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