Finale!

Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?
Wow! Congratulations! You are superstars! You've reached the 23rd thing. Give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program! We hope you have enjoyed the process and learned some things. But before we send you off into the brave new world of Web 2.0, there is one last discovery post.

For your last and final exercise for this program, please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you're drawing a blank:

• What were your favorite Things (like in the Sound of Music) and discoveries?
• What did you find especially useful?
• What would you like to know more about?
  
• How did you connect with others doing the 23 Things?
• How has this program assissted or affected your lifelong learning and/or your classroom?
  
• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or content?
  
• What do you love so much that you would like to help at an idea session for fellow staff members?
  
• How would you describe your learning experience in one word or in one sentence, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities to others?

And last, but not least…

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?

After all the time and effort you have invested in 23 Things, we hope you will continue to experiment with new tools and continue to blog about your learning and the challenges of Web2.0. Here are some ideas:

• Maintain your blog as you continue to learn and play with new Web 2.0 tools.
  
• Add your blog URL to your e-mail signature line.
• Re-purpose your blog as your education blog.
  
• Share your blog with your colleagues and administrators.
  
• Start your own 23 Things with colleagues, friends, family. The concept is adaptable to any content--23 Books, 23 Movies, 23 Football Games, 23 Anything You Can Think Of. It is a great way to create and strengthen community through learning and discussion.
  

Be sure to let us know how you plan to continue.Thanks for participating and being so willing to share! Thank you all for participating in this journey. It has been fantastic and we hope that the journey simply continues on from here.

K12 Online Conference!

Not a "Thing"... but something pretty cool.

In the spirit of learning about technology:

Hop on over to the K-12 Online Conference!

Today is Day One. Enjoy!

Thing 22: YouTube

By now, the world knows YouTube(started by a Saint Paul Central High School grad!) as the source of all things video on the Internet. And we do mean “all things.” The good, the bad, and the ugly are all there for all to see—one reason many districts block YouTube. Another reason is bandwidth. Like music, video is a bandwidth hog. We recommend you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

YouTube revolutionized the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video. YouTube is now owned by Google, so it will be interesting to see the how the evolution/merging of the two sites happens. Right now, a search of either one returns results from both sites.

There are dozens of other video sites, but among the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials or 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing aboutbloopers here. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube or Google Video find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
   
2. Talk with your students. Ask them if they have videos online that they have created (probably for classes) and check them out! You might be surprised at their talent!
   
3. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site?why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any ways to use video on your web site or in your class?

OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Other popular video hosting sites:

Yahoo Videos
Google videos
Others - top video site list
NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.

Challenge

1. Feeling brave? Make your own video and upload it to YouTube or Google Video. Promote a program or introduce your library to the community or something else. If you do, be sure to embed it in your blog. We all want to see it!

2. Jumpcut is a Yahoo! product that lets you upload video or photos, re-mix and edit them, and produce a video. It is all online, easy to use, and with many other features, including slide shows and clips to add to yours as you build your movie. And, like most Web 2.0 tools, it offers a community of like-minded participants who want to watch your videos and share theirs with you. So jump right in and make a video to share with us. Post it to your blog and let us know just how easy it is to be creative!

Other Resources

Do you need a way to SAVE those YouTube videos so that you can use them in class without having to worry about an internet connection? Try any of these sites:

vixy.net

flvto.com

vconversion

zamzar

Viral videos are what our students are watching. It's an easy way to relate.

Thing 21: Podcasting 101

What? You want to learn how to be a podcaster too? In this Thing we will be looking at the "how" of podcasting… trying to keep it as simple as this web 2.0 primer allows. There are myriad resources available for people "serious" about podcasting.

• Poducate me
• Yahoo: Publish a podcast
• Odeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
• Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
• How to podcast tutorial
• The Beginner's Guide to Podcast Creation (from iLounge)

If you want to go about it the "real" way, you'll need to equip yourself with some things. Mostly, you'll need a microphone and the freeware program Audacity (for sound recording). You will ultimately need those things, but peruse the aforementioned resources to learn more first.

We are just trying things out with these 23 things… getting that "taste" for the web 2.0 tools, so we'll keep it easy. (Although podcasting itself isn't difficult either.) So, here are some resources for recording sound online (or through your cell phone). Click through them to see which one calls out to you, and then prepare for some sound-magic!

Discovery Resources

Earfl

Gabcast

Gcast

Cinch

VoiceThread

Discovery Exercise

1. Create an account (if needed) at the site that called your name.
2. Add an audio post about your experience to your blog.
• You did it! You created a sound file that could be the beginning of a podcasting paradigm for you! What did you think? Was it easy? Was it hard? Could your students do it? For what purpose? Where do you want to go from here?
• Did you notice that you could have used your Jott account to create saved audio as well? I'm glad that you tried new things, though!

Challenge (optional)

1. Check out the poducateme guide; reading specifically the second paragraph about the studies done at Duke University about the use of podcasts in classrooms.
2. Keep up with your audio goodness. Make it a "real" podcast by continuing it on a regular basis. Maybe add it as a permanent guest on your blog!
1. 

Thing 20: Podcasting

Podcasts, Smodcasts!

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Google Reader account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

• To find out more about podcasts start with Yahoo: What is a podcast tutorial?
  
• There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Here are a few of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, don't require a software download:

1. Podcast.com
2. Podcastalley.com
3. Podcast Directory
   
4. Educational Podcast Directory

• iTunes recently added iTunes U. College and university faculty post content they create for their classes. Students and others can download what they need, and go. Download iTunes (free) here for either Mac or Windows.

Discovery Exercise

1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed (or iTunes, if you have it) and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting education related podcasts here.
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Google Reader
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful?

Thing 19: Jott

When you feel you just haven't gotten enough nagging (and perhaps need more), you can nag yourself with electronics. Okay, so maybe that casts a bad light on this Thing… so let's try again. Here's a story (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) to illustrate the reason for this Thing:

Jane is a teacher. Every night she stays up working on school work: planning, correcting, reflecting. Every morning she is up early so she can get to school with time to breathe.

On this very ordinary Tuesday morning, Jane gets up, showers, puts on her clothes (ugh, forgot to iron again), eats breakfast (remembering that they are almost out of milk and eggs) , brushes her teeth (oops, she needs to schedule that dentist appointment), puts on her makeup (almost out of mascara), picks up her school bag and is ready to walk out the door for her glorious day of work when Steve, her husband, trods slowly out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes. "Hey, remember that we have that thing tonight… oh, and the baby needs diapers at home and more wipes at daycare." It's a good thing that they've been married long enough that Jane knows exactly what "thing" Steve is talking about. She smiles, gives him a kiss and leaves for the day.

In the car on the way to work, Jane goes over her mental list. "Grocery store: milk, eggs, mascara?. Once I get to work: call dentist. Target: diapers and wipes… wait, can I get that at the grocery store? Hmmm… there was one more thing… what was that?"

As she simmers about what that last thing is, she pulls into school and walks up to her room. She has two students waiting (they actually came to school early!) for help with class. She starts to pull out worksheets and think about what steps she should take for each student for maximal understanding.

And what has happened to that mental list? By the time 3:00 hits, she's at 50% (at best)… and that's with the understanding that nothing else has been added to that list during her day (which is improbable).

The problem for Jane (and many of us) is that she is pretty sure she will remember… and that she doesn't have access to anything to write on when she gets (or thinks about) the information.

Jott, and programs like it, close this information gap. With Jott, you call in (on your cell/home/school phone) and leave a message (like "Remember the Milk!"). Jott then transcribes the information and sends you a text reminder for the time you set up.

Discovery Exercise

1. Go to Jott and create an account.
2. Call and send yourself a message/reminder.
3. Blog about your experience and the possible applications in education or for yourself.

Discovery Resources

Jott

Remember the Milk

Evernote

Challenge

1. Use Jott to post to your blog. (Now only possible by subscribing to the Jott service. It might be worth it!)
2. Sign up for Remember the Milk and Jott or e-mail to your Remember the Milk account. It separates your task by due dates and will e-mail you reminders. You can also sync this with your iGoogle page (which you automatically have b/c you have a Google ID). See Vicki Davis's Post on Rocking your Remember the Milk.
3. Use one or more of the discovery resources listed above and sync them with Google Calendar. Blog about your experience. (this one could be a Thing on its own…)

Thing 18: Survey Goodness

If you chose the cell phone adventure last week, you might have found that even cell phones can be used for surveys… but in this Thing we will be discovering some of the "survey services" (that's fun to say) that are available for free online.

Polls and Surveys can be used for polling 100 people (like on "Family Feud"), making money (Surveysavvy), giving some statistics to things like elections (Gallup polls), and educational feedback (end-of-class surveys, to name one). What do all of these have in common? They are set up because they want feedback. What they do with that feedback (or how they interpret the feedback) changes as often as the wind (Are we, or are we not, in a recession?)… but the first step is always to get the feedback.

So this is our Thing for today. You get to discover the inner-workings of the various survey sites and really get a taste and feel for how they work. The fantastic part is that these sites (for the most part) do most of the data collecting and crunching for you. So you set up your survey and get immediate results… fully tailored with statistical analysis.

Here are the sites we'll be working with:

• Survey Gizmo
• Survey Monkey
• Zoomerang
• KeySurvey
• Poll Daddy

Discovery Exercise

1. Check out (trial run or tour) at least two of the survey sites. See what they have to offer.
2. Choose a site and create an account and
3. Create (and use) a survey! Create the survey, have people take it, and take a look at the sleek results you get.
4. Blog about the experience: what you liked and didn't like. What you hoped for and how you can use this personally/professionally.

*Hint: Surveys are also named "Choice" in Moodle if you're using it!