Finally!!!!!!!! :)

At the beginning of this journey, I honestly never believed I could make it this far. These 23 things were not easy and they were very time consuming, but they were very much so worth every minute of it. This blog helped show me a lot of Web 2.0 tools I never knew existed and helped show me new uses for things I already used on a daily basis such as YouTube and Facebook. My favorite thing had to be number 21, Animoto, The video making was very interesting and it was neat to be able to throw in my own images and music. This blog helped show me that, even though you may know a lot about something, if you take the time to sit down and explore some more there is always more to learn. :)

Thing Twenty-Three: Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an amazing little tool that makes life a whole lot less stressful for a whole lot of people. With it, I am able to use resources made by others without violating copyright laws. It's easier now for a creator of a work to pick and choose how they want their work to be used and how they want to be credited. It's all up to the creator how they want it, they can decide to be paid for anyone who uses their work or just to have the work credited to them when someone uses it. We can now easier find powerpoints, videos, or lesson plans and tweak them to better fit our needs for the subject we are teaching. Before Creative Commons, people would have had to locate the creator(or a lawyer) to be able to achieve permission to use it. I will probably use Creative Commons for my own creations so that other teachers will have them to be able use and tweak because I understand that everyone needs a little help sometimes. :)

Thing Twenty-Two: LiveBinders

Literature
I created three education binders, one for a specific subject. The ones I made were Literature, Grammar, and Mathematics. Each binder holds either activities my students can do or stories for them to read when they have finished their work for they day. It would be a great thing for students to do at the end of the day and whenever they finish all of the projects in one binder they can receive a "get out of homework free" pass ( like the one in my thing #9 blog) It's another great way to keep everything organized and in one place. It's online, so you save paper and you don't have to have authentic binders taking up needed book space on your shelves.

Thing Twenty-One: Animoto

I had a whole lot of fun with Animoto. It was fun to incorporate my pictures into a video, I just wish I still had all my own music on my computer because I could have chosen better music. Animoto does have some good music, just not any that are really popular songs. I really like my video and my song, because I don't ever get to see my nieces and my nephew except for maybe once a month so the songs fit pretty well. :)


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thing Twenty: YouTube!

The video by Taylor Mali was a great one to watch and helped boost my confidence a little about teaching. I've always known I'm not going to get paid a whole lot of money, but that doesn't matter to me because I want the chance to be able to help make other children's dreams come true. It reminded me of a situation I found myself in a few weeks ago. I had a "friend", who insisted that I do not work hard and that I have it easy because I am an education major and that I will never work as hard as she does because she is a science major and she would make more money than I ever would. I decided to find the poem and add it as a note (editing out the bad language) on my page. Anyways, on to the greatness of YouTube. I've always used it to watch music videos or for tutorials on how to do something. I chose this phonics video, because it would be great to sit down some of my student's with reading problems down in front of this video so they could work harder on some of the words.

I CAN ALMOST TASTE THE END!!! :)

Thing Nineteen: Other Social Networks

Besides Facebook, the coolest social network I found was the TeacherPop. It pretty much takes away all the problems I was worrying about in my previous post about Facebook. You have to be approved before you can even become a member. The home page even has a guide for teacher's and their Facebook to help avoid problems with your employer. I can't wait to get started and be able to explore this site more once my membership is approved.




Visit TeacherPop

Thing Eighteen: Social Networking

Facebook is pretty much our generation's addiction and I have to say I am also one of the Facebook junkies. I've had my Facebook for about 4 years or so and it's a great way for me to keep in touch with my friends that are back in east Tn without having to call or text them all the time. I can see what they are up to, see pictures of my family especially ones of my one year old niece that is growing like a weed and I feel like I don't miss out on as much. I don't have a Twitter account, because I just really don't like tweeting or anything that goes with it. It is a good idea for teachers so you can get updates or help from teachers all over so in the future if I did have one it would be for work purposes only, not personal. Facebook is more personal and I wouldn't be adding any of my students on it because they don't need to see that personal of a side of me. Recently a teacher at the high school back home was fired for something he commented and another student saw. It would just be much simpler if I kept it personal. 

Here's my facebook :)