation to my students. I'm ready for a project.

Thing 6

Wow! Had we but world enough and time. It's marvelous that through wiki's we have the world at our fingertips. It was fascinating to read Vicki Davis' blog post Wiki Wiki Teaching and find out about the success she had using the wiki in her classes. It opened my mind to the potential wiki's have to engage students. I would love to achieve that kind of response from my students. Although it's a new tool for me, and I am still fuzzy about how to use it, I think it will be fun to work with wiki's.


From 1001 Flat World Tales I loved the prompt that inspired teachers and students from three other countries to connect with each other to share the stories they wrote and published. From Discovery Utopias I observed that students can be in touch with anyone anywhere anytime in the world to share reactions, thoughts, and ideas that come from their reading. Communicating with someone across the district, state, or possibly another county would motivate and make my reading more exciting; so I am wondering how I can use the wiki to motivate my ESL students to become better readers, speakers, and writers. I would love to get in contact with Chinese and Spanish teachers even though I only speak a little Spanish and no Chinese. I wonder what is going on in their classrooms. Are they wondering about us and our teaching.



From fhs wolves den I loved the Don't Quit Poem video. Other features that struck me were the online portfolio from which I got the idea of creating trading cards about characters in books. The cards could be kept or traded. This site had more teaching ideas, links, and videos that I would like to explore.

After exploring these wikis, I see why teachers and students need to be "networked learners". It's an arduous process for me because I have never had a basic computer class. I am easily confused and forgetful; but thanks to a patient mentor I know more now than when I began, and I am determined to persevere and finish Thing 11. I can equate it to acquiring a new language, so it gives me a fresh insight into the struggles my Non-English speakers experience on a daily basis.



Finally, I soaked up words from an excerpt I read in Penny Kittles book Write Beside Them. I felt like she took thoughts that had been floating around in my head and put them on paper. It was lovely to read that "nurturing a creative spirit and unleashing a vibrant mind is every teacher's dream". Also, "students and teachers are the most powerful forces in the classroom--not the tests". Plus, "teachers know the students best". I hope I can read the whole book this summer. Wiki's intrigue me now that I discovered them. I'm looking forward to finding out more about them, and how I can use them to help me become a beter teacher.

Thing 5 Hibernating and Spacing

Hibernation and space between the minutes appeals to me so much per Jim Burke's blog The English Companion. The stress of educating students who don't see the relevance of what I am teaching, life (my daughter's wedding), and trying to stay abreast of what is happening in Web 2.0 pulls me in opposite directions. I think I can create a center of calm by reminding myself to hibernate and be kind to myself.

Thing 3 Native or not?

After reading Betcher's article about the myth of the digital native, I immediately thought of how many times people think ESL students are more proficient in English than they really are because they are able to understand and respond appropriately during a conversation. Like the students in the article who use their digital knowledge to navigate socially, the ESL students use their newly acquired English to survive socially. I see a parallel in the lack of technological fluency for "digital natives" and the lack of academic language fluency for ESL students. Both groups need instruction to succeed. My ESL students need lots of support in technology and language. As for me, I will not think that all of the students that I see glued to a computer are so much more "techie" than I. My intimidation level has shrunk from 100 to 98.6 %. I can feel my computer speak synapses beginning to snap.

Switching to a new train of thought, I have to comment on Vicki Davis's "Spies Like Us". OH NO! Now Little Brother is watching me. Ever since I read Orwell's 1984 in 1977, I have been quietly trying to resist Big Brother's invasion into my private life. Do I even have a private life anymore if I'm a teacher? I vote YES I do, and I want to keep it that way. More than ever we as educators need to establish the rights teachers and students have in regard to privacy and teach our students to respect those rights. Maybe a paraphrase of an observation by Shakespeare's Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing applies to this situation: Doesn't the appetite alter? Students love the kind of technology in their youth that they may not be able to endure when they age . I am going to ponder this issue.