Thing #24: the one last thing!!

This project has been a great learning experience and shown me so many new tools I can use on the web that I had no idea existed. I enjoyed getting to blog about sites I already use daily like Facebook and Youtube, but I also really liked exploring new sites that will be useful in the future. My favorite activities are the ones were we we got to use picture to create different images (the puzzle, magazine cover, video slideshow, etc) and things like Shelfari and Google Reader. It is nice to know that I now have a way to keep track of books I read and want to read, as well as stay up-to-date on news related to my favorite sites and ones that will be goof resources as a teacher. I will definitely continue to use some of the Web 2.0 tools that we explored through this activity and will probably start creating more blogs for personal and professional use. As a teacher, I think it will be a good way to stay involved with students and their parents, and keep the line of communication as open as possible. I was surprised by just how many tools we have available to us and for free. I still don't like the idea of putting my email address in too many places; however, I love pretty much anything that is free and can see how these sites in particular might be worth putting it out there. I like seeing sites that allow for private settings so I can monitor who sees my information. I wish all sites would do that.
I do not think that this activity should be changed in anyway. Each one had its benefits for life as a teacher and exposes anyone in the education program to resources they can use in their classrooms. In doing all these activities, I have found a sense of community and learned how important that is. New teachers need to feel that and know they can get advice from others teachers, and not just from a face-to-face situation. All these forums provide us outlets to share our own thoughts and experiences with others in the profession and learn from them because as more than one of my professors has said, it is acceptable to  "beg, borrow, and steal" . Educators need to help each other out, especially when teacher accountability is being looked at more closely now than ever. This blog and other applications we explore in the last 23 things will help us help each other and we can grow as a community of professionals who want to make a different in students lives. That is my biggest goal in becoming a teacher: to influence the lives of young children/adolescents in the most positive and loving way that I can.
Thanks for reading my blog!! This may be the end of the 23 things, but I will be returning to  the blogoshere in the future!!

Thing #23

This appears at the bottom of the 23 Things homepage; it shows that this project is based on someone else's work and modified. I did not know Creative Commons exited before taking this Educational Technology class and I think it is important for everyone to know. It seems like a much easier and convenient way to have your work copyrighted and make sure you are not plagiarizing. Teachers need to be very careful about this because the last thing any teacher needs is a lawsuit. Also, teachers need to set a good example for their students and show them that cheating is not acceptable. Creative Commons will introduce them to a simple way to check for a copyright and they may want to have their own original work copyrighted. It is great that Creative Commons does not charge for the copyright; it will make a lot of people's lives easier. I, for one, will introduce this to my students and possible for myself if I ever get to writing those novels I want to write. Well, wanted to write when I was younger, but the idea still floats around in my head from time to time. As much as I love to write, I cannot image how it would feel to actually have a published book. That would be an incredible feeling!

Thing #22

The three live binders I created are called Education-Resources, Educational Blogs, and English Education Webpages. It took me a while to figure out how to navigate the Livebinder website and add different tabs in my binders. I was very frustrated at one point and was ready to give up when I somehow managed to get multiple tabs. I am not sure how I did it, but whatever I clicked worked. I do see that this tool can be useful because it's like having all your binders in one place (online) and can access them anywhere. It is nice because it provides a way for people not to have to lug binders around with them like most students do. We all know how painful and annoying it can be to have to carry multiple binders for the day and this tool could potential save people the hassle of doing that. In my observations I have noticed that many of the students, even in the lower grades, have big binders full of stuff. It is evident that some struggle holding their binders do to weight and amount of papers they have. Plus, it would save a lot of paper! As a teacher I could keep online binders for each class period and won't have to worry about forgetting them someplace; whether I am at home or at school I would be able to access my binders. I think Livebinders has some serious potential to be useful in the classroom setting.

Livebinder

My binder titled "Education-Resources" contains an academic vocabulary document, common core standards reference, and the Teacher Vision website. I put these in it because they are going to be important to have as references when I become a teacher. They are tools and concepts I will need to know and integrate in my daily lesson plans and unit plans. 

Thing #21

Family and Friends This discovery activity was one that I really enjoyed but found a little frustrating. When I first signed up and connected to my Facebook a video was instantly created by Animoto, which was nice, but I was looking forward to creating my own. It took some time to figure out how to create a new video and I ended up figuring out how to edit the one the site automatically had made. It was frustrating because I wanted to choose a style/background for the video and it kept saying I had to upgrade and pay for them. I did find my way around that however and had fun changing the pictures and music for video slideshow. I loved that it let me choose where in the song I wanted to start so I could have the chorus play through this 30 second video. It was also rather difficult trying to figure out how to get it on my blog. I tried doing it from my blog, and from Animoto. I finally found that under "sharing" there is "more options" that include blogger. This was one of my favorite activities to do and I will most likely use it in the future. I think it would be fun to use to make videos of my classes, which I think students like. I remember in 5th grade, the teachers made a slideshow to the graduation song and all of us girls cried when we were watching it. The song combined with the pictures of us and our friends, made the idea of leaving elementary school for middle school so much sadder. But we did enjoy it through our tears.

Thing #20

Another one of my favorite websites!!! Youtube! I love that there are videos for pretty much anything you can image: instructional videos, music videos (some with the song lyrics), movie clips, comedy routines, and so much more. I have been using this site for a long time and mainly for entertainment purposes, but it has been helpful in my academic life as well. Just last semester I had to memorize the first eighteen lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and I found a video on Youtube that helped me prepare to recite it to my professor. It had the pronunciation of each word written out and there was a person's voice saying the words  with the correct accent; it definitely made a difference in my ability to memorize the lines.
I also love that Youtube lets you create an account and a channel. You can subscribe to different channels, simply by clicking "subscribe" which appears above the video, and every time you go to your account new videos will show up. If you are watching any video on this site, on the right hand side there will be a list of related videos or other videos that you might find interesting. It is a good way to keep up with videos you like or ones that can be used in the classroom. Many professors have used videos from Youtube in class that relate directly to the lesson. The educational videos would be good to apply to the library's website because students can actually understand concepts better by watching them. The problem would be weeding out all the other videos that are not educational and distracting for students when doing research.
The only thing I don't like about Youtube is the commercials that come with certain videos, even though I understand why they do it. And I have heard that people who create a series of videos, upload them, and get a lot of views, get paid money for the commercials to appear on their stuff. It's often referred to as "going viral".

I was exploring educational videos to add to this blog entry and remembered one of the movies we watched in like elementary or middle school. I am sure there are some people who know what I am talking about...this video is from Schoolhouse Rock. I was very entertained by this movie as a kid and the songs have actually stuck in my head since then. Schoolhouse Rock is a series of movies that cover all subject areas. Here is "Conjunction Junction" and if you watch it you just may find yourself singing "conjunction junction, what's your function...hooking up words, and phrases, and clauses" as I often do. And I actually got it on here by clicking the add video icon on the bar that appears above the box you write your posts in. It gave me a "from Youtube" option and I just looked up the video, pressed select, and added it. It may not be the way videos are supposed to be added, but it worked and it was easy.

Thing #19

I am a member of some online communities. I have mentioned Facebook before (and wrote a whole post about it) but I also have a Flickr account, this blog, and a Yahoo account. There are probably others that I am not aware or are simply forgetting; these are the ones that first come to mind. I use Facebook and Yahoo on a daily basic, Flickr rarely, and this blog when I have time to post a new thing. I do try to read other students' blogs when I have time to get as much out of this project as I can. People might not think of Yahoo has an online community but there are so many applications and programs that Yahoo has. The one I use some times is Yahoo Answers. It is a forum for people to ask questions no matter how practical or important they are but there is a sense of community. People can be open, honest, and help each other out, even if they don't actually know each other. It can be nice and beneficial to seek advice from people who do not know you because they will have unbiased opinions. Questions are categorized to make communication of ideas easier. I used to get on Yahoo answers all the time and now I just use it as a way to keep me from getting bored every once in a while. It is still one of the online communities I take part in.
The social networks that appealed to me from the list provided were those that involved music and books (my two biggest passions). I already knew about IMBD because I use it regularly. It is great being able to look up the cast for a movie and see what other productions actors/actresses have played in. It makes it so much easier to find and watch films that my favorite Hollywood stars have done and TV shows they have guessed starred in. I love this site because of how quick and reliable the information is. They also have short bios that I like to read. The other two sites I played around with and really got interested in are Project Playlist and Shelfari. The first is very much like Pandora, except there are no commercials. However, with that said, the advantage Pandora has  is that it lets you create stations that will play new songs as well as older ones. I liked exploring this network and the fact that you can follow other people's stations. I just do not see myself using it much in the future.
I will use Shelfari later on. I got sucked into the world of books and sharing them with others. I started adding books to my shelf and I could not stop...I looked up all my favorite books and wrote reviews for them. I like that this also lets you follow other people and you can connect to people that you do know through Facebook, Twitter, etc. Shelfari allows you to create a list of books you have read, plan to read, and ones you are currently reading. This is a great way to keep track of books I want to read and I am very glad I found this network. There are groups you can join that relate to your favorite genres. I also loved that this goes through Amazon.com so I did not have to sign up for something new and I do use amazon all the time. I highly recommend this to book lovers like myself!
I sign up for TeacherPop and posted some pictures, creating an album I titled "Important People" because they are people who have made me who I am and that I could not image life without. At some point in the future I may add pictures of other people that have had such a large impact on my life...this was just getting started. I also commented on my album explaining why those particular people where significant in my life. I also left a comment on the main page about how I thought TeacherPop is going to be helpful in my professional life and that it is nice to be a part of a community like that. One thing I really liked about this site is that it has a guide for using Facebook as a teacher. It will most certainly come in handy in the future, seeing as how social networking is so popular and only going to continue to gain people's interests. Everyone who is going to be a teacher should look at this document.
I see that these networks can be of great use to educations. They are great ways to share ideas, communicate, and learn.

Thing #18

YES! I get to talk about Facebook!! Now I must admit I resisted social networking for a while when Facebook first became popular. I did not really see the point of it, but in the last few years I have been rather addicted to it. I think educators need to know how social networking works because it is a huge part of society. So many people have a Facebook or Twitter account. As teachers it is likely that we will run into Facebook posts that aren't so nice; social networking can be positive or negative depending on how it is used. I was watching a special on Facebook one time and there was a story about a teacher who got fired because of a post she put on there about some of the parents. Educators that have Facebook pages need to be careful using the site and their students may even "friend" them on Facebook. Social networking is fun to do for personal reasons, but I do not see its usefulness in the classroom or school setting. There are hundreds of applications on Facebook that can be distracting and take students away from productive website in learning. I would like to know what other people might see as a good use of social networking sites in classrooms and schools. I just don't see any!
There was not any new insights I got about Facebook since I am an avid user of this site and play around with games and such all the time. I did however learn something new from the Twitter tutorial. I had heard that Twitter was the equivalent of updating a status on Facebook (and that was all it was). After watching the tutorial I realized it is more than that. People can choose whose posts come into their feed, whereas on Facebook everyone you are friends will comes through. Even though you can hide posts on Facebook and make it so certain people's posts are rejected (or just delete them from your friends list), I like that Twitter does that. Both sites allow you to share links and thoughts on different subjects, and another awesome thing about these sites is that they can lead to reconnecting with people from your past. I think that is one of my favorite things about having a Facebook; I have been able to find and chat with people online that I haven't seen since elementary or middle school. These are the friends that moved away or ones that I moved away from and I love being able to catch up with them. I also like "friending" new people that I meet so I can see what they are up to as well. It allows you to stay connected with family, coworkers, and old friends. My closest friend at home Colleen is not a talk on the phone kind of person and neither am I. Our prime sources of communicating when I am not in MA are texting and Facebooking each other. It is a wonderful thing!!!

I cannot think of anything I dislike about either of these sites. As long as they are used carefully and not to vent your frustrations (that could get you in trouble) they are far more beneficial and enjoyable. Facebook just has more features that's all. Twitter seems pretty simple.  Here is the link to my Facebook page if anyone wants to take a look. http://www.facebook.com/alexis.wylie