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 :)

Thing Seventeen: Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us really is a great name for this site, because it is a great site. I can bookmark my research into folders right there on the website and then log onto my account from any computer it will be there. It’s hard when I’m working on a paper on my computer bookmark a resource but then go to the library to work on it some more and I don’t have my bookmarks. This makes them accessible from anywhere. Sometimes when I’m researching, I lose my sites just because I don’t think about saving it to my bookmarks, it’s easier to do with this site cause it’s all right their on the same site. I didn’t really enjoy the other sites, such as Digg. It didn’t seem as easy to bookmark an article and save it.

 

 

Thing Sixteen: Getting Organized with Web 2.0

I used the iGoogle since Google is already my home page. I really like the way you can edit it to you what you want. It makes everything easier to find and all in one place. I've never really used online calendars because I use just my paper calendar to keep everything in one spot. Now that things are more commonly used on the internet and computers, I'll probably import my calendar to my computer. As for online to do lists, I actually have the remember the milk application on my phone to use for a grocery list or when I have important things due in my online class. I always seem to forget my grocery list when I'm going shopping and having it right there on my phone it makes it a whole lot easier since I don't go anywhere without my phone.

Thing Fifteen: What In The World is a Wiki?

I think wiki's are great for finding information in a plain English sort of way, not with a whole lot of mumble jumble that some people may not understand. Its a great place for parents of students to quickly find information to help their students out at home. The APSU 23 things was pretty cool, because it was a place for everyone to add a little bit of their blog and do whatever they wanted to that would make it unique. Wiki's are good to just find information on the fly, like Wikipedia. It has pretty much anything you could ever need to know and also has references at the bottom for websites that hold more knowledge and is credited information.

Thing Fourteen: Go With the Flow

I remember having to draw out mind maps in high school when we had to write a persuasive paper or an essay. We'd start with the central idea in the middle, then branch out three main reasons why you felt that way. Mind maps pretty much wrote your paper for it and made it much easier to organize your ideas into a well flowing paper. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten all about their existence and I'm reminded through this how helpful they really are. I have a big research paper due next month for my online history class and I know I'm going to use http://bubbl.us/ to help write this paper in an easier way. I'll add a screenshot of the mind map I've started to help me with this paper.

I think this website would be great for a cyber way to draw out the mind maps for an essay. You can personalize them to be any color, they are way neater than if you had hand written them on paper, and you can save it to your account and access them at any time.

Thing Thirteen: Web-based Applications

I have to say I'm not really a fan of Zoho writer, just in the fact you have to pay for it when Google Docs is free and I also already have Microsoft Office. I guess I'm a penny pincher and don't really like having to pay for something when you can find something pretty similar and possibly better, for free. I also needed another email address with that one, with my own domain. I already have a Gmail account and about one too many other emails that it's hard to keep up with. It seems like that's just something else I'd have to check often and I don't really want that. I had a little fun with the Google docs drawing. Here's my picture!

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1Jiwa-LA-wu0BNaqulGxb58pUEBa7febNiyh-7swzMzI/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CIDl730

Along with the screenshot, in case the link doesn't work correctly for you. 

 That drawing took me about 5 minutes, if that. It also tells you the link where you located the picture, which can be really useful to credit the photographer. 

I think this would be a great way for students just to make little biographies about themselves. Give them an option of adding three images of things they love (like I did) and instead of writing what I wrote they can give me a little information about themselves then just save it all to a group of our class so we can all get to know each other a little bit.

Thing Twelve: Cool Tools Google has to Offer

Google really does have everything and I never even realized it. The only thing I ever really used Google for was just to search, I had no idea that it had so many untouched resources. My favorite thing would have to be the Google Calendar. It automatically incorporates all holidays and your contacts birthdays. The time slots would be fantastic for mapping out your lesson plans for each day of the week and then being able to go back and look at it to see what day you taught when and what time. Calendar's are already great tools and to have one online where you can access it from any computer, or phone, makes it so much easier to map out your schedule. Another tool I really liked was the Google translate, during high school I took French classes and I have to say that was my best friend and my survival through that course. A good use for this tool would be with ESL students to write letters to their parents or help the child work better incorporating their language and English into their homework.

Thing Eleven: Subscribe to a Few Fun and Useful Blogs

The easiest search engine for blogs for me was the Google blog search, because it acts just like Google which is something I am very used to using on a daily basis. When I searched the school library learning 2.0, I found a 23 things blog from California that is almost identical to the one we are using right now except for different numbering and titles. The most confusing one I used was the Syndic8.com because it just had a lot of unnecessary jumble on the first page. Then when I searched for "education" I got a lot of blogs that had nothing to do with the subject and only a few that were actually what I was looking for. This is a really useful "thing" since it shows you how to better find blogs and add the ones you want to see. I've never used blogs before, so I was very new to this when it all began but I now find myself reading a few of them because they are so interesting and you can find blogs about pretty much anything and everything.

Thing Ten: Learn About RSS Feeds

I never really knew anything about RSS feeds and had definitely never used one, but they are very true to their name and keep things really simple. It puts everything together in one place where it's easy to locate and a quick read. It helps me keep up to date information and I would most likely use it in my classroom to do the same to show my students what is happening in the world so that they can be more involved and knowledgeable about their society. I could also use it to follow blogs from teachers around the world and help get tips and help from them on something I may be struggling with as a teacher. 

Thing Nine: Online Image Generator

 

http://monolpoly.game.cards.txt2png.com/

I used the monopoly generator and made a get out of homework free card. This would be a good reward for students that maybe did really well during the week in their behavior or made a large improvement in their work. Other things I could use would be to make an extra ten minutes on the computer during a break time. Image generators could be used for any kind of reward concept or even used for nameplates on the students' desks so it would be easier to learn names for me and other students.

Thing Eight: More Flickr Fun

I really like the spell with Flickr option, you can spell anything with random pictures for each letter and you can customize each letter for it to be one that you really like. You can change it to where all letters are one color, but different images to teach children about colors. I think it would just be fun to use as decorations in my apartment and as important words in my classroom because they are more enjoyable than just a regular font poster.

Thing Seven: Explore Flickr

Exploring Flickr, one of the neat things I found was the "a year ago today" groups that showed popular images that were searched and uploaded on June 18, 2010. The most common were images of weddings and newborn babies, which is understandable considering that June is normally a month where both of those occasions. Another one would be the map of the world that showed images from people all over the world and where they were when they uploaded that image.

I searched the keyword "orange" since it's my favorite color just to see what I could find in that color. My favorite photo was

by doug88888 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2775233719/

Thing Six: Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

 

Before this class, the only thing I ever really thought about using Skype for was to talk to my friends and family that were back  in Knoxville and I don't get to see very often, or talk to my friends that are deployed overseas. I never really thought about it from the educational standpoint, until now. I think the neatest thing I could do with it would be to connect my classroom with another classroom from across town, the state, the country, and possibly the world. When I moved out here two years ago, I never thought that cultures could be so different just from middle Tennessee to east Tennessee and I was thoroughly surprised that they are. With Skype, I can connect cultures from anywhere and incorporate it into any of my lesson plans throughout the school year. 

www.skype.com

Other favorites would have to be Amazon and Pandora, because well...they are just fabulous. :)

Thing Five: Perspectives on web 2.0

Web 2.0 has to be one of the greatest things I have seen in a long time. It makes things so much easier and life a little less stressful. For instance, with Google, you can find anything you need at anytime with the availability of internet on smartphones. For example, my boyfriend and I were going to see a movie the other night and a song came on the radio and he believed the lyrics were one thing and I believed they were something else, so to settle the dispute right out came my phone with Google as the homepage. (I was right, of course.) With these applications and tools, schools are going to change so much into the future. The need of books will be most likely wiped out in the next few years with the uses of iPads or Kindles, which would be great because productions costs would most likely be much cheaper and you'd save more trees(yay, go green!). Web 2.0 gives endless possibilities, we can now connect with teachers all over the globe, which will lead me onto my next point....skype! 

Thing Four: Why commenting is important

I believe commenting on a fellow blog is important because it provides feedback on my original idea and helps expand my thought process. People can also comment when they don't agree with something my post states to and it can help broaden my opinion of something by seeing their point of view.

Thing Three: Register your blog

Registering my blog helps it to become available to more people. With registering, our entire class can now find and read each of our classmates blogs. Having my classmates blogs available it helps me to see things about each thing that I probably wouldn't have thought about to begin with. :)

Thing Two: Create a blog, add a post and an avatar

I had a lot of fun creating my blog and my avatar. I personalized my blog a little bit more then just the basic template and changed some of the fonts and colors to make it more like me. The template I used makes me think of the summer and  how warm and beautiful it is. I used brighter fonts because I'm not a fan of blacks and dark colors and it made it more personal. For my avatar, I made her look as close to me as possible and put her in a tshirt and blue jeans which is what you will normally find me wearing on a normal basis. I also put an orange flower in her hair because I love flowers and orange is my favorite color. This blog is also a great idea because it helps me to write out my thoughts on each of the 23 things and it helps me to take more from each one.

Thing One: Lifelong Learning and Learning 2.0

Out of the 7 and 1/2 habits used for lifelong learning, the hardest one for me would be habit number three which was view problems as a challenge. When a large problem arises, it is hard for me to view it as a good thing. I don't just give up when a problem happens, but I do get rather stressed out. Viewing them as a challenge would greatly help me maintain a much lower stress level and probably assist me in conquering the problem that much sooner.


The easiest would be number 7 and 1/2...play! Playing takes the stress out of the equation because you do not worry as much about the task at hand and you are taking it with an easier air instead of hitting it head on with a serious matter. The goal can still be reached both ways, playing is just much more enjoyable. :)

It's hard to believe at the age of 19 that I am already a lifelong learner because of some of the situations I endure. I am also an avid reader and you will always find either a book in my bag or something new on my kindle. I had no idea that just because I enjoy reading it qualifies me as a lifelong reader.