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!).

Thing #15

I did not find this activity as much fun as previous ones, but I do think it could be used by teachers. Teachers can create wikis for their class(es) to share and learn. The class can post things that they learn from different lessons and it can also create a sense of community with everyone sharing information in the same place. There are various types of wikis out there and I did not know that some could be more carefully monitored by having to sign up to use them (like APSU 23 things sandbox). But it seems like there could be a problem though, when I went to add to the front page everyone else's posts came up to, giving me the impression that I could change their stuff. I did not actually try to do this so I do not know for sure. I would not want someone to change the things that I put on there.
I have never been a fan of using Wikipedia because anyone can edit the information, therefore it is not always reliable and my teachers/professors have always said not to use it. The other wikis I think would be better to use for teachers or for personal reasons. In this activity I copy and pasted projects from thing 8 and 9 but for no particular reason. I wrote just a bit about why I created those projects for my 23 things (my love for children and just liking the pictures). I changed the text color to match my pictures because I like when things match. I kept it simple! The way I like everything!

Thing #14

The two tools I used were Gliffy.com and Bubbl.us but for no particular reason. I just clicked on them and had some fun creating charts. I really liked how Gliffy has a variety of organizers and charts that you can create online like venn diagrams, and floor plans (to name a couple). It was not easy to figure out how to create an account and get started because on the page you get linked to there is no option to do so. However, one I got in there was just so much to experiment with and I definitely will use this in the future. It is a great way to create the kind of organizers it takes to prepare for essays or just to organize your thoughts on any topic/project. I could play around with Gliffy for hours I think and not get bored with it. Bubbl.us was pretty enjoyable to, except I did get a bit frustrated trying to figure how it works (connecting bubbles and moving them around). I do like the simplicity of it...there is nothing that can create a distraction, it is just bubble maps. These tools will come in handy as I continue in my own education and in my future classroom. I can provide good examples of maps and charts for my students, and they won't have to read my awful handwriting. I used both tools to make a flowchart and map of idea for the unit plan that we are beginning to work on in my 3070 class. I have been kind of torn between a few idea and I used these maps to see how they would play out day-to-day. I though it may help me decide if I saw the break down more clearly for each.
I do not see there being too many differences between mind maps and flowcharts. There are many ways to set them up and various types. A person can create either to look however they want, a way that best helps them sort their thoughts and have a visual representation of them. I had always been under the impression that the terms where pretty interchangeable (like synonyms). Both have the same general purpose and are effective in acheiving that purpose.  

Thing #13

I had never heard of Zoho before this activity and I do like the fact that it s a free way to create documents, but I like Google Docs even better. I like that it allows you to create different types of documents not just ones you could produce in Microsoft Word. Google Docs is like a combination of some of Microsoft Office programs; it lets you make spreadsheets like excel as well as word documents. I have had previous experience with Google Docs that contributes to my preferring it over Zoho and Microsoft. Every semester I go on religious retreats held by other universities and as a staff member I get a lot of emails. The most important ones involve staff assigments and tranportation, which come in the format of Google Docs. The thing I love about it is that when someone sends you a Google Doc you can open it and add to it, and it will save automatically. Everyone puts thier information in and it all stays nicely in one place that you can go back to and change if necessary. Google Docs also has the benefit of being free. All you need is a Google account. I am not so sure I would use Zoho much in the future when I have other options. I found it more confusing and harder to navigate for some reason.
These programs will be great to use in the classroom. When a teacher assigns group projects, students will be able to share them easily and can edit them from home. They do not have to be in the same room even though it is still good to communicate in person. Google Docs will definitely make collaborating on projects and other assignments more fun and less stressful for students. They do not have to worry so much about scheduling a time, date, and place to meet. I think even the students who do not do well in groups will be motivated and active in doing group things. We have all had that experience when given a group project/presentation where there is one person (at least) that does not participate and makes everything harder for the other group members. Being able to share documents and such through technology may just help with that problem because those people can at least do their part while they are sitting at home.
The document I created with Google Docs was the first thing that came to mind: a preadsheet of all 12 grandkids on my Dad's side of the family from oldest to youngest, our ages, birthdays, and where we fall in the order. I thought it would be interesting to figure out the average age and to my surprise it was a lot higher than I expected. But I did realize that would be because most of us are right around the same age. As you can tell if you look at it there were 8 of us born within a matter of 7-8 years...I like to refer to it as "the original 8". That is how many grankids there were until one of my uncles married a woman who had a child from a previous marriage, and before another uncle got remarried to someone ten years his junior. We have a couple of very new editions to our family that have really stretched out the age difference, but did not really effect the average. I did even realize as I was putting in birthdays that Google Docs was putting the full birth year (I typed 89 and it put 1989).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqVYGyWKgaqgdGRPdGZIeU5jZDNzMGxOMzYzRlBmVGc#gid=0

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.

Thing #11

I think all of the methods of finding feeds were easy: Google blog search, topixs.net, technorati, and Edublog Award Winners. However, I did like Google blog search the best because it brought up exactly what I was looking for and did not have a lot of stuff to distract me. Topixs.net and technorati had political news story and various heading and sections that made me loose my focus a bit. I was not really sure where to search and it did not produce as many results as Google blogs. I found feeds through Google that would be helpful to me as a teacher when I first have my own classroom and could use for ideas and information. There was a blog called Life as a beginning Teachers and I started reading it; I realized she had some great ideas and insights into life as a new teacher. There was other blogs for new teachers that I found interesting and that could be encouraging for those going into education as well, like Reality 101 is a place where new teachers share their thoughts and stories. I did find any unusual feeds in the activity or other tools to locate newsfeeds. Google blog search really provided all the help that I needed and it did not take long to find blogs I wanted to subscribe too.

I really liked reading The Cool Cat Teacher Blog post about creating your circle of the wise. I agree with what he says about finding the people who inspire you. As a teacher it is important to inspire our students and that is exactly why I want to teach: to inspire youth to read and want to read. If we do not find the people who inspire us, then why would we want to read what strangers think and have to say? I have never been one to just read autobiographies unless I was interesting in learning about a specific persona life. For instance, I read Shania Twain's autobiography by choice because I had heard about how tough her childhood was and her whole success story. But it was totally different hearing it and then reading her words for myself, her thoughts, and stories. I am truly inspired but what she has overcome and the outlook she has on life after what she has been through; her story made me appreciate what I have and not to take any of it for granted. I found it quite humorous that in his blog Cool Cat Teacher says, "Life is too tough to have real AND virtual people dragging you down". He is so right and creating a circle of the wise is a good thing to do.