Is It the End or Only the Beginning?

Whooo, finally!  My 23 Things are complete!  As apprehensive as I was to start a blog in the first place, I really had a good time doing this one.  It was a lot more fun going through the activities and doing things I didn't even know were out there.  My absolute favorite post in this blog was Thing #21, the Animoto video.  I just thought that it was so fun and so cute to do.  I also just love the idea of making something similar for my students at the end of every school year as a small keepsake.  It is something they and their parents could look back on for a long time.  I also realized what a good tool blogging can be.  It will be so useful as a teacher.  I could set one up and have my students' parents follow it.  I can post homework assignments, examples, important dates, school events, class pictures, activities, etc. on the blog and parents could keep up with what their children are doing at all times.  As a teacher I want my classroom to be as open to parents as possible.  I want parents to feel free to always come in and visit and know what's going on with their children and I think that a blog, or even a social network page, such as Facebook, would help to make that possible. 

Thing #23

Creative Commons is something that will be very important to me, as a teacher.  It is important that you make sure you're not inadvertantly stealing someone else's work.  How can you discipline your students for plagiarizing or cheating when you, the teacher, have stolen someone else's idea for a worksheet, or class video, or what have you.  It is crucial that if you are going to use technology and the internet to enhance your lesson plans that you make sure you do it legally.  Even if it is something as small as inserting an image from a Google search into your PowerPoint presentation to make it a little more interesting, you still need to make sure that you are obtaining that image legally and that you are using it in the right way.  Teachers cannot ethically get on to students for cheating or plagiarizing when they themselves are essentially doing the same thing.  Teachers have to set the example.

Thing #22

I really like the idea of on online 3-ring binder.  It's a great way to keep things organized and keep ideas that you find on the web.  One thing I really liked was the automatic Google fill feature.  I liked being able to just type in a google search and have the site autmatically fill the binder with great ideas and topics. It's a lot more effective than going through Google yourself and having to sit there and scan through each result.  This site narrows it down and chooses only the most relevant and effective resources.  The titles of my three binders are "2nd Grade Vocabulary", "2nd Grade Alphabetic Principle", and "2nd Grade Language Arts Games".  The last one is my favorite because it is filled with lots of ideas for games, everything from interactive sites to sites with free, printable worksheets.  I think there would be a lot of uses for this in the classroom.  Teachers can create their own binder and have the resources needed for whatever lesson they are using at the time right there in one spot.  That is much more convenient than having to search around for them or even just having several tabs open at one time.  I like how this keeps everything in one spot and it keeps it together.

2nd Grade Language Arts Game

Thing #21

I LOVED the Animoto video project.  How cute is it to be able to make your own little video using pictures of your friends and family (or in a teachers' case, her students) and share it?!?  I think this would be a great tool to use in a classroom, if for nothing else than to create a cute video of your students at the end of the year as a memorable project for them to keep.  I think parents would enjoy it as well.  Teachers could create the video and then post it on their blog or social networking site and share it with their students' parents, who could then share it with their friends and family.  I absolutely love this idea and plan to use it with my students!




Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Thing #20

For this post I chose to use a School House Rock video for "Interjections".  Anybody that knows me knows I LOVE School House Rock!  I have loved it ever since I was a kid and I use it a lot.  In fact, I just used the video for "Nouns" for my lesson plan in my instructional strategies class.  My daughter loves the videos, as well.  When I was in eighth grade my teachers played them for everything from language arts to social studies.  To this day, whenever I have to recite the preamble to the Constitution of the United States (which surprisingly is not that often!), I can't do it without singing the School House Rock version in my head! 

I think YouTube is a great tool to use for teachers to find videos to enhance their lessons.  The only drawback to it is there are some videos that can give your computer a virus, so you have to be careful of what you click on.

Thing #19

Teacher Pop is pretty cool.  I had never heard of it before now but the more I explore it, the more I like it.  It's a lot like Facebook but restricted to teachers.  I think it is a great place for teachers to get together and share ideas.  I also like how not just anybody can sign up and have an accout.  You have to be approved.  That is a good privacy feature that will keep people who don't need to be a part of it off of it.  Teachers can feel safe posting pictures of themselves or their classroom and not have to worry too much about the internet dangers that come along with sharing those things publicly on Facebook or elsewhere.


Visit TeacherPop

As far as other social network sites, I have accounts with Facebook and Pinterest.  I use both of them frequently.  I think Pinterest is a great site to share ideas.  I have gotten a lot of teaching ideas from that site.  There are a lot of educational blogs, curriculum ideas, etc.  I even used some of them for one of my assignments in another class.  It's a really great site to use.

Thing #18

Social networking is a very important aspect of today's education.  It is very important that teachers know how to use this tool because it is one of the biggest forms of communication now.  Facebook and Twitter are extremely popular and used widely so they are a valuable way to get in touch with students' parents, or to keep track of what is going on with the school.  Students can use them to "like" or "follow" the school's page or the teacher's page.  Teachers can post homework assignments, projects, due dates, etc. on their Facebook or Twitter page that way students (who spend the majority of their time on these sites) won't have the "I forgot" or "I didn't know it was due" excuse.  I think, as a whole, Facebook is more useful than Twitter.  Twitter only has a limited number of characters to use for each update, while Facebook allows the post to be as long as you want it.  Both sites definitley have their classroom uses, as stated above, and I can almost certainly say that once I get my own classroom, we will definitely have a class Facebook page (with parents' approval, of course).  That way my students' parents can see what goes on in the classroom, I can post pictures of the fun activities we'll do, and parents can always know what homework or assignments are due and when they are due.

Here is a link to my facebook page:  Stephanie Stevens

Thing #17

Social bookmarking is a great way for teachers to keep track of interesting websites that they might want to use to get information for a lesson.  After joining Delicious, I started poking around a bit under the "educational technology" tag and I found myself actually reading some of the websites, not just scanning over them.  One of them, How Stuff Works, had a link to an article titled "5 Earth Facts to Blow Your Kid's Mind" (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/conservationists/5-earth-facts-for-kids.htm).  Having an almost-7 year old myself, who is sure she knows everything there is to know about everything, I thought this would be a pretty cool article to read.  It has some neat facts about Earth that would be pretty awesome to share with an elementary science class.

I can definitely see the potential for using a site like this in a classroom.  You can bookmark your own websites that you come across so that you have them there for future reference.  It definitely beats having to go back and search for that site or article you read but can't exactly remember where you saw it.  I think teachers can absolutely take advantage of this type of site for classroom use.  It would definitely come in handy!

Thing #16

I chose to do the iGoogle start page because it is something I use a lot.  It is not my permanent home page (AOL is my home page for the simple fact that it has been since I was a teenager and I am reluctant to change anything, no matter how small it is!) but it is something that I access quite often.  I like all the different themes you can pick with iGoogle and all the various widgets and features you can add to customize your page. 

I also chose the Google calendar because, again, it is something I already use.  It is useful because it keeps track of the events of the day hour by hour.  I can always know what I have going on for each hour of the day which is important because being a working mom who also goes to school full time, I stay pretty busy and need something to help keep me organized and on track.  As far as the to-do list goes, I think an electronic version is too much work.  I tend to forget that I have things placed on it and that is an area where I believe having it written down and physically in my hand is more helpful than having to go in and access it electronically. 

Thing #15

For this post I chose to share my Thing #14--the flowchart made from Gliffy.com--on the APSU 23 Things Sandbox Wiki.  I chose the flowchart because I just think it is a really fun tool for teachers and students to use to help keep students focused on the various steps of long problems. 

I really liked using the wiki.  I enjoyed just browsing through the other things other students had posted from their blogs.  There are a lot of great ideas out there and I think that it's really neat that there is a place out there where we can all get together and interactively share our ideas with eachother.  I think it would be a great tool for teachers to use within a school district, or even outside of one.  It's a good place for teachers to get together and share ideas with one another. 

Thing #14

For the flowchart portion of this blog assignment, I used Gliffy.com.  I really liked this site as a tool for creating flowcharts for my classroom.  It's very easy to use and it would be beneficial for students to use to help them out with homework assigments that have a lot of steps to them.  As an example, I created a flowchart depicting the Order of Operations:

As for the mindmap, I tried MindMeister and Bubbl.us and I am still not 100% sure of what I am supposed to do with it.  I know it is used for brainstorming ideas and other things of that nature, but to me, it's not very useful.  It just seems like more trouble than its worth to me and it's not something I can see myself using very often, if at all.

Thing #13

Before this assignment I had never even heard of Zoho writer and had never given much thought to Google Docs. I think both sites have their pros and cons but one thing that I really liked about both of them is that by using one of these sites you eliminate the need to purchase Microsoft Word, which can be a bit pricey.  Students will be able to type up their homework and print it out for class without having to spend a lot of money on a product that their families may not be able to afford.  Also, with either of these programs students can work together on projects, even when actually getting together may not be an option, through the share feature.  This would be extremely helpful for students in completing group assignments.  After trying both of them out, I have to say that I like Google Docs better.  There was one feature that it had that Zoho writer did not and that was the Translate feature.  With Google, you can type up your document and then use the translate icon to translate it into any language in a separate document.  I think that this feature alone would be invaluable to teachers who do not speak any other languages but who have students whose parents/guardians struggle with the english language.  Here is an example:

March 31, 2012

Dear Parents,

    We will be having an Easter party next Friday, April 5.  Please send 24 candy filled eggs to school by April 4 for our Easter Egg Hunt.  We also need parents to sign up to bring refreshments, plates, napkins, etc.  There is a sheet in your child’s folder for this.  Please fill it out and return it to school as soon as possible.  

Thank you!
Mrs. Stevens

de marzo de31 2012

Estimados padres de familia,

    Vamos a tener una fiesta de Pascua el próximo viernes, 5 de abril. Por favor, envíe 24 huevos rellenos de dulces a la escuela el 4 de abril para nuestro Easter Egg Hunt. También tenemos a los padres a apuntarse para traer refrescos, platos, servilletas, etc Hay una hoja en la carpeta de su hijo para esto. Por favor, llénelo y devuélvalo a la escuela tan pronto como sea posible.  

¡Gracias!
La señora Stevens