Is it the end or only the beginning?

It was really fun to create my blog and get to learn new things. I enjoyed learning how to use some of the tools more than others. Some of the tools down right annoyed me, and would prefer not to use those. After this I'm not too sure how blogs will fit into my future, I'm kinda burned out on writing blogs. That is my own fault for leaving things till last minute though. I'm sure that since computers are becoming more integrated into classrooms that I will keep up on the latest web 2.0 tools. We will see as time goes on how I feel about using blogs for my classroom.  Technology is a great thing to have in classrooms, some helps students learn things they didn't know before and needed to study further.

Thing #23

Copyright allows teachers and students to use works without breaking copyright as long as it fits into educational means. Creative commons allows us to share out works with other people and give them permission to do certain things with it. It is good that we as students and teachers can use a picture we find on Google and use it as long as we are using it for educational means
I found another blog called k12learning20 - 23things it was pretty similar to what we did on our own 23 things but with a different set up on the way the things were done. Its cool to see how other teachers are teaching the 23 things, to get a new refreshing take on things.

Thing #22

I named my binders Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. I just randomly created these binders just to see how easy it would be to do it. The site seems to be a great place to find information and the best part is that it could all be put in one neat and tidy area.This would be a great way to create a homework lesson for students to use the internet at home to work on it. All you have to do is pick the topic or standard you are working on and pick websites that apply to that standard or subject matter. It is simple and great way to keep things in order.

Thing #20

I use Youtube to watch videos all the time and know that it is sometimes hard to find a video of good quality. I found this video which show a great circle time activity for younger children called the Mystery Bucket. It looks like a great way to get to the students to used their critical thinking skills at a early age.

Thing #21

Modest Means



This was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot. I've never done something like that and it amazed me at how truly simple it really was. The video turned out pretty cool and I would love to use this site to create something I can show other people. It would be a great thing to do for a back to school night project to have the video playing with pictures of the kids  coming up on the screen.. This is a good site, and would love to use it again for a personal project.

Thing #19

I often go to forums and websites that allow you to share things. I'm really interested in the cooking sites, because I love to cook and am always looking for new recipes to try out. I am also ALWAYS on IMDB, I love checking out movies to see what actors are in there and what movies my favorite actors are playing in. I can see myself using some of these sites both in my personal life and in my teaching career. Some of the sites look like they will be very helpful.

Thing #18

I have used both Facebook and Twitter, although I must admit that I prefer Facebook more than Twitter, due to all the hash tags that are on Twitter. It really annoys me when people hash tag on Facebook, it just seems stupid to me. I feel that it is important to use these social media websites to be able to keep in touch with other teachers and get advice or even find methods for teaching from someone who has more experience than you or give advice to someone who might not have the same experiences you do. Twitter is good because you can follow someone have get a very short message about what they wanted to show you. Facebook gets a little annoying because you have to wade through all the game posts to find what you want to look at. Each of these sites has its own pros and cons and those would be different to each person looking at them.

Thing #17

Delicious is a great tool for teachers, allowing teachers to share the links they think other teachers would find helpful. I could see myself using this site to help find useful tools and sites to help me in my beginning teaching days. This tool can also be used to get sites that would be beneficial to the students for a project or assignment. To find really good sites for arts and crafts stuff, the possibilities are pretty much endless on what could be on this site. It looks like a great tool for teachers, especially ones who are just getting their footing in the teaching world.

Thing #16

The homepage I chose was Igoogle, because I'm always using Google anyway. I just chose to put on a humor section and a couple cooking sections. I don't think I will keep this as my main homepage because I'm haven't really used a homepage much. I'm not a fan of online calenders as i have a tendency to not update them or write things on them, I don't even use the calender on my phone. I can see how the online calender would be easy to use and quick and even save some paper, but I just like the tactile feel of paper. I fell in love with remember the milk, I use to do lists all the time and I'm a major procrastinator and need to have something to remind me to get work done and on time, not last minute. I would have to say that remember the milk might actually be the one tool that I would use for both my personal life as well as school and work, it looks like a great place for me to try to keep myself organized and on track with projects.

Thing #15

I use wikis all the time, for many different things. Mainly for the games I play like Minecraft and World of Warcraft. It would be easy to create a wiki for a classroom to put assignments on or lists of books that are going to be read in class. Terms could also be put on a wiki and even student work could be added to a wiki. It would be a wonderful back to school project for the kids to do, putting together a classroom wiki for their parents to look at.
For my part in adding to the sandbox I just added one of my blog posts and changed up the color and size and font a little. Not sure if my contribution to it will be useful, but at least I added a little bit to it. 

Thing #14

I have used flow charts since I was a kid. Honestly both the flow chart and the mind maps look the same to me. I used Gliffy and Mindmeister. I have to say that my favorite was Mindmeister, simply because I like the ability to move the little bubbles. The ease of using Mindmeister was my favorite part, its just so simple. Each of the sites would be perfect to have students use, as long as they have the ease factor for younger students.

Thing #13

Working with both Zoho and Google Docs was really easy and fun.  I made a very simple and not good at all drawing using Google Docs. After using the spread sheet in class I can see how a group of people or students can all work on the same document. It would be very simple to have an assignment using Google Docs, the students each have part of the document to work on. After using both of the sites I would have to say that they both are amazing. Zoho has an ease, it was almost like just using Excel, and Google was very easy to use. I would recommend using either of the sites, they are both great.

Thing #12

I have to say the ones I liked the most were Google Translate, although I noticed that not all the translations were 100% correct. It was still fun to play around and see what the translator came up with. As a teacher I can see how it would be easy for a both students and the teacher to use. Like I said the only drawback is the translations are not fully accurate so it might not be the way you want to do you homework. My second favorite was the Picasa Web Albums, which seemed relatively easy to use.  The upload speeds were really fast and the pictures came up instantly. I would prefer this tool over Flickr, it is so much simpler. I had fun looking and playing with both of these tools.

Thing #11

The easiest tool to use for me was the Google search one, just type in a few key words and hundreds pop up for you to look through. I'm not sure if I would classify the others as harder to use or more complicated, just not something that I would prefer to use. For this exercise I didn't look for anything in specific I just looked for things in general so I was not able to find anything that I could classify as "useful." These tools are really great for searching for blogs to help you with recipes or mommy ideas. It is just about finding the right blog for you and what you are interested in looking at.

Thing #10

The ability to subscribe to blogs is a pretty neat little tool. Its nice to pick a blog you want to read and to subscribe to it and have the reader just tell you when your favorite blog has a new post. It can also be a good way to get ideas for an assignment or a craft for the students to do. I'm not sure how this technology can be used in an elementary school but I know for high school it might be easier to use for teachers. I'm sure as I continue down the in my education I will find a way to incorporate these tools into a fourth grade class. And I am open to those options, in time maybe tools like this and Flickr will be a staple in schools and teachers will be trained in their use. The possibilities with all these new technologies that continue to come out out are endless and will continue to be so as long as technology continues to be integrated into schools.

Thing #9

So I found this activity to be incredibly fun and relaxing after beating my head against a wall with Flickr. It was so fun to look at the different generators and play around with them. This sign came from a little generator that give you four pictures and allows you to make you own street sign... This site didn't have many pictures to pick from that I saw but it was fun to play with making the names.

This one was fun to make too...The site gives you a few choices to pick from on what type of warning sign you want to make...You can add in your words and have a little fun!

This one was super fun to make.This site allows you to make logos and play with the text you want to include in them. The site is called FlamingText. There are many to chose from and play around with. 

Another site I found that I got the first two sites from was an article called 13 Fantastic and Fun Image Generators. I only chose a few to play around with but they all looked like they would be fun to play around with and explore! It would be easy to create a sign that says Mrs. Winn's 4th Grade Class...Or Welcome to Mrs. Winn's Class...It would be creative and fun to have the students make their own name plates for their desks with these generators too.

Thing #8

I decided to go with the simple make a puzzle tool because trying to figure out all the other ones gave me a migraine. I can see how a teacher would use a mashup of their students for back to school night or as a way to remember a class of students after they have moved on, but as good with a computer as I am I was having trouble navigating some of the sites and trying to make some of the mashups. Sharing photos online does not bother me when the method of sharing and putting them on their is not overly complicated. I have a Facebook and share photos on there all the time. I'm not sure that once I'm teaching I will have enough time to sit down and try to figure out how to get flickr or these other mashup sites to work the way I want them to.

Thing #7

I chose this photo of my panther gecko,Tripp (yes with two P's), taken the day I got him in August of 2011. He was so tiny, barely measuring 2.5 inches long. Now at a little over a year old my Tripp measures close to 6 inches in length. This is as big as he is going to get, as that the panther geckos are one of the smallest ground geckos in the world.

I tried for a few hours to try to upload the photo from Flickr. But it just kept telling me that the photo wasn't public even though I had made sure to check and triple check to make sure that it did indeed say public. I'm sure for those who know how to use the site and enjoy uploading their photos to the world, that this site would be the best for them. I however did not have a good experience with this site, and most of the photos I do upload go onto Facebook where I know that they will go up without problems. This site was even more complicated to use than Photobucket, which is the only other site I have used, and even then it wasn't for long. I lose interest in uploading photos to sites like these fairly quickly, and I don't know if I would use them in my teaching career.

Thing #6

I picked a tool called GrammarBase . This is a wonderful site that gives free spell check and grammar check for papers. It instantly checks your papers and within a few moments it generates a detailed  report of the mistakes found in your paper and allows you to correct them on sight. This would be a wonderful tool to use in a classroom or library, it would allow the student to check their papers and fix them right there before printing or turning them in. Best part is that the service is free, it finds the errors and allows you to correct them. A great tool for students of all ages.

Thing #5

As technology continues to advance and spread further the more it is seen in schools, and homes. The more people that use technology help to continue its spread. And today more schools are turning to these emerging  technologies for their staff and students. Students are beginning to use I-pads in the classroom and even laptops for learning. And while I can see the ease of having books on an I-pad or even learning Apps, but at the same time students are not at school to play video games. School 2.0 to me means more kids using technology and less focus is being put on the actual teaching methods. For me I think that too much technology can actually hinder the teaching process. Whats to say your students are actually paying attention to the lesson that you are teaching. Its hard enough with video games to get students to do their homework and now we are giving them a reason to not pay attention in school. If we aren't careful with the amount of technology being put in schools one day all students will have to do is bring up a video of  the lesson on a screen and hit play. Teachers could one day become obsolete in place of a master computer.

Thing #4

Reading some of the information that was given about commenting was time consuming. For me, yes sometimes feedback is amazing but sometimes I just want to post something without having my every word analyzed and criticized. But I can see how getting that feedback can create a sense of community, a sense of feeling that someone is actually reading your posts and taking something out of them. It can form a sense of pride as you look and see the count of page views going up. The two points that I picked out that I find to be the most important when commenting is to be humble and gracious not only when leaving comments but when commenting on other blogs. Rude comments I'm sure are neither wanted nor well received.

Thing #3

Writing this blog has shown me that I can write down my thoughts and feelings as I am going through as I finish up my time in the Education program. It can allow me to look back and see what I did and how I felt about a certain assignment. I can also put ideas on a blog to look back at later and maybe put them to use in my own teaching methods.
Blogs can be used to keep your students parents up to date on what their children did in class that day. You can make sure to inform the parents of the homework that the children have. Inform them of upcoming tests so they can help the children study.That is if you are up to doing a blog post once a day. If not once a day it can be done once a week to keep the parents up to date on what happened, or tell them what their children will be doing the following week. Depending on the grade level of the child you can have them start their own blog. The blog can be updated as a group, with videos or class messages.

Thing #2

I've done a few blog posts before, mainly on Myspace, I used them for writing my poetry and getting my feelings out before they consumed me. Don't read many other blogs, I am more into writing my own. It wasn't hard picking my name I just decided to use my name, it makes it easier for everyone as well as myself. Its not easy coming up with a catchy name to go by.  It was pretty fun creating the blog and decorating it, it wasn't hard for me since I spend so much time on the computer. My avatar doesn't  look like me, well not too much , it was kinda hard to make it exactly like me because the clothes it gives you really aren't things I would wear in life. But I put the avatar in a trench coat in honor of my favorite wizard PI Harry Dresden. Of course Harry wears a leather duster not a trench coat but its close enough. So you could say that my avatar shows my personality by my love for reading

Thing #1

The easiest one for me is  7 1/2 "Play", I love to play video games, watch T.V.  and have what I like to call "me time"(which mostly involves me skipping off to my own little world where I can image what ever I want...I like to daydream...Don' you?" For as long as I can remember I have been more interested in play time then doing schoolwork and even housework. But my play time is actually what first sparked my thoughts at wanting to be a teacher. Growing up there were five years between my older sister and  5 and 6 years between the younger two. My older sister didn't want anything to do with me once she hit her teen years and the younger ones were always off playing with their friends and well I didn't want to play with them either, so I played by myself mostly. I had some old literature and math books that I got from a library sale for a couple cents and had a mirror and a white board marker. I would teach and read to an invisible class full of eager eyed young students, I would grade their papers and have parent conferences. I continued with this from 8 years old onto about 12. But the spark to teach had taken root in my heart and even though at this point I was a pretty horrible student, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. And as I grew up a little more and got into high school the spark became a growing flame and actually brought me to this point. Besides all work and no play makes for a very horrible day!

The hardest would have to be #3 "View problems as challenges." Often when something arises that looks like its going to set me back I get frustrated. I see it as another thing that has gone wrong, as if there is some higher power telling me that I am on the wrong path, that the dream of being a teacher that I have had for the last 17 years is not what I should be doing. As much as I try not to let things get me down when they come up it makes me feel like I have chosen wrong. I sometimes think "Why have I chosen this path? How am I going to help someone learn and get the education they need? What happens if I mess up?" Its not so easy for me to look at something and go "Alright a little speed bump, no big deal, just got to get it done and then I will be on better ground." But then again I usually make mountains out of mole hills...its something I'm still working on.