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.