One More Thing

Thank you for your patience and all your positive comments along the journey. I experienced fun, frustration, satisfaction, anger, achievement, etc., etc. I really enjoyed the activities of making things. I was hooked at the beginning by creating my Avatar. I will definitely keep my blog going and hopefully make it functional to my role as a principal. One thing I should tell you is that I have frustrated many professors in my time with my reflections. I often don't go as deep as they would have liked. I think it's just part of my personality. My wife would probably attest to that as well. Again, thank you for all the effort you have taken to guide us step by step through 23 things.

Thing #23

Oh, I'm finally to 23. I like the time clock countdown on the 23 things Ning. I found the badge but was not able to find widgets. I think I really should have finished all of this before TAKS week arrived. I am zapped of most of my mental faculties. I did like looking around and reading postings and blogs of educators on various subjects. I know that I am not there yet in terms of using social networking within my role, but I hope to be more proficient in the future. Goodness, I am just getting on Facebook and I already am falling behind in accepting friends. http://23thingsters.ning.com/main/embeddable/list

Thing #22

Okay, I finally broke down and joined Facebook. I have been dreading getting to this point, because I have always been opposed to MySpace and Facebook. I can't get over all the personal information floating around the internet for all to see. I have been apprehensive and I have a very close friend who has been on may case about "getting over it." My profile is very limited and will remain that way until I do "get over it" and become comfortable with the sharing aspect of Facebook. I do understand that as educators, we need to be familiar with these tools because our students are using them. Here is the link to my profile: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1610966893&ref=profile

Thing #21

I created my own webpage on igoogle. Cool! Now my gmail account page doesn't look so boring. I will continue to tweak it to make it fit my style. The page currently has the following topics: current comic by Calvin and Hobbs; weather information; local news, national news, sports updates; movie schedules for local theaters and a few other items. I also looked around quite a bit on the Google Book Search. I found a book (I say that alot) I want to read about golf and I'll tell you why. Often, a golfer waits for the bad shot to happen. It is very difficult for most golfers to maintain the positive thought processes necessary for a quality round. When I go out and really feel good about playing and hit lots of good shots, it's still in my mind that the bad shots and the bad hole that will ruin my round is just around the corner. I need to be mentally stronger and focus on what positives will happen. Therefore, I want to read the book titled Extraordinary Golf: The Art of the Possible. I don't know if it will cure any of my mental weaknesses, but it sure can't hurt.

Thing #7b

Here is an article that discusses a circumstance we all run across from time to time: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/2009/04/other_duties_as_assigned.html
Why me? Why do we need this? What's the purpose? Have you heard any of these questions when trying to create a plan to make the campus run more efficiently? I think we all have experienced the barriers or apprehension from others as we "change things" or "try something new". I still have Leader Talk as a google reader and I really enjoy many of the articles in Education Week. I think I will look for the book “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” (Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck and skim through it to see if I can pick up any good tips.

Thing #20

I was fortunate enough to take a mini class with Dr. Armand and explore some of the facets of googledocs. Have I made to most of my training???? I'm sorry to say no, but I do have plans to utilize the training in the future. As I looked at the principal's to-do list, it reminded me of last year when Daron started creating the list and asked for suggestions by email. He took such great initiative in getting a common list together. Now that it's created, all principals can go in and edit to their particular needs as well as help others with things they don't often think about until they are in a time crunch or under a great deal of stress. Googledocs offers such a cool method for professionals to view, collaborate, edit, plan, etc., etc.

Thing #19

Voicethread is not one of my favorite tools. It's probably due to experiences with the tool in the past. It is often used in connection with the presentation of important information. I think you have to be careful when using this tool with students because it tends to lend itself to the Ferris Bueller method of teaching "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller, anyone, anyone, anyone". Hopefully you have seen the movie to understand the reference. I feel it is easy to make the information very dry if you're not careful and that is the last thing our current generation of students need. I'm sure there are ways to spice up a presentation using voicethread, but as I searched, I found more dry presentations than engaging presentations. By the way, here's a trailer to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s-oGumvPz0

Thing #18

I have searched YouTube clips quite a bit in the past. I like looking for humerous or goofy things people do and post. For example, check out this first clip. I promise I'm not picking on women drivers. I was actually told to look for it by a close female friend. Look on and get a laugh: Ooops, I took it off because as I look closer, the comments people left had inappropriate language for our course. If you want to see it, go to YouTube and search "women drivers". You know, I along with a few other "23 Thingers" actually have a famous MISD video that made its way to YouTube. I need to start searching and utilizing clips to emphasis staff development, etc. Check out this cool TeacherTube video clip of the life cycle of a butterfly: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=6156dea786245fc68c96

Thing #17

Okay, this "thing" was right up my alley. I love Itunes and my video Ipod. This is one area of technology in which I do not feel lost. I can spend hours looking for songs and videos. My son and I have similar taste in music so we often look for songs together. It's cool finding old songs that I listened to when I was younger and finding out he likes them as well. We have also spent time looking for videos and podcasts to help him with homework assignments. I did look at several of the sites and I found three of them that stood out to me: GeekEd, NPR Books Podcast, and 60 Second Science. I actually subscribed to the 60 Second Science.

Thing #16

I have a habit of finding the Discovery Channel on my television and honestly, I probably watch it way too much. Last night, I was watching a really cool documentary on Da Vinci and not too long ago I saw a show on Nostradamus. When I started looking at LibraryThing, I had to do my searches on the two histrorical figures. Now I have a wealth of suggested readings from my searches. I am excited to go and find some of the titles at the library. I think the possibilities of using LibraryThings as an administrator or a teacher are limitless. I know this is a "thing" that I will utilize beyond the 23things class.

Thing #15

I like this delicious thing and tagging. After playing golf on Sunday in the 30 mph plus wind gusts, I need help. I have tagged several golf tip sites to hopefully provide some helpful hints. Several of the sites offered video demonstations and since I am a visual learner, I found them very interested and I'm ready to go and work on some of the skills. I know this is really not focused on an academic topic, but with many of the 23 things activities, I have to go with what is on my mind at the time in order to have fun. I am waiting to see if the tag to deliciousmisd23 works. I hit refresh several times and it hasn't shown up yet. We'll see.

Thing #7a

It is easy to put off checking the google reader. I have kept up with one subscription for the most part. I really like the postings from Infinite Thinking Machine. There is a current posting called Friday Five- Tools for teachers. The posting happens to have sites posted that we have already experimented with during our 23 things time. The posting was created because "sometimes as teachers/administrators, we are so busy looking for the perfect resource for our students, that we forget to take care of ourselves. By nature, teachers are caretakers and we do often take care of others needs before our own." The posting shares tech tools that can help us be more successful at our job.

Thing #14

I ended up playing around quite a bit on the ToonDoo comic site. I also found a use to for the TaDa site. It seems that we always have to-do lists and the site provides endless ways to play around and create a list for anything you can imagine. The site can definitely be used to create lists in a fun way of all the things teachers, administrators, parents, students, etc. need to do. I made a short comic in regards to 23 things on the ToonDoo site. It was fun creating characters to put in the strip. I hope I saved it correctly so it can be viewed by anyone visiting my blog. If not, I will work on getting it right.

Please check out my short 23 Things comic at : http://www.toondoo.com/cartoon/688043