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.

Thing #17

            This tool is so useful! I never knew such a thing even existed and that it could be so helpful and convenient! This tool is very valuable for any teacher at any grade level. It allows someone to have all the websites they need in one place and allows you to access them from anywhere that you have the Internet available. It is so important for teachers to be able to get to websites quickly and easily and this website allows for this to happen. As educators, we can take advantage of this tool by using it to keep track of websites that may be useful in our classroom and in lessons that we may teach. It can also be helpful in doing research because just typing in a few key words can bring you so many useful resources. I can see myself using this tool in my career as an educator and in my personal life. I am so glad that I have been exposed to this tool! It is a wonderful website!

Thing #16

            I chose the Google start page to begin with. I chose this page, because I already have a Google account and I use Google at least once every day. Unfortunately, Google will not be my permanent home page. My homepage is set to Austin Peay’s homepage, because I use it more than anything else. I had a lot of fun creating my Google homepage though! Everything is organized just the way I want it be and I can easily find what I need. I chose a fall theme, because as you can tell from my blog, I love the season fall! I think that the online calendars can be useful and helpful, but personally I prefer an actual calendar or planner. I feel the same about the to-do lists. They were all easy to create and organize. I just prefer for things like that to actually be on paper. It’s quicker and easier for me to do it on paper, rather than on the computer. I definitely think that the Google homepage would be useful in my classroom. It is set to my needs and I can view the weather, news, and etc. all in one place and reach other websites from there as well. I would recommend all the tools to other people. They are all useful in their own ways. I just don’t prefer all of them for my everyday life style. However, I now have my own personal settings on my Google page, which is really cool!

Thing #15

            This was a totally new experience for me! I use Wikipedia all the time for personal use, but I have never actually explored other wikis and edited one. Just to be clear, I do not use Wikipedia for education purposes. It took me minute to figure out how to work and edit the APSU 23 Things Sandbox wiki, but once I got the hang of it, I thought it was very simple and useful! Wikis can definitely be used within my future classroom. I could set up my own wiki and use it to post information for the class and the parents. It could also be a place for children to post ideas and research and for other students to view the ideas and research. However, it also very crucial that students are informed that wikis are not always reliable. Anyone can edit them and people can post false information. So, it is important that students realize this and know that wikis, like Wikipedia, are not sources that should be used to actually research a topic. The concept of a wiki is useful, but students need to know that it is not always reliable and correct information. This activity was very useful and informative! I now understand the concept of wikis much better!

Thing #14

The two tools that I chose to use were Gliffy.com and Bubbl.us. There was no specific reason that I chose these two tools. I just randomly selected them. Gliffy was a website for creating different types of flow charts. Honestly, it was kind of hard to understand at first. But once I took some time to explore what I could do, I got the hang of it and began creating different flow charts. Gliffy allows you to create flow charts, venn diagrams, organizational charts, and many more! I think that it is great that this tool is available to people, so that they have different options for creating flow charts. The second tool that I chose to use was Bubbl. Bubbl was also great! It was also kind of hard to figure out at first, but once I spent some time working with it, I got used to it! The overall simplicity of the mind maps was great! They were neat to make and I had fun with this tool. This tool is great, because it gives people the chance to make bubble maps if they do not already have a program to make them with. These tools can definitely be used within my future classroom! These tools offer students a variety of different ways to create flow charts and mind maps. I have tools to make charts for my students and they have tools to make their own. Overall, the flow charts and mind maps are useful tools for a teacher and students, so that information can be organized!