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.

Thing 18 Social Networking

I have both a Facebook and a Twitter account. My Facebook can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/hayley.leann

It is important for educators to understand and be able to navigate social networking sites because that is the prominent form of communication for students. Cyber bullying is a rising problems that schools and teachers need the tools to combat. If there are issues in the social networking sites, there will be issues brought into the classroom. Facebook has gotten better with some aspects lately. For example, users now have the option to attach documents in private messages. The most useful features about both Twitter and Facebook is that they make communicationg with others easy. Facebook makes it easy to share photos and statuses so that others can comment and like them.

Schools and classrooms can use social networking sites to show the parents and community what is going on at school. Schools often use Facebook in order to let parents know about upcoming events. Engaging parents and the community in learning is vital in the learning process. 

Thing 17 Introduction to Delicious

Delicious is a wonderful tool for teachers, for everyone really. It is similar to Pinterest; however, Pinterest is a bit easier to organize with the pinboards feature. Still, when it comes to education, I prefer Delicious because it is much easier to search using tags. I wish I had discovered this site sooner! It is definitely an easy way to create bookmarks and keep up with webpages that interest me. As for potential in the classroom, teachers can use Delicious to do research and refer students to Delicious for research as well. Once I searched “educational technology” I also realized that it gives access to tons of different ideas. Reading the other tags for the webpages is an easy way to see if that is the particular webpage that would benefit me. Users can see how popular the webpage is and read comments regarding it. Ideas, teaching strategies, teaching technology, handouts, worksheets, projects, and much more can be found using Delicious. Once again, this is a great way for teachers to “beg, steal, and borrow” everything they will need in their teaching toolbox. This is definitely a tool I will be using for now on and in the future for teaching. 

Thing 16

I chose the Galaxy theme for my start page on Google. This one appeals to me because it is colorful and an amazing scene, I have been using the start page for Google for quite some time now. It’s a bit outdated now, but I still find myself using it. After November of this year, it will no longer be available. This makes me pretty sad. The to-do lists help me out a lot so that I can remember what I have to accomplish within the  day, week, or even the year. As I’ve said in two previous blog posts, online calendars are important to me because they allow me to have one calendar that syncs with every device I use. I am always reminded when I have something due or a presentation coming up. I also enjoy sticky notes so that I can leave myself reminders all over my desktop and online. Students could use these and to-do lists to keep up with assignments and check them off as they're completed. I found and use Evernote and Pinterest frequently. Both of these allow me to organize and share ideas. Evernote will be helpful to students because it is a note taking tool that allows you to save and search notes. Pinterest is an amazing tool for teachers because it is a place to save or "pin" websites to refer to in the future. I have found many teaching ideas and lesson plans for elementary school that I plan to modify for my own classroom. 

Thing 15 Wiki Uses

I did not enjoy posting in the wiki page. I dislike the format and when you add your content, it brings up everything previously submitted. I had a page open that I was supposed to copy and paste one of my blog posts in. It was a mile long and hard to navigate. It was interesting to see what had been posted over time, but I wish there were a more effective way to post your own content without it being jumbled with everyone else’s content. I do enjoy looking at everyone's posts and experiences. However, there is the problem of others going in and deleting content without permission. 

In the classroom, I would use a wiki for parents to post questions and concerns. I could answer questions and other parents could also. I would also like to post worksheets and documents on a wiki page so that parents and students can access them from home. If a child is sick and the parent wants the work immediately, he or she can just go print it from the wiki class page. I also think it would be unique to create a class wiki with a page for each student. Every student could go post inspirational words and encouragement on other students’ page. Of course, this would have to be closely monitored for abuse. I remember doing a similar project in school. For this project, each student made a book with construction paper. It had the individual’s name on the front. The books were passed around the room and students were asked to write compliments about the student that owned the book.

Thing 13 Google Docs vs. Zoho

I prefer Google Docs because it is much more user friendly. I navigated Google docs much more smoothly than Zoho; I had not previously done much work in either. Zoho also required you to create an account. With Google Docs, it comes with your Gmail account which much more people have as opposed to Zoho. I found presentation templates in Google Docs, but could not seem to find them in Zoho. Zoho was not nearly as easy on the eyes either. Google Docs also has the option of installing Google Drive to your computer so that you can work while offline. However, both have positives. Google Docs has a “Draw” option, but Zoho has a “Planner” and “Notebook” that Google Docs does not have. Both have a calendar, but Google Calendar syncs to my smart phone. In the end, Google Docs is earier to access because of applications and easier for collaboration. Therefore, it’s the most efficient for education.

With Google Docs, students can use their Google accounts to share work. For a group presentation or project, each student could do their part in the assignment and send it to one another for review before combining it into one document. Another option is to have one student work with the project and complete his or her section before sending the unfinished project to another student to work on. More than one student can work on the same project as a shared document at the same time. Teachers can receive documents and presentations on Google Docs for review. Google Docs allows reviews/editing. They can also go to the shared document in order to track student progress.

Thing 12

I have been using Google tools extensively for some time now. I use Google Calendar, Google Alerts, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Play, Google Bookmarks, and Google+. Alerts and Calendars sync well with my smart phone so that I can have my schedule with me at all times. Google Play allows me to get applications for my smart phone that can be useful in many different ways. Google Bookmarks allows me to save important websites and a description of each so that I can access them on any computer using my Google account. My Google account has my personal information already saved on it since I have been using these tools for a while; therefore, I can't really save links to much here.

There are many Google tools that are relevant to education. For example, during high school I was introduced to Google Earth by one of my teachers. We were able to look up different parts of the world from right there in the classroom. It gave us insight into where other countries were located. When studying History, I would just look up the area being studied. Google Maps even gives an ACTUAL image of the place you search. Alerts and Calendars can be used in education to keep up with schedules and due dates for assignments. School systems are moving towards giving students iPads. As a teacher, I could make a public calendar for the class I teach so that parents and students can subscribe to them. This would mean that nobody could say they had forgotten an assignment! This function has saved me quite a few times since I’ve been in college. Google Play has many educational apps available for Android smart phones and smart boards. I plan to use Google Play in order to find interactive lessons and educational games to use in my classroom.

Thing 11

Technorati is one of my favorite blog finding tools. It was easy to navigate and found only things relevant to my topics; however, it only has a few select topics to view Topix is the most confusing to me because of all of the ads, but it allows you to search ANY topic. Google Blogs is another helpful blog finder. I am already familiar with Google searching, so it came pretty natural to me. Another way I found blogs I’m interested in is looking at the blogs that I find other blog makers following. So, when I go to a blog I enjoy, I look at the blogs they read often in order to find more.

One cool blog I found was Geekologie. It is a blog devoted to new and upcoming technology. It gives tutorials and has reviews for tons of technology. I believe it is critical to keep up with advances in technology; this blog helps me tackle that goal.

Another helpful blog I found is Making Teachers Nerdy. It has a plethora of information for teachers. It gives links to other excellent blogs as well. It has tricks for commonly used programs such as Microsoft Word. It even has printables for teachers! This is one that all teachers should check out.