New Toys

Whoa, this is a lot of new toys. I am working through a number of thoughts as I try to narrow down a topic and a tool. I am not there yet on either front.

I started out with the links that were provided in the opening of this class. I followed to Scoop It and got to work. I was working under the theory that if I do not try it I have no idea how it will work. There were parts of Scoop It that were nice. It was automatically polished, where Diigo that I have used previously is just nuts and bolts to look at.

I do not think Scoop It is what I will use in the end because I can not figure out how to get it to run blogs and tweets. This is quite possibly a user failure.Scoop It also seems more restrictive in what you can do on the free version. Here is what I ended up at: http://www.scoop.it/t/interactive-textbook
**** Update, I might be having a change of heart. I have figured out how to post tweets for a hashtag. I am still learning everything that I can do!*****

Paper.li is successfully pulling blogs and tweets for me. Since our goal is to have RSS feeds, articles and #tags running on our paper, I think that it makes it the better tool. I only switched over to it last night after I became frustrated with my creation on Scoop It. Paper.li has so many fuctions that I have only scratched the surface with. What I have found is that it was easier to to get to static sites with Scoop It. I wonder if in the end I will or can use a combination of the two with the Paper.li feeding from the Scoop It?



I am looking for sources that have great technical know how. I am still on the search for users. I think that part of my struggle for users is the technical vocabulary. I am finding the words that publishers and technical bloggers use, but not what the teachers are calling it. What do teachers who are using interactive textbook and other participative technologies call it? I love both of those phrases. Interactive Textbooks seems to be too narrow a topic, so I am broadening it to including other interactive teaching methods. I do worry that then I have become to broad. I don't know that I would include educational games. I feel that educational gaming alone would be a topic. I want to look the interactive end that is not clearly a game. This is something I will work on as I continue to define exactly what I know and share. Because I started with interactive textbooks, which started with it being mentioned on the curate mind map which I will have to go back and find again to share with you here, the technical wording led me to experts and publishers. I need to hone in on the vocabulary that teachers are using. Specifically, I would love to find elementary and middle school teachers who are blogging and tweeting about these teaching technologies.

When I am looking at these sources I want to know what they offer. Do they make a technology that I am interest in? Are they using it? If they are using it, at what level. I have found some cool things in my search that I know I can't use in 5th grade. For example, I found http://www.polleverywhere.com/
app being used. This app allows students to text answers that will automatically populate in a Power Point that has been set up for it. In the high school where they would all have their phones, this would be great. I have allowed student to bring in devices, but most of their parents are unsure about it, and the majority are ipod and ipads, not phones. My 11 year old doesn't have a phone either. So, I need to dig deeper to what can be used in elementary school. That is what I want to know.

The technology that I have in my building will be part of what I am looking at in my search. We are a Microsoft based school, it would be silly of me to put too much into Apple sources that I can not use. My students do have those iPods and iPads that we can use on a rarity, but our primary use are the school computers.

I feel challenged by all of this. There is so much to learn and understand. I am interested to see what everyone else is up to.