1. Most of my favorite exercises had to do with use of images. I really brought my creative side out on these (which I didn't even know I had). I also enjoyed the exercises that helped with organization. I think this program has affected my learning goals positively because I now see a lot of the learning tools out there that I can use, as well as my students. Loved the concept, so no changes. I think that staying in touch with current teachers and current classmates blogs is going to be a great step in the right direction when it comes to staying up to date.
2. I shall maintain my blog as best I can. :) Bye for now...
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Thing #23
http://schoollibrarylearning2.csla.net/2007/02/23-things_27.html
This link will take you to a blog called "School Library Learning 2.0: An Online Learning Program for CSLA members and friends. It is a list of 23 things to do with the internet. They are almost exactly the same as the 23 things that we are doing. Ours is different from theirs because we have this as thing 23 whereas they have the summary part as their thing 23. Now that I know about creative commons, I will use it in my classroom to expose my students to what is right and wrong when it comes to using someones else's work in their projects and assignments. They have to know how to do it properly so that it is fair for both the creator and the user. The biggest thing to remember is that you must give credit when credit is due.
This link will take you to a blog called "School Library Learning 2.0: An Online Learning Program for CSLA members and friends. It is a list of 23 things to do with the internet. They are almost exactly the same as the 23 things that we are doing. Ours is different from theirs because we have this as thing 23 whereas they have the summary part as their thing 23. Now that I know about creative commons, I will use it in my classroom to expose my students to what is right and wrong when it comes to using someones else's work in their projects and assignments. They have to know how to do it properly so that it is fair for both the creator and the user. The biggest thing to remember is that you must give credit when credit is due.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Thing #16
I chose iGoogle because Google is something that I am very familiar with. I use Google probably every day, so this seemed like the most obvious choice for me. I will make it my homepage because it has everything on it that I need like access to my email, news, time, and weather!
Online calendars can be so useful to me! Actually, any calendar or planner helps keeps my life less stressed and keeps me more productive. I really enjoy having one online because it is much neater than the one that I have on my desk. There are no scratch outs, no scribbles, and I'm never "saying great.... now I have to change that before I forget" because I can access it on my smart phone. As a teacher, organization is key, and this will definitely come in handy.
I think the to do lists are helpful, but... not for me. I just feel like I would do better with a sticky note stuck to the screen of my computer or planner. I don't think I will remember to check and see what all I have to do. HA. So I guess that I'll just stick with writing them out until I find something that fits me and my life.
I would recommend any online calendar that fits the persons/ teachers needs! These are amazing and I am sure people would get a lot of use out of them, whether their an organized person or not. I would also recommend iGoogle. It pretty much caters to your needs and shows you everything that you would want, with your permission and choices of course.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Thing #22
The titles of my binders are:
Methods and Strategies
Parents, Students, Teachers, and the Community
Mild to Moderate Disabilities
I would use these binders, obviously for myself. I really enjoy this site because I really like to keep my classwork organized. It keeps me from becoming overly stressed (about where things are anyways. I think that students could also use this in group or even individual projects. It would be a place they could share their resources without always having to print or email them every time one is found. This way they can just add it to the binder and it will be there when they need it!
Methods and Strategies
Parents, Students, Teachers, and the Community
Mild to Moderate Disabilities
I would use these binders, obviously for myself. I really enjoy this site because I really like to keep my classwork organized. It keeps me from becoming overly stressed (about where things are anyways. I think that students could also use this in group or even individual projects. It would be a place they could share their resources without always having to print or email them every time one is found. This way they can just add it to the binder and it will be there when they need it!
Thing #21
Make your own slide show at Animoto.
I really enjoyed using this! If I had known about it earlier I would have been using it for all sorts of family and friend get togethers! Great tool. It was super quick and really easy. It was even easy to post to my blog. You can purchase a lot of things but I found that the free ones were pretty neat. Great for teachers or current students. This would be a really good resource to use when doing any type of project for a class.
Thing #20
YouTube
I absolutely LOVE YouTube. I use it probably every day. I listen to music, watch funny clips, short films, and things like the video above. This is a 5th grade teacher who creates a video at the end of each week announcing the upcoming weeks events. This is something she posts so parents can watch and know exactly what is going on. I really enjoy this idea and I think I may use it! The only thing I don't like about YouTube is that things are not censored so I would be afraid to let students roam around on it in the classroom and find something that they should not see or hear. I do think that this would be good to use though because there are plenty of educational videos to find on here! Also, it could be fun to have students make them and post them to be graded and for their family and friends to see.
I absolutely LOVE YouTube. I use it probably every day. I listen to music, watch funny clips, short films, and things like the video above. This is a 5th grade teacher who creates a video at the end of each week announcing the upcoming weeks events. This is something she posts so parents can watch and know exactly what is going on. I really enjoy this idea and I think I may use it! The only thing I don't like about YouTube is that things are not censored so I would be afraid to let students roam around on it in the classroom and find something that they should not see or hear. I do think that this would be good to use though because there are plenty of educational videos to find on here! Also, it could be fun to have students make them and post them to be graded and for their family and friends to see.
Thing #18
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=636955009
Facebook & Twitter
I think that it is important to know how social networking works when you are a teacher because it is so prevalent in both teachers and students lives. It's really hard to ignore something that it such a big part of people's daily lives, so why not use it to the teachers advantage? I learned about how they worked and operated, and what the functions of each were. I disliked the way that Twitter "flows". It just doesn't make any logical sense to me and it's almost pointless unless you're famous, but that's just my opinion. I think that for an educational purpose, Facebook would make more sense than Twitter. On Facebook you have so many more options for groups, editing, privacy, and etc whereas on Twitter it is really just following people. Twitter, however, may be better used if the teacher only uses it to notify students of important information (although you can still do this on Facebook). I believe that you could potentially either of these two sites, but you have to be careful in doing it. The students have to be of appropriate age, administrators should give it a "thumbs up", and parents should be more than aware of it's use. I don't know that I would use either, but who knows what will happen when I actually become a teacher.
Facebook & Twitter
I think that it is important to know how social networking works when you are a teacher because it is so prevalent in both teachers and students lives. It's really hard to ignore something that it such a big part of people's daily lives, so why not use it to the teachers advantage? I learned about how they worked and operated, and what the functions of each were. I disliked the way that Twitter "flows". It just doesn't make any logical sense to me and it's almost pointless unless you're famous, but that's just my opinion. I think that for an educational purpose, Facebook would make more sense than Twitter. On Facebook you have so many more options for groups, editing, privacy, and etc whereas on Twitter it is really just following people. Twitter, however, may be better used if the teacher only uses it to notify students of important information (although you can still do this on Facebook). I believe that you could potentially either of these two sites, but you have to be careful in doing it. The students have to be of appropriate age, administrators should give it a "thumbs up", and parents should be more than aware of it's use. I don't know that I would use either, but who knows what will happen when I actually become a teacher.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Thing #17
For this thing, I decided to look at a few of the bookmarks, but my favorite one that I found was Glogster. It is a website that you can go to and make your own poster with your own ideas, words, pictures, fonts, etc! I found that Delicious.com is a pretty neat website filled with great resources for anyone, not just a teacher. However, if you are a teacher, you can find plenty of great ideas on here. Instead of going into a search engine and finding more misses than hits, this will be almost dead on and give more options geared toward what it is you're looking for. Each thing on the website has been given multiple tags to make finding them or sorting through them much easier. Teachers can and should take advantage of social bookmarking sites like this one because it makes things simpler (and that's what we all want, right?) I think that education revolves around a lot of peer interaction and sites like this makes that happen easier. This is a good tool for both teachers and students.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Thing #15
Wiki
Wiki was a pretty awesome website/ tool! I really enjoy the use of collaboration between users. It was easy after I figured out how to edit it in the first place. I like that every person can change things to the way that they want them to and be able to portray their personality on the website. This way, a whole class could work on a group project and the teacher could easily know who did what and who did not. I would use it to do class projects or even to just discuss assignment directions and so forth. I thought that it was interesting how I was able to do whatever I wanted to the document even though we all had access. Great idea!
Wiki was a pretty awesome website/ tool! I really enjoy the use of collaboration between users. It was easy after I figured out how to edit it in the first place. I like that every person can change things to the way that they want them to and be able to portray their personality on the website. This way, a whole class could work on a group project and the teacher could easily know who did what and who did not. I would use it to do class projects or even to just discuss assignment directions and so forth. I thought that it was interesting how I was able to do whatever I wanted to the document even though we all had access. Great idea!
Thing #14
I chose the mindmap: Bubbl.us and the flowchart: Gliffy.
I liked learning about both of them, but each offers different things. On Gliffy, I was allowed to pick everything, and I mean everything. I chose the style, shape, width, and etc. When I switched to Bubbl.us, I was given almost everything and I have to say, I liked it this way better. It adjusted and changed color when I needed it to. Editing and adding was easier this way.
A mind map is for creating and adding words and ideas that surround one general idea or word.
A flow chart is for multiple ideas that go together to make thing flow easily.
I liked learning about both of them, but each offers different things. On Gliffy, I was allowed to pick everything, and I mean everything. I chose the style, shape, width, and etc. When I switched to Bubbl.us, I was given almost everything and I have to say, I liked it this way better. It adjusted and changed color when I needed it to. Editing and adding was easier this way.
A mind map is for creating and adding words and ideas that surround one general idea or word.
A flow chart is for multiple ideas that go together to make thing flow easily.
Thing #13
Zoho Writer:
I was a little skeptical about using this tool going into it. I thought, "why would I use an online word document?", but once I opened it, I saw the reason. This looks and acts similarly as my Microsoft Word on my own computer. The difference is, Zoho Writer is online, so I can save it (not email it to myself or worry about putting it on a flash drive) and sign in on the next computer and continue working on it or print it out. This works much better for me because I freak out and check my mail or flash drive 10 times before leaving for school to print it or whatever else I may need to do and sometimes it STILL ends up being the wrong one. This would also keep me from having like 20 different documents/ drafts for just one assignment. Very easy to use and it even gives you an entire run through of all the things you may want or need to know before beginning. Also, I can still have more than one document open at a time and just switch back and forth by using tabs. Great tool!
Google Docs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2ccZ-EoNydUxn2QpOBj--1GkV40fYP7bG9jv3oArIg/edit
I enjoyed this tool as well. What I liked most about it was that it saves my document automatically after any changes made so no more shut down/ surprises on something I have spent so much time on. I am also able to access and edit this through the internet. Also, more than one person is able to work on this at once. A teacher could take a group project/ assignment and have them use Google Docs. The privacy can be changed to where each student would be able to collaborate on ideas and go in and physically change and add things to the document. This could put a stop to one or two students thinking that they are the ones doing all the work because all members will have access to the document. This is a great idea, especially in classes.
For my own personal use as well as use in a classroom, I would most likely go with Google Docs. It does everything Zoho writer does and more! It automatically saves, can be used by multiple people, and can be shared with whomever or whatever the user decides upon. I think the automatic savings is what pulled me in!
I was a little skeptical about using this tool going into it. I thought, "why would I use an online word document?", but once I opened it, I saw the reason. This looks and acts similarly as my Microsoft Word on my own computer. The difference is, Zoho Writer is online, so I can save it (not email it to myself or worry about putting it on a flash drive) and sign in on the next computer and continue working on it or print it out. This works much better for me because I freak out and check my mail or flash drive 10 times before leaving for school to print it or whatever else I may need to do and sometimes it STILL ends up being the wrong one. This would also keep me from having like 20 different documents/ drafts for just one assignment. Very easy to use and it even gives you an entire run through of all the things you may want or need to know before beginning. Also, I can still have more than one document open at a time and just switch back and forth by using tabs. Great tool!
Google Docs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2ccZ-EoNydUxn2QpOBj--1GkV40fYP7bG9jv3oArIg/edit
I enjoyed this tool as well. What I liked most about it was that it saves my document automatically after any changes made so no more shut down/ surprises on something I have spent so much time on. I am also able to access and edit this through the internet. Also, more than one person is able to work on this at once. A teacher could take a group project/ assignment and have them use Google Docs. The privacy can be changed to where each student would be able to collaborate on ideas and go in and physically change and add things to the document. This could put a stop to one or two students thinking that they are the ones doing all the work because all members will have access to the document. This is a great idea, especially in classes.
For my own personal use as well as use in a classroom, I would most likely go with Google Docs. It does everything Zoho writer does and more! It automatically saves, can be used by multiple people, and can be shared with whomever or whatever the user decides upon. I think the automatic savings is what pulled me in!
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