reflections of the 23 things

In doing this activity, I learned a lot about a bunch of different resources that I did not know were available. Some of them I can see myself using in my classroom, and some I honestly don't. Some of them left me feeling more confused after I tried to figure them out than I was from the start. I believe many other non traditional students can agree with me on the confusion aspect. As non traditional students, most of us did not have access to any of these resources while in school. Hopefully now that I had an introduction to these, hopefully I can work with some of the tools I liked more and get more comfortable with them and use them to my advantage when I start teaching.

Thing 20

Youtube is another one that I also use on a regular basis. Youtube is great for finding videos of pretty much anything that you could want (and some you don't). I have used youtube in my everyday life to find tutorials of how to do things, in particular when I need to learn something new on my sewing machine. It is so much easier to watch someone do something to learn than just to read it out of an instruction book.The videos I can see myself using the most are probably science and math videos. One that would be really helpful is a animation of DNA. it describes it so much better than pictures in the book can because you can see what is happening. There are so many videos like this that can enhance your lessons.

Thing 21

It is a neat idea to make videos to music with this site, but I feel like teaching sixth graders for example, would require more than a 30 second video for anything, and I don't want to have to pay for anything. I can see myself using this to make little cutesy videos of my husband and me. Our wedding pictures would make a good video to share with our family that couldn't make it to the wedding. Although sending it now would be about four years to late. I think I may use this to compile a video from the vacation we are planning on this summer because that would be better than posting a bunch of pictures to facebook. I don't really see myself using this in a classroom though.

THing 19

i am still waiting to be accepted to the teacher pop group, for some reason I am having issues with that. Not sure why, probably a user error. I will do the assignments involving that as soon as I can. But for now, I will talk about the other social media site I like, goodreads. I had to join Goodreads for another class but I actually enjoy the site. As a self proclaimed book nerd I am always looking for good books to read and this website is dedicated to talking about books. Readers can submit comments on books and rate books so you can pick your next read.

Thing 23

Creative commons is great because it takes the guess work out of trying to get all of the correct permissions to use something. The permission is already granted, and you just have to follow the guidelines that are given.I had no idea about creative commons before this class and thought as long as I cited everything, I was good to go. well, I guess I was wrong. it will be important to teach my students about creative commons because they need to learn to respect the work of individuals. Kids can be bad about taking credit for others work even by accident.

thing 22

teaching technology

This is my helpful technology binder. I have dedicated this binder to lesson plan ideas. Livebinder seems like a helpful tool because I can organize websites into catagories. I really should have named this one lesson plans, but i wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it until I got into it. I can see using this to organize notes and worksheets even for my students so they can view anything that we have gone over in class. it can also be helpful to make sure parents have access to everything also. As a teacher, I can look at other live binders and get ideas for my classroom.

Thing 18

I already have a facebook account as most people seem too. I have had people try to get me to join twitter and I have not and have no plans of getting a twitter account. It seems redundant to me to have both. they can be useful to communicate to parents and I am already in several groups here at austin peay to keep up with need to know information.

Thing 17

I really don't see myself using delicious after doing this blog. It's not that I don't see the usefulness of a site like this, It's just it seems to me that after looking at so many search engines and organization sites, I am more unorganized and scattered around than before. I have the Diigo account and will use it to see the websites my classmates find useful and i really prefer pinterest or google to find useful information. I really think by this point I am simply becoming overwhelmed with various accounts that seem to do the same things.Being able to search by tags is the one benefit I see of this over pinterest or a google search so results can be much more pinpoint of what you are looking for. I have used stumble upon just for phone as a smart phone app and enjoyed it for entertainment, but I don't really see using it as an educational tool personally.

Thing 16

YAY! one I am familiar with! Finally, having an android phone which uses google, I actually use the calender on a regular basis. Although it is great and sometimes being able to have an electronic device go off when you have something to do helps, I honestly prefer the post it note on my fridge method as opposed to online calenders. They are very time consuming to me. I have to log on to my computer, log on to my google account, create alarms and events and hope they actually go over and the reminder will go off. In the time this takes i could fill my fridge with post it notes that I know I will see many times a day because I am always going to the fridge. The one that I really like that is not on this list though, is one I use at home called grocery IQ, you put your grocery list in it and it organizes it into sections and looks for coupons for those items. This one is worth my time and I use it all the time. As far as online calenders...I will be sticking to my sticky notes. :)

Thing 15

I think wikis can be a very helpful classroom tool. Any sort of networking site is helpful because it is an easy way to get information to everyone who needs it and to allow parents or other teachers to provide immediate feedback. I think the most convenient tool in using a wiki is the ability to quickly receive and provide feedback. I tried playing around with the sandbox feature and actually had a lot of trouble. I am sure I made it more complicating than neccesary as I tend to do with technology. I think I may have edited some stuff I didn't mean to and have no idea what or if I added anything on my own. I need some work on this, but I think it could be helpful once I better understand it.

Thing 13

My favorite of these was Gliffy.com. I liked how there were many different charts you could use and it gave examples of each. It was easy to navigate because everything was right there on the side bar. It would be useful in the classroom not only for me to make diagrams for my students but for my students to complete assignments. Having said that, the one I actually used was the mind mapping one. I had my study guide for one of my midterms with me and decided to make an easier to read study guide. I like the color coding to keep things organized and easy to see.

Thing 11

I found the google blog search the easiest to use simply because I am used to using the google search engine. I was able to fairly easily find blogs that I liked using the suggested search terms in the 23 things. I was also able to search for some blogs for outside interests such as cooking and crafting blogs. The other tools given on here were confusing to me and after playing around with them, I still don't quite get it. My favorite way to find a blog though is still using pinterest. There are so many on pinterest and they are seperated by catagories so it is easy to explore what you are looking for.

Thing 12

I looked around on google translator and on google alerts. In google translator, I translated to french because my moms side of the family speaks french (well cajun french) but close enough. I don't speak it myself, but I can read enough of it to know if what I was typing was translating correctly. This could be a very useful tool with english language learner students because handouts can easily be translated into their native language. Students should not miss out on content because they dont understand the language. I also looked and google alerts. It is really neat how you can get updates on specific topics. I chose to get daily updates on childrens literature because I am taking that class right now, and my topic for this class is sixth grade reading. I am hoping to get some useful information for both classes through this.

Thing 10

When I saw this my first thought was "oh great, something else I have to create an account for". Thankfully though, when I clicked on the link, the account is through gmail, so everything was already there I just had to add my blogs. I added the suggested blogs first because I figured they must be useful if they were the example ones, but after looking around I plan to add many more blogs. I have blogs that I like to check from time to time, mostly cooking and crafting blogs that I will add. It is nice to have everything all in one place and organized. Rather than having to chase down a blog or wondering if there are any new posts, they are all right there. No more searching again and again for a blog if I am not on my home computer. I can log on and its all there. I think this is my favorite "thing" so far.

thing 9

OK,so this took forever, I had fun playing with the generators but actually getting them to show up on my blog was a whole different rodeo. I seriously took over an hour trying different ways. every single generator seems to have a different way to post and I have to go through this all again. Obviously, I am a non traditional student and I did not have the advantage of learning to use technology while I was in school, so my students will be miles ahead of me. On the other hand though, I am learning a lot of fun and useful tools to use in the classroom. I can use this generator to make cute little cartoons of reminders that the kids may actually show interest in reading.

thing 8

I used the spell with flickr app. I wrote my name, although it came out huge and I'm not really sure how to fix that...If any one knows, feel free to leave a comment. I think this would be fun to use in a kindergarten class for students who are learning to spell there names. It moves away from boring letters, and you can create a class collage of everyones names.

Thing 7

/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyth3b3at/3354916100/



I was looking through the education section of flickr and found a page about helping pubic schools. Their were a lot of pictures that people had uploaded of public schools in shambles. It was really sad because these children should have a safe comfortable school to go to. With these schools already in the condition they are, there were also many pictures of protesters against further cutting the budgets of the schools. I thought this image really hit the nail on the head. The childs sign says "If your kids can read, hug a teacher". which is very true. All of the people who are trying to save money by cutting funding in schools are punishing the same people that helped them get where they are today (a teacher) and putting the children in a position where they won't get a quality education.

Thing 6

I looked through several of the websites listed and had some trouble getting on a lot of them. I found some that I thought were really interesting but had to sign up and have a school code to do so. I will be keeping them in mind for when I am working at a school and have a code to enter to sign up. The one that looked most interesting, I of course, could not sign up with out a school code to use, was a website to let students create their own books. students get to design their own book and you upload it to the site and they will publish it and send it to you. I'm sure this would be expensive to do (I couldn't get to any type of price list) but students would love it and parents would want to keep it forever, so this would be an awesome activity.

Thing 5

I think web 2.0 is really beneficial for schools. Having students use technology to learn in great because it get them more involve and helps teachers give feedback almost instantly. In the slide show about 50 web programs to use in the classroom, the socrates app was mentioned. I have used this app in a class and it is great. students download the student version on their phones or tablets and the teacher downloads the teacher app. the class has a specific password so everyone can be logged on together.The teacher enters questions into the app that will show up on everyone in the class's device and when they answer the teacher instantly gets a graph and percentages of each answer. It can be very helpful in making sure your class understands whats going on.

Thing 3

Using blogs in the classroom as teachers can be very beneficial. Blogs allow teachers a way to share ideas and get ideas to use in the classroom. Teachers can post about ideas that did and did not work for them and provide feedback in comments. Teachers can have a feeling of community in the world of blogging. Looking for ideas for lessons is much easier with the use of blogs because teachers can pull off of each other, and since most of the time if a teacher blogs about something, then they have done it and other teachers can see the results that came from it, offer up suggestions to change and form ideas to fit their classrooms.

Thing 2

Before this, I had no previous experience with making a blog. I am learning as I go with how to go about creating it. however, I was familiar with the layout of blogs because I follow several cooking and crafting blogs.I got the blog put together pretty easily with some help and found it much less complicated than I expected it to be. Making the avatar was the most fun part of the process. I played around with it a lot and ended up with an avatar that does resemble me, down to the dog following it around. Getting the avatar to show up on the blog was slightly more difficult and I probably would not have been able to do it if I had not had someone to show me after they figured it out.

Thing 1

Reading through the 7 1/2 habits of effective learners, I found the easiest one for me is being goal oriented. The Hardest one for me will be using technology to my advantage. Being goal oriented is the easiest because I came back to school with the end goal in mind. I have wanted to be a teacher since I can remember and need my degree to do that. Right our of high school, I would have said that this habit would have been the hardest, because I could not see the end result and dropped out after a year. Going back, I have learned that I am working towards a goal, and four years of school is not too bad in the long run.

Using technology is The habit I will struggle with the most, although I know technology is available to make things so much easier, learning to use it seems way to frustrating. I am slowly opening myself up to learning how to use some of the technology, but it has been a struggle.

Doing the 23 things and learning about web 2.0 will help me learn new ways to use technology that I may have never found out about, and actually learn how to use the ones I am familiar with.