Thing #19

Facebook is really the only social networking site that I am a member of. But this “Thing” has opened my eyes to all the other social networking sites out there. I did join TeacherPop which is a nice site for professional connections and uses. I do use some of the other sites listed on a regular basis such as IMDB to look up movie and entertainment information and Yelp for restaurant reviews. Goodreads also seems like a site I would like to explore further. All of these sites have great uses for your personal life and some of the professional sites such as TeacherPop and Classroom 2.0 would be a great way to make connections and share information with other teachers.

Thing #18

It is important for teachers to understand social networking because it is such a fixed part of our culture and society these days. Everyone is on Facebook or Twitter including the students we will be teaching. Cyber bullying is also an ongoing issue with students today, so teachers need to be able to address that.  Social networking sites can be a great way to communicate with others and share news, information, photos, etc. However, I am not sure of how I would use these sites in my classroom. I suppose I could set up a class Facebook page or Twitter account for easy communication purposes with students and parents, but I don’t think I would use it for anything else because I feel these sites are more for personal use.

Thing #17

I enjoyed exploring Delicious and learning about social bookmarking. I can definitely see the benefits of using a social bookmarking site to save websites rather than just bookmarking sites in your web browser. It provides an easier way to locate saved websites and the tags help keep them organized by category. This is a great resource for teachers to use because the tags allow them to easily find websites related to their subject area and it also is a way to see what other teachers have found and used in their classrooms.

Thing #16

I created my start page with iGoogle. I figured iGoogle would be the easiest since I’ve already been using a lot of other Google applications. I really like the start page. You can see your email, weather, news, etc. all in one place. I added a few widgets including a To-Do List notepad. I also created a Google Calendar to keep up with school assignments, work deadlines, and personal appointments. Online calendars are very useful because they help keep you organized and you can access them anywhere. The other site I explored was Lifehacker. Lifehacker is a site that keeps you up to date on the new changes on various apps and software. I think all these tools will be helpful in both my personal and professional life. Being organized is very important for teachers and all these sites and applications will be useful to me in the future.

Thing #15

On the APSU 23 Things Sandbox wiki, I uploaded one of the images I created with an image generator from Thing 9. Editing the wiki page was very easy to do. I can see how wikis can be useful. It’s another tool that makes collaboration easy. The example given in the “Wiki in Plain English” video is a good example of how wikis can be beneficial. Wikis could be used to coordinate information for a group project or as a way for students and teachers to share information and ideas. However, I find wikis to be somewhat confusing and disorganized because it is hard to tell who wrote what and what was changed, so I don’t know if I will be using them in my future classroom.

Thing #14

Mind maps and flow charts are a great way to create a visual outline of a topic and see how things are connected and related. I think these would be great tools for students to use to help them grasp certain concepts. The two tools I explored were bubbl.us and Gliffy.com.

Bubble.us:  I really liked this site. It was very user friendly and easy to figure out. You just click the “Start Brainstorming” button and then you can start adding your bubbles. Some of the nice features on this website allow you export and import your charts as well as the sharing feature which lets you collaborate with others.  

Gliffy.com: This site was a little more complicated and more difficult to use. There are so many options to choose from. This site took a little bit more time to figure out, but once you figure out how to use it, it’s not so bad.

Thing #13

Using Zoho Writer and Google Docs is much like using the Microsoft Office applications expect they are both free and available on the web. Both have many of the same basic features as Microsoft Office. However, they have some other features not available on Office such as importing documents from the web and a way to share and collaborate with others easily. The sharing option is a great benefit to using these tools because it allows you to work in real time with others. This feature would be very useful for group projects and presentations. Both programs were very easy to use so I don’t really prefer one over the other.

  

Here are the links to the documents I created:

Google Doc:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BVEG5YhH7A569Cu_CjWkxMnNoR18OTmVdKR90Sow-tU/edit?usp=sharing

ZoHo Writer: https://writer.zoho.com/public/911921793e7956c4fcf653b15d4a34a38e2fd705d41bec3acd0e086a4dfc6442d2bec0af04f23226