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

Thing #17

Tagging and social bookmarking tools can be useful in the classroom. A teacher can keep any websites he or she wants to use in one place, and they can be shared with other teachers as well. Social bookmark has the potential to create a sense of community among educators online and in a person's personal life because book marks can be shared. This activity reminded me a lot of the Google Reader exploration where you can stay up-to-date on all your favorite sites and such. It is basically the same concept since everything stays in one place (just log into your account and its all right there). It does seem to have the advantage of making life a little easier for teachers. From this one page you can take your class so many places on the web and quickly. When you click on the websites they come up in a new tab instead of replacing the page you are on. I really like that all these bookmarked sites can be accessed from anywhere. Teachers need to be able to have resources at there fingertips and this can definitely help. We as educators can take advantage of this tool by using it to keep track of sites that may be useful in our lessons and to find ones that can useful. It can be helpful in doing research because just typing in a few key words can bring you thousands of resources to look through. We can back up our information and find reliable sites. I would probably use this tool more in my career as an educator than in my personal life. Like I said in my last post habits are hard to break and I will most likely continue to go about typing in every website I want to go to into the address bar, instead of going to one place that has links to all of them. This is partly because I do not want to have my email flooded with messages; I have found that signing up for anything online can lead to this problem. Everytime I look at my email, there are so many that I don't even care to look at. They are nonsense emails that just take up space in my inbox. I am simple saying that I am trying to me more careful than I have been in the past about what I create accounts for online to protect my email and myself in general. I now have this Delicious account that I may use in the future when I am a teacher, not so much right now. I think I would prefer Google reader though because it felt like the same thing to me. And Google is just awesome!!! I for one would be lost or just very bored with out it.

Thing #16

I chose the iGoogle start page because I already have a Google account and would not have to create or sign up for something else. It was simple, fast, and easy! I did not like that it gave me about five different options for backgrounds, but one was purple and that is all I need. I love purple everything!! I was quite happy when I figured out how to change my blog background. If I play around even more with iGoogle I am sure I can figure out how to make changes and do other things. I use Google all the time so was the best option for me and it is nice putting news and other interests I have on the start page. When I am at school I tend to feel behind on current events and news of any kind really. Even with that said I will probably not use iGoogle as my homepage. My main email account is through Yahoo! They also allow personalized home pages and you can put whatever you want on them just like iGoogle. I am not willing to part with my Yahoo page because I use that address for everything and check it several times a day.
The online calendars can be useful the same way that calendars on Google can be used, as I discovered in a previous activity. Parents can see it more publicly and know what events are happening at the school or in the classroom. It allows teachers to keep track of important dates and can easily access their calendar online. In this day-and-age where technology is advancing so quickly and everyone is getting online, it seems to be more practical than having wall calendars. Those can be ignored pretty easily when a teacher is extremely busy and rushing around. Teachers would be reminded when they open their email of appointments, meetings, etc (like Google calendar). There are many benefits to online calendars.
The to-do lists applications would be helpful, but I also think they would be too much work. I do not see the point in keeping my to-do list online, when sticking post-it notes to my desk has been working just fine. I spend enough time on my computer that these notes would be hard to forget, they are brightly colored in right at eye level. It was fun using an online to-do list, I just would not use it on a regular basis. Actually I think I would forget that's where my to-do list is. I found tools that are definitely useful for school and some that may be useful at home. I would recommend online calendars, and Google Docs (or Google anything!).