Thing #12

Google Calender can definitely be used in the classroom. I would use it to keep track of assigment due dates, field trips, parties/special events, and meetings. As one of my classmates mentioned in a blog post the calender can be posted on the teacher blog so parents can see what is going on. It may even get more parents to be involved in class activities. This was fun to explore and figure out. I like that you can color code events and such as I did on the calender I started. I used one color for my classes, one for social events, one for games coming up, when I plan on going to the gym, and one for my Newman Club meetings. I did not make it a very detailed or descriptive schedule because I just wanted to get a feel for this tool and what options it has. It lets you see your schedule by the day, week, month, etc which can really come in handy (you can look at whatever view you want). Google Calendar can also be connected to a mobile device and will give you the option of receiving email reminders for the events. This tool is a good one for teachers. Here is the link to my calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=Tc&pli=1

I had a lot of fun using Google Translate! I really like how it translated as you typed and that when you were done you could highlight different parts of of the translation it would also highlight in the section you typed to show the correlation. I think it would be useful in trying to learn to get the general idea of how to speak another language. I mostly played around with English to Italian translation just because a large part of my ancestry is Italian. My grandfather's parents (on Dad's side) were 100% Italian and it is a language I have not really been exposed to. I could have played with this Google for a long time and not get bored. I think this would be useful in the classroom because it would introduce students to different languages and possible prepare them a bit for when they actually have to learn a foreign language. It would just be a nice activity to imcorporate in a lesson at some point in time. It could even show students how similar some words are in different languages and help them understand prunciation and sentence structuring in an English class like I plan to teach.
This is the link and it's rather long because I kept typing  http://translate.google.com/#en/it/my%20family%20is%20Italian%20and%20I%20would%20love%20to%20go%20to%20Italy%20one%20day.%20I%20would%20like%20to%20learn%20how%20to%20speak%20the%20language%20and%20eat%20a%20lot%20of%20Italian%20food.%20Lasagna%20is%20my%20favorite%20food%2C%20but%20I%20do%20love%20pizza%20and%20pasta%20as%20well.%20It%20would%20be%20amazing%20to%20see%20the%20Vatican%20and%20other%20famous%20landmarks%20in%20Italy.%20I%20think%20this%20translater%20is%20so%20awesome%20that%20I%20just%20want%20to%20keep%20typing%20and%20reading%20the%20translation.