The Adventures End

WOW! This has been one great learning adventure within the world of technology and discovering many new things! I have learned so many new beneficial things that I can use personally and within my future classroom. It is impossible for me to choose a favorite discovery or exercise because I loved them all! One that really stood out to me though was Animoto! It was so neat to create a slide show and add music and a theme to it. This program has allowed me to venture outside of my comfort zone within the Internet world and learn so many new things that I can use for the rest of my life. It has shown me that I can learn anything that I set my mind to and that by learning new things and concepts, I will not only benefit from learning them, but my future students will benefit as well! There were a lot of take-a-ways from this program! Almost everything that we learned was new to me or broadened my knowledge on things that I already knew. I loved everything about how this program was set up! It was perfect and very well thought out. I think it is a great idea for us to create our own blog and discuss our findings and experiences. Not only was the program designed perfectly, but it will also influence my practice as a future teacher. I have now been exposed to so many more sources and tools that I can use within my future classroom. I cannot wait to create my own blog for my classroom. I think that it is a great way to keep parents up to date on assignments and about what the children are learning in the classroom. It is also a great form of communication. It seems like every day there is some type of new program or tool for people to use. I hope that I can keep up with these new tools by staying in contact with the tools that I have already learned to use. I feel like if I continue to use these tools, it will expose me to other tools that I can use. And of course, we can always Google for new tools that are available. I’m now more than ready to use all of these tools and see how they can benefit me! These tools will not only follow me into my personal life, but they will also be used within my future classroom. I feel the need to share all of these wonderful and beneficial tools with everyone!

Thing #23

            The picture that I have posted below is from the 23 Things homepage. It shows that this project is based on someone else's work and has been modified. Until I began this course, I did not even know that Creative Commons existed. Creative Commons seems like a much easier and convenient way to have your work copyrighted and to make sure you are not plagiarizing. Plagiarizing is very serious and teachers and students need to make sure that they are very careful and cautious about what they are using. Creative Commons is very simple and easy to understand. It is a great way to teach students about copyright. Not only does this teach them about copyright, but is also informs them of how to copyright their own work. Creative Commons is a wonderful tool to become familiar with and to teach to students. The concept of copyright is something that everyone needs to understand. I am glad that I know more about copyright and have learned about Creative Commons!

Thing #22

            LiveBinders is something totally new to me. Until now, I had never heard of LiveBinders. The site was kind of confusing at first, but after a while I became more comfortable with it. However, I do think that they could make it more user friendly. I created three different binders that were titled: Classroom Websites, Education Websites, and Education Resources. The binder titled Classroom Websites is composed of websites for the children in the class to use. The binder titled Education Websites are sites for my own personal that can be used for lessons and the Education Resources binder are sources that can also be used for personal research. LiveBinders is a wonderful tool to use in the classroom. This tool allows you to have everything that you need online all in one place and allows you to keep it organized just how you would like for it to be. For example, a teacher could create separate binders for different lesson plans and store everything all in one place. Not only could teachers use this, but students in the upper grades can benefit from this tool as well. This tool is very neat and I look forward to using it in the future and being able to keep everything organized all in one place! Below is a link to my Classroom Websites binder.

LiveBinders

Thing #21

            Animoto is amazing! I had never heard of this website before, but I am so glad I got the opportunity to discover it through the 23 Things. This activity was so much fun! I absolutely love the slide show that I made! Animoto was easy to figure out and very easy to work. I had no trouble at all creating my slide show and I love that I got to choose a fall theme to go with it. I cannot wait to use the tool more in the future! This would be a great tool to use at the end of the school year to create a slide show of the children in the class. Below is a link to my Animoto titled “Memories” for you to watch! Enjoy!

Memories

Thing #20

            I love YouTube and I use it all the time! I had so much fun with this activity because I lost track of time and just kept searching and watching videos. This site is so useful for teachers. It offers teachers so many videos that can be used in the classroom and used for entertainment. The video that I chose was a Sesame Street video. I chose this video because it was age appropriate for Kindergarten students to watch and learn from. Plus, what child doesn’t like Sesame Street? The video focused on the five senses, which is an important concept for children to learn. However, YouTube does have its flaws. It is a very “busy” site with video suggestions and ads all over the place. But you can make the video full screen to eliminate these distractions for students. I do think that the pros outweigh the cons. This is a great resource for teachers to use in their classroom!

Thing #19

            I am a member of Facebook and Twitter and today I joined TeacherPop! I never knew such a thing existed! This is such a great social network for future and current educators. It can be used to communicate, post ideas, and so many more things! Some of the social networking sites definitely appealed to me! I already use IMDB to check out new movies and the ratings of them. The cooking social networks appealed to me the most. I chose to explore Bake Space and it was really neat! I do not cook a lot, but when I do, I find myself baking most of the time. This site was really interesting and easy to figure out. I love that you can find recipes and swap them with other people. You could even make a cookbook! I will definitely be using this more in the future!

Thing #18

            Social networking has changed the way we communicate with people and has really changed some aspects of the world completely. Before, communicating with people was not right at our finger tips, yet now it only takes seconds to do so. It is so important for educators to know how social networking works. Educators need to know so that they have different ways to communicate with student’s parents and other educators. And not only should educators know how to use social networking sites, but they should know their role on social networking sites as an educator. Educators must be role models for everyone and that means acting maturely and appropriately on the sites. This activity was basically just a review for me. I am very familiar with Facebook and Twitter. I use them both every day for social purposes. I have come to dislike the advertising that has begun to pop up on Facebook and Twitter. However, I realize that since these sites are free, there is always going to be some type of advertising I think that Facebook is more useful than Twitter. It is easier to navigate and allows you to write a lot more in the posts than Twitter does. Facebook also has more features, such as: picture albums, family information, work information, creating group pages, and etc. I think that Facebook could be very useful in a classroom. A teacher could create a group page for the parents/students to communicate on about assignments, homework, questions, and etc. Overall, social networking is very popular and is changing the world constantly.