Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

Some of my favorite exercises was learning about everything Google had to offer. I always thought Google was simply a search engine, and now I know it’s defiantly not. At the start of this program, I did not think I was going to have fun doing all the activities. I was so wrong! A lot of the “things” were so much fun! On top of fun, I can see my self using some of these programs in my classroom one day. I know for sure I’m going to have a blog for my classroom. It’s such a great idea that I never would have thought of with out this. I think it would have been neat if on a couple of the “things” we picked what we wanted to blog about. Like doing a website of the day. Blog about really interesting website we found and how we would use them in our classroom one day.

Thing #23

Creative Commons is such an important thing that very one should know about, but in reality, I’m sure a lot of people on this college campus still don’t know what it is. I know I have done it before simply with out thinking, but it’s not fair to take someone’s work without giving them credit for making it. How would you feel if you spent a really long time creating something and someone else copy and pasted it, and just said it was there’s? I’m sure I wouldn’t be very happy. Creative Commons is great for teachers for that reason. Now I’ll know the symbols to look for on web pages. I’ll also teach my students how this is a serious topic and not just to think it’s not a big deal.

Thing 22

Livebinders is a great program and I can see how it would be very helpful in a classroom. It would take away the stress of forgetting a website you wanted to go back and use one day in class. It is also a great way to stay organized, which is always helpful. I made three folders. My first one is Technology, the second is Games, and I know they were all supposed to be educational, but my third binder is Cooking. It’s so cool how the whole webpage is there and you don’t have to even click a link. In my technology binder I included Animoto and Flicker, along with Google Calendar. In my Games binder I added the website I did for website of the day and Education.com. And last in my cooking binder I added Tasty Kitchen, because ever since I got on there the other day, I can’t get my self to leave. This was a really enjoyable Thing to do.

Thing 21

I really loved using Animoto to make a video. I upload a hand full of picture from my trip to London over Spring break. The first couple pictures are of me and the rest are of places I went. It was so much fun! I already want to go back! Making this video was really fun too. And a lot easier than I thought it would. It was as simple as uploading pictures and you were just about done. I was defiantly use this website more offend. It is was a great way to put all your memories together. I am so proud of this video!!

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Thing #20

I have been YouTube since before I can remember. I took communication online last year and we had to make a YouTube account to be able to turn in our speeches. I love this site! You can find anything you ever want to know. From movie preview to how to cut your own hair to how to cook. This website could be used in the classroom everyday, if you take the time to find the video your looking for. That's the only problem, sometimes it takes forever to find a video it took you one second to find yesterday. This is a preview for the new movie Bully.

Thing #19

I looked around Teacher Pop and the website is really cool. This is another website that I have never heard of, and I can see I have been missing out. It’s so much fun! Social networking is everywhere now. Pinterest is huge! If I’m not careful, I can spend so much time on that one website. Another one I get on all the time is IMDB. Every time I’m going to the movies I pull up that page. As a matter of fact, I was on it today. My roommates and I were trying to pick a movie to go see later. Were seeing Lockout, I hope it’s good. Tasty Kitchen was amazing! I have already planned to make some dishes from that page!

Thing 18

Social networking can be a very good and useful tool, but at the same time they can have negative influences. They can be useful in the classroom if you have a Facebook page for your class and all your students and student’s parents can join and come together. You could remind them of upcoming work that is due and have a very easy way to talk to the parents about any problems that are happening in class. On the other hand, Facebook can get you a lot of trouble. Now days, everyone looks you up on Facebook as soon as they meet you, just to get to know you a little better. Facebook can very easily be the reason you did or didn’t get the job you wanted. In some cases I think this is fare, but in others it’s not. I don’t think Facebook is a very good way to get to know people because there is no way to know if they are being truthful.  Although I do have a Facebook myself, I hardly ever check it any more.

Thing 17

I think teacher could use bookmarker sites in the classrooms very easily.  They are such a simply way to find new ideas and remember old one. I use Stumplupon all the time. I went to London over Spring break and bookmarked a lot of websites with ideas of neat places to visit and things to do when I was going to be there.  Bookmarking is just a great way to communicate with other teachers in different school and even in different states.  If you have the internet; you have an unlimited amount of information already out there, you just have to find it. With websites like these, it makes it super easy for teachers to share these great ideas.  

Thing 16

I already have iGoogle as my home page on my lap top. I love it! I love having the weather right there everything I log onto the internet. It is also really nice to have it be the same website that is my email; I don’t have to keep going to different tabs. Everything I need is there and that is what makes it my favorite. I really did not like the idea of online calendars; I simply do not see myself using them in reality.  I have a calendar hanging on my wall in my bedroom and I write all my important events on it. Although if calendars were one of the things you had time for, it would be a really helpful thing to use every day. I make to do list all the time, so that tool was really nice and easy to use. The to do list could also be used in the class room for the students to make their own list of things that need to do turned in by the end of the week.

Thing 15

Just like a lot of other high school students, I was always told not to use Wikipedia for any of my papers, research projects, or group work assignments. One day, I will more than likely tell my students the same things. I guess after hearing the rule for so long, that it is still hard to trust the site even if you are sure the information is a fact. After looking at some of these Wikis, I found out not all the information on these sites are false.  These websites are actually really good sites to visit if you simply need information about a topic fast or just clarification on an event.  I could tell by just looking around on the sites that a lot of people spend a lot of time making the Wikis what they are.  Just like a lot of other people have been saying, I would use Wikis in my classroom in group work projects. The students would be allowed to have time in class to research topic in History and write a summary of the events that occurred.    

Thing 14

I have always been a fan of flowcharts and graphs, simply because they make everything so much easier to see and understand.  Gliffy would be my favorite website to use if I ever needed to create any type of charts.  As I was looking through all the things you could make on Gliffy, all I was thinking was how I could use all of these in a classroom.  You could make Venn diagrams, organization charts, flowcharts, site maps and more.  All of which could help children understand the concept of an event better or explain the main characters in a book your reading in class. The organization charts could be used to show upcoming events or when homework and projects are due.  Over all I really love the idea of using charts and graphs and this website makes it really easy to make whatever you have in mind.

Thing 13

This was my first time ever hearing about and using Zoho. This website offers so many great things! As with a lot of the other website I have used on 23 things, I was once again surprised by how easy Zoho writer was to use. It also offers a lot more tools than Microsoft Word does. One of the tool that I picked that I really liked was the custom dictionary. In the custom dictionary, you can add words ( such as Zoho ) that you know are going to come up misspelled, and it will not up the red line under it. It would simply same time when writing a long paper, if the main characters name always showed as being wrong. It also has a lot of really good format tools, that would also make writing a paper easier and quicker. I’m normally all about Google apps, but I did not really care for Google Docs. It actually ran really slow on my computer and I couldn’t find any thing that it did, that Microsoft Word doesn’t already do just fine. I’m sure the problem was my computer and not the program, but I can see myself using Zoho over Google Docs.

Thing #12

I am in love with iGoogle!! I have no idea why I have waiting till now to start using it. Every morning I check the weather and my Facebook page, well now I can do all that on my home page and it’s perfect! It makes everything so much faster. Another one of the Google tool I started to try and use was Google Calendar. I love to take notes and I always have to have all my plans wrote out or I’ll forget about them, so I thought I would love this as well. I don’t really like it. Nothing is wrong with the program and it was really easy to use, it is just not something I can see my self using right now. Once I start teaching, on the other hand, this could turn out to be a great and really helpful tool to stay organized and prepared.

Thing #11

I didn’t find any of these sites confusing to use, but I do like Technorati the best. I really like the top 100. Although, they are not all in one category, it’s still an easy way to see which blog is doing well. There are also so many different blogs! One of the search engines that I did not really like was Topix.net. I don’t really have a reason why I didn’t like it as well as the others, it just wasn’t as easy I thought. I also use Google to find blogs and newsfeeds and that was really easy also!

Thing #10

I liked the RSS and newreader. It’s a great way to stay up to date with how ever many different resources without having to visit so all the websites. This is one reason I normally don’t reads that many blogs, because it takes so much time. Well, this makes it so much faster! I might use this in my class room to stay connected to educational blogs and resources that I find are helpful for what I’m teaching at the time. This is perfect for websites you know you are going to visit everyday!

Thing #9

       I used image chef (http://www.imagechef.com/) to make this image. I always write in the sand when I go to the beach, so I thought this was neat. Anything you can think of, you can make! T-shirts, signs, edit pictures or add words to an images, so many differnet ideas. Another great thing is it's so easy! I know it took me less than a minute to make this. I don't know if I would ever use this in my classroom. I'm sure there is a way to involve it into something, but if not, kids would at least have fun playing around with all the differnet programs in there free time.

Thing #8

Flickr has so many different programs that allows its users to make mashups and they all are so much fun to do! I played around with just about all of the ones that are listed on the 23 things page, and truth be told, they are slightly addicting! I think, if your creative and willing, you could include all the eight mashup ideas in a class room at least once. Mappr would be great to show what different areas look like, and even to travel back in time and see what a town did look like, maybe before a hurricane or an economic depression. Flickr color Pickr would be a great tool to bring some life to a boring classroom wall. Mosaic Maker would also be cool to hang on your wall if you made one that included pictures of all your students. Clockr would be fun as a screen saver, and creating puzzles with your class would also be a new idea. I favorite was Spell With Flickr. I have a ring that says the word hope so that is the word I picked, but you could pick anything! You could print out subjects and make labels or just let you students see how many different ways they can make there name. I love taking pictures, but I’m not really the type to put a lot online or do a lot of editing. I normally just print them off and put them in a photo book, but now after seeing all the different things Flickr lets you do with your pictures, that just sounds really boring. I’m still not sure if I will ever put a lot of my pictures out there, but I know for sure if I do want to share them, I have all these tools to help and make them great.
  This is my word, made with Spell with Flickr.

Thing #7

Thing number seven asked us to explore Flickr and find out everything the website has to offer. Just like a lot of the website in Thing number six, this website was also new to me. I have heard of it before, but I’m not really that in to uploading and editing pictures, so I never checked it out before. First, I started by taking a tour of the site. That informed me a lot about all the different things users can do with there pictures and how they can involve friends and even connected there account to there Facebook and blogs. When I started looking at pictures, I just type something in the search bar and so many pictures can up. It was crazy how many hits I got for everything I searched for. It was also great how easy it was and how many different types of things are there.  In the end, I found this really awesome picture of the London Eye when I searched London. I'm going to London in March and I can not wait to ride this. The view has to be amazing! This guy did a great job taking this picture!
Here is a link to the picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/5012303654/

Here is a link to Flickr's home page:
http://www.flickr.com/

Thing #6

As I was looking around the top Web 2.0 winner, I was in shock by how many of the website I have never heard of before. There are tools out there that can do anything and everything and they are not even that well known. I was also shocked by how much Google had to offer. In just about every category, Google had something special to give, and once again, I have never heard of it. After looking around some I found this website called Evernote. It is Amazing!! I already created an account and downloaded it to my computer, just so I can always have it at hand. You can also download it on a phone in an app form. Evernote allows its uses to be able to take notes in your account and be able to see those notes on any computer, phone, or device that you sign back into. It also allow its users to save pictures you saw on a website or upload a picture you might have saw in a maize to your account, so you can always see your ideas. Another thing it lets you do is save web pages, so you can go to them when ever you want too. I think in a class room where students are able to use computers or ipads to take notes, this would be a great tool. If you download the program (it’s free!) you do not have to have internet connection to see the notes you took earlier. As students can take notes in class with there lap top, go home and study still being able to use there notes. Teachers could also use this as a to do list or take after Pinterest and same all there ideas on to Evernote. This is a great Web 2.0 tool and I can not wait till I start to really see all it’s benefits.

This is a link to the top 100
http://www.cnet.com/html/ww/100/2009/winners.html

This is a link to Evernote
http://evernote.com/

Thing #5

When I was in middle school or even High school, I only rarely used the internet for any projects. I went to the library and looked up the information. I looked in books, encyclopedias or talked to the librarian for other help. Now, only two years later, I use the internet for everything! I don’t go a half a day with out checking my email, getting on Facebook, Googling for some information, or watching a TV show I missed from the night before. Web 2.0 and School 2.0 mixes all the great things the internet has to offer with education and is a awesome new addition to all classroom. Anything from creating a social calender to share upcoming events with your students to pulling up Google Earth in class to show what London really looks like, I really believe the internet is a prefect approach to a new kind of learning. I scare myself sometimes when I talk about how much technology I plan to use in my classroom someday. I’m so new to some of these tools, but the great thing is it’s so easy to learn! Times are changing and in my opinion, schools need to be on the same page as there students. If teachers like it or not, the internet is a great part of their students lives. My thought is if teachers don’t let students use the tools we have, there going to sit in class on their phone and use Facebook for something more entertaining. I’m not saying everyday should be action packed with a new program, I just think the internet has so much to give, why should we hold it back?

Thing #3

I will definitely be using a blog in my classroom. Calendars can be posted so students and parents know what to expect in the following weeks. Homework assignments can also be listed, so even students who were not present in class can have knowledge of what happened in class on that given day. Homework examples can be included if it is a difficult chapter and I can tell some students need the extra help. I also want my students to make one. Students can learn about the internet and start sharing there ideas with others. An entire class can be involved in a project or homework assignments and not even have to be in the same place. To me this is a great way to really get your class room involved and learning together. I would allow some class time everyday so everyone has the opportunity to use the computers. Students could look up experiments they would want to try in class or comments on a classmates thoughts. I think blogs would be a great addition in any classroom.

Thing #2

At first when I heard we were going to have to make a blog, I was a little nervous. I have never used a blog before and thought it was going to be hard. In the end, it was really easy! We had perfect instructions that walked me through everything I had to do. I made my post name my name just because I really couldn’t think of anything else I make it. I was able to design what my blog looks like and the layout, so that part is fun. One of the other thing I had to do while making my blog, was to create an avatar. At first I thought it was going to be silly, but it turned out to look kind of cute. Although, as hard as I tried to make it look like me, I don’t think it does. I made it have a purple shirt because that’s my favorite color.

Thing #1

As I was watching the 7 1/ 2 habits for life long learners, I found that number one, beginning with the end in mind would be that hardest for me to break. I always try to get my work done as quick as possible, so I’m able to do other things, in stead of taking my time and really trying to learn. On the other hand, the easiest habits for me to break would be number 6. I always try to use technology to my advantage in what ever I’m doing. There is so much out on the internet, not to try and learn from it. Although I am not the best at computers and programs, I still do my best to learn from tools I can use for everything.