One Last Thing....

Well although I am quite glad that this is my last blog, I did learn a lot and had a few specific activities that I enjoyed above all the others. I especially enjoyed #17 in which I learned about Del.icio.us. This thing has already been useful for me in my research project for my EDUC 4160 class. It is so convenient in organizing information that I am amazed I haven't been using it my entire educational career. I also truly enjoyed #13 in which I explored Zoho Writer. I have been using Zoho writer since I learned about the program for my papers for school. It is very convenient because I don't need to worry about a jumpdrive, nor do I have to make sure that I am using a computer that has Microsoft Word on it. This program has taught me that I am much more tech-savvy than I thought I was and that using technology is EASY. Almost all of the things that I explored in this exercise will be applicable in my future classroom, in both my students' education and also my own.

Thing #23

Well I found that APSU 23 Things is based on 43 Things by Stephen Abram.  Some evidence that information was borrowed from Abram's 43 Things was his number 22: Get a Del.icio.us account and play with social bookmarking and tags is the same as APSU 23 Things number 17: Learn about tagging and discover delicious, a social bookmarking site. As a future educator, I will use Creative Commons to allow other individuals to use my intellectual property, as well as be able to use other peoples educational property depending on their copyright. I will definitely be teaching my students about Creative Commons, so that they will properly use other people's work as well as give credit to those creators.

Thing #22

Grammar Challenge was the post that I chose to listen to, and I found it on Learnoutloud.com. I really enjoyed this podcast, because it helps students learn more about grammar and then quizzes them on what they have learned. This is a podcast that I have decided to subscribe to through iTunes. It is educational and very interesting. I don't think that this has inspired me to make a podcast, because when we made the podcast for 6.1 I found it very frustrating and difficult. I feel that some podcasts, especially the Grammar Challenge one, are very helpful and can be very beneficial to students. I think it would definitely be a good project for students to do as a group in the classroom to present information to the class.

Thing #21

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This was so much fun! As you can see, I made a video of pictures from my sorority recruitment. I was so easy and so much fun. I enjoyed making it, and I am sure that my future students would also enjoy using the program. It took me all of about 5 minutes to make and I tried to utilize all of the options that were given to me. Although you have to pay to make longer videos, the price was not that much and would be worth it if you were to use the videos for an educational or recreational purpose.

Thing #20

 I think everyone in this class has seen a video on YouTube sometime or another. This is my favorite video. While I don't think that it necessarily has very much educational merit, it is enjoyable and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. I like YouTube when looking for videos that are simply enjoyable; however, when looking for videos with merit it is difficult to find them through all of the junk that is on YouTube. I had a difficult time finding very many educational videos, and I don't think I will be using it in my classroom very much. I will instead continue using it simply for enjoyment.

Thing #19

This was a pretty interesting thing. I joined Teacher Pop and chose to make a comment on the page and to also install the badge onto my blog! Teacher Pop is a very useful social network to interact with other professional educators and learn and share information with each other. What I really liked was the other social network that I joined, Good Reads. I found out that many people that I already know are on Good Reads, and it speaks to my hobbies and joys! I like being able to share with other people how much I enjoyed a book and getting reading suggestions from other people to expand my library!

Thing #18

My Facebook!!

I already had a facebook, and it is a very useful tool to be able to keep in touch with people and keep up to date on certain things. I was already friends with the APSU Advising Page, and this page has been helpful to me all year. I am able to keep on track with when advising and preregistration starts and I was able to talk to someone in the advising department! Cool, eh? It is important for educators to understand how social networking works, because it is something that speaks to students and that students are drawn to. This can help educators adapt their teaching styles to mirror some of the techniques that facebook uses, in order to better reach and engage students. There are not very many useful features when it comes to teaching in anything other than college, and I do not intend to use it as a resource when teaching my students; however, in the college arena it can be another useful way to keep in touch and communicate with students as with the advising page. I like to use facebook, but it is important to make sure that your facebook is a good representation of yourself, and not conveying things that future employers might frown upon. It has become a resource for employers to find out more about individuals that they are going to interview or consider for a job.

Thing #17

WOW! I am so glad that learning about Del.icio.us was one of our 'things'. After watching the tutorial and exploring the apsu23 things account I fully intend on making my own account. This is my favorite thing that we have learned about so far because it is so easy to use and so very useful as both an educator and a student. This will make research projects and papers so much easy and quicker to complete. To be able to be on a site researching and then only have to click a button to save the link with other things similar to it will make finding information a breeze. After I am done with all my researching it will be helpful to be able to already have all of my different sources saved and organized by what they will be useful for. When teaching in the classroom this will be helpful when finding teaching resources. I will be able to find tools to teach Romeo and Juliet and tag them all together then have another tag for teaching the Odyssey and so on. This will also be a tool that I will teach my students to use when they are working on research projects. I can't wait to dive head first into this amazing tool!

Thing #16

This 'thing' was very exciting for me. I am constantly trying to discover ways to become more organized, and I am one of those people who gets excited about planners and sticky notes. When I saw that the first part of the project was to develop a personalized homepage, I admit I was filled with a bit of pride, because I already use one! I use iGoogle right now! It is my homepage and it includes links to my email, facebook, shows a specific blog that I read everyday and shows the news. Also, due to my obsession with Harry Potter there is a part that gives me a new quote each day from the books :) I also already use google calendar. I started using it when I worked for a gymnastics business for keeping track of when I needed to find subs for the coaches, but now I use it to keep track of assignments that are due in my online classes. It is very easy to use, because I can color code each class when I put it into my calendar, and I have also programmed it to send a reminder on my phone 2 days before I have something due. I explored a few of the sites to include Ta Da, and they all seemed pretty simple to use, but I did not think that they would be very helpful to me. I admit that I am old-fashione, and I am not quite ready to make the leap from paper sticky notes in my planner to sticky notes online!

Thing #15

I confess that when I found out that there was an actual 'thing' that refers to wikipedia, I was very excited. I have used Wikipedia multiple times in my college career; not to use as fact or as a reference, of course, but I have used it to get a broad idea of things that I may be studying. I explored most of the things listed as wikis, and I found that they would be so helpful in the classroom. While as an educator, I probably won't refer my students to wikipedia, but wikis can be helpful for discussions and resources for my students. I didn't make a post on the sandbox, but I did explore the editing tools which were very easy to use and a lot of fun. I plan on utilizing some of these wikis when I begin my teaching experience. I feel that they can enhance both my teaching as well as my students learning!

Thing #14

This was a more frustrating project. I used Gliffy to create a flowchart, and I found the program very difficult to use. I was finally able to figure it out, only by using a template that they had, but I wanted to post it to my blog and after attempting this for about 30 minutes could not figure out how to do it, so I probably will not be using that site again. I used Bubbl.us to create my mind map, and this program was a little bit easier to used. I found that I could use the program easily; however, I could not figure out how to post it to my blog again. I will definitely be exploring that site more, because it would be a very good educational tool to use in my classroom. It would be something that I would potentially teach my students how to use and have them explore it.

Thing #13

Exploring Zoho Writer has been incredibly educating. I do not have Microsoft Word on my laptop, so this program will be extremely helpful to me as I continue not only my educational journey, but also my professional journey. Zoho writer seems like it would be taking the place of Microsoft Office in the future. It has the same features that Microsoft Office has and is more convenient to use because it is not located strictly on one computer. In addition to lowering the need for Microsot Office, it also gets rid of the need for jump drives. If a student needed to print out a paper for class that they forgot at home, the only thing the student would need to access the paper is internet. This will greatly improve the way that teachers retrieve work from students, espeically if they do not have a printer at home. The other advantage to using Zoho instead of Microsoft Office is that it is free. My laptop is over two years old now, so it does not have an updated version of Word; therefore, it is very difficult to transfer papers from writing it on my laptop in the old version of Word to the campus computers with the new version. Zoho, I don't ever need to worry about that again. GO ZOHO!

P.S. I did try to post to my blog with Zoho, but it said that I had to be in https mode, and although I googled that to find out what it was, I could not figure out how to get it into that mode :CWith

Thing #12

I already had a Google calendar that I used to use when I had another job, so I decided to expand on it and put it to good use again. I love working with Google in general because it is so simple to use. I think this is why Google has become so popular to almost all individuals across the country. The Google calendar could be used in my educational work by being something of a unit calendar to keep me on track with my class's assignments. The other Google site that I chose to investigate was Google Translate. Google Translate was so easy to use. It will be so helpful if I decide to try and teach English Second Language students. Although this site might not perfectly translate everything, it will definitely be helpful if I need it.

Thing #11

This 'thing' was both enjoyable and frustrating at the same time. It was not quite as enjoyable as the other 'things' but I feel that it was very helpful. I found all of the feeds equally easy and useful, but I didn't often use a lot of them.  The search tools were what frustrated me. The easiest search tools for me to use were the Technorati and the Google Blogsearch.  These were very simple and completely easy to use. The most difficult search feed was Syndic8. This site was very difficult to navigate, and I had no idea how to use any of it. I found a really helpful blog that was about the Bronte sisters and how to teach their novels to students. This will be very helpful for me, because I am going to be teaching these novels to my future students.

Thing #10-RSS

After reading the assigned articles and watching the YouTube video, I was very impressed with the idea of a RSS. I can't believe that I have never heard of an RSS before, because it is so revolutionary to the way that individuals receive through the internet. They are so convenient, especially for people who do not have very much time to spend looking on the internet. When I am teaching or even now when I am in just my personal life it will help me to learn the most information possible in the shortest amount of time. Teachers should use this not only to learn more about the subject they are teaching and new ways to provide information to their students but also to help students in their technology usage.

Thing #9

These generators were a lot of fun to use! They were a little bit more difficult to navigate than the flickr website, but that made it all the more fun to figure out. I enjoyed making the magazine cover. All you had to do was upload a picture of your own and then pick out a magazine template. When I first chose the template part of my picture was covered up, but after looking around a little bit more I found a way to move the picture around the template so that it would show better. The chance card took a little bit more creativity.  It gave about ten different card templates with just the word chance and the pictures on it, and you had to write a fun comment onto the card.

Photos generated by: www.fototrix.com and signgenerator.org

Thing #8 Mashups!

 

This was the most fun 'thing' we have done yet! I thoroughly enjoyed using all the different mashup tools, but I like the Spell with Flickr and the Jigsaw pictures the most. I chose to make my images about something important in my life, my sorority, Alpha Delta Pi. I was able to spell out the shortened version of my sorority and also make a jigsaw from the picture of one of our events. This was a lot of fun for me and it gave me the opportunity to share information with all of the readers. I think that same kind of thought process could be used in the classroom with students. A fun assignment for students, espeically in my subject area high school English, would be for them to use some of these mashup tools to create a presentation to teach their classmates about a specific assignment. Along the lines of my selected novel Wuthering Heights, each student could be given a specific event or character to tell the class about and be able to do so using these mashups in a short powerpoint or something similar. Both of these programs were very easy to use and could be done also by middle school aged children.  I feel that sharing pictures online can be very beneficial for the sharer and those viewing the images, but it must be safe and students and individuals should be encouraged not to put images on the internet that he or she does not want seen by everyone.

Photos above created by: Spell with Flickr and BIg Huge Labs

Thing #7-Flickr...AGAIN!

  

Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was going to be able to investigate the Flickr site more for my next 'THING'! I enjoyed searching specific tags to discover more about the site. It was like a treasure hunt, which I enjoyed because it brought me back to my childhood. I decided to go through the tag novel and then wuthering heights. I also discovered this photo was inside the groups 'The Pleasures of the Text', 'Visual Mashups', 'Wild and Crazy...Lunatic Fringe', and 'Visibily Talented.' My project in this class is based around teaching the novel Wuthering Heights to senior English students, so I felt that this picture would be very appropriate for my flickr choice (also I LOVE this novel!). This photo not only appealed to me, but I feel that it would appeal to high school students. It is not only visually appealing and beautiful, but it is also informative. It lists numerous themes, symbols and ideas from the novel in a fun way that is 'young and hip' as my mother would say. This photo would be useful as an opening to teaching students about the novel, and I am planning on using it in my powerpoint teaching tool.

Photo retrieved from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30807533@N02/5037060938/

Thing #6-Flickr

I chose to explor Flickr www.flickr.com 

Flickr is a photo sharing community in which any individual may add or share pictures with any other user. I found this site VERY easy to use. It took me less than a minute to make an account, and I was immediately able to both search photos and add photos onto the site. I found it very easy to add photos which I was able to edit and add captions to; however it was somewhat difficult to search for photos. Not that the search engine was hard to use, but it was difficult to narrow down your search terms and all uploaded photos found do not exactly relate to the search term that you typed in. For example, although I was able to find the inserted Web 2.0 picture by typing in Web 2.0, but it also pulled up a picture of an individual with her cat. There was a pretty cool search tool in which it would filter appropriate pictures for students. This would be a helpful tool in the classroom. I feel that as an educator you could use this site for students to discover pictures when making a powerpoint or doing a webquest. They would be able to safely navigate the website with directions from the teacher.   


Photo retrieved from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/careers/2935895182/

Thing #5-MY School 2.0

After reading the articles about Web 2.0 and the subsequent School 2.0, I realize the necessity for both myself and all other prospective educators to become proficient in technology. Web 2.0 has taken over our lives by storm. From grade school students up to grandparents, it is hard to find someone who has not at least heard of youtube or facebook let alone use it. 

School 2.0 to me means:

Education for every person no matter where they live or their SES. It is difficult for an individual today to not have some sort of access to a computer, whether it be a home laptop or the library computer. School 2.0 allows for all individuals to be able to acces information about anything they need, to contact and learn from educators through blogs, online education, or social networks, and to learn about anything from anyone in the entire world. This is amazing to me. As an eduator to know about the opportunities through School 2.0 and not to use it is a crime. If schools and educators do not take hold of School 2.0 we are not only holding back our potentials for teaching but we are also holding back our students.

Thing #4-COMMENTING AHHHHH!

To be honest, leaving a comment was one of my biggest fears when it came to blogging. A parade of ideas run through my head when deliberating what to leave as a comment such as 'Do I sound intelligent?' 'Should I say it critically or nicely??' 'Am I stupid for thinking this?' 'Should I actually leave this comment?' and so on and so forth. Reading my peers blogs and the tips for leaving comments helped me to realize that yes you should leave a comment that is meaningful and thoughtful but that it does not matter quite so much if you sound silly or professional or critical or helpful. All comments are unique to the writer and should reflect both your own thoughts and feelings as well as keeping in mind those of the blog that you are commenting on.  Going with that thought I really appreciated the 'Your comments?' blog which just really said that anyone who blogs LOVES to receive comments to reinforce the idea that people are reading his or her blog and appreciating it; the idea that someone is affected by what you are writing is what we are all here for anyways! I also appreciated this blog's insistence that commenting become a regular part of a blogger's practices.

As an beginning experiment of commenting I went ahead and commented on a few of my classmates blogs, but have decided to hold off on other individual's blogs as well as continuing my commenting on my classmates' blogs.....

My Classmates:

http://bmenees.blogspot.com/2010/09/thing-4.html

I selected Brittany's blog because I know her and can relate to a lot of the things that she talks about in her blogs!

I commented on Brittany's #5 blog about discovering School 2.0. In my comment I related my feelings of overwhelment with hers in discovering all of the technology. I also talked about how we are both learning so much about technology in the classroom. 

http://teacheffortlearnlife-mciezki.blogspot.com/

I selected his blog because after reading a couple of his posts I felt like I knew him and completely understood the way he spoke to his readers in a very real and educated way. I feel that he will make a superb educator!

I commented on his #4 commenting post because I was very impressed with the way he talked about commenting as something that you shouldn't be afraid of and you should use with gusto! He gave me courage to make stronger comments on other individual's blogs. I offered him commendations for these points!

http://meganartzsblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/thing-3.html#comments

I chose Megan's blog because I felt that she was really connecting with her blog and readers and was being very genuine and real in all of her posts.

I commented on her #3 post because I loved her idea of using a blog to communicate with students by including a schedule for the week and to post upcoming assignments. I let her know how fabulous of an idea this was.

edaygoodmanteacher.blogspot.com/2010/09/thing-6-information-overload.html#comments

WOW I completely connected to Goodman's post about being very overwhelmed by technology. This is why I chose to comment on her post. I commented by mutual feelings of overwhelment and amazement at the things I am capable of doing now that I have been in this class for a few weeks.

http://camorgan06.blogspot.com/2010/09/thing-8.html#comments

Cheryl's blog is filled with so many impressive creations from technology and this is why I chose her blog to comment on!

I commented on her thing #8 because I have finally realized after participating in this class how to make all of the wonderful things that she has been making. I commented her on her mosaic and reflected on what I was capable of doing before this class and what I can do now. She impresses me so much because she commonly says how she knew how to do this before the class began!

Thing #3

I think the most useful thing about a blog in reference to my teacher education program is to reflect on teaching methods in the classroom. The hardest thing for me to do when something doesn't work how I want it to is to discover why it didn't work for me and what I could change to make it work in the future. By having a blog not only would I be able to lay out my thoughts to reflect on the pros and cons of my methods, but other individuals with teaching experience would be able to share their experiences or insight on my methods. I would not only be able to learn from my own mistakes and successes but also from the mistakes and successes of other teachers.

Thing #2

I'm so excited to have made my first blog! Because I have never had a blog before and don't feel like I am very creative so I just named my blog with my initials and last name.

It was much easier than I thought to create a blog. It was very simple to set up and took about five minutes. I understand why so many people have blogs these days! Not only are they very easy to set up and use, but it is enjoyable to be able to let all of your feelings and experiences out into the world whether they are read or not.

My avatar looks like me. I feel as though I'm kind of fun and playful, so I tried to convey that onto my avatar. I am very happy with the way she turned out!

Thing #1

Of all the lifelong learning habits, I feel like the two easiest for me are #2, "accept responsibility for your own learning" and #4, "have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learning." Everyone is ultimately responsible for his or her own education, and I am no different.  I have worked hard to get where I am today and am proud of myself and my accomplishments. I feel as though these two habits go hand in hand because without having confidence in myself as a strong learner I will not be able to accept responsibility for my learning. By having confidence in myself, I am more willing to accept my responsibility and therefore be more successful.

The habit that I have the most difficulty with is #6, "use technology to your advantage." I am not very strong in my technological ability and, therefore, do not use technology unless I have to. This is not an admirable trait that I see in myself, but I am hoping that after taking this Instructional Technology course that I will be able to use technology not only to my advantage but also to my students' advantage.

I have never blogged before, and I can honestly say it was not as bad as I thought. I think the most difficult thing to me is to use first person and be talking to other people through my writing.  As an English Education major I am used to writing professionally; however, as difficult as it is to get used to, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to write more casually.