Thing 17

Delicious is a social bookmarking website used my millions of users to tag and link websites to various topics. This website can be a great way to collaborate with others in your same field of study or simply your friends. As a teacher, I can see the potential use of this website. However, I did not find the website very user friendly. When searching for tags, I did not feel all the information I was receiving was related to what I wanted. For the most part it seemed to depend on what I was searching for and how great of results I got. Teachers can take advantage of this website and others like it by posting and tagging subject areas that would benefit other teachers and schools. When you find a good resource you should share it with others who could use it to help students. This website has potential to be very beneficial. :)

Thing 16

After doing some exploring through different resources, I was able to find some pretty cool ways to organize all your apps or news feeds that you follow onto one page. For this "thing", I chose to use to Symbaloo. I have an iPhone that uses tiles like the ones on Symbaloo so this was a very easy start up page for me to use. What I found really cool about it was that there were many apps available to use on the page and plenty of space to arrange all of the ones I wanted. I am a Google fanatic, so having Google search in the middle of the page was an extra bonus on why I chose this web start up page. Although this is a cool way to organize and check all of my various interests, I will not be using it as my homepage. I like having just plain old Google as my opening homepage. I chose to not use this because all of the tiles I put on the start up page I currently have on my phone. This would eliminate the use of my phone for those reasons and the start up page cannot be taken on the go like my phone. It would be pointless to set Symbaloo as my homepage on my phone because I already have the same apps installed.

Online calendars can be useful because you can keep all of your important dates and appointments in one place and with you no matter where you are. Another great feature of online calendars is the ability to share them with whomever you want.

For use in schools, I like the MyStickies app as well as Remember the Milk. These are two great tools to use as a teacher. Not only can you leave yourself notes on the computer, you can have an online calendar as well. This way you won't be losing notes and important appointment times on your desk with all the papers waiting to be graded. Each of the tools out there serves a purpose for one person or another. I would recommend researching what tools work best for you and then share them with someone else.

Thing 15

I have been fortunate enough to have felt with different "wiki" sites before this post. Wiki sites are pretty simple to use and are a great way to stay in communication with fellow students, parents, teachers, and resources. Wiki sites provide different information and some are interactive. Wiki sites are allowed in schools and are a good way for students to work on things together as well as have parents check on their students work. This also allows teacher to see the work when it is completed or is a good way to post homework assignments. I could see myself using this resource in my classroom through different activities. The wiki concept is fun and inviting for students and hopefully will be for schools as a whole. This is a really good way for all teachers to be collaborative and would allow them to see new students work from previous years. Teachers and students need all the help they can get to be successful!

Thing 14

When working on a project, I like to be organized. Flow charts and mind maps are two tools that can help you stay organized. For this post, I explored https://bubbl.us and http://flowchart.com. I created a mind map for a paper that I am going to be writing for one of my other classes. This paper includes many topics that need to be arranged in a certain order and the mind map allowed for great organization. I was able to put things in the order I need them as well as color coordinate the topics and the supporting facts. This was a great tool because I knew exactly which color meant what and I was able to move the  different bubbles around to organize them in the manner that I felt best. Although flow charts are helpful for projects, I felt a mind map was the best for a paper organization. As a teacher theses tools could come in handy when trying to teach students how to organize a paper, steps of the scientific method, and historical events, and so much more. Instead of just telling your students the steps, they will be able to have a visual in front of them to truly understand the information you are giving them.

Thing 13

I had never heard about Google Drive until recently in one of my classes. After exploring the resources it provided, I was surprised at how much I liked the app. It made it much easier to access my documents from anywhere, at anytime. Here is my Google Drive document. I believe that Google Drive would be a great tool to use in the classroom, not only for the students, but for the teachers as well. As a student you know that if you are assigned a group project, all members of the group will be able to access the project and contribute equally. Also, you will be able to know that your documents are accessible for turn in any moment. You will never have the fear of forgetting your homework or not being able to open up the file again. As a teacher, you know that you are able to have all of the students work in one area. This will allow for better organization and less stress.

Here is a sample presentation I put together about the Original Colonies. This is just one thing you can make with Google Drive. After looking into a similar app known as Zoho, I would have to say that I prefer Google Drive 100 times more. For me, Zoho was not as user-friendly. Most of the applications I was looking at on Zoho were more business orientated. It was not easy for me to find where to create a simple document or presentation. If I have a hard time using Zoho, I do not feel it is fair to have my students try and use this website. Google Drive is the winner!

Thing 12

In today's society, Google is a person's best friend. I use google all the time. At first I was a user of yahoo search, but after using google a few times, I found it to be a much better tool. I have google for my email and calendar already, but I have never used google to look for books. Google provides an easy to use search bar for books. This was really cool because it even let me preview one of the books I was interested in. Google+ photos is a really good tool to store and back-up your pictures. I know I am suppose to create a link to my photos, but I really do not wish to share all of my pictures with the public. I don't want my son's face all over google. I think that all that google has to offer can be used inside the classroom. Google translate can be used to introduce new words to students when studying different cultures. Google books can be used to show students different books that would be interesting to read. Google calendar would be a teachers best friend. This tool would allow teachers to remember meetings, lessons, appointments, and anything else they need. This would definitely be better than having a huge calendar laid out all over your desk. To all my future teacher friends, "Let's start Googling!"

Thing 11

Looking for relevant RSS feeds can be a little difficult. The great thing is that there is many tools to help you find the right ones for you. The easiest way to find relevant RSS feeds was through feedly, blog search engine , and Google blog search. For me, Technorati was the most confusing. I felt there was no really good way to search for what you wanted. During my search, I was able to find some feeds that were useful to all elementary school teachers. A good one was Seomra Ranga. This one has many classroom resources. All the ones that I viewed were geared towards fall, which is good because it allows the students to learn more about what is happening outside as well as educational things such as letters, numbers, and vocabulary. I did not find anything unusual during my search, but may in the future once I dig deeper into them. After doing some researching, I was able to find many other resources for finding blogs. A few of them are blog catalog and best of the web blog search. These allow for you to type in your interests and search for what you want. 

Thing 10

RSS feed and newsreaders are a great way to stay up-to-date on things around you. RSS feed is an efficient way to gather many content areas or interests into one place so you are able to access it all at one time without having to go to each page separately. RSS feed is available on any mobile media. This can be helpful in the classroom because you can access it many different ways and bring up news articles, informational posts, pictures, and activities for the students in your classroom. Bringing this into the classroom allows for different and exciting opportunities for the students.

Thing 9

I used image chef to create this cute word mosaic image that says, "Every child is special". Before now, I have never used this web tool. I found it to be fairly easy to use, but also frustrating when it came to saving and coding my picture. It was not clear on how to do that. To create this image I simply chose an image symbol (format for how I wanted it to be shaped), then I wrote what I wanted it to say. From there I changed the font and colors. There are extra features you can add, but I chose not to use those. What I thought was really cool about this generator is that if you kept pushing the preview button it would change the image every single time. It would rearrange the words to make them look different. Lets just say that I had to push it like 15 times before I got this one!

 

http://www.imagechef.com

This tool along with many other web tools of this kind can be used in the classroom for decorations, school newsletters, motivations signs, and posters for events. I think this could tool would be fun to use especially if the students were involved with it. It would be fun to have the children come up with sayings they would like to see around the classroom and make them look good around the room. 

Thing 8

When commenting on other blogs, I noticed a few that contained some cool pictures. I thought these images were fun and exciting. Before this post, I had no idea what many of the web tools out there were. After reading and exploring some of the tools, I realized that the cool pictures were created with Spell with Flickr. This tool allows you to spell out anything with pictures/images that are found on Flickr. The tool was extremely easy to use. All you do is simply type what you want to spell into the box and click "Spell". There was two different size options, I prefer the bigger one because it allows you to see the images better. At the very bottom it had the URL link you would need to upload your image onto the web. I believe that some of the Flickr mashups could be useful in classroom for various things. For younger classrooms, the Spell with Flickr could be used to make labels for things around the room. These labels would make it fun and possibly easier for the children to read. Flickr Color Pickr could be used to gather color images for your lesson plans. These images can not only teach the children different colors, but also it can teach them about the different thing within the pictures. Mappr would be useful tool in many classes. This tool could be used in Social Studies, Music, English, Science, Art, and Reading. This map tool would allow teachers to gather pictures and put them on a map so children can visually see where the places are located that they are talking about or where things come from. For example, in music and art, the teacher could put pictures of the artists or pieces of artwork on the located of where they are from. The other mashup tools I explored, I do not feel are very beneficial to the classroom.

As far as sharing photos online, I believe that is a personal preference. Many people have Facebook these days or some other sort of media account. With this, it allows you and almost entices you to post pictures. While I do share some photos online, I do not share many. I select which ones I want to and there is a reason for the ones I choose. I believe that as long as the pictures are appropriate, why not share them if you want to.



             

Thing 7

Flickr is something new to me. After using it, I found it very easy to use. This site allows you to search for pictures of almost anything. What I found to be really interesting is that inside the advanced search engine there is a place to select only search creative-commons licensed content. This allowed for me to make sure the artist allowed for use of their photo. Flickr would be a good tool to use in the classroom because it has thousands of photos right at your fingertips. This would be useful because it would allow you to show photos of different countries, cities, people, foods, and so much more. When I started searching I knew exactly what I wanted to find. I am originally from Wisconsin, but currently reside in Kentucky and go to school in Tennessee. I am a somewhat long distance from home and being that I had thousands of pictures at hand, I wanted to bring home a little closer to me. I found a beautiful picture of Wisconsin during the winter.

This photo was taken in Walworth County,Wisconsin on December 25, 2008 by Al Thomas. This photo was labeled "Wisconsin Winter Sunset". What I find particularly cool about this photo is that it was taken really close to my hometown. To be honest, I believe I know the farm that is seen in this photo. I could not believe I was able to find this picture on Flickr and was glad to see that the artist allows for use of his photo. I will definitely be looking more into Flickr and find creative ways to use it in the classroom with my students.