Last Thing

My top 3 favorite discoveries/ exercises were Thing 13-GoogleDocs, Thing 12-Google Translate, and Thing 7-Flickr. They were honestly my favorite exercises to do because they were so easy and pretty fun. I think this program has affected my lifelong learning goals by forcing me to learn new things about the programs that I use everyday. Which, honestly, wasn't anything that was too new to me. Something that surprised me was the fact that I actually knew about a lot of the things we used in the exercises, but some of them I hadn't actually used before. Nothing could really be done to improve the program's format or concept, because these are all things that future teachers should really know. Even some teachers that are in the field now don't know a lot of this stuff. I think this program will influence me as a teacher because there are so many resources out there to make amazing lesson plans, and a lot of great minds are out there that I could ask for help about anything. I plan on using this blog when I go into the teaching program because it has taught me to keep up with a lot of stuff and to write down everything you do, because you never know who could be out there reading around, looking for help.

Thing #23

The example I found for the 23 things was this blog.

I think I would use Creative Commons licensing in the future to publish works of my own. But because I would want others to be able to use it I would put that in my copyright.  Also, I would have to say that if someone does use it then they can't make any money off of it because I let them use it for free. And lastly, anyone who wants to use my work can edit it but would have to credit me as the original creator. This would be a great way to get ideas from other teachers and learn what they are doing in their class to help their students learn.

Thing #21

Want to Travel?

This is the link to the video I created in Animoto.

My experience with Animoto was nothing too exciting. I've used many different websites to create videos, but one that is not a website is iMovie. The program that comes with all new Mac computers and laptops. I find that you can do a lot more on that than on Animoto. But I guess I shouldn't expect too much since the website is free unless you want to make longer videos. But if you're just wanting to make 30 second videos then this is definitely the website you want to use.

Thing #22

The titles of my binders are Education 1, Education 2, and Education 3.

Education 1

I could use LiveBinders in the classroom to put together a variety of activities for the same subject. The binder that is embedded is a binder full of Math websites that I just looked up on Google. One of the websites in the binder is IXL.com and specifically the section for Kindergarten. You can set up lessons for counting, subtraction, fractions, time, measurement, money and so much more.

Thing #20

The YouTube video that I felt was worth posting is located here. There is absolutely NOTHING to dislike about YouTube (except for maybe the trolls). Other than that I LOVE YouTube. I am on it everyday, and I can honestly say I watch YouTube videos more than I watch regular TV. The people I subscribe to are more interesting than the people on TV. I chose the video linked above because, even though it seems like has really no relation to the topic at hand, it really does. (I didn't choose this video at random, I really like Kevin's videos and felt like this video should be shared in this class.) Kevin went to Kenya and he ended up creating a secondary school for the kids there. And he did it all through YouTube, just from people watching his videos. Education is truly important, and this is a great way to talk to kids about children in other countries and what they have compared to us. It's not to make the U.S. look better than other countries, it's to get the students interested in helping people who don't have as much as we do. YouTube can be used in the classroom for just about anything. If you want to show your students how to factor in math then just look it up on YouTube. I'm sure you can fid something.

Think #19

Visit TeacherPop

Of all of the websites listed, I am a member of GoodReads for my Reading 4050 class. But other than that I am not a memeber of any other online communities. Since I use IMDB pretty frequently it would be interesting to join that though. One online community that I would probably be interested in joining later would be the crafting website since I am interested in crafts, and when I am in the mood to do crafts, I am always looking for good crafting websites.

Thing #18

I think it is important for educators to know how social networking works because I believe you can really go places through social networking. You could become friends with someone who is opening a new school, and you could end up getting a better job than you have. But I feel like Facebook is very controversial. Many people like it but feel like it should be something that you use on a personal level, not in the classroom. I am one of those people. I don't think that you should be introducing you class to social media, depending on the age, because it can be very dangerous. I plan on teaching Kindergarten through 3rd grade, so I don't feel like making a Facebook page, even one for the classroom, is necessary at all. If you want to post pictures, you can easily post them on your classroom blog. But I guess using Facebook in the classroom is completely up to the teacher.

Think #17

This is actually a very interesting tool. It can be very useful in the classroom because it's a great way for students to keep up with the websites they have recently been to but can't quite remember the name. It is definitely an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere, because I know I hate when I find a website at home and can't remember the link and I didn't write it down. This way I can just look up my link. This reminds me of the website we use in class everyday; Diigo.com You can bookmarks websites and pages on there too. Teachers can take advantage of this by bookmarking websites that they may find helpful to their classroom on here and they won't have the copy and paste the links on a word document or have to worry about putting it on a thumb drive.

Thing #16

I chose the iGoogle start up page. It appealed to me because, once again, I always use Google so I decided to look at something I already know a little about. But I highly doubt that I will make it my home page. I currently have apsu.edu as my home page and that makes it a lot easier for me to get to my school stuff. So if I were to change it to the iGoogle homepage, that would be one extra unnecessary step to get to D2L and Outlook (knowing that D2L hardly ever works the first time I try to go to it.) I will stick with APSU as my homepage.

The online calendars can be useful because you can write down everything that you have to do for the month and every time you get online you can see it there. The same goes for the to-do lists. Even though they were both a bit a work and kind of time consuming they can still help you keep track of everything that you need to do. These are the kind of tools that you can use at home and at school, and even though they are work, I would recommend them to others to use. Because as we all know, our lives can become hectic, so we all need some kind of organization.

Thing #15

Wiki is pretty cool, but it really reminds me of a classroom blog only everyone can edit it, not just comment on it. I guess I could use Wiki the same way I would use a classroom blog. You could send the link home to the parents so it they want to stay up to date with everything going on in the classroom then they can. Wiki could also be used in the classroom for assignments that require group work. Each group could post their projects on Wiki and and the end of the unit you can have them share with the class their findings, and then compare it to their classmates. I like the whole idea of Wiki, but just like the normal Wikipedia, ANYONE can edit the page and people can go in and change other people's work. So, it's ok but overall..not to interested in it.

Thing #14

I chose to use Bubbl.us simply because it was a lot more appealing to me in the pictures for our choices.  Although I did look into Gliffy.com too, I like Bubbl better. I chose to do a simple little brain storm about hoe to say hello in 6 different languages. Spanish, French, German, Irish, traditional Chinese and Arabic. The tools I chose were simple rounded rectangles because it is the default and I don't think there is anything else to choose from. I chose these because they were easy and it was very simple to read.

Thing #13

The picture below was drawn with Google Docs drawing tools. It's just a random picture of Pac-Man "walking" outside. Here is the original link.

Google Docs can be used collaboratively by one person creating a powerpoint, another writing up a paper in a word document, and someone else can create pictures for their project. The pictures can be put in the powerpoint or on the word document. I prefer using Google Docs simply because I already use Google everyday anyway. This way the students won't have to go through the hassle of trying to remember another website and trying to find it.