Thing #12

The first one I chose was the Google Calendar.  I really like the it because I can put in everything that I have written on my calendar at home--birthdays, homework due dates, important school functions, etc--and I can sync it with my phone and have the notifications sent directly to my phone.  I think it would definitely be a great tool for teachers to use to help them keep organized and keep everything on track without having to keep up with a paper calendar or desk calendar. 

I also chose iGoogle, which I really liked.  You can have everything from the local weather/date/time to news links and any other topic you choose all on one homepage.  For mine, I have news topics, such as CNN and NY Times as well as entertainment and sports news and a recipe section so that I can get new recipes whenever I log in.  You can set a theme at the top so that you're not looking at the same boring image all the time.  It's basically everything all on one page.   

Thing #11

Searching for blogs was so much easier through Google.  Topix and Technorati were just a little more difficult to work with.  Through Google, I found 2CoolTools which had, on one of its posts, a social media timeline, which I thought was pretty cool.  I found Free Technology for Teachers through the link on 23 Things for EduBlogs Award Winners. 



Check it out!



 I also found a couple of blogs through Pinterest (my new addiction!).  I have a habit of pinning elementary education blogs and I thought First Grade Blue Skies was a cute blog.  It has a lot of really cute activities to do with your first graders.                                                                    

 
Another blog I found through Pinterest is The Alphabet Garden.  This blog has so many ideas for everything from centers to homework.  The first thing I noticed when I accessed the blog was the cute President's Day activities.  



The Alphabet Garden



Cellblock 303



I'd have to say, though, that my most favorite blog is not education related but I have been a follower for quite a while.  I'm a big hockey fan and Cellblock 303 is an awesome site for any Nashville Predators fan and anyone who has ever been to a game knows who they are!  The Preds are a big part of our lives, thanks in part to my husband, and during hockey season a lot of the conversations between him and I, my sister and I, or my cousins and I are about this team.  (We are all a bunch of hockey nuts!)







Thing #10

RSS and Newsreaders...I'm not too sure that I like this type of technology just yet.  I had never used it before and I found it kind of frusturating.  I didn't know how to go about finding feeds and that sort of thing.  But once I figured it out I did subscribe to several feeds.  NPR Education, CNN Education, Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education, and Infoplease--This Day in History being a few of them.  Out of those I liked CNN Education the best, but being that I am a regular on CNN's website I kind of find the newsreader pointless.  I can see how for some people it would come in handy because you can get everything all in one place without having to go from site to site.  That aspect of it is very useful but as for me, I will probably never use it again.  I do think that it would be useful with teachers.  If you had to find an article that you had read very quickly and you didn't have time to search the entire internet, this would be useful because it narrows it down so much.  It definitely has its benefits, I'm just not sure it's totally for me.

Thing #9

For this post I chose the Image Chef website to make a star patterened template with the words "You are a SUPERSTAR!" on it.

I browsed around through some other sites but I thought this was the cutest idea.  To make it I just looked through their given templates and found the star and then thought of a cute little motivational quote to put on it.  I think this would make great wall art for a classroom.  It's cute (if not a little cheesy)  and it also reminds students that they are "Superstars"!  

Thing #8

For this post I chose to do a mosaic with pictures I found from Flickr using Mosaic Maker.  I chose pictures of the beach because it is one of my favorite places in the whole world and right now I have a really bad case of beach fever!  

I think the Mosaic Maker would be an awesome tool to use in a classroom setting.  Teachers could use it to make a mosaic of the students in their class to post on their blog.  It could be used as a learning tool to show students various examples of a subject.  For example, for my unit plan I am doing for another class, my topic is nouns.  I could make a separate mosaic for common/proper and singular/plural nouns and use as a handout for my students to give them examples of each category.  They could use it to take home and study with.  I think there could be many helpful uses for this site in a classroom setting and it's so easy and fun to play around with.  

Picture credits:  1.)  beach  2.)  beach walk  3.)  beach grass  4.)  Beach--Shadows on the beach  5.)  Tunnels Beach Kauai  6.)  Curracloe Beach 2  7.)  Beach Photography  8.)  Life's A Beach  9.)  the beach

Thing #7

Flickr is a pretty awesome site.  I had heard about it before this but never visited it.  Finding a picture for me to use for this post took forever because I sat there browsing so many of them before deciding!  I finally chose one of an orca whale by Raymond J. Barlow.



I love whales and have always been fascinated by them.  I am a complete Animal Planet/Discovery Channel/National Geographic geek.  I love watching shows about the ocean and the animals that inhabit them, especially whales.  My biggest dream is that before I die I get the opportunity to go whale watching in Alaska.  It's a bit far off right now because for that to happen I have to overcome two of my biggest fears:  flying in an airplane and being out in the open ocean. 

I searched around on Flickr for quite a while, looking at pictures of everything from flowers to landscapes to basically anything involving nature.  One thing I really liked about the site, as opposed to just using a search engine to find pictures, is that while searching for a good whale picture that I wanted to use I came across a lot of professional photography pages.  These are people who actually went out and photographed these animals and did not just photoshop or copy/paste the images on their page.  That makes it so much more authentic and credible.  I think teachers could find a lot of uses for Flickr, using pictures from the site to lend a real world touch to enhance their lesson.

Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/43039595@N02/4933463522/in/gallery-gettyimagesloves-72157627987809903/
Site:  Frozen Planet

Thing #6

The site I chose to use for this post is YouTube.com, which can be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/.  Everybody knows what YouTube is and how it operates.  It is a site where thousands upon thousands of videos can be accessed and posted by anyone around the world.  That, however, is one of the aspects of the website I do not always like.  It's great that any and everyone can post, but the problem is that any and everyone can post.  Sometimes the video you expect to be what you wanted is nothing more than a parody of what you were looking for, a horribly shot video from some random person, or worse still, it could be a video which contains a virus that can crash your computer. 

Even still, YouTube is a valuable website that has many positive uses in the classroom.  Teachers can use it to show video clips that are relevant to their lesson.  For example, I am going to teach K-6.  One of the techniques I hope to employ during my lesson on the parts of speech is to use School House Rock video clips.  A couple of teachers of mine in elementary and middle school used these videos and they really helped us to learn the lesson.  We learned things from these videos that stuck with us to this day, so I believe that School House Rock is a valuable tool and a fun way to teach children.  However, I do not own any of the videos so I can use YouTube to access them and show them to my students in order to give them a fun way to learn a typically boring subject such as the parts of speech.  With all the video clips available on the site, there is a never-ending stream of useful clips for teachers to use in order to enhance their lesson.

Thing #5

School 2.0, to me, is basically the school of the future.  It’s using tablets and computers as opposed to pen and paper and SmartBoards instead of overhead projectors.  It’s communicating with your child’s teacher (or student’s parents) through email and social networking sites rather than letters and phone calls.  It’s also students getting help with their homework through blogs and other aspects of the internet instead of calling the Homework Hotline or just guessing when they cannot figure it out.  Technology is an integral part of education today and there really is no choice but to embrace it and use it nor is there no reason not to do so. 

When I was in school everything was done by hand.  Papers, homework, every assignment was handwritten.  My senior year of high school we had to write a five page paper—by hand (and I graduated in 2005, so it’s not like we didn’t have the technology, it’s just that my school did not embrace it very much).  I cannot even imagine doing that today.  Technology has changed everything so much in a relatively short amount of time and it continues to change constantly.  Schools are now using everything from SmartBoards to iPads as a replacement for textbooks.  Homework is no longer done by paper and pencil in some schools, it’s done and sent to the teacher through the computer.  Technology is opening up so many doors for so many students and teachers alike.  Teachers’ lessons are no longer limited to only what they can find in a book in their local school or library.  They now have the entire world at their fingertips and are able to employ so many different teaching techniques.  Completely replacing textbooks with iPads on a 100% level may still be a few years away, but the idea of it is very intriguing.  Students will be able to gain a much better understanding of a subject by being able to be more hands on with it rather than just staring at it through a textbook.  Technology in the classroom is extremely beneficial for both student and teacher, as it provides an endless amount of opportunities to teach and to be taught.

Thing #4

Commenting on blogs is an essential part of the process.  It helps to create a sense of community in that it makes the blogger feel like he/she has something important to say and that others agree with him/her.  Even if the comments are in disagreement with the original post, by adding your opinion in a polite, effective way, you are making the writer feel as if he/she has contributed something of value.  From the given blogs about commenting I thought that writing a meaningful comment and criticize kindly were two of the most important features of commenting.  It doesn’t do the writer any justice to just reply “Yeah” or “No”.  You should give some feedback, whether it is positive or negative.  Also, by criticizing in a non-productive way you are just doing yourself a disservice.  It’s fine to disagree with someone but remember your manners and watch your tongue. 

For this post, I commented on Rebecca Black’s blog post for Thing #3, Myleah Gallagher’s post for Thing #4, Tonya Haley’s post for Thing #2, Ashley Nalley’s post for Thing #6, and Reneice Glasper’s post for Thing #6. 

For the two outside blogs I picked two that I found from links on Pinterest (my new favorite site!).  The first one is the First Grade Parade, which you can access at http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/.  This is a blog that has lots of great ideas for classroom activities and gives examples of the ones she has completed in her own classroom.

The second blog that I picked is called ObSEUSSed and can be accessed at http://www.obseussed.com/.  I absolutely LOVE this blog.  It is chock full of Dr. Seuss themed literacy activities, DIY crafts, and printables.  It also has links to various other blogs where you can access similar things.  This site has ideas for everything from One Fish, Two Fish printable placemats that you can use to practice numbers to Thing One and Thing Two paper bag puppets with templates, all the way down to Cat in the Hat themed cake pops.  Did I mention I LOVE this website?!?