Thing 15

I am not sure how I feel about  the the APSU sandbox. It is neat that you can go in and edit your own things but I feel like you can do that anyways on your own. One of my own favorites was the pictures of Ireland that I made into a collage. I would like to keep adding other photos to that and may one day even some of my own from Ireland! Something I do not particularly like is that you can go in and edit someones work.

Is it the End or Only the Beginning?

There were quite a few things that I enjoyed doing during the 23 Things. I really liked the Animoto site. I think that that will be useful for many different subjects and topics. I also really enjoyed flickr and getting into Pandora. There were a lot of things that I feel I will be able to look back on and use again when I have my own classroom.

Thing 4

 Commenting is what keeps a blog going and is kind of what a blog is about. It creates a sense of community because more than likely you have the same people who come back to visit your blog and put in their opinions and comments. I found it important to know that there is an etiquette to being a part of blogs. You need to know that there are multiple ways to respond and I am sure that goes both ways. You making a comment is like voting and saying that the blog post is important.The first blog that I chose to make a comment on was Ashlee Boyd's Thing 16. As I was reading her post I realized that we had that one in common and I thought it would be nice to share that. My next post was to Kara Wyatt's Thing 21. Making the video was also my favorite and I really enjoyed finding and using that website. I think that it will be great to use in the classroom. My third comment was on Hannah Stone's Thing 12. She really liked the Google Calenders and even though I was not too keen on them at first, I know now that they can be very useful. My internship has shown me that this could be very useful for the company and keeping things organized. The fourth post went to Reneice Glasper's Thing 15. Wiki is such a tricky website to use by she had such a great idea. Letting the students use it for summaries would be a great idea. There would be different interpretations and in the end we could go over it as a class. My fifth post went on Darryl Haislip's Thing 6. I thought that the maps were also very useful and could be used in everyday life. We always want to teach our students about things that they can take with them and this is one of those things.  A post I chose outside of our class was from a website called A Cupcake for the Teacher.blogspot. It was on organizing you bulletin board supplies. Not being in my own classroom yet, this was a helpful hint for me. It is always nice to learn things from those who have already experienced it and she is still new, only teaching for 4 years. For my last comment on a blog I chose Ms. Cassidy's Classroom Blog on a Animoto video. I really enjoyed using that and she used it in her classroom for painting's that students were creating base on Van Gogh. I though this was a great idea and it could be put to use when I have my own classroom.

Thing 23

http://sjlibrary23.blogspot.com/
This is an example of another 23 Things that show's we are not the only ones who are participating in the activity.

As a future teacher  I will use creative commons to remind myself that I must get permission to use someone's work and give credit where credit is due. I will also use it to teach my students that they need to remember copy right laws and to make sure to give credit where it is deserved.

Thing 22

http://www.livebinders.com/edit/index/374333#All of my Live Binders for this are titled Education.  This specific Live Binder is one that has different links for kids to play games to help with learning. I am currently using Live Binder in another class for a Case Study and Assistive Technology. This would be great for the classroom because you can save multiple websites that you may want to use for different lessons. You could put websites for all subjects and use them to teach or use as assistive technology. Students could make one as well, with help, to keep track of helpful sites and ones that they can share with their fellow classmates.

Thing 21

I really enjoyed using Animoto! It is a really neat website and there are a lot of things that you could do with it. The first thing that came to mind was using it for different events at school to make a video for students to watch of photos taken. We could also use it for a video for the end of the year to look back at all the fun we had! This is definitely something I will use in the future.

Make your own slideshow at Animoto.

Thing 20

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6uYhDU5tvg     Special Education Teaching: Teaching Strategies in Special Education

I really like YouTube. There are so many different videos and many different areas where you can look up information. People make videos on things such as strategies, how to use different tools, classroom management, etc. I chose this one because I think that we sometimes find it difficult to incorporate different strategies in the general education classroom for those with special needs. There is always help you just have to know where to look and take the time to do it.

Thing 19

http://teacherpop.ning.com/profiles/profile/show?screenName=040mq1ffxfo4l&from=fb

This is the link to my badge that I added to my Facebook. The only online community that I am a member of, that I use often, is Facebook. I do like Facebook and Twitter seems to be a nice online community as well. I like the Bake Space a lot because I am baking and cooking all of the time. I like that they have a space for recipes and I saved this website for my personal future use. I think that I would use the Craftster.org, Whats on my Bookshelf, FilmCrave, and Classroom 2.0 Ning.

Thing 18

As educators, we need to be able to know how social networking works so that we can broaden our knowledge and find new things to use in the classroom. With twitter, https://twitter.com/#!/AndreaForsting, I like that you can look up many different things in a lot of different areas. I had never used Twitter before this class so it was interesting to see what all it offered. People always use it to follow friends and celebrities but it is also great for educators. I like Facebook but it is more my personal social network rather than how my Twitter is for school and the classroom. You also have to be very careful on what you post on your social networking. Make sure that all things you post or look up are appropriate. We are professionals and must conduct ourselves that way in everything we do.

Thing 17

I am not sure how I feel about Delicious.com. I can see where it could  be useful but I do not particularly like it. This could be a tool used in the classroom and for personal use as well if you chose to do so. Social bookmarking for teachers would be great for sharing information with other teachers as well as parents. If there is a site that you think would be useful for students to use at home you could use this to share with parents very easily. 

Thing 16

For my start page I chose to use iGoogle. This one appealed to me because I use google quite frequently so I figured it would be the best one for me. I will make this my homepage. It shows me the weather, news, and time as well as many other things. This will be great for signing in everyday.

The online calenders can keep you on track by sending you reminders. I received one the other day that I had actually forgotten about. This is a great system to have for those who have a lot going on and need reminded of daily things to do.

I do not really like the to do lists. I make my own in my agenda which is something that keeps me on track from day to day.

I would recommend a lot of these tools to others. They could be used at school as well as at home, especially the calender and start pages. I like the StickyNotes idea since that is something I use and I think it helps with little side notes and reminders.

Thing 14

http://www.gliffy.com/gliffy/#d=3397601&t=Blog_14_Example

https://bubbl.us/

For Gliffy (flowchart) I chose to make a floor plan for fun. I thought it was neat to be able to create many different styles and there were a lot of different layouts to choose from. In bubbl.us I just made a simple diagram. There were not as many things to choose from when it came to bubbl.us so I think that I would prefer to use Gliffy with all of its different options. Even though it was very easy to use bubbl.us and if I was looking to make a simple diagram that is what I would use. It would be great for compare and contrast and students could use it very easily.

Thing 13

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1Km0K-hJYLTcmM0v1djiXvkAd6YuUvP7vX3iyc2tnUZU/edit

Using Google Docs, students could make a lot of different helpful things for assignments and projects. They can use this to make presentations, forms, and tables along with many other things. I decided to make a simple drawing just to see what could be done with it. This would be great to use for students learning shapes or maybe just for some fun during free time.

When it comes to comparison and which one I like better I would have to say Zoho. I like that there are many different areas (apps) for me to use. It is a little more professional and when it comes down to it Zoho just offers more useful things to help keep organization and structure.

Thing 12

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1

http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?mqm=c&q=Current+Events&x=AMJHsmVISEF7vpRJ81stEoNpr_Be_f-lHA:1329343833330

I decided to use the calender and the alerts. I really like the calender and it was very easy to set up and use. This would be great for keeping track of things going on in the classroom and events coming up in the school, like assemblies and drills. The alerts were really neat too because it lets you decide what topics you want, how often you want them, and where you want them sent to. This would be good for educational use because you could get alerts on new technology ideas, new events happening in education, different activities, etc. 

Thing 11

I think the easiest method of finding feeds is to use the search tools specifically for blogs. On websites that I usually visit, I do not really notice that there are icons for me to put into my RSS. The easiest search tool for me was probably the Technorati. One, it allows to to search for blogs very easily. Another thing is that is lets you find the topics that you want to put in your RSS. I did not find any of the tools to be confusing. They all allowed you to look for what you wanted and allowed you to be able to put the feeds into your RSS. I found these to be interesting. Anytime I look for a blog, I use regular Google. To see that there was a Google for blogs was really nice and will make searching much easier. I liked that the Topix.net had your location so that you could look at things that are happening in your area or state. I found a website called Syndic8.com and this site allows you to find RSS and Atom news feeds on many different topics.

Thing 10

• Something that I like about the Google Reader is that you can subscribe to anything you want and there are many different topic areas for you to choose from. It is nice that there is something like RSS to keep you updated on new things that have arrived for you to use.
• This is great for school because it lets you read about things that are going on all over the world as well as in your own state with schools and if you are aware of things that are happening you can do your best to help change the things that may not be going as smoothly as they should be. It allows you to stay updated on the latest issues in education and as a teacher that is very important. 
• Teachers can use RSS to their advantage by actually using it. If you have ever looked up things on a website, sometimes it is just not up to date for what you need. RSS is a neat thing to have so that you can always have the latest information on a topic that you are following on a regular basis.

Thing 9

These were a couple of my creations from the custom sign generator. The process for creating these was not difficult at all to complete. The site is pretty easy to follow and all you need to do at the end is right click and save to your computer. I think that for the classroom you could create a lot of things that students would really enjoy. Some classrooms do a star of the week, or helper of the week, and this would be a great way to put their picture up in a fun way. I would use this personally for different things as well. This would be fun to use for parties/events to display what the event was and who it is for.

Thing 8

This is an example of the Mosaic Mash up on Flickr. I chose to do pictures from the one place that I would really like to travel to which is Ireland. This could be used for a lot of things in the classroom. You could make one for the seasons, months of the year, the alphabet, sight words, etc. This is great for anything you can think of really! I will definitely refer back to this when I have my own classroom and need ways to put things together. I would not mind sharing photos online with others. Obviously we need people to share photos otherwise we would not be able to use sites like this. If they are going to be beneficial to others I would definitely share my photos online with others.

Thing 7

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuppini/4852884811/

On Flickr I decided to use the key word history to see what it would give me. I really enjoyed looking through all the photos and seeing what it came up with. I have never heard of Flickr so I was interested to see if it would be a good site or not. I also like that it gives you a few different size options to view the photos. There are times when you go to sites like Google images and it is always the image you want that will not get any bigger. I think that Flickr is definitely something that I will continue to use for different assignments and also for things I do in the classroom with my future students.

Thing 6

I decided to look into Pandora. I know that a lot of people use it but I had never payed much attention to it. Something that I like about Pandora is that you can pick any kind of music you like, which makes it easy to find stations for you to use in the classroom. I also like that it is not something that I had to pay to listen to the music. I went ahead and listened to a few things that I personally like and they were all really great song choices for what description I gave. Anything that teachers can use that does not cost anything and is beneficial to the students learning is wonderful. Even if there was no application for its use in a school or library setting, I think that it would be approved by a principal for a teacher to use a Pandora app and play songs in the classroom. IPod's are being used quite a bit in the classroom and I think that music can be used as a learning tool or be played while students are having some free time.

Thing 5

I chose to take a look at the Horizons Report and Teachers 2.0. What I liked about the Horizons is that it gives a lot of information about technology and how it is increasing for people of all ages. Technology is something that is always improving and now it has become a focal point in the schools at all levels. The Teachers 2.0 was a really neat podcast. I have never used a podcast and now that I know what it can do I am interested to see what I will be able to do with it in the future. I like that there was a host who brought different guests on to discuss a specific topic together. It is important for teachers from all over to discuss different ideas to help one another out in the classroom. There is always room for improvement and always more for us as future teachers/current teachers to learn. To me, I think that "School 2.0" means more technology and better things for students to benefit from. It sounds like the schools will be really focusing on what technology can do for them and the learning environment. Schools in the future I think will be using way more technology that what we do now. I also feel that in the future the technology will be so advanced and not have all of the "glitches" that we have now. All of the technology that we use now in the classroom will be more improved and advanced for students to benefit from in all aspects of learning. 

Thing 3

A blog could be something very useful in the classroom. Even in grade school, I think that a classroom could share one for parents to use with their students. It would be great for a schedule of events that were coming up and students could put ideas into the blog. Parents could also use it for ideas for the teacher as well. I think that it would be a great way for students, teachers, and parents to all keep in contact and share ideas together for things like field trips, different activities, parties, and so on. Students, with their parents, could also post things in the blog like what their favorite things are at the time such as cartoons, movies, outdoor activities, games, snacks, etc. This would give the teacher ideas for different things to use in classroom that the students would enjoy learning from.

Thing 2

When it came to the name of my blog and my posting blog, I really just wanted something easy that I knew I would remember and what would be better than my name! Creating this blog was not difficult for me to do but I am also still working on being interested in the idea of a blog. This is something that is new to me and something that I have never been interested in but after looking at other blogs I have realized that this could be very beneficial to me and my future in the classroom. The avatar was made based on what I look like, as close as I could get it anyways! I like to create things that reflect me because this is about me and the things I like and my opinions.

Thing 1

I think that all of the lifelong learning habit's are easy for me except for one. Confidence is not always something I always have but at the end of the day I know that I am able to accomplish anything I set my mind to. The first one, begin with a goal, is my favorite because I always go into something with a goal. This helps me to stay focused and determined on what I am trying to complete. I have never heard of the Web 2.0 tools referred to as Web 2.0 tools. Even though I use some of the tools, some I do not so I am excited to see what they will do for me and what I will learn from the tools. Setting up the blog was not very difficult for me. I have never been a blog person so I think it will be interesting to see what I gain from this and if I will continue to use it in my future career as an educator.