Objective 23 - Reflection of the Journey

I have truly enjoyed my 23 Things learning journey. There were tools that I thought I knew how to use, but I always found new facets when playing and completing the discovery assignment. I love this kind of learning – self-paced; some weeks I have more time than others to devote to a project like this. I have also enjoyed walking this path with so many others. I took great pleasure in reading and commenting on my colleague’s blogs.
My concept of Web 2.0 has not really changed throughout this project. I have, however, come to appreciate many things. I know there have been countless hours by Dino to create this project. I know that I have spent more time completing the tasks plus reading and commenting on blogs than I want to admit. It has also been exhilarating to see so much energy put into a technology learning experience.

Looking back over the last ten weeks…I have rediscovered the wonders of Delicious and Twitter. I better understand how Flickr and YouTube work. I was frustrated with my inability to get the exact product I wanted with screencasting and Prezi. I know I reworked those projects dozens and dozens of times.

I was very surprised the there were not more people doing the 23 Things project. This is the one professional development opportunity that did not cost the school money (well, maybe a few bucks for those that completed all 23 tasks within the allotted time) and could literally be done in PJs at any time of day.

I thought the format of the project was well organized, visually appealing, and nicely balanced for a variety of learners. I think we need to do more technology in this format. The weekly workshops were also great tie-ins to the 23 Things.

I am ready for the next 23 Things project. I wonder what the theme should be???

Angie Saylor

• Flickr/AngieSaylor
• Facebook/Angie Saylor
• Twitter/AngieSaylor
• YouTube/AngieSaylor
• Wikipedia/acsaylor
• Get your own Widget

Objective 20 - Presentations with Pizzazz

I love SlideShare and have used it many times. When I go to a conference many times the presenter will have a SlideShare of his/her presentation. I also will periodically search SlideShare for presentations that I miss at a conference. When I was first introduced to SlideShare I was also shown Thumbstacks. Apparently Thumbstacks is no longer available. I mention this because there are many Web 2.0 tools that are short lived while others go on to great fame and use. SlideShare is a great way for students to share and comment on class presentations. This is also one way to overcome file format issues; SlideShare supports ppt, pps, pot, pptx, ppsx, potx, and OpenOffice.

I gave myself a time limit to explore SlideShare to find a presentation to embed in my blog. I know I searched, watched, and rejected presentations for more than an hour. There are just so many good ones that captured my attention. Finally I decide I had to just pick one. I browsed by popularity, choosing the most popular of all time. I happened upon a slideshow that someone shared with me recently. I love the vivid images…this is what I was looking for. Just before I uploaded my SlideShare I noticed that [2 + 4 x 6 - 3 x 5 + 6 x 2] THINGS embedded the same SlideShare (now I remember where I seen this particular show), so I looked for another presentation by the same person.

The Future Of Work

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman.

In investigating a bit more about Scribd I discovered this statement “Scribd is a type of a social networking website that allows you to publish all kinds of documents and images to the web. It's great for people who have something to share with the world but don't have a website, technical skills or the patience to publish things in the traditional way.” This is certainly appealing for a distributing a variety of types of documents to a wide population, such as those attending a conference.

I am a great fan of Google Docs in using the forms tool. I have not used the presentation tool. To be honest, with choices like SlideShare or Scribd, I am not sure that I would choose to use Google Docs.

The Professional Learning Community I belong to tried to use DimDim as a monthly meeting option. There are limitations to this type of tool, but is an option on a very snowy meeting day.

I did not explore WiZiQ. I opened the website and immediately knew that I needed to spend more time with this tool. I am intrigued by the front page statement…”WiZiQ enables teachers and learners to collaborate through: virtual classes, online tests, educational content, contact network.”

I saved playing with Prezi last in this Thing. Here is my first Prezi presentation.

Playing with Prezi on Prezi