Thing 4 Commenting

       William Graves’s  is the first blog I commented on because I found his ideas about Animoto very unique. He explained that using Animoto for students’ personal expression was a way to incorporate it into the classroom.

       Ryan Whipkey was my next blogger to comment on. He had an awesome and inspiring post about a website called Smores.com that gives you templates and features in order to make AMAZING, professional looking fliers. As soon as I am done with this post, I am going to check this out. It could be used throughout my teaching career to make fliers and newsletters for parents, professional meetings, and in my personal life as well.

       Emily Shei cleared up some questions that I have always had about Google Translate. I was hesitant to turn to it as a form of communication between myself, ELL and ESL students, and their parents because I was concerned about it’s accuracy. As a Spanish student, she uses it and never has any problems with it; now I can use it confidently!

       James Harris  is a friend of mine and I felt he needed a little encouragement when he posted about his weakness being in the area of technology. I just dropped into his blog to tell him what a great job he was doing and noticed that we have the same strength. Of course, we had to discuss that point also. Everyone needs some encouragement every once in a while!

       Hope Erwing  showed interest in GoodReads, a site that I am already a member of and enjoy very much; therefore, I commented on her post so that she knows some of the great featuers of the site and knows it is worth her time. She also knows who to ask if she has any questions about the site. I have had several people do the same for me and it is extremely helpful.

       Some outside blogs I subscribe to are Single DadLaughing and The Mouthy Housewives. In SDL, Dan is a single father raising his son. He posts a variety of topics from humorous to controversial. I enjoy reading everything that he discusses and giving feedback on whether I agree or disagree. MHW is a blog where a group of women answer questions that readers have submitted. It is hilarious, and it also gives some great advice. I usually comment on these posts to encourage others who have asked the questions, or just to let them know how much I laugh when I read their blog. 

Thing 21

Try our slideshow maker at Animoto.

When I read about making my own video, I have to admit that I was dreading it. I thought it would be really difficult and time consuming. However, it was just the opposite! It syncs with Facebook so all I had to do was pick pictures already on my account! I picked from a list of beautiful themes, chose my pictures, then picked a song that I liked from the categories. I did not expect the video to look this well! I am excited to use this with pictures of my pets (like the one you see above), pictures of my sisters, pictures with friends, and eventually pictures with my students for the class blog! This is another technology I would have never considered if not for the 23 Things journey :)

Thing 23 Creative Commons

The 23 Things was adapted from the website 43Things. This website has evolved into a place where you can set personal goals and have a community of supporters to help you. It’s actually a very motivational site. After discovering it, I believe I will use it to set personal and professional goals. THAT website came from an article written by Stephen Abram titled “43 Things I (Or You) Might Want to Do This Year”.

Now that I have further explored Creative Commons, I can use this as a future teacher because I know what is safe to use in the classroom and what may cause issues in the classroom due to copyright. I will use Creative Commons to teach children what is okay to borrow and share. I will explain what plagiarizing is and make sure everyone understands the consequences. With this, I can explain the plethora of information and ideas on the web that ARE okay to share and use freely. Many people do not know the difference and this is vitally important to today’s youth.

Thing 20 YouTube Video

 Above is a video called "Cell Rap" that I found for teaching children 5th through 6th grade about cells. It appeals to the Musical Multiple Intelligence. For this reason, I will use many videos and songs in my classroom. It is important for the auditory and visual learners. Go see what you can find for your own classroom!

I found many interesting videos on YouTube and could use educational videos, or clips from videos, in the classroom. I enjoyed that I could type in almost any topic and find results that pertained to what I was searching for. However, I did not enjoy the fact that MANY videos appeared that was not necessarily appropriate. It is not something that I would search while in front of the class or library. For library websites, I could use whimsical videos just to brighten up the website.

Thing 22 LiveBinders

The title of my first two binders on LiveBinders is “Teacher Tricks” and “Technology!”. I am in the process of creating one dedicated to reading development. I have “Technology!” and “Teacher Tricks” embedded below. Go check it out and tell me what you think!! 

Technology!

Teacher Tricks

For the classroom, I will use LiveBinders to organize all of my researched and helpful information. For example, I have found tons of helpful websites with free handouts and worksheets that would work wonderfully in the classroom. For student projects, when compiling a research paper or project of the sort, I could have students use LiveBinders to organize their sources online. They could send me this information for review at any time.

Thing 14

The difference in a flow chart and a mind map is that the flow chart is a template that is pre-made and can be filled in with information. A mind map is added to as it is filled in.

I chose Mindmeister  as the mind-mapping tool. First I tried another option, but it was not as easy to connect ideas; this one made linking bubbles easy. I like that on Mindmeister I can have several topics on one mind map. I also like that all of the formatting options are on the side. There are different options for everything, even the lines connecting the bubbles. It also helps as a study aid that there is a section to type notes about each bubble and topic. Mindmeister also has an application so that I can use it on the go.

I chose Flowchart.com as the flow-charting tool. I really enjoyed the many templates available. It also had the option of making your own template. Also, it allowed you to upload a previously made flowchart from your computer. I will use Flowchart.com when I have an idea of what kind of template or format that I should use to formulate my ideas.

Thing 19 Specialized Social Networking

I recently joined GoodReads. I love GoodReads because it shows me the books that my friends have read along with their ratings of the books and the reviews of the books. I also like that it suggests books based on my interest so that I can find new books to read. Without this feature, I probably wouldn’t have stumbled upon some of the books that the website has suggested for me. I will always use GoodReads.  

This is the first time I have been exposed to TeacherPop. I will continue to use this site throughout my teaching career. I am now waiting approval and have added the badge to my blog! I wish I had known this existed when I first began my journey as a teacher candidate. My next social networking site will probably be Classroom 2.0. I like to explore the site extensively before joining. Until I began this project, I did not realize there were so many specialized social networking sites out there! I definitely want all the teacher discussion I can get.